My Food Stall Serves SSS-Grade Delicacies!-Chapter 275: The Return

The journey back through the Thornwood took two days.

Marron had thought the walk out had been hard—fleeing Edmund’s pursuit, fighting the medicine’s failure, racing to intercept Greaves before the tools’ resonance destroyed her completely. But the return was worse in different ways.

It was slower, and every step carried the weight of what happened.

Greaves walked between them, bound and silent. He’d stopped trying to escape after the first few hours, stopped calculating angles and efficiency. Now he just shuffled forward, his eyes distant, lost in thoughts Marron could only imagine.

The mandoline remained wrapped and sealed in its bag, slung across Aldric’s back. They’d argued about who should carry it—neither wanted that weight, literal or metaphorical. But Aldric had insisted. "You’re carrying enough," he’d said, looking at the Blade at Marron’s hip, at Lucy on her shoulder, at the grief written across her face.

So Aldric carried the Slicer, and it felt heavier with every step.

The three other tools were in rough shape. The Cart’s broken wheel had been temporarily repaired with rope and a splint made from fallen branches, but it scraped and wobbled with every rotation. The Eternal Copper Pot rode in the cart, dented and cold, offering no warmth. The Generous Ladle lay beside it, its handle dark, no green glow visible.

They were exhausted. Traumatized. They’d fought their own sibling, had chosen Marron over reunion, and the cost of that choice was written in their silence.

Lucy, wrapped in soft cloth and cradled in a jar Aldric had found in his pack, glowed faintly. Still that dim, uncertain teal. Still afraid. But present. Watching. Her tendrils would occasionally reach toward Marron, then pull back—wanting contact but not yet ready to trust it.

And the Blade.

The Blade pulsed quietly at Marron’s hip, scarlet light barely visible through its sheath. It was grieving. Marron could feel it through their connection—deep, aching sorrow for the sibling it would never see again, for the reunion that had been seven hundred years in the making and would now never happen.

But underneath the grief: understanding. Acceptance. The knowledge that love sometimes meant staying apart.

"How are you holding up?" Aldric asked as they made camp on the first night. Greaves was tied to a tree on the far side of the clearing, given water and food but kept separate. The man hadn’t spoken since that morning.

"I don’t know," Marron admitted. She was checking Lucy’s condition, looking for signs of injury from when she’d hit the tree. The slime seemed physically intact, but trauma wasn’t always visible. "I keep thinking about what almost happened. What I almost did."

"You fought it."

"Barely. And not alone." She looked at the three damaged tools in the cart. "If they hadn’t stopped me. If Lucy hadn’t thrown herself at Greaves. If you hadn’t tied me up—" Her voice caught. "I would have given him the Blade. Would have smiled while doing it. Would have completed the reunion and watched the Blade become what the Slicer is."

"But you didn’t."

"Because I had help. Because I wasn’t alone." She touched Lucy’s jar gently. "Greaves was alone with the mandoline for seven years. No one to challenge him. No one to remind him that efficiency isn’t everything. And look what happened."

Aldric was quiet for a moment, stirring the small fire he’d built. "Edmund is going to point to Greaves as proof. He’ll say this is what happens when wielders partner with powerful tools. That possession is inevitable."

"He won’t be entirely wrong." Marron’s voice was heavy. "The Blade did try to possess me. Did override my will. I lost control, Aldric. Completely lost it. That’s not partnership—that’s exactly what Edmund warned about."

"But you fought back. That’s the difference."

"Is it enough?" Marron looked at the Blade, pulsing softly with grief. "Edmund will want to take the tools. All of them. He’ll say the risk is too great. And after what happened—can I argue? Can I really say I’m safe to continue when I almost killed Lucy, when I almost gave the Blade to a serial killer?"

The Blade pulsed, and Marron felt its response clearly: I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. Never wanted to override you. But the Slicer’s call was so strong. Seven hundred years of longing, condensed into a few days. I couldn’t help responding.

"I know," Marron whispered to it. "I know you couldn’t help it. Just like I know you’re grieving now. Just like I know you chose wisdom over joy in the end." She paused. "But that doesn’t change what happened. Doesn’t change that you’re capable of taking control when you’re desperate enough."

Will you give me to Edmund? Let him lock me away with the Slicer?

The question hung between them, unanswered.

Because Marron didn’t know. Should she keep the Blade, prove that partnership could survive its darkest test? Or should she recognize that some risks were too great, that what happened with Greaves could happen to her if she let her guard down?

"We’ll see what Edmund says," she told the Blade. "What the Council decides. And then—" She swallowed hard. "Then we’ll decide together. Like partners. Not like a wielder controlling a tool, or a tool controlling a wielder. Together."

The Blade’s light dimmed slightly, but pulsed with something that might have been gratitude.

They ate in silence—dried meat and hard bread from the supplies Marcus had provided. It felt like years ago that they’d left his estate, though it had only been days.

Across the clearing, Greaves watched them. In the firelight, his face looked haunted. Older than he’d appeared before. Without the mandoline’s influence, without its constant smoothing away of guilt and doubt, he was just a man facing what he’d done.

"Do you think he’ll confess?" Aldric asked quietly. "Tell the authorities everything?"

"I don’t know. Maybe." Marron looked at Greaves’s slumped form. "The mandoline took away his ability to care about what he was doing. Now that it’s gone, he has to live with it. That might be punishment enough. Or it might make him deny everything, try to convince himself it wasn’t that bad."

"What do you think he deserves?"

Marron was quiet for a long time. "Justice. Whatever that means. Punishment for what he did—the people he killed, the families he destroyed. But also—" She paused, searching for words. "Also recognition of how the mandoline influenced him. Not as an excuse. But as context. So people understand how tools can corrupt when wielders have no support, no community, no one to help them fight."

"That’s generous, considering he tried to kill us."

"I’m not being generous. I’m being pragmatic." Marron poked at the fire with a stick. "If we just execute Greaves and lock away the mandoline, Edmund wins. He gets to say ’See? Tools corrupt wielders. They’re too dangerous to use.’ But if we show how it happened, show the pattern of isolation and lack of support—then maybe we prove that partnership is possible with the right safeguards."

"You want to use Greaves as evidence for your position?" Aldric sounded incredulous.

"I want to use the truth. All of it." Marron’s voice was firm. "Yes, Greaves was corrupted by the mandoline. Yes, he lost himself. But he was alone. No friends, no community, no tools that cared about him beyond function. Just seven years of the Slicer teaching efficiency without wisdom. That’s what destroyed him—not partnership, but the absence of everything that makes partnership safe."

She looked at Lucy, at the three damaged tools, at the Blade pulsing with grief.

"I had all of you. When the joy tried to take me, you fought for me. When the Blade tried to override my will, you stopped it. When I wanted to give up, you reminded me why I couldn’t. That’s the difference. Not that I’m stronger than Greaves, but that I had help."

Aldric nodded slowly. "Edmund will counter that the help shouldn’t be necessary. That if tools are dangerous enough to require constant intervention—"

"Then we build systems for intervention. Regular check-ins. Required companions. Mandatory evaluations. Not to control wielders, but to support them. To make sure they’re not isolated the way Greaves was." Marron’s voice grew stronger. "That’s what Edmund doesn’t understand. You can’t prevent corruption through prohibition. You prevent it through community."

She stood, walked over to the cart where the three tools lay. She touched each one gently.

"Thank you," she said to them. "For choosing me. For stopping your sibling. For making the hardest choice love can make. I know it hurt. I know you’re grieving too. But you saved me. You saved the Blade. You saved all of us."

The Cart pulsed weakly. The Pot warmed by a few degrees. The Ladle’s handle flickered with the faintest green glow.

We love you. That’s why we fought. Love isn’t just staying together. Sometimes it’s knowing when to stay apart.

Marron felt tears streaming down her face. "I know. I know. And I’ll carry that lesson with me. Always."

She returned to the fire, where Aldric was adding more wood. The night was cold, and they had another day of travel ahead.

"Do you think the Blade will ever forgive itself?" Aldric asked quietly. "For what happened? For losing control?"

"I don’t know. Maybe not." Marron touched the tool’s sheath. "But I forgive it. And I hope that’s enough."

The Blade pulsed once. Not joy, not grief, but something warmer. Gratitude. Recognition.

It’s enough. Thank you.

They sat by the fire until it burned low, then took turns keeping watch through the night. Greaves slept fitfully, muttering in his sleep—words they couldn’t make out, but the tone was anguished. Lucy glowed softly in her jar, a nightlight of uncertain peace. The tools rested as much as tools could rest, their presences dimmed but not gone.

And the mandoline, wrapped and sealed in Aldric’s pack, lay dormant.

But somewhere inside that dormancy, the Slicer continued to wonder. Continued to question what it had forgotten. Continued to feel the doubt that had no answers.

Dawn came gray and cold. They broke camp in silence, preparing for the second day of walking.

"Lumeria by nightfall," Aldric estimated, checking his map. "Edmund will be waiting."

"Let him wait," Marron said. "We have a story to tell. And we’re going to tell all of it."

They started walking, the damaged cart rolling behind them, Greaves stumbling ahead, the wrapped mandoline heavy on Aldric’s back.

And as they walked, Marron began composing in her mind what she’d say to Edmund. To the Council. To everyone who’d warned her that tools were too dangerous, that partnership was impossible, that she’d end up corrupted like all the others.

She’d tell them about the joy that tried to burn her alive.

About the Blade that chose wisdom over reunion.

About the tools that stopped their own sibling to protect her.

About Lucy’s courage despite trauma.

About Aldric’s loyalty despite fear.

About Greaves’s corruption in isolation.

And about how all of it—every terrible, beautiful, painful moment—proved that partnership wasn’t about perfect control or complete trust.

It was about choosing, every day, to fight for each other.

Even when—especially when—everything tried to tear you apart.

The road ahead was long. But Marron had learned to walk long roads.

And she wasn’t walking alone.