Winter Festival

"Celebration?" The Goldfinch cocked its head playfully, "What is a celebration for?"

The four-winged thunder hawk and the white-feathered pelican also looked confused. Lizard had gathered them all together after receiving a communication from Ina, saying that they were to attend some kind of celebration. But wasn't a celebration something humans do together? What does it have to do with them?

"It's an activity where you can eat and play." Lizard summed up Ina's verbose description in simple and plain language. It pretended to be calm, trying to lower everyone's expectations for the celebration: "Is there any bird that doesn't want to go? There must be a bird left to watch the fish pond."

Lizard waited for a while. The three birds in front of him were all staring at him, their feet firmly fixed as if nailed to the ground. Not one bird volunteered to stay behind.

As one of the earliest monster employees in the restaurant, Lizard had a certain amount of prestige among the birds. It shifted its gaze to the left and looked at each one from left to right. To the far left was The Goldfinch, without any hesitation, Lizard immediately jumped to the next, leaving The Goldfinch to watch the house was less useful than putting a scarecrow next to the fish pond.

The white-feathered pelican met Lizard's gaze, and a not-so-good premonition appeared. Its eyeballs turned, and then loudly said: "When you recruited me, you said you would take me to eat and drink. Now you want to kick me out?"

The lizard was momentarily guilty. The newly built crawfish pond had been a lot of effort for the white-feathered pelican. It had brought back crawfish caught elsewhere in its bag to the crawfish pond, leading to the first harvest of crawfish. The pelican deserved to participate in the celebration.

Then there was only...

The four-winged thunder hawk was of similar strength to Lizard, and thus was quite confident: "Besides a bird, a lizard can also be left to watch the house."

It didn't know what the celebration would be like, but it would definitely see the black dragon! So, it had to snatch the quota to attend the celebration no matter what. When the four-winged thunder hawk thought of the black dragon's sharp, electric gaze and broad membrane wings, its heartbeat couldn't help but speed up.

It seemed to have acted too stupidly the last time they met. The four-winged thunder hawk puffed out its chest and spread its wings, determined to leave a strong and agile impression on the black dragon this time!

The situation was at a stalemate for a moment, and no one wanted to stay and watch the house.

The three birds and one lizard stared at each other, none of them willing to back down. In the end, it was The Goldfinch that came up with an idea: "How about we ask other monsters to help watch the fish pond?"

This was a good idea, and their eyes all lit up. But who would they trust to do it?

Ironbark bear? No, it loved to eat fish. Letting it guard the fish pond might tempt it to steal.

The golden parrot, wouldn't work either. Any slightly stronger monster could defeat it easily.

Finally, they selected the raging wild bull. It was vegetarian, could fight, and definitely wouldn't be a problem!

The four Monster employees were very satisfied with this result. Lizard pointed at the white-feathered pelican: "Miss Ina asked us to send some crawfish to the restaurant."

The white-feathered pelican rolled its eyes at Lizard, resignedly opened its mouth wide, and let everyone load the crawfish inside its bag.

---

Ina explained her arrangements to the leader and priest of the Rize tribe. Both of them were very excited and volunteered to offer some sacrifices to the goddess as their lives had significantly improved.

Ina could only reiterate: "This is a celebration, not a sacrifice. The protagonist of the celebration is not a deity, but each of you. You just need to arrange the tasks I've assigned to you. You don't need to do anything more."

The chief and the priest nodded in agreement, slapping their chests to guarantee that they would definitely do well in what Ina had arranged.

The celebration task was somewhat special, so the system provided the task props in advance. Ina looked at the row of snack carts in her bag and the (temporary usage rights) marked behind them, determined to complete this task successfully, so she could get the highest level of reward and keep these props.

Ina conveyed the notice of the celebration to all employees of Dragon Flame Restaurant, except Donne. Despite his good performance, his sensitive status as a member of the Knights always prevented him from participating in the restaurant's confidential affairs.

When he curiously asked Dusì, who came to inspect the food today, why she was so happy and why her smile never faded, Dusì could only dryly answer: "I thought of something happy... uh... my, my chicken laid an egg today!"

Why was that something to be happy about? Wasn't it normal? Donne was full of question marks.

What was even stranger was that Dusì also took away a large amount of ice cream this time. Donne had predicted that the boss might be running other restaurants elsewhere. He occasionally received requests from the food teleporter to make certain types of ice cream to put in it, but to take away so much at once, wouldn't it melt?

"These ice creams will be placed in a... very cold place." Dusì was afraid of saying too much and causing mistakes. To avoid Donne's endless questions, she ran away quickly.

Why did he seem to see a bit of pity in Dusì's eyes? Donne wondered to himself.