So the Half-human’s attention was on the orc with a bovine face and another orc that resembled an otter.
The former was the stall owner, while the latter was the paying customer.
Speaking of which, the otter orc, despite only reaching up to the Half-human’s waist, had an exceptionally large appetite. Sitting at the table with a giant bowl in front of him, big enough to serve as a bathtub for him, filled to the brim with noodles and meat. For a Half-human, this bowl of noodles would have been enough to feed his entire family for a day.
All the noodles ended up in the otter orc’s stomach, surprisingly without any cases of overeating to death occurring. Rather, after putting down the bowl... it wouldn’t be accurate to say he put it down, as the Half-human watched the otter orc slam the bowl onto the table, stand up, and look up at the bovine orc, "Your noodles are short in weight, you bastard!"
The Half-human tilted his head—so much for a big bowl and a lot of noodles. You’ve eaten it all, and then you accuse others ... You must be hoping for a free meal.
"If you don’t pay up, you’re going to die here today," the bovine orc seemed to not mince words, merely stating a fact.
"I’ll pay with your damn head!" the otter orc exclaimed and then flipped the table.
Was a fight about to break out?! The Half-human was extremely excited—because orcs were always known to be immensely strong, which was especially true from his Half-human perspective.
The bovine orc turned around and grabbed a large cleaver used for cutting meat.
The otter instantly turned tail and ran.
The Half-human watched the bovine orc bellow and give chase to the otter, about to say something when he noticed several Thanan orcs emerge from a corner of the street. They stuffed everything from the stall into bags they had prepared in advance and then also ran off.
The Half-human looked around—the officers had already chased after the bovine orc and the otter orc, leaving no police at the scene, and no one would bother with this kind of incident—members of the Western Human World like the Half-human often preferred that Thainan folks sort matters out among themselves.
And for the Thanan folks, it was best to let the Spirits handle their own affairs.
Thus, the Half-human watched as the Thanan orcs cleared out the stall, a yellow-furred cat-person even took the tub of chopsticks with them.
He turned his head to glance at the stall owner inside the kitchen who was leaning against the counter, "Is it really okay to do this?"
"Of course, it’s okay. Let the Spirits sort out their own issues. As long as they’re not killing each other in the street, a little blood between them counts for nothing," the Thanan stall owner replied. His employee, holding a box of prepared meals, came over, "Your order. Please return the food container to the city hall’s sanitation workers. We will pick it up on Wednesday."
"No problem, as usual." After taking the food box and paying, the Half-human left the Thanan’s store.
He saw the bovine orc and the officers return. The otter was nowhere to be found, clearly, the little creature took advantage of its small size and nimbleness, and it was anyone’s guess where it might have slipped off to.
Then he also saw the bovine orc’s dumbfounded expression upon seeing his empty stall.
Out of kindness, he remained silent.
It wasn’t that he lacked empathy, but he noticed in a corner alley, those Spirits were distributing buns they had taken from the stall to the small vagabonds.
The war in the North seemed unlikely to end anytime soon, and those poor children, along with their parents, were displaced and living under the tyranny of hunger.
As a Half-human, he didn’t think there was anything wrong with staying silent at times —a good deed unrecognized by the law was still a good deed, wasn’t it?
With that thought in mind, the Half-human passed by the alley and noticed the orcs looking at him. So he raised his eyebrows and smiled at them.
The yellow-furred cat-person also raised their eyebrows and bared their teeth in a smile.
Sometimes, there is no need for acquaintances to have met before.
Little Nagen, an Apprentice at the Church of the Goddess of Harvest, had just joined this year. Before revealing his talent for Assistance Magic, he was nothing more than a child from the Western District, tumbling in the mud. The day he passed the apprentice assessment, his mother wept tears of joy, and Nagen had never seen her so happy, nor so distraught.
He had no father - a common scenario for children in the Western District. Sometimes, for the sake of living, his mother had to sell a little something. Nagen had never attended school in the six years since his birth and couldn’t even write his own name. If not for that fateful test that changed his life, he might have ended up like the other kids from Western District, loitering all day, likely to end up dead in some corner.
But becoming an Apprentice, Nagen realized how big the world was and that there were many ways of life far better than being a hoodlum, and there were things far more frightening than hoodlums themselves.
For example, those refugees in the distance. Lately, they had been gathering together frequently, doing and discussing who-knows-what. They refused to work in Sir Malin’s food processing factory, refused to earn their food with their own hands, yet they still had food and drink.
This was abnormal. The Deity always said, "You reap what you sow," and Nagen thought so too. Because of him, his mother found work at the factory, even though it was just washing clothes for the men. She earned a few coins each month and got a few cans of food. Though it was less than before, she was happy, often saying that she was earning less money, but at least she was living more like a person than before.