by Hiro Ainana
“I’ll do it! I shall become the ultimate sacrifice!”
“Tama toooo!”
“I wanna be the sacrifice and eat meat, sir!”
“No, this is too dangerous to leave to the children. Allow me to be the subject of the experiment instead.”
“Master, I belong to you. Any duty that is yours is mine as well. Thus, I am the most appropriate subject for an experiment, I advise.”
“Mrrrr. Meat?”
So everyone wants to eat it? Aside from Mia, anyway, who’d only been charmed by the smell and lost interest once she learned it was meat.
…Nana, you need to stick with your liquid diet for a little longer.
“We’ll decide with rock-paper-scissors. Nana, you’re still not supposed to eat solid foods, so you can’t do it.”
“Master! Please reconsider!”
“Nope.”
Nana did her best to convey shock and mortification with her expressionless face, but I dispassionately shot her down.
I felt vaguely guilty, but I could hardly subject the person with the weakest stomach to this experiment.
“Hooray! I win!”
Lulu hopped up and down triumphantly, her fists in the air. I had never seen such straightforward joy from her before.
Watching affectionately as Lulu realized what she was doing with instant embarrassment, I sliced the finished meat into two pieces. Then I tossed one into my mouth.
…What the—?
The meat was more delicious than any I’d ever tasted… No, I guess of all the meat I’d ever had, the fillet of Ohmi beef that the company president had once treated me to was probably a bit better.
But still, why was this steak so delicious?!
The simple seasoning of salt and pepper had drawn out the original flavor of the meat itself.
Despite being so well-done, it seemed to melt in my mouth with a single bite. There wasn’t much in the way of juices, but the savory liquid flowed directly over my tongue. The melted fat from the pan only added to the flavor.
I definitely hadn’t expected it to be this delicious. And the garlic that I’d added gave the taste even better depth.
As the gamy taste, so different from beef, overwhelmed me with enjoyment, the small piece of meat disappeared down my throat.
The scent of garlic in my nose and the aftertaste on my tongue made me long for a second bite.
But, remembering my goal, I forced myself to stay strong.
I checked my log to be sure, but I saw no strange status resistances or anything. As my “Analyze” skill had suggested, the meat didn’t seem to be dangerous.
“It’s delicious. All right, Lulu, you eat it, too.”
I picked up the other piece with chopsticks and held it out to Lulu. Holding her hair back with one hand, Lulu opened her little mouth wide and bit down on the piece of meat. I was surprised she hadn’t hesitated a little more, like her usual shy self.
Delicious food really was bewitching.
Lulu rapidly cycled through several expressions before settling on a blissful smile.
“Ahh… Master, the person who marries you and gets to eat this sort of food every day will be very lucky…”
Lulu let out a suggestive sigh and mumbled as if her appetite itself had possessed her.
“That’s right! Lulu, I’m sure you can get Master to fall for your good looks! How about it, Master? If you marry Lulu, you’ll get a bonus Arisa for free! Just imagine, having two beautiful sisters to have a th—”
Arisa’s sentence was heading down a dangerous road, so I interrupted it with a Forehead Flick Mk II. (The Mk II part doesn’t mean anything.)
Usually, Lulu would respond to any kind of praise with a flood of negativity, but enraptured as she was with the steak, she paid no attention to Arisa at all.
Checking my log, I saw that I had gained the new titles Meat Master Chef and Sorcerer of the Dining Table.
When I closed the log, my eyes fell on the dish covered in oil from the meat, so I washed it in a nearby pail. Oil stains could be very stubborn, after all.
“Aah!”
“My hopes and dweams are gone, sir…”
All I’d done was wash the steak dish, but it evoked a scream from Tama and a wail of despair from Pochi.
…Did they want to lick the juices off the dish?
Liza didn’t say anything, but she didn’t react as the pot boiled over, either.
…All right, all right. I guess I have to make some for everyone.
In the end, everyone but Mia ate some of the rocket-wolf steak.
At first, I had planned to make Nana hold off, but when she called upon the mysterious legendary technique known as the “jiggle-jiggle,” I had no choice but to give in.
Not wanting to accept the reality of the legend, Arisa and Mia protested in some way or other, but I was too deep in my own bliss to remember very clearly.
Everyone was still hungry after the small steak pieces, but I didn’t want them to eat a lot and get a stomachache, so I offered them the cooked hearts and livers from the brown wolves instead.
Compared to the rocket-wolf steak, the brown wolf meat was a bit of an acquired taste, but it was still delicious in its own way.
I guess a maxed-out “Cooking” skill could probably make even low-quality ingredients taste good.
I should note that I made a vegetable and mushroom stir-fry for Mia, since she was left out of the meat dishes. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a very extensive cooking repertoire.
“Ahh, to think we’ll be able to eat such delicious food every day from now on…”
“Not really. I’m only going to do it when the mood strikes me.”
I liked good food as much as anyone, but it was impossible to make something like that every day. I’d definitely get tired of it. Plus, I’d feel bad, since Liza had been teaching Lulu and Nana to cook.
However, I did enjoy meals made with a maxed-out “Cooking” skill, myself, so I figured I’d take on cooking duty once in a while from now on.
“Aww, reallyyy…?”
“Mrrrr…”
“Master, please reconsider!”
Dominated by their appetites, Arisa, Mia, and Nana all protested.
The beastfolk girls and Lulu seemed disappointed, too, but they refrained from joining in on the protest.
Right…I guess they’re mindful of their status as slaves.
As in the fable of the north wind and the sun, the modesty of the beastfolk girls affected me more than the complaints of the others, so I gave in and said I would lend a hand with lunch once a day.
In the blink of an eye, the mountain of hearts and livers had totally disappeared.
Guess I should make some stomach medicine next.
A Conspiracy and a Reunion
Satou here. I once heard at a seminar or something, “Never be complacent about your current situation—always strive for better!” But I think it’s important to take it easy without worrying about anything once in a while, too.
“Looks like a ghost town.”
“Yeah.”
On the afternoon of our seventh day since leaving Seiryuu City, we arrived at an uninhabited village.
I had noticed a broken barrier post from the road, so I’d stopped by to check if something had happened. Now that we were here, we could see that whatever had happened had likely been years in the past.
I took the younger group with me to search the town and left the older group near the horse-drawn carriage to keep watch and start preparing lunch.
Judging by the broken barrier posts and craters in the ground, my guess was that a large monster had flown in and destroyed the village. Could have even been the work of that hydra.
Four of the usual six barrier posts were damaged, and there were only holes where the remaining two would normally have been, as if people had pulled them out of the ground.
All the posts were hollow on the inside.
While I examined the scene with Pochi and Tama
, Mia and Arisa called out behind me.
“Satou.”
“There’s a well over there, but it smells unpleasant, so I don’t think we should use it.”
“Hmm. This place is pretty close to Sedum City… I wonder why they left it like this.”
Why wouldn’t they just rebuild the barrier and the town?
“Hmm. In places like my hometown, they import barrier posts from the Saga Empire, so maybe they’re too far away from any territory that makes them?”
Oh, I see. I’d been thinking of them like telephone poles, but barrier posts were also a kind of magic tool.
I took Arisa and the others with me to survey the village some more.
Apparently, pottery had been the main livelihood of the village, with kilns and areas for collecting clay in the hillsides nearby.
Two of the three kilns were broken, but one seemed to be intact.
Pochi and Tama clearly wanted to play with the clay, but I told them not to for now.
Following the path of broken bowls and plates, I walked toward the village square where our carriage was parked.
Along the way, Tama spotted some russet wort, an herb used for MP recovery potions, and we collected it as we returned to the others.
We had an early lunch in the village square. Just as I’d promised the day before, I cooked up some of the brown wolf meat.
It was a pain to keep grilling it in batches, so I made steaks too big for the plates for everyone who wanted one.
Because it was more sinewy than the rocket wolf, steak wasn’t necessarily the best way to prepare it, but Liza praised it for “feeling wonderful under her teeth.” Pochi’s and Tama’s enthusiasm as they tore into their steaks was adorable, too.
For the others who couldn’t chew it as well, I cut their steaks into small cubes.
I stir-fried vegetables for Mia again, but I mixed it up with different ingredients. I chopped some of the pickled vegetables that Arisa had bought and tossed them in along with some herbs to add to the flavor and aroma.
I’d limited the portions so nobody would overeat, but once we’d finished, everyone was still too full to budge for a while afterward.
During our break after lunch, I formulated some elixir to use for transmutation.
For practice, I started out with one of the crimson needle bee cores from the Cradle.
First, I crushed it into a powder. I used a tool from the alchemy set that resembled a screw-style nutcracker to smash it, then ground it into a fine powder with the mortar and pestle.
Since the process was a bit of a pain, I decided to try crushing the core with my fingers the next time.
After that, I mixed the stabilizer. All I had to do was throw in a pinch of the powder I’d gotten in the alchemy shop, which contained bat wings, charred newt, and a bit of salt.
With a core that was only the size of the tip of my little finger, I could make twenty potions’ worth of elixir.
I stored the completed elixir in the Alchemy folder under the subfolder Elixir/HP Recovery Potions/Russet.
I was curious how effective of a potion I could make, so I practiced with a low-grade HP recovery potion.
Perhaps because I’d gotten the “Magic Manipulation” skill, operating the Transmutation Tablet seemed easier than before.
My completed magic potion came out as Highest Quality.
Since the salesperson at the alchemy shop had wanted red grade-3 cores or better, I had assumed rank was critical for potion making, but it could be done even with grade-1 cores.
This time, I tried a recipe from Trazayuya’s documents for brewing five potions at the same time. Unfortunately, these ones came out a rank lower, at High Quality.
Next, I tried it out with rank-2 and rank-3 cores. The results came out as Highest Quality, even when I used the five-at-once recipe.
Basically, the grade of the potions was based on the grade of the cores used, it seemed.
Most likely, the reason I could make high-quality potions even with low-grade cores was that I had a maxed-out “Transmutation” skill.
I had plenty of red cores from grades 1 to 3, so I made twenty of each kind into elixir. It would be a huge pain to put them all into little packages; I just stored the powder on its own.
While I was at it, I used some of the russet wort we’d picked earlier to make a few low-quality magic recovery potions.
Since Mia and Arisa had mentioned the terrible taste, I tried to reduce the bitterness by adding small amounts of honey and thorn licorice sap.
The efficacy fell slightly, but in exchange they came out surprisingly tasty. I’m sure my “Cooking” skill had something to do with that.
For the potions I didn’t have any empty vials for, I made folders to keep them in liquid form in Storage.
I really want to stock up on vials for potions soon…
I’m sure I’ll be able to get some if we go to Sedum City.
“Master, suspicious individual detected inside the forest. The target has already fled, but it is possible that they have already signaled reinforcements at this time, I report. Recommending an increase in alertness level.”
“Fishy.”
On the main road a little ways away from Sedum City, Nana gave a report while she drove the carriage, supplemented by Mia.
There was indeed a person in the forest. It was a man belonging to a guild I’d never heard of called “Duckweed.”
The guild was probably local to Sedum City. Since some of its members had bounties like Murder on them, I guessed it was a criminal guild like the Street Rats back in Seiryuu City.
Furthermore, more men from the same guild were lurking up ahead: a few at an intersection and twenty or so in a little clearing by the bank of a river on a side road.
Just to be safe, I took the reins from Nana.
The men waiting at the crossroads up ahead definitely looked like crooks to me. They were blocking the road with a crudely made bar.
“Hey, the coachman ain’t a lady!”
“There’re some brats riding in back, so it’s gotta be this one.”
“No, didn’t he say it’d be an old hag and a little girl?”
My “Keen Hearing” skill let me detect what the villains were muttering among themselves.
So these guys are only targeting carriages with either elderly people or young girls as their coachmen? This sounds awfully suspicious to me.
Well, not like it’s any of my business.
Determining that we weren’t their target, the ruffians moved the roadblock out of the way.
“Did something happen?”
“No, nothin’. Just keep movin’.”
I had addressed them politely, yet the group of scoundrels chased us off with a deliberate display of the machetes hanging at their waists.
I certainly wondered about it, but you wouldn’t catch me complaining about avoiding trouble.
Putting the suspicious matter behind us, we passed the roadblock and arrived at Sedum City.
This place was a castle city about the same size as Seiryuu City, but with at least 20 percent more people. There were even fewer demi-humans here than in the last city, though the proportion of catfolk was a bit higher.
Along the outer wall a little ways away from the city gate were clusters of emaciated people in dirty, tattered clothing living in little shacks.
According to the AR display, they weren’t citizens of Sedum City. Their titles read Refugee, so they’d probably come here from other territories or kingdoms.
While I was paying the city entrance tax at the gate, I inquired about it and learned that they had fled from the Muno Barony some twenty years ago. The fight between Zen and the Marquis must have been to blame.
Over the course of two decades, most of the people had moved into the city or nearby villages, but about two hundred people who hadn’t been able to relocate still remained.
After this conversation, I reported the suspicious bunch we’d passed by to the Sedum City gatekeepe
rs, and a knight assured me that he would take some men on patrol to investigate.
Despite his haughty mien, he accepted the job without even asking the details. I guess you can’t always judge a book by its cover… I shouldn’t have assumed that he was a no-good layabout guard based on his appearance.
“Yes, they are demi-humans, but they are my master’s beloved slaves. As you can see, they’re wearing expensive clothing, so it would cause some trouble if they slept in the barn and were robbed. And if their clothes were stolen, would the inn be able to compensate, I wonder?”
“No, we wouldn’t.”
“In that case—”
“Which is why we must decline. They cannot stay in our inn.”
Not even Arisa’s nigh-invincible negotiating skills were enough to overcome the thinly veiled rudeness of the clerk at the inn near the gate.
After our arrival, we’d visited the nearest inn in the hopes of establishing a home base, but we were curtly rejected.
Oh, I wonder if I can use that introduction letter here.
Figuring I had nothing to lose, I pulled out the letter I’d received from the constable’s aide at the public office in Noukee and showed it to the ill-mannered clerk.
I wasn’t sure whether an authority from another town had much clout here, but since it was technically a letter from a noble of the same territory, maybe it would have some influence.
“Th-this is from the baronet…? P-pardon my rudeness. We will prepare a room for you right away.”
His face stiffening as if in a silent scream, the clerk quickly changed his tune. I guess the letter of introduction works in this city, too.
Arisa shot the clerk a withering look of contempt as his attitude changed.
“You’re going to ruin your cute face,” I hissed quietly to Arisa before discussing our room arrangements with the innkeeper.
The biggest room they had was for six people, so we decided to rent it for five days. I tried to rent another single-bed room for myself, but a chorus of protests from my group shut down that option. It was too late for that now, since they’d grown accustomed to sleeping in a huddle.