Chapter 5
“I was a man to begin with!”
I shouted this at those who had mistaken my story about my body changing to mean that only my limbs had ended up like this.
“A man…?”
“Yeah!”
When I shouted at Huey, who was asking me with a blank expression, he froze in place, still bent over as he was while adding firewood to the campfire.
“So that means you have one…?”
Lucy’s voice came immediately afterward.
She didn’t look the type, but was she interested in that sort of thing?
“As if!!”
“But you’re a man?”
If I had hands right now, I would have thumped her on the head until she cried.
“I used to be much taller than I am now, too.”
Even now, every time I woke up, the emptiness between my legs nearly killed me.
“An artifact that changes both your species and your sex? I’ve never even heard of such a thing….”
It had even changed my body into this and then vanished without leaving a trace.
Even now, I still trembled with rage whenever I thought of that day three months ago.
“Anyway, I used to be a man, so you don’t need to go out of your way for me.”
Fortunately, Lucy seemed to accept that and nodded, while Huey remained frozen in the exact same position as before.
“…Speaking of which, why is he like that?”
“Please leave him be. Something happened that shocked him.”
As I stared at Huey in bewilderment, Lucy patted my shoulder a few times, then approached him.
“Stupid Master. You said you were going to prepare dinner.”
“Ghk.”
“Is that really such a shock?”
“Shut up….”
Lucy whispered something into Huey’s ear while he sat there looking strangely dejected.
Since it seemed like he would need some time to recover, I decided to sit on a nearby rock and wait.
About ten minutes passed like that.
“You’ve come around.”
Huey stood up, covering Lucy’s mouth while she continued whispering something into his ear.
“Sorry. I’ll try to avoid treating you like a girl as much as possible.”
“It’s fine. You didn’t know, so I suppose it couldn’t be helped.”
Huey approached me and bowed his head as soon as he got to his feet.
It was the captain’s fault for not explaining things properly, so I decided to let it slide this time.
“Anyway, I’m starting to get hungry….”
Since I was getting hungry anyway, I spoke up to change the subject.
“So, what are you planning to do for dinner?”
“Wait. I’ll have it ready in a moment.”
I didn’t see any luggage that looked like it might contain cooking utensils, so how was he planning to do that?
“You’ll see.”
“Ren. You can’t hold utensils, can you?”
As I stood there blankly, wondering what he meant, I heard his voice.
Of course I couldn’t hold anything with these things, so I nodded for the time being.
“Hmm… In that case….”
Huey pondered for a moment, then stretched a hand toward the empty air.
“Huh?”
Several cooking utensils, including a pot and a cutting board, began appearing out of thin air.
“People from another world are said to gain some kind of special ability.”
Perhaps expecting me to be surprised, Lucy cut in and explained that this was Huey’s ability.
I marveled at the waist-high shelf that appeared in front of Huey last.
“Whoa….”
“The downside is that it only produces cooking utensils. You still have to prepare the ingredients separately.”
“That’s still pretty amazing.”
“That’s true.”
In other words, as long as he had ingredients, he could prepare a proper meal anywhere.
Considering how people sometimes had to limit themselves to simply boiling stew because they had left their cooking utensils behind to reduce the weight of their luggage, this really was incredible.
“Lucy, could you bring over the leftover meat, some onions, and salt?”
“One moment.”
So that was why that particular bundle had looked like it was made of a different material.
Apparently, they also had a bag enchanted with preservation magic.
“Oh, and bring two Kellan leaves, too. We’re out of pepper, so we’ll have to use those instead.”
“Yes.”
…Did they fill their luggage with nothing but cooking ingredients? Why did they have so much?
Not that I was complaining.
Anyway, since I had the chance, I moved closer so I could watch him up close.
“What, you want to watch?”
“Yeah.”
“It won’t be all that interesting.”
“It’s better than doing nothing.”
“Then I shall rest, Master.”
“Yeah. Rest.”
I watched Lucy sit in front of the fire and begin staring blankly into space for a while.
Then I focused on Huey, who had begun cooking in earnest.
“What are you making?”
“We happen to have some decent minotaur meat and underground mushrooms, so I thought I’d make meatballs.”
“Oh….”
Minotaurs.
Muscular, bipedal cows standing about three meters tall on average.
I’d heard that they had so much muscle that there were few parts one could actually eat, but the meat was much more tender and juicy than ordinary beef.
“I took on a request a few days ago and hunted a few of them, so I took some of the meat instead of payment.”
He spoke so casually about taking on what was normally a C-rank request to subjugate minotaurs that his adventurer rank must have been surprisingly high.
You’d need to be at least a Silver Rank 3 adventurer to hunt a minotaur alone, so he had to be higher than that.
I wasn’t the type to hold back my curiosity for long, so
I asked Huey, who was washing his hands and finely chopping the ingredients,
“What adventurer rank are you?”
Adventurer ranks were generally divided into Bronze, Silver, and Gold.
Within those divisions, Bronze and Silver ranged from Rank 5 to Rank 1, while Gold ranged from Rank 3 to Rank 1.
There were ranks above Gold Rank 1 as well, but I would certainly have heard of them if they were that high, so I excluded them from consideration.
If he could talk so casually about subjugating minotaurs, was he around Silver Rank 1?
“Me? Gold Rank 3.”
“Oh-ho.”
I was honestly impressed.
The difference between Silver Rank 1 and Gold Rank 3 was whether one could complete a B-rank request alone, which meant Huey was even stronger than I had thought.
“I’d still be Silver Rank 1 if I didn’t have Lucy.”
At some point, Huey had pushed the finely minced meat aside and covered it with a cloth,
then put the finely chopped onions and mushrooms into a pot, added a little oil, and carried it over to the campfire.
That was unexpected, too.
It meant that Huey himself was at least Silver Rank 1, and Lucy was apparently at a comparable level.
-Sizzle.
…Maybe I’ll think about that later.
“Whew… It smells incredible….”
The sweet smell of the onions cooking and the deep, rich scent unique to the mushrooms mingled with the oil and spread through the air, leaving me unable to think of anything else.
After sautéing the onions until they softened, he lined a plate he had set on the shelf with a cloth, placed the sautéed ingredients on it, and left them to cool.
“It’ll all be ready in about twenty minutes, so wait just a little longer.”
My mouth was already watering, but I decided to hold out a little longer.
In the meantime, Huey took a small piece of bread from his luggage and toasted it over the fire.
About five minutes later,
he put the meat he had covered with the cloth, along with the somewhat-cooled onions and mushrooms, into a bowl.
Then he crushed the bread, which had been toasted until crisp without burning, into crumbs and added them to the bowl before kneading the ingredients together.
“Ah, I almost forgot.”
He briefly stopped kneading the meat, onions, and mushrooms with practiced hands,
added the Kellan leaves he had chopped in advance, sprinkled in some salt, and began kneading again.
And so the meatball mixture was complete.
“Gulp.”
I was admiring the sight, practically drooling just from looking at it, when
Huey took out a wide frying pan and poured oil into it.
“Lucy, could you hold this?”
“Understood.”
He had Lucy secure the pan over the fire, then
“Ren, can you fit this in one bite?”
pinched off some of the kneaded meat mixture, rolled it into a ball, and held it out to show me.
It was just the right size to fit in a single mouthful.
“Yeah!”
I swallowed the drool threatening to run from the corner of my mouth and nodded,
whereupon Huey smiled gently and placed the ball of mixture into the pan.
-Sizzle!
The oil seemed properly heated, and the meatballs entered the pan one after another with an appetizing sound.
After rolling all the kneaded mixture into evenly sized balls and placing them in the pan, Huey took a large lid out of thin air and covered it.
“I’ll take over now.”
“Yes.”
After taking the pan from Lucy,
Huey shook it back and forth as though trying to cook the round balls of meat evenly.
“Normally, you sear the outside first and then simmer them with sauce, but since we have underground mushrooms for once, let’s try eating them without sauce.”
I didn’t care how he did it, as long as they finished cooking soon.
“They should be about done.”
The longest wait of the day finally came to an end. When Huey lifted the lid from the pan, an aroma filled with the rich savoriness of meat spread through the air, stimulating my stomach just by its smell.
“…Whoa.”
“Looks like they turned out well.”
“Master, I brought the bowls.”
“Thanks.”
As though checking whether they were cooked all the way through, Huey split open one of the large meatballs with a fork.
Then he speared half of the meatball and held it out to me.
“Want to try one first?”
“Yeah!”
“Be careful. It’s hot.”
“Hawp.”
It had only just been taken out of the oil, so it was unbelievably hot,
but despite that, the fragrant flavor of the mushrooms burst across my tongue the moment I put it in my mouth.
“It’s good, right?”
“Mmph, hoo!”
“I know you mean it’s delicious, so swallow and then speak.”
With every bite, the rich juices of the minotaur meat burst forth and mingled with the sweetness of the onions.
The distinctive spicy fragrance of the Kellan leaves cut the gaminess of the meat, while the saltiness was exactly right for eating.
“So good―!”
It was a taste that truly made me happy.
As I closed my eyes and savored the lingering flavor of the meatballs, a bowl was held out to me before I knew it, apparently after all the meatballs had been taken out.
“I’ll make some dishes just for you soon, so put up with this for the time being.”
It was a bowl with a long spout for pouring sauce, the sort I had seen a few times in high-end restaurants.
Huey put meatballs and a few pieces of bread into the bowl, then handed it to me while telling me to be careful not to spill anything while eating.
“Tell me if it’s too difficult to eat. I’ll feed you instead.”
“No. This is plenty!”
I held the bowl with both wings and tilted it just right, watching the meatballs roll toward the spout, and thanked him.
“Let’s eat!”
As I began eating the meatballs one by one in earnest, I couldn’t help but tear up at the realization that, until three months ago, I had never known this kind of happiness.
What was so special about my master that I had cowered like that and forced myself to eat such lousy vegetarian food?
Life had been meat all along, anyway.