Chapter 521: Stomp Town: The Cozy Maple Hotel
*Bing-bong*
The writer of this work would like to make it known that the following dialogue is in Hoof Speech.
That is all.
*Bing-Bong*
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“Well…this fucking bites,” Gao Ren grumbled to himself as he leaned on his desk, waiting for someone, anyone, to come through his hotel’s doors.
“Yet another day with no new guests…motherfucker…”
A city of Willow Scale’s size was home to all manner of little towns and subsections each catering to a certain type of resident and/or visitor.
There was Blossom Avenue, the aristocratic district that was located near the city center and home to the wealthier/more powerful residents, as well as a litany of stores selling exotic goods that would cost seven digits worth of gold.
There was Carver’s Row, the artisan’s district where artists either barely made rent pumping out wood carvings everyday or make enough money to buy three small villas a week via a single painting with a questionable meaning attached to it.
Granted in this world, one could literally cultivate via staring at paintings so, can’t really judge.
And then there were all of the other, smaller, middle-class areas and slums that were too numerous to name in a reasonable timeframe.
That being said, it was among this particular subsection that a place known as “Stomp Town” was categorized.
Stomp Town was what colloquially referred to as an “ethnic enclave”, essentially a place where people of a certain ethnic or geographic demographic gathered, which in the case of Stomp Town, was anybody who just so happened to immigrate from the Stampeding Bison continent.
It didn’t matter if the person originated from the Adamantine Empire, the Golden Horns Confederacy or the Iron Sands Sultanate, if they came from Stampeding Bison and moved to Willow Scale City, they lived here and possibly have descendants.
‘Maybe I should just close up early,’ Gao Ren thought to himself as he flicked his tail in annoyance, ‘maybe go and check out the festival.’
In the case of this fellow, named Gao Ren, he was a second generation descendant of a pair of fox-like bloodliners who moved from a small war torn country in Stampeding Bison to Roaring Tide for a fresh start.
“No, think of what mom would say, think of what mom would say…,” Gao Ren told himself just as he was about to put up the “Closed” sign and leave the counter. After repeating this mantra a couple of times, he placed the sign back into its cubby beneath the desk.
To make ends meet, Gao Ren’s grandparents established a hotel that they called the “Cozy Maple”, a place one could sleep on the cheap while enjoying some “old fashioned” Stampeding Bison style cuisine. Which, in the eyes of particular otherlanders, was very similar to “country southern food”, i.e., pancakes, biscuits, gravy, mashed root vegetables, corn everything, collared greens and good ole fashioned bacon, sausages and steaks of every cut.
Hearty foods that was just greasy enough to make it taste good, and also enough to make you sick if you ate too much of it at all at once.
“What am I deluding myself for, nobody comes to Roaring Tide to eat food from another continent, they come here for food from Roaring Tide! Should I modify the menu?”
During the time his grandparents ran the hotel, things were going pretty good.
People found the idea of Stampeding Bison cuisine novel at the time and they found the lodgings to be quite charming and rustic since it was done in the Stampeding Bison style.
When Gao Ren’s parents took over, things got even better.
They earned enough to expand the hotel in an upward fashion, adding a whole new floor, they could overhaul the kitchen to include more aether tools that not only expanded their cooking methods, but also store ingredients for longer.
For all intents and purposes, as long as Gao Ren kept up this momentum and everything went well, then the Cozy Maple Hotel could’ve become one of the premier places to stay when visiting Willow Scale City.
Unfortunately, that has not been the case since about five years ago.
Surprisingly, it had nothing to do with Gao Ren’s temperament or management skills, since he managed to keep up with the same workload as his parents and grandparents before him.
It was simply a matter of time, and the changing of tastes that occur when enough of it passes.
A hotel in the Stampeding Bison style serving cuisine from there was a novelty for a spell, but like all novelties before it, interest waned as people assumed they squeezed out any enjoyment they could from it.
Then again, it could’ve also been due to the murder-murder-murder-murder-fratricide-suicide that occurred on site when the daughter of a very influential family found her husband-to-be in bed with several ladies of the night and her brother, all at the same time.
Some patrons of the hotel swore to the heavens that they could still hear the screams of bloody murder and rage, and could still smell the blood that was spilt that evening.
Gao Ren had thoroughly scrubbed down the room where it happened, multiple times, but it still didn’t help.
Either way, it was kind of difficult to attract patrons when your place of business is associated with such a violent affair…but it didn’t stop Gao Ren from trying.
Regardless of these issues though, Gao Ren did his absolute best to make sure the Cozy Maple Hotel was always in tip top shape, that the food was of the best quality and that the rooms always had fresh linens and pillows.
That being said though…it was kind of hard to maintain this level of quality when there were little to no guests to appreciate it.
“Hmm…”
*Tap, tap, tap.*
With increasing frustration boiling in his stomach, Gao Ren began to tap the surface of his desk with more and more force until he finally got sick of it and just slammed a fist against it.
“That’s it! I am taking the day off! There are not fucking customers and I don’t think there will be any-”
*Ding-a-ling*
“Hello?”
“Customers!”
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“Whoa…,” Zhen Hai whistled as he looked around the hotel lobby, “this place looks a lot like home.”
“To be fair,” Zhen Feng interjected, “the entirety of Stomp Town made me a bit homesick, although, I don’t think I’ve ever been to the Iron Sands Sultanate, so I don’t know how authentic that shop selling Iron Sands antiques was.”
“None of us have,” Zhen Yue added, “literally none of would be able to tell.”
“True.”
Following Zhen Liu’s idea, again, the scions of the Zhen Clan immediately set their sights on trying to find an ethnic enclave that just so happened to cater to people from Stampeding Bison.
Lo and behold, they managed to find a place called “Stomp Town”, which appeared to be a weird almost equal mix of all the nations that made up their home continent, all concentrated in about a twenty block area.
While it didn’t have the same dryness that the Zhen branch clan younger generation was used to, at least it smelled and looked about the same…more or less.
It was a bit surreal for them seeing Stomp Town though, since back home, this layout was reversed.
Regardless, as Zhen Liu had guessed, Stomp Town happened to be home to several hotels and inns that had vacant rooms.
However…a good chunk of them appeared to be vacant for good reasons.
Several of the inns looked either run down, falling apart or were straight up abandoned, and one too many of them had what appeared to be either a drunk guy or a dead guy lying in their front yards.
Nothing exactly looked too promising.
That was until they managed to stumble upon one hotel that actually looked to be in decent condition, called the Cozy Maple.
As the name implied, the hotel in question was built to look a bit like a giant maple tree, with the “seeds” of the tree acting as what the scions assumed to be the more private or luxurious rooms.
Seeing as it was the most intact of the surrounding hotels, and the best looking as well, the Zhen Clan scions decided that this was probably the best place for them to stay at while they were in Willow Scale city.
“You sure this place is open?,” Zhen Xing asked aloud, “it looks kind of…empty.”
“To be fair, this place is a bit out of the way in regards to everything else in this city” Zhen Guo pointed out.
“Again, true.”
The fact that this place happened to be at the far edge of the city was also a benefit, but that was more of the concern of one particularly paranoid member of the clan.
Namely, Zhen Liu.
‘Huh…this entire place gives off the same vibe as a folktale cartoon. Like the ones about Brer Rabbit,’ Zhen Liu thought to himself as he looked over the hotel’s interior and the wooden furniture that decorated it.
‘All it would need now to complete that look though is-‘
“Welcome to the Cozy Maple Hotel! Are y’all planning to stay for a spell or just came in because you smelled the freshly baked pecan pie?”
‘-an anthropomorphic animal host who spoke with an accent, I was honestly expecting a squirrel.’
