What Do You Mean I'm The Captain Of A Yandere Mercenary Company?

Ugghh… This case is more complicated than I thought…

I guess if you think about it, if this place was the only one that was making people addicted to the ’food’, then they would always flock back to this place instead of searching around for more organic food.

”This situation is way bigger than I thought it would be…” I sighed.

”At least we got another lead right?” Ries pointed out.

”That means we’ll have to look for the masked guy. But with only that description in a place like this… Where do we even start?”

The guy clasped his hands together, ”Wait, wait… You’re not just going to leave me here, right? I really don’t want to do this anymore…”

I raised an eyebrow at him, ”What do you want us to do?”

”Get me out of here!”

Amber scowled at him, ”You’re basically telling us to go to war with this syndicate for you.”

”I… There’s no need to do that… Just err… Get me out of here, maybe?”

”What? Like pack you in a box and sneak you out of this place?” Lea scoffed.

He gasped, ”That might work! We can just use that box of White Powder! Put me inside it and then you can sneak me out of here!”

Amber rolled her eyes, ” Yeah, like the people here would see us take out a box out of this place and no one would question it or even check what’s inside it.”

He grimaced, ”Ugh… Is… Is there anything that you can do to help me?”

Mara gave him a pointed look, ”You seem to be mistaken about something. Why should we even help you in the first place? Is there anything beneficial to us if we help you?”

”Err… It’s… It’s a good thing to do right? Helping people? Isn’t that why you’re investigating this?”

”We’re Mercs. We’re getting paid for this. We’re not doing this for free,” I informed him.

”Ah… I err… I don’t really have anything to offer to be honest…”

Amber shrugged, ”Well, I guess you’re on your own then. Good luck~”

”Wait! You can’t just--”

He was interrupted when the door opened to reveal Ingrid standing coming in with a bucket in her hands.

But the moment she stepped inside, the smell of the room got to her and she froze up as her face turned a sickly shade of green.

The girls behind her all blanched at the smell and quickly escaped from the room, the sound of retching and coughing could be heard from behind the door.

As for Ingrid… Her eyes slowly widened until she suddenly doubled over and started throwing up into the bucket she was holding.

I turned back to the guy, ”Are you not able to smell the state of your kitchen or something? How are you able to live with this?”

He blinked at me, ”What’s… What’s wrong with the smell?”

”Like… Everything? Is your sense of smell ok? Why do you think all of us have a strip of cloth tied around our noses right now?”

”I… I thought you were doing that to hide your faces or something…”

”No? Like is your sense of smell really broken?”

”I mean… I don’t think it’s that bad?”

I was about to go on another rant at him when Mara tugged at my arm and leaned over to whisper in my ear.

”Tera… He comes from a rather bad part of the station and lives in literal trash before. So this is actually a step up from what he’s usually dealt with. That’s why he doesn’t see anything wrong with what he has done with this place.”

Oh wow… Ok, that explains a lot…

He wrung his hands nervously, ”Is… Is it really that bad?”

I gestured at Ingrid who was still throwing up into the bucket.

The guy grimaced, ”Ah… In my defence… I’ve pretty much been the only person to be inside this kitchen for a long time… Actually… Now that I think about it, this might be why the guards assigned to me stopped staying here… I thought they started to trust me… Guess not…”

”Wait… How do you send out the food?”

He pointed to the door and I realised there was a small indentation in the wall beside the door and I’m guessing that’s the serving window where he would drop off his dishes and the servers would pick up without even entering the room.

I wonder if they installed it before or after he made this kitchen into the dump it currently is…

The door then slid open and a guy dressed in a suit stood there with a frown on his face.

”What is going on in here?!”

He took a step inside the room, blanched and immediately ran outside and started retching.

Ingrid was still throwing up into the bucket by the way.

”Could someone…” I muttered, gesturing at the bunny girl in question.

Amber sighed and started strolling towards the girl to help pull her out of the kitchen so that she could stop getting sick.

I turned back to the guy, ”Anyway, I guess all I can say to you is good luck with what you’re doing here but we’ll have to head out and see if we can find more information about that guy.”

He raised his hands in a panic, ”Wait! That’s it! Why not take me along for that?! I can help you search for him! You don’t even know where to look, right? If you take me along, I would at least be able to help you find him! That’s a good deal, right?”

Hmm… Not gonna lie, he does make a good point…

I mean, the option of just giving up on finding more information and just going to submit what we knew about it was also there but it feels like we’re almost at the very edge of solving it and we just needed a little bit more to get to the final result.

But well…

I turned to Mara and raised an eyebrow, prompting our resident Psionic to pause for a moment before leaning over to whisper in my ear again.

”Mmm… While I can see the location of where he met the masked person, I’m not familiar enough with the station to pinpoint the exact place. It might take us some time to find it if we’re not relying on him.”

Oh, I guess this is like being shown a picture of a place and then relying on the picture to find the exact place in real life?

I turned back to him, ”What you’re suggesting makes us enemies of the Syndicate, doesn’t it? Even if it takes us some time to track this masked guy down, I would rather take that than to have an entire gang on my back for kidnapping their chef.”

He looked around nervously, ”I… I… Wait! I know! You said you’re a chef right? Are you able to cook with organic ingredients?”

Feeling a little curious about what he had in mind, I nodded my head slowly, ”Yes? What about it?”

”In that case… You can say that you’re a rival chef here to take my position and then we can have a cook off! Then you will beat me and the gang will throw me out naturally!”

”And keep me in here to take your place… How the hell is this even a good idea?”

”You can tell them that you need that salt as well and when you leave, you can then escape! Heck, you could even have your companions here arrange an ambush and attack the guards before you escape! With all the gang war happening on this station right now, they would definitely just chalk it up to another gang trying to snatch their new chef! It’s a perfect plan!”

”Except the possibility that they don’t let Mistress leave and send someone else to find this masked man to obtain the White Powder from him instead,” Lea pointed out, clearly not on board with the idea.

He waved his hand at her, ”Don’t worry about it, it will definitely work! Trust me!”

Ries gave him a sceptical look, ”For someone who got into this position in the first place to say that… I don’t think you’re in a position to ask anyone to trust you right now… Especially when you’ve resorted to drugging people to save yourself.”

He flushed from that and he was about to say something again when the guy in the suit came back in with his sleeve held over his nose to block out the smell.

”What is going on in here?! Who are you people and what have you done to our kitchens?! Get out, right now! You! Where are the rest of the orders?! Do you want to be sent back into the torture room again?! All of you get out right now or I’ll get the guards to throw you out!”

Oh, well you heard the guy, looks like we’ve got no choice but to leave now~