Chapter 86
“Malphite?”
Penny cautiously poked her head into the Head Mod's room.
But there was no one on the bed.
“Are you here?”
She opened the storage room and searched every corner, but she couldn't find so much as a glimpse of the Head Mod's clothing.
It had already been three days since the Head Mod disappeared.
She took out some ramen and side dishes from the kitchen shelf and deftly set them on the table.
Just in case, she prepared two servings, including one for the Head Mod, but the Head Mod never came, no matter how long she waited.
She stopped picking at her ramen, collapsed onto the table, and muttered with her lips pushed out in a pout.
“I'm lonely...”
The ramen was astonishingly delicious.
The Head Mod's bunker was overflowing with food like that, and it also contained mountains of storybooks.
But there was nothing she could do about this emptiness welling up inside her.
A listless look lingered on Penny's face.
*
The otherworld's food shortage was gradually being resolved.
That was thanks to the mass release of cheap ramen, baguettes, and bottled water onto the marketplace.
- Ramen is good. It's soup that warms my soul.
ㄴ But it's not exactly ideal as war supplies...
ㄴ Who has time to boil water? Every second counts.
However, it left something to be desired as provisions for the Great Monster War.
There was no time to boil and eat ramen in the middle of a frantic war.
And so, I came up with hardtack.
Its overwhelming cost-effectiveness and sheer quantity made it perfect as combat rations.
It was nothing less than human feed.
“Is this the food the Head Mod sent?”
“That's right. He said it would be a great help in the battles to come...”
Inside the Kilgrot meeting hall.
A sack of hardtack sat at the center of a table surrounded by dwarf commanders.
The dwarves each peered into the bag with curiosity.
“You said this was hardtack?”
“It looks like chunks of wood. How fascinating.”
The dwarves picked up pieces of hardtack and examined them from every angle.
Hardtack was a reasonably edible snack.
If you melted sugar and fried it over a fire, it made an excellent dessert, and you could also simply pop it into your mouth and let it dissolve for a nutty flavor.
However, what the Head Mod had purchased was a ten-kilogram sack of barley hardtack, bought by the bag for maximum cost-effectiveness.
It was hardtack that prioritized quantity and price over taste, to the point that modern people would find it difficult to eat.
“Well, I suppose we'll know once we try it.”
“Has Brother Head Mod ever sent us something we couldn't trust?”
The dwarves grabbed a dozen or so pieces with their rough, oversized hands and tossed them into their mouths.
A crisp texture accompanied by a rich barley aroma and nutty flavor spread throughout their mouths.
At that moment, the dwarves' eyes opened wide.
“O-oh?”
“Hmm, hm. Not bad. No, it's delicious!”
The hardtack had been made with quantity and price in mind rather than taste.
But if that was the palate of medieval people from another world who had gone hungry day after day, the evaluation changed.
It was nutty and delicious.
It contained nothing moldy or rotten, only finished pieces, which inspired confidence.
Dry and powdery? Compared to the days when they'd boiled and eaten tree bark, they could hardly notice it. Above all...
-Thud!
“Your Majesty?”
“Hmm, no, it's just...”
Taldain, the Dwarf King seated at the head of the table, pulled out a large wooden beer mug.
Yes, it was the perfect snack and meal, the kind that naturally made one think of beer.
“Have a mug each. This flavor makes me crave beer.”
The king gave his permission.
As if they had been waiting for it, beer mugs began taking up places on the table throughout the meeting hall.
Thanks to that, they set aside some of the formality and continued with more candid evaluations.
“What are your thoughts?”
“The taste is one thing, but the price is astonishing. How can this possibly cost only 25 points?”
Even a dwarf with a meager income could easily afford 25 points.
And yet, for 25 points, they were being given an entire ten-kilogram sack of hardtack.
“It seems it would be excellent value not only as combat rations, but as food in general.”
It also had an excellent shelf life.
The packaging said several months, but in reality, it had the advantage of remaining edible even after several years.
And above all...
“What's this?”
“What is it?”
“Your Majesty, look at this.”
While they continued tearing into beer and hardtack without pause, a dwarf nobleman stepped forward.
What he held in his hand were white crystals.
They looked like beautiful crystals at a glance, but they were surprisingly large.
“It seems they're called star candy.”
“Star candy?”
It was a mysterious name just to hear.
The dwarves, who were also interested in carving and craftsmanship, crowded around to examine the star candy.
“Could something like this be harvested naturally?”
“It seems to have been made artificially. From what I tasted, it's sugar.”
“This is sugar?”
“How mysterious. How could they have made something so small and intricate?”
Sugar was not an easy ingredient to obtain.
Even relatively well-off dwarves, when they lacked sugar, would dissolve honey or sugar in water and drink it as tea.
The star candy that appeared among the hardtack was unmistakably an elegant dessert for nobles.
“Wait, mine didn't have any.”
“It seems to appear at random. Apparently, it's only included in some of the hardtack bags...”
“Give me some right now!”
“Yes, yes.”
When the dwarves opened their bags of hardtack, they found star candy in roughly one out of every ten bags.
Taldain accepted a piece and tossed it into his mouth.
“Ooh!”
“How does it taste?”
“The texture, the flavor... I like how clean it is and how it isn't sticky!”
Even when people in the Middle Ages lacked sugar, they had no proper way to replenish it.
And yet, this had desserts like this hidden inside at random, alongside the meal.
With this, it was impossible to get tired of eating hardtack, no matter how much they ate.
“What do you think?”
At that moment, Taldain looked at a dwarf seated nearby.
It was Taldru, the dwarf closest to the Head Mod and the one who spoke with him without any sense of distance.
Taldru stroked his beard and pondered for a while before raising his head and speaking.
“It's the perfect food for dwarves.”
“As expected, you think so too.”
It went well with alcohol.
It was also perfectly suitable as combat rations.
And the occasional luxury dessert called star candy made it excellent for replenishing sugar as well.
It was even cheap, but there was a problem when it was listed on the marketplace.
“If this is released onto the marketplace, the limited quantity will make it difficult to buy.”
“That's right. We'd have to compete every time.”
“Even if we managed to buy it in bulk, merely being accused of hoarding it would cause discord.”
Taldain's expression hardened.
Hardtack and star candy—wasn't this food that the Head Mod had made for the dwarves?
Besides, given the nature of the marketplace, there would surely be days when no hardtack was listed at all.
“If it's this cheap, the production process must be quite troublesome...”
“He must have created it through magic.”
A dessert made directly by a grand mage through magic.
Taldain felt grateful toward the Head Mod all over again.
He had personally made unprofitable hardtack for the dwarves on the eve of war.
Of course, the Head Mod was simply producing it in unlimited quantities with a click in the shop.
But the dwarves, who didn't know that, thought differently.
“Mages have no interest in food for commoners. If he's a grand mage, all the more so...”
“He probably didn't develop and produce it for profit.”
“It must be food he created only for the dwarves after much deliberation.”
The Head Mod was a benefactor who had helped the dwarves reclaim their homeland.
That was why, despite his unknown species, the Head Mod alone could be called a brother of the dwarves.
Of course, he had merely bought it in bulk with a click from the shop...
Taldain made a decision.
“Just because he is our brother, we cannot buy the hardtack developed by the Head Mod at a cheap price.”
The dwarves stopped eating and drinking and focused on Taldain's voice.
Besides, after reclaiming their kingdom, they were making a decent profit now, weren't they?
“If we have received help, we must show at least a little sincerity. Otherwise, how are we any different from the shameless elves?”
“That's right!”
“At the very least, we must show the proper duty of dwarves!”
The elves, who had been sitting quietly, were insulted for no reason, but none of the dwarves cared.
Even to the dwarves, the hardtack seemed excessively cheap.
So Taldain's decision could only be one thing.
“We will monopolize the hardtack exclusively for the dwarves.”
Taldain rose from his seat and concluded the meeting with his final words.
“Write up a contract and contact Brother Head Mod.”
*
Do you know the Head Mod who was kidnapped by the Blue Mod?
Unfortunately, that was me.
Whenever I had some time alone, I wanted to think about an escape route, but it wasn't as easy as I'd expected.
That was because Vampire to the Bitter End never left my side.
“Why? Do you need something?”
“No, not exactly...”
She had said there were lots of rooms in the old castle.
Three hundred and a few dozen more.
And yet Vampire to the Bitter End spent all her time with me in the room I'd chosen as if I'd been pushed into it.
Whenever I secretly glanced at the vampire from the corner of my eye, the vampire noticed like a ghost, tilted her head, and met my gaze.
‘This is bad.’
I have a demon waiting at home!
But I kept my mouth shut because I didn't think saying that would lead to a good result.
That was how I spent today as well, lying in bed after getting moderately drained of blood, when—
Taldru: Brother Head Mod, are you available right now?
Among my shallow connections, I received a message from Taldru, a dwarf gallery user.
Head Mod*: Yeah, what's up?
Taldru: It's about that food called hardtack you sent us this time. I have something I'd like to say about it.
“Hardtack? Oh, right. I did send that.”
The threat posed by monsters was growing both inside and outside the dwarves' kingdom.
The hardtack had only been a temporary measure.
I had been wondering whether I should give them guns if things got really bad, so why were they bringing up hardtack all of a sudden?
Taldru: We'd like the dwarves to have exclusive rights to hardtack for several years.
Head Mod*: What?
“No, that might be a little...”
Food itself was plentiful enough in the marketplace to become tiresome if you searched through it.
But monopolizing food as cost-effective as hardtack during a shortage was a bit much...
As if he had anticipated this, Taldru continued the chat before I could say anything.
Taldru: Instead, we'll purchase the exclusive right to buy it for 3 million points.
Head Mod*: ?
Taldru: In addition, we'll pay three times the current sale price for every transaction!
Head Mod*: No, why?
“Wouldn't the dwarves benefit if they bought it at a low price?”
I couldn't understand why they had suddenly decided to shower me with points of their own accord.
Taldru: We never forget our brother's efforts. This is only a small part of our repayment. Please accept it.
“Efforts?”
I furtively glanced at the shop window.
My only effort was searching for ‘hardtack’ in the search bar and clicking Buy.
Taldru: If the amount isn't enough, we'll pay more at a later date. Please help us.
The dwarves were suddenly threatening to shower me with points.