Chapter 550 – Runaway Ice Cream

Chapter 550 – Runaway Ice Cream

Mo Lan: “…”

They really do run!

“Ready? Here I go!” Mo Lan held her shell spoon, bracing herself just like the others.

“Go ahead!” Rose, Lena, and Dora were all ready.

Mo Lan lifted the cloche, revealing eight colorful ice cream balls inside.

The moment the cloche was removed, the ice cream balls bounced out of the bowl like kicked rubber balls, flying off in every direction.

Mo Lan aimed at one ice cream ball and scooped at it.

As soon as the shell spoon made contact, the ice cream ball immediately became docile. Mo Lan then went after the other ice cream balls around her.

Rose, Lena, and Dora were quick on the draw too.

Working together, the four of them quickly corralled all eight ice cream balls back into the bowl.

Mo Lan breathed a sigh of relief—finally, she could eat.

She picked an ice cream ball, scooped up a small spoonful, and had just put it in her mouth when the ice cream ball ran away again.

Mo Lan had no choice but to chase it with her spoon. Each scoop would calm it down momentarily.

But before she could take a second scoop, it could bolt at any time—sometimes right after she finished a bite, sometimes before the spoon even reached her mouth, it was off again.

She could only eat while chasing it with her spoon.

If Mo Lan let her guard down and allowed one to run a full lap before returning to the bowl on its own, it would immediately melt into a pool of rainbow syrup, drizzling over the other ice cream balls.

“Rainbow syrup on ice cream is pretty tasty too!” Rose consoled her. “We always end up eating one and letting another escape.”

Finishing one bowl of ice cream felt like playing a nerve-wracking game of catch.

“So? Wasn’t that fun?” Dora said with a grin.

“It was pretty fun,” Mo Lan said, feeling grateful that none of the other dishes they’d ordered today had the word “runaway” in the name—otherwise, getting even a single bite would have been a struggle.

She took a sip of Bubble Coral to calm her nerves.

Colorful bubbles floated up from the glass. She gave one a gentle poke with her finger, and it transformed into a tiny daisy.

But when she caught it in her palm, the little daisy turned back into a droplet of water.

After confirming with Rose and the others that the remaining dishes weren’t as “lively” as the Runaway Ice Cream, Mo Lan lifted all the cloches.

A combination of grilled seafood and fried bites arranged in a battered model ship immediately caught her attention. “So this is the Sunken Ship Treasure Platter? It smells amazing!”

Compared to drinks and desserts, she definitely preferred this kind of hot, fragrant food.

However, Mo Lan noticed a scroll of parchment tied with a red ribbon to the mast of the battered ship. “What’s this?” she asked curiously.

“That’s the surprise treasure inside the Sunken Ship Treasure Platter—a treasure map!” Dora said.

“A treasure map?” Mo Lan wasn’t exactly thrilled. This dish cost 100 gold coins—expensive, sure, but not expensive enough to actually contain a real treasure map. Otherwise, why would Aquina bother running a restaurant? She might as well just go dig up treasure herself.

“What exactly is the treasure?”

“It could be anything. The grand prize is a genuine, undiscovered sunken ship treasure,” Rose said.

Mo Lan was all too familiar with this kind of scheme. Her own Card Magic gacha pool had a grand prize too.

“Have you ordered this dish before? What did you find with the treasure maps?”

Rose’s expression turned somewhat complicated. “The first time we ordered this dish, the treasure map led us to a crevice in the reef, where we found a chest of waterlogged letters. They were probably love letters a sailor had written to his sweetheart. The handwriting was so blurred that we could barely make out the phrase ‘don’t wait for me’ repeated over and over.”

Dora continued, “The second time, we found a treasure chest covered in shells. The chest was completely empty, with tiny words written on the bottom: ‘Congratulations, you’ve found the essence of the sea.’ We didn’t understand what the essence of the sea was at first, so we brought it to Aquina to ask. Turns out, the essence of the sea is seawater. And sure enough, when we’d opened that chest, it had been full of nothing but seawater.”

Mo Lan: “…”

She could just imagine how devastated Rose and the others must have been.

“Honestly, after finding the ‘essence of the sea,’ none of us wanted to order this dish again. But the Sunken Ship Treasure Platter really is delicious…” Lena said.

“So you ordered it a third time, right?” Mo Lan asked.

Lena nodded. “The third time, we managed to find something with a little bit of value.”

“Though it was also a little bit disgusting,” Rose added.

“What was it?” Mo Lan asked curiously.

“A pirate’s dentures. A magical item with rubies embedded in it. When you clamp them together, they play a recording of pirate profanity,” Dora said.

Mo Lan: “…”

What kind of bizarre treasures were these?

“Actually, we got off pretty lucky. The luck spell did help a little. I heard that someone once found a cursed gold coin, and after taking it, they were chased ashore by a horde of relentless giant crabs—and the crabs didn’t stop there. As long as that person lingered even briefly near the sea, crabs would come after him. He had no choice but to go see Lady Aquina, who told him the coin was the giant crab chief’s retirement fund. After it was taken, the chief had dispatched his underlings to collect the debt.

In the end, the poor fellow had to return the cursed coin.”

Rose couldn’t help but burst out laughing as she told the story. “Compared to that guy, what we found was actually pretty decent.”

After hearing all this, Mo Lan could only marvel, “The fact that the Merfolk Tavern is still up and running is honestly impressive!”

If this were on Earth, they would’ve been shut down from complaints long ago.

With that, the treasure map sitting atop their Sunken Ship Treasure Platter suddenly felt like a hot potato.

“Go ahead and try it, Moira. Even though nobody’s found the actual sunken ship treasure yet, Aquina has guaranteed that she really did put one genuine sunken ship treasure map in there. It’s just mixed in with all the others, and even she doesn’t know which one it is anymore,” Dora said.

Mo Lan first cast a luck spell on herself, then used a cleaning spell to wash her hands before reaching for the red silk ribbon holding the treasure map.

She unrolled it and found a set of map coordinates.

“It looks like it’s somewhere in the sea?” Mo Lan studied the map, puzzled.

“All the treasure map locations are in the sea,” Rose said. “If you don’t have a water-repelling gem, you can also hire one of the tavern’s merfolk as a bodyguard during the daytime when the tavern is closed. She’ll wrap you in a bubble and take you to the sea floor to search for treasure.”

Mo Lan quickly said, “I have a water-repelling gem. Looking at the coordinates, it’s not very far. I’m planning to go look for it tomorrow—do you all want to come?”

“No, we can’t. We’ve got a ton of deliveries to make tomorrow!” Rose said. “But you absolutely have to tell us what you find!”

“Yes!” They were all dying of curiosity.

“Alright,” Mo Lan said, tucking away the treasure map. She picked up a skewer of grilled seafood, and after just one bite, she understood why Rose and the others kept ordering this expensive dish three times in a row despite finding nothing but junk each time.

It was genuinely delicious!