Chapter 56 – The Petunia Cannon 

Biceps that rivaled the poster child of Mister Universe’s bodybuilding competition himself, the legendary Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. Standing at nearly two meters tall. A heavy set square jaw with stubble and an equally intimidating mean mug on his face, with thick brow muscles and small eyes relative to his large face.

This was Petunia, a fully grown monstrosity of a man rivaling the minotaur demon in musculature who lady Ann somehow got to wear a dress that was about to tear in half from his sheer bulk, squeezing the dear life out of a tomato that he was about to throw. And ‘she’ was about to pelt the ever living hell out of Devon, who now felt like a real rabbit running across the field, trying to escape a big bad wolf on the hunt for him. 

Now Devon understood why the carriage driver cautioned him so much, saying that this mission was less desirable than fighting an ogre to some agents. It made a lot more sense now than before, when Devon was just dealing with a few flimsy shots by Ella the busty blonde noble and her other giggling and limp wristed noble girl friends. 

In a dodgeball game dominated by giggling elementary school children, a massive overgrown highschooler just arrived, metaphorically speaking. 

Petunia winded up his first throw, with so much pent up anger at being dressed up like a doll by this spoiled lady Ann that he looked like he was about to explode out of his dress. He then threw, launching the tomato at such a high speed that its shape began to distort into an oval.

The tomato slammed into Devon’s back, sending him sprawling on the ground in shock. So the tomato kind of just burst open, and such a soft fruit/vegetable thing wasn’t supposed to hurt upon impact, but the sheer speed at which Petunia could pitch a tomato made it hurt like a motherfucker. 

“Fuck!” Devon shouted. It stung quite a bit. Kind of like getting hit by a pail of water dropped from three stories up. Water generally didn’t hurt but with enough speed, even water could be like cement. Such was the property of surface tension. 

“Wow Petunia, one point already~” lady Ann chortled in laughter, nodding in approval as her giant murder machine man dressed in a poorly fitting pig tail wig loaded up another tomato into the Petunia cannon.

Devon leapt away and ran at top speed around the courtyard trying to dodge Petunia’s next shot. The other giggle noble girls were laughing and lobbing tomatoes at him, some of them hitting his tail and even his bulge, but they were inconsequential compared to even a single tomato thrown by Petunia.

Petunia grunted and cocked his arm back, launching a tomato at lightning speed towards Devon’s face. Devon instinctually brought his arm up to block it, and the tomato splattered all across his arm, seeds and tomato goo running down his shirt and face. 

Spitting out a few seeds that got into his mouth, although tomatoes were healthy vegetables and Devon wasn’t opposed to them, Devon ran towards the country house’s wall and began climbing as best as he could.

“Hey, no climbing!” Ella shouted, but Lady Ann just laughed and waved it off.

“It’s okay, let our little rabbit climb. We want him to last a bit longer today, anyway~” 

“Oh alright,” Ella replied, the blonde aristocrat a bit dejected sounding since she couldn’t toss a tomato so far up the house if Devon actually managed to make it to the top. 

She watched as Devon scrambled to try to climb the country house, but he fell back down onto his ass, and Petunia let loose another shot from the petunia cannon. Fire in the hole.

The tomato launched across the courtyard as if it was in slow motion, and pelted Devon straight in the cheek. He felt his entire head get displaced a good arm’s length away from where it was before, knocking him flat onto the ground again and giving him an intense headache.

He finally understood why other guild backrooms adventurers were more willing to take on an ogre than play in this ‘tomato run’ game. This was actually just physical torture. He grit his teeth and tried to live through it though, thinking of the huge payoff that would come from this. And it wasn’t like he could actually fight an ogre if that was the other option. His combat abilities were too weak to do anything of that sort.

Suddenly, as another tomato whistled towards his face from the petunia cannon, an idea arose in Devon’s mind. 

melonball

p.s. the businesswoman that granted Devon his passive returns to the story as an important character in the most recent chapters ;D