Trebello Free Commercial City looked splendid and well developed on the surface, but behind such a city, quite a number of outlaws were running wild.
Since there was no king or noble ruling this place from the beginning, there was no way public order would be good.
Instead, the people here formed alliances centered around each merchant company and managed public order themselves.
If someone touched a person affiliated with an alliance, they retaliated several times over so that no one could ever touch them again.
As such, this city was not a place where back-alley thugs like these could act recklessly.
Because if they happened to touch someone from an alliance by mistake, they could become crippled or leave this world without even a mouse or bird knowing.
That was why people who had just come to this city for the first time and seemed to have no connections, like Lawrence, were mainly their prey.
However, Lawrence was not someone who would be frightened or intimidated by them.
Rather, he showed an appearance overflowing with composure.
To Lawrence, who had fought savage monsters at close range for months, the momentum given off by back-alley thugs was nothing but laughable.
In truth, Lawrence was smiling faintly as if he found the bastards interesting.
At that sight, the faces of the robbers, already fierce-looking, crumpled even more.
“This country bumpkin bastard can’t read the mood.”
“Lower your eyes right now, you bastard!”
“Everyone, calm down. Once he gets stabbed once, he’ll start crawling on his own. If you give them one deep hit in the stomach, they all start crawling. Hehehe.”
The one who spoke last among the robbers pulled a dagger from his clothes and drew it across his tongue with a sssrk.
Blood immediately flowed from his tongue, and he showed the inside of his mouth, covered in blood, while giving a chilling smile.
This entire process was an act meant to frighten Lawrence.
If they showed such a cruel sight, most weak-willed bastards grew frightened on their own.
Even if the opponent had some skill, showing them a scene like this made them frightened, made their movements unnatural, and made them easier to deal with.
This was all one of their methods to make robbery easier.
Of course, they thought there was no chance of losing in a three-on-one fight, but if the opponent charged at them as if prepared to die, there was a possibility of injury, so there was no harm in being careful.
Because if they suffered a serious wound, the treatment cost might end up being greater than the money they stole.
That was why the situation they wanted most was to frighten the other side like this and make them surrender on their own.
“Crazy bastard. What is he doing to a perfectly fine tongue? In any case, the things thugs do are no different here or there.”
Lawrence looked at the robber who had cut his tongue with the dagger as if he were pathetic.
Modern thugs also often took off their shirts whenever they wanted to threaten someone, or in severe cases, broke glass cups and harmed themselves, or chewed razor blades.
Meanwhile, when Lawrence did not become frightened even though he had injured his tongue and instead looked at him pathetically, the thug’s face flushed red.
Because the other side reacted like that, shame washed over him for seemingly having done something crazy all by himself.
And that resentment over his shame soon turned into anger toward Lawrence.
“I was going to take only your money and let you live, but not you. Just think of yourself as dead. Around here, no one cares even if one person dies.”
As soon as he finished speaking, the bastards slowly drew their daggers as if they had arranged it in advance, creating an atmosphere of fear.
A moment later, the sharp momentum emitted by the three of them swept over Lawrence.
“Hey, what are you guys doing right now? Are the three of you putting on a comedy routine?”
Lawrence lightly blew away the momentum the bastards were giving off with all their might simply by frowning and revealing a little of his own pressure.
Then he looked at the bastards with a baffled expression that seemed to ask, What kind of pathetic bastards are these?
“Drawing your swords means you’re ready to fight to the death, doesn’t it? Then you should attack right away. Stop posing like idiots.”
Lawrence’s voice as he shouted at the bastards like he was scolding them sank low, as if he was angry.
He was irritated that they still had not realized the difference in skill and still saw him as easy prey.
A day-old pup still failed to read the mood and looked down on a beast of prey.
In the end, unable to control his rising irritation, Lawrence moved first.
With a single leap, he closed the distance of about three meters in an instant and approached his opponent.
Then he threw a punch filled with irritation.
Lawrence’s fist, thrust out powerfully, landed precisely on the jaw of the robber closest to him.
The jaw struck by his fist was driven back, and the lower lip crashed into the upper lip. In that instant, his face was crushed flat like an old man with no teeth.
Then came a chilling cracking sound.
CRACK! The sound of his jawbone splitting rang out.
The eyes of the robber, who had been so full of confidence, grew hazy in an instant, and the bastard’s head snapped backward with a whoosh while his feet lifted into the air.
Even then, the force contained in Lawrence’s fist was not fully discharged. As if someone had grabbed him by the nape from behind and pulled, he flew briefly through the air, then fell backward helplessly.
“How dare you, you bastard! Die!”
Another robber could not hold back his anger and attempted to attack.
The bastard aimed for Lawrence’s stomach and stabbed with his dagger.
Perhaps because he had come to his senses after seeing his comrade struck down, it was a fairly sharp attack, but there was no way an ordinary person’s attack without mana would work on Lawrence.
Lawrence deflected the attack far too easily with only a light step.
The robber’s dagger, having lost its target, stabbed into innocent empty air, and at that moment, as if foreseeing his own future, the robber’s eyes grew sorrowful.
And just as the robber had expected, Lawrence’s picture-perfect counter struck the bastard’s jaw.
CRUNCH!
This time, perhaps because more force was properly loaded into it than before, there was the sound of bone being crushed.
From the start, Lawrence was not someone who would leave alone a bastard who had attacked while aiming for his life.
He loaded more force into his fist than he had with the first bastard, and as a result, the bastard’s jaw shattered.
The light vanished from the bastard’s eyes, and he collapsed like a doll whose strings had been cut.
The pupils of the robber left alone after seeing all of this trembled as if an earthquake had struck.
The last remaining robber was frightened and stepped backward.
‘Fuck, we picked the wrong one. He didn’t react much, so I thought he was crazy, but that’s just a monster.’
Before Lawrence’s overwhelming strength, the surrounding scenery disappeared, and only Lawrence filled his vision.
Starting with the trembling of his teeth, soon his whole body shook like aspen leaves.
‘I-I have to run. I absolutely have to run from this.’
His fallen comrades had long since disappeared from his mind.
The robber turned his back and tried to run away, but Lawrence was faster.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
As if trying to take away the robber’s mobility, Lawrence immediately threw a low kick.
THUD—!
The kick struck his ankle precisely, and along with a crunching sound, the ankle twisted in a direction it should never have bent.
Soon after, the body that had lost its support lost balance and fell to the ground.
“Aaaaaaagh!”
The bastard screamed at the pain rising from his ankle, clutched it with both hands, and rolled across the ground.
The fight ended so quickly that it was hard to believe it had been three against one.
But Lawrence had no intention of stopping here.
Since they had aimed for someone’s life, he wanted to make them clearly realize that their own lives had also been placed on the scales.
And he also disliked the oily shine spread across their faces, as if they had lived comfortably by robbing others of their efforts.
Lawrence went around and gently stepped down on the bastards’ wrists.
“I-I was wrong. Aaaaaagh!”
“P-Please spare me. Ugh!”
“…….”
Except for one bastard who had fainted, the others screamed like frogs being stepped on.
Whether they knew it or not, they would not be able to commit robbery for quite some time.
No, since Lawrence had certainly taken measures, if their treatment did not go well, they might have to vomit back up all the comfortable life they had lived until now and pay the price for it in the rest of their lives.
Leaving behind the grand welcome greeting, Lawrence left the place.
Over the next few days, Lawrence went around various parts of the city and came to understand it.
He carefully investigated everything, starting from which merchant companies were mainly active and which goods were popular, to the geographical center of commerce and the districts where restaurants were densely gathered.
As a result, before long, Lawrence was able to blend completely into this city.
Now it was time to begin something.
“No matter how much I think about it, what I can do well is still…….”
In the end, just as he had first thought, the conclusion was the food business.
In truth, because he did not have much money, he also had no choice other than the food business.
First, in order to do food business, he needed a shop.
And after walking around for several days, Lawrence had found a shop he wanted.
However, when he actually tried to obtain the shop, he could not make the decision easily.
Most of the money he currently had was money his father had given him.
Because he knew very well that his father had strained himself to prepare that money, he wanted to decide as carefully as possible.
‘There’s a chance business might not go well, so let’s not start big from the beginning. It won’t be too late to open a shop after checking how the market reacts first.’
Even if he had modern knowledge, Lawrence was still unmistakably a beginner in business.
So what he thought of was a street stall.
There were already many street stalls in the city, and it looked perfect for checking the market’s reaction.
However, after looking into it, even street stalls had no small stall fee.
A good location had a higher cost than the monthly rent of most shops.
‘I expected it, but good spots really are expensive.’
Naturally, it would be good to do business in a good spot, but Lawrence was confident that if it was the food he had in mind, he could do it anywhere.
The food he thought of was none other than pork cutlet.
The preparation was simple, and cooking it was easy because he only needed to fry it in oil.
Also, if he prepared the sauce in advance, the food turnover would be fast.
One slight concern was that because it was a food that did not exist in this world, he did not know how people would react.
But Lawrence believed that delicious food would work regardless of the era.
With that belief, the place he chose for his street stall was fairly far from the city center.
It was not a place many people passed through, but he liked its quiet and cozy atmosphere.
He installed a simple stand where he could cook and purchased the necessary cooking tools.
“Now, the business preparations are done. Shall I start in earnest?”
To begin business in earnest, he first had to make the sauce.
He could not make it exactly the same as what he had eaten in Korea, but Lawrence was confident he could make it delicious even with the ingredients here.
So for a while, he went around the market and obtained the necessary ingredients.
Using butter, flour, and wine as a base, he added various spices and made the sauce.
‘I’d like to add some pepper, but that’s too expensive and will raise the food cost.’
For price competitiveness, he avoided using expensive ingredients as much as possible.
Even so, this was delicious enough.
He boiled the pork fat he bought at the market to render out oil, and pounded properly cut pork with a wooden mallet to flatten it.
Doing this softened the meat and made the pork cutlet even more delicious, so it was an essential process in most pork cutlet specialty restaurants as well.
After that, he sprinkled salt to season it and coated the meat in order with flour, egg wash, and breadcrumbs.
Now, all the preparations to make pork cutlet were finished.
Lawrence boiled the oil, and once it reached an appropriate temperature, he put in the pork cutlet.
“Mm, the sound is good. Now, as long as it fries well…….”
Along with a pleasant sound, the first pork cutlet fried into a delicious brown color.
A savory smell spread through the street and drew the attention of passersby.
And Lawrence poured the sauce he had prepared in advance over the golden-brown pork cutlet.
“Oh, it looks much better than I expected.”
With a pork cutlet as large as a person’s head sitting proudly on the plate, the overwhelming sight naturally brought out admiration and surprise.
When Lawrence carefully cut the completed pork cutlet with a knife, tender pork appeared from within the crispy batter.
When he put a piece cut into a good size into his mouth and chewed, the sweet and salty taste of the sauce, the sweetness of the tender pork, and the richness of the fat harmonized together.
“Wow, I made this myself, but this is better than expected…….”
The moment he took one bite, admiration came out on its own.
The first time Lawrence had eaten pork cutlet was when he was thirteen.
It had been a snack-shop pork cutlet made by pouring sauce over a commercial pork cutlet, and it had tasted so good.
After that, pork cutlet had proudly taken its place as one of Lawrence’s favorite foods.
Eating pork cutlet he liked so much after several months made happiness wash over him, comparable to the day he had eaten pork cutlet for the first time.
“Whew, now all that’s left is to rake in the money.”
Lawrence’s eyes sparkled and filled with delight.
Even objectively, this taste was not inferior to the pork cutlet he had eaten in Korea.
Now, all the preparations were complete.
Only starting business remained.