One of the various reasons Lawrence chose the pork cutlet business was the supply of pork.
He had no intention of buying pork to make it.
Because the mountains near the city were full of wild boars.
Since monsters also lived in the mountains, hunting wild boars was not easy, but that was only true for ordinary people. It had nothing to do with Lawrence, who already possessed considerable martial strength.
Lawrence’s plan was to hunt wild boars while also catching monsters and raising his level.
Early the next morning, Lawrence headed to a nearby mountain as soon as he woke up.
When he entered the mountain, the first thing he noticed was a goblin, something he had fought to the point of exhaustion in the territory.
“Whew, I’m sick of these bastards. Just how many damn goblins are there? They’re basically modern cockroaches.”
Because goblins were one of the lowest-grade monsters, their numbers could not help but be high.
At first, even facing one had not been easy, but to Lawrence, who had grown, goblins were now only annoying things like mosquitoes.
As his level rose, the experience he gained from goblins had become negligible, and the bastards’ byproducts had no value at all.
They could be called trash-like bastards who gave only 1 point.
“Grrrrrk.”
The goblins puffed themselves up in their own way and pressured Lawrence.
“Hey, I don’t have time. Hurry up and attack.”
When Lawrence, laughing faintly, crooked his finger, the goblins rushed at him all at once as if they understood.
Lawrence’s sword swung several times toward the bastards, and that was the end of the battle.
Leaving the goblin corpses scattered across the ground behind him, Lawrence entered the dense forest.
After all, there was a higher chance that wild boars would be in places with plenty of food rather than near the foot of the mountain.
Just as he thought, before long, he found a place where the ground had been disturbed as if someone had dug through it.
Judging from the few stiff, dark hairs visible on the ground, it seemed to be a place where a wild boar had taken a mud bath.
“Malgeum, could you check whether there are any wild boars nearby?”
“Okay.”
When Lawrence asked, the water spirit floated high into the sky.
Not much time had passed before she hurriedly returned and told him where the wild boar was.
“Lawrence! If you go ooover there, there’s a really huge wild boar.”
“Thank you, Malgeum. Good work.”
Pleased by Lawrence’s praise, the water spirit smiled brightly.
When he went to the place the water spirit had told him about, he saw a wild boar busily searching for food.
As the water spirit had said, its size was enormous.
With a little exaggeration, it was about the size of a small truck.
However, if one was struck by that heavy body, it certainly would not end with only one or two broken ribs.
“Ah~ nice! The size is good, and it’s fattened up beautifully.”
Lawrence immediately took a bow from his Inventory and aimed.
As befitting a knight who handled mana, when he put strength into it in earnest, the bow bent as if it might break, and the bowstring became taut as if it might snap.
Because he had learned archery whenever he had time while standing duty at the Barrier Wall, hitting the wild boar was not particularly difficult.
When Lawrence finished aiming and released his hand, the arrow flew quickly and lodged itself into the wild boar’s belly.
The force contained in the arrow was so strong that even though the distance was fairly far, the arrow pierced the wild boar’s thick hide and drove in more than two-thirds of its length.
“Squeeeal!”
Startled by the sudden attack, the wild boar leaped and then fled just like that.
“This is a pretty tough bastard. It still runs quite well even after being hit by an arrow.”
Lawrence quickly ran after the wild boar.
It was natural for the wild boar to run well since mountains were where it lived, but Lawrence was running just as well.
Because they were in the mountains, even the slightest carelessness could easily make one trip over stones or tree roots, but Lawrence dodged them instinctively and ran skillfully.
A short while later, perhaps unable to endure the pain in its belly any longer, the wild boar stopped and sat down.
“Impressive. The arrow must have lodged in its organs, yet it still ran this far. Huff, huff.”
As Lawrence steadied his breathing and approached, the wild boar that had been sitting down sprang to its feet and glared straight at him while breathing roughly.
As befitting a beast with living wild instincts, the bastard resisted until the end.
“Squeeeeeal!”
Even while dying, the wild boar let out a thunderous roar and charged, kicking powerfully against the ground with its hind legs.
Its size was one thing, but if those protruding tusks struck someone, it seemed as if a human body would be torn apart with ease.
‘Oof, that’s vicious. I didn’t think I’d struggle this much just to catch one wild boar. That’s practically a monster. But if it’s this fierce, it would be too much for ordinary people to catch.’
Seeing the bastard charge at him felt like a truck with no brakes rushing straight toward him.
However, Lawrence calmly focused on the wild boar’s movements, and just before it arrived, he threw his body sideways and dodged.
CRASH—!
Unable to control the force of its charge, the wild boar slammed squarely into the tree behind Lawrence.
The impact was so strong that a thick tree, one that would take at least two people with outstretched arms to embrace, shook, and leaves and fruit came pattering down.
The bastard, seemingly having taken a considerable shock, staggered, then roughly shook its head from side to side as if trying to regain its senses.
However, because of the wound from the arrow and the shock delivered to its head, it could not endure any longer and collapsed to the ground with a thud.
“Whew, stubborn thing. To think it fell for such a simple trap no matter how angry it was. No, with a wild boar’s intelligence, is that only natural?”
Lawrence muttered to himself and drew the sword at his waist.
Without hesitation, he drove his sword into the wild boar’s heart.
The wild boar trembled several times, then soon went limp.
At that moment, experience and points came in.
[45 experience and 3 points obtained.]
Lawrence was startled when the message window suddenly appeared before his eyes.
“Oh, I get experience even from killing a wild boar?”
He had naturally thought he would be able to gain experience only from monsters.
But to think a wild boar also gave experience. It felt like he had unexpectedly struck gold.
Moreover, it gave a full three times more experience and points than a goblin.
Well, thinking about it with common sense, a wild boar was several times stronger than a goblin.
Lawrence had planned to focus on hunting wild boars for a while and thought raising his level would be difficult, but if things were like this, it was a complete gain.
“Anyway, thanks to this fellow, I’ve had a proper run for the first time in a while.”
Lawrence had run quite a long distance chasing the wild boar.
Because of that, his body had heated up, and he wiped the sweat flowing down his forehead with his hand.
Chasing after the bastard had been several times harder than fighting the wild boar itself.
He was about to take a brief rest, but then shook his head as if he had decided something.
“Right, let’s dress it first. I can’t ruin meat I worked hard to catch.”
Lawrence tied the rope he had prepared to the wild boar’s hind legs, looped the rope over a sturdy-looking branch, and pulled with all his strength.
A short while later, when the wild boar floated into the air, he tied the rope to the tree and fixed it in place.
He immediately began dressing it.
Because he had often watched soldiers at the Barrier Wall hunt and eat wild animals, he removed the blood and organs without much difficulty using the dressing method he had learned by watching over their shoulders.
When he took a dagger from his clothes and skinned the wild boar with hand movements that looked fairly professional, the sight of meat just as he had seen in butcher shops was revealed.
“Malgeum, could you wash the wild boar clean?”
“Mm, okay.”
The water spirit, having received Lawrence’s request, smiled brightly and moved here and there over the wild boar.
Whenever the water spirit moved, clean water washed the wild boar as if alive, and it soon became clean.
‘At this size, I should get about three hundred servings.’
Lawrence placed the butchered wild boar meat into his Inventory and went out to find another wild boar.
Using the same method, he hunted three wild boars in the morning alone.
This amount seemed more than enough to run business for a week.
Since the most important ingredient, pork, was ready, all that remained was to begin business.
After returning to the city, Lawrence immediately began trimming the meat.
He removed the fat and stacked the meat, cut into proper sizes, neatly into a container.
“Malgeum, could you freeze some water?”
“Okay.”
At Lawrence’s request, the water spirit smiled and froze the water inside the bowl.
He wrapped the ice he had secured that way in cloth and stacked it neatly on one side of the box.
Doing this would prevent the meat from spoiling while also naturally aging it, improving its taste and flavor.
Then he boiled the pork fat that came from trimming the meat and rendered oil from it.
This oil would be used when frying the pork cutlets.
Lastly, he made plenty of pork cutlets and sauce.
He coated the meat he had pounded with a mallet in batter and stacked it neatly on plates, while on one side, he boiled a pot full of sauce.
At last, all preparations for business were complete.
Now he only needed customers to come.
Because it was the first business of his life, Lawrence waited for his first customer with a pounding heart.
But people merely passed by indifferently without even giving his stall a glance.
It was already in an out-of-the-way place with little foot traffic, and it seemed like he should not simply stay still like this.
Then suddenly, a good idea occurred to him.
He had remembered a scene he had once seen on YouTube.
-They say that when doing business, customers bring customers. But when there are no customers in the hall, how should you draw customers in?-
-At times like that, rather than sitting still and waiting for customers, it is better to show the owner busily moving around. For example, cleaning tables. If there is a cooking space at the restaurant entrance, it is good to show yourself making food. There are many cases where people are drawn in by the smell.-
“Right. Staying still like this won’t help at all.”
As if making a resolution to himself, Lawrence lit the firewood and heated the frying pot again.
A short while later, when he put a chopstick into the oil to check the temperature, small bubbles formed at the tip of the chopstick.
It was a sign that the temperature was suitable for frying.
When Lawrence carefully placed a pork cutlet into the oil, a loud sizzle rang out, and soon, a savory smell spread around him.
At that moment, a passerby who had been walking quickly as if he had something urgent to do slowed his steps, drawn by the increasingly rich smell.
His gaze, which had been looking straight ahead, naturally turned toward Lawrence’s stall, and when he discovered the pork cutlet being fried deliciously there, he could not take his eyes off it.
“Hey there. What food is that?”
The passerby who approached the stall asked Lawrence, who was cooking the pork cutlet.
“It is called pork cutlet. It is a dish made by preparing pork and frying it. If you eat it with a sauce made with various ingredients, the taste is truly amazing.”
Lawrence answered the passerby’s question kindly, along with a detailed explanation.
At Lawrence’s kind response, the passerby’s wariness faded.
In truth, the people here were generally rough and ill-tempered.
The street vendors were especially severe. If someone was not going to buy something, they would often ignore questions without even answering.
Moreover, if someone asked a question while they were busy working, they would usually glare at the person who asked and make it obvious that they were busy.
But the merchant before his eyes was somehow different.
When Lawrence answered not only with the name of the food but also with a detailed explanation, the passerby felt good, as if he was being treated well.
“How much does it cost?”
“Three pennies.”
Hearing the price, the passerby scratched his cheek with a finger and looked slightly troubled.
The smell was good, and it looked delicious, but because it was a food he was seeing for the first time, he seemed hesitant to buy it.
Quick-witted Lawrence immediately realized the passerby’s concern.
He, too, often felt a little hesitation along with curiosity before a food he was seeing for the first time.
‘At times like this, a sample is best.’
With skilled hands, Lawrence cut the pork cutlet into small pieces and coated them in sauce.
Then he held one out to the passerby and said,
“Try it first and decide afterward. It tastes very good.”
“Oh! Can I eat this?”
The passerby leaned his upper body slightly back and blinked in surprise.
In this place, where sales techniques had not yet developed, the concept of tasting samples was bound to be unfamiliar.
Moreover, it was no exaggeration to say that Lawrence was the first to offer a sample at a street stall, which could be considered the lowest rung of business.
“Yes, of course. It is free, so please enjoy it without pressure.”
Lawrence pierced a piece of pork cutlet with a small skewer like a toothpick and held it out to the passerby.
Unable to refuse Lawrence’s active offer, the passerby tasted it without quite knowing what was happening.
But the moment he bit into it, his eyes widened.
‘What is this? This taste…….’
He had not expected much…….
A festival broke out in his mouth.
He could feel a taste he had never experienced before from the food this young street vendor had handed him as a sample.
The sweet and salty sauce, the crispy texture of the batter, and the tender meat being chewed harmonized together.
There was no way this could taste bad.
“H-Hurry and give me one.”
The passerby ordered pork cutlet as if possessed by something.
Urgency could be seen on his face.
‘It worked!’
Delighted by the first order he had been waiting for, Lawrence clenched his fist tightly.