Chapter 147
We spent three days and two nights enjoying a vacation in the elven settlement.
What we got out of it was the translation ring the elves gave us.
Whether you consider that a major loss in business or an event that netted you a rare item depends on the person.
Regardless of profit and loss, being able to establish friendly relations with the elves was a major achievement.
It felt like, “This middle-aged man pushed himself and even tried doing something political.”
It took us about two days to travel downstream from the lake, but going back up against the current took about three days—and...
We returned to the mouth of the river where we had caught the trout.
Of course, we also safely recovered the rubber boat the beastfolk had abandoned along the way.
We were back at the mouth of the lake, and the right bank was where we had camped on our way in.
Since we were continuing onward, we moored the boat on the left bank.
That meant we had taken quite a detour just to cross the river.
It had grown dark, so I brought out the container house and began preparing dinner—but something seemed strange about the beastfolk.
“Boss~ We’re going to catch fish, so we don’t need dinner.” “Yeah, nya.”
“What’s wrong?”
“...Boss, you’re definitely planning to eat those bees, aren’t you?”
“You figured that out?”
“Aaaah! We’re eating fish!” “Nyaa!”
“I’m not going to force you to eat them. If you don’t want to, we still have Lesser Dragon meat.”
“No, there are tons of fish here, so we’ll eat fish.” “That’s right, nya~”
Apparently, beastfolk were conservative when it came to food.
The beastfolk liked spices, so perhaps I should give them some curry powder—or maybe...
When I searched Shangri-La, I found something promising.
It was tandoori chicken spice. It was a mixture of various spices that would turn into tandoori chicken if sprinkled over chicken and grilled.
I wondered whether it could be used on grilled fish.
“Then I’ll just give you the spices. Sprinkle them on and grill the fish, and it’ll probably turn into a spiced dish. And here’s some curry powder.”
“We’ll take that.”
Myaaree and Nyamena opened the bags of spices and sniffed them.
“Mmm, it smells good, nya!”
I left them to handle their own food and set about cooking the bees.
The elves had eaten bee larvae, so their safety was guaranteed.
There should be no problem eating them without conducting a safety test like we had with the cave-spider eggs.
“Anemone and Lilith, you don’t have to force yourselves to join me, you know?”
“The soup we ate in the elven settlement was delicious. Judging from that, it shouldn’t taste bad.”
“That’s right.”
Anemone had decided to eat with me too. She was more adventurous than I had expected.
“If we go adventuring and can’t eat the local food, it’ll make things difficult, won’t it?”
“That’s true.”
Foreigners in my old world apparently had trouble eating food outside their homelands—but one strength of Japanese people was that they could eat almost anything.
Well, we ate pretty much anything, anyway.
“Besides, compared to before, when I couldn’t eat anything at all, being able to eat is already wonderful.”
Apparently, Anemone had barely been able to eat before.
“A Grand Mage like Anemone was on the verge of starving to death without being able to use her talents? What a terrible loss for the world. The absurdity of this world reaches its peak right there.”
“Indeed... From the perspective of one who once held a position responsible for governing the realm, I find it rather embarrassing.”
While I was talking with my family, Bell came over.
“Meow.”
“Thanks for your help this time, Mother.”
I stroked her fur and gave her a can of premium cat food as a present.
“Indeed... Forest Cats truly are mysterious creatures.”
“Of course, Princess. They’re messengers of the gods.” “That’s right, nya.”
“Meow.”
Bell raised her head and looked smug.
“The elves considered Forest Cats to have that sort of status too.”
From the way they acted, it seemed they could communicate with one another.
Conversely, even among the beastfolk, the dogfolk seemed to be an exception.
The dogfolk worshipped Black Wolves as messengers of the gods.
Just as the catfolk could communicate with Forest Cats, perhaps the dogfolk could do the same with Black Wolves.
But enough of that. It was time to cook—I would take the contents of the white, jiggly eggs and make mayonnaise. A classic.
I poked a hole in the oval-shaped egg, which was about fifty centimeters long, and emptied the contents into a bowl.
I thought Anemone’s magic had heated it quite thoroughly, but it was still runny and had not completely set.
I grilled the parts that had solidified and used only the runny portion for the mayonnaise.
I added apple vinegar, olive oil, and seasonings to the runny contents, then blended them with a hand mixer—the same as with the spider eggs.
I tasted it. “Oh, this is good.”
It seemed to have a richer flavor than the spider eggs.
I stored the leftover ingredients in my Item Box.
Next, I cut open the larvae, removed their insides, and blended them with the hand mixer.
I had Anemone cook onions, carrots, potatoes, and the like with her magic, then blended them together with the larvae.
The insides of the larvae were protein. They had no flavor on their own, so I added some soup stock powder.
I seasoned it with salt, and the potage was finished.
“Oh, the Boss is doing something again...” “Don’t look, nya.”
Ignoring the beastfolk, I licked a little off my finger to taste it.
“Yeah, this’ll do.”
I decided to make dessert too.
I added sugar and milk to the bee eggs and flavored them with vanilla. I would steam them while we ate and make pudding.
Bee dishes were arranged on the table.
Potage made from bee larvae and vegetables, fried bee eggs topped with bee mayonnaise, and Anemone’s freshly baked bread.
“Amazing! You’d never know it was bee unless someone told you.”
“Indeed. If this were simply served at the table, no one would imagine that bee larvae were the ingredients.”
“Uwaaah...”
Nyamena was frozen in place, holding the fish she had covered in curry powder, but I ignored her.
“Hmm, just as I thought, it seems to have a richer flavor than the spider eggs.”
I ate the fried eggs. They looked somewhat like fried egg whites, but the flavor was strong.
Bee eggs had no yolks, so everything was blended together into one mass. The mayonnaise sauce went well with them.
“Are spider eggs perhaps milder because they are larger?”
“I don’t think that’s the reason...”
Perhaps bees were more delicious because they were used as food more often than spiders.
In my old world, cicadas were also said to be delicious, but there were no insects resembling cicadas in this world.
“This soup is rich, but it has a comforting flavor.”
“It’s delicious!”
It was rich and high in protein, yet low in calories.
Perhaps this was what meat or fish would be like if blended until it became completely smooth.
You wouldn’t even need protein supplements, so it would be perfect for bodybuilding.
If I could break the protein down into amino acids properly, I thought it would probably become more flavorful...
Come to think of it, the elves’ soup had been delicious.
I wondered if they had used some kind of magic.
I sipped the potage and remembered the flavors of my old world.
It seemed similar to the flavor of a thick, rich ramen broth, but it contained no fat.
Besides, that kind of ramen broth should have used plenty of chemical seasoning.
“Lilith likes eggs, so it’s nice that she can eat plenty of fried eggs.”
“Indeed, this is delicious, and it seems as though it would go well with other dishes too.”
By the time we finished eating, the pudding had finished steaming, so I had Anemone cool it with her magic.
“Mmph—Refrigeration!”
Since it was in a teacup, it looked like a white steamed egg custard at first glance, but it was pudding.
I disliked caramel, so there was none, but I tried topping it with whipped cream.
I took a bite. Egg pudding sometimes had a strong eggy smell, but this had none at all.
It was nothing but rich pudding flavor.
“Oh, this is actually pretty good.”
“Kenichi, make more of this!”
Anemone seemed to like it too.
“This is marvelous. It is first-rate as a sweet, and one could never eat anything like this in the castle!”
“Well, ordinary people don’t go deep into the forest to fight bees.”
“Boss... There may be people who fight them, but I don’t think anyone would try to eat spiders or bees.”
“That’s right, nya.”
“Our doctrine is to try eating anything that looks like it might be edible.”
“But there must be dangerous things too, right?”
“That’s true. A lot of mushrooms are dangerous, so you have to be very careful...”
After all, this was another world. There could be something as deadly as the fire coral mushroom hidden among mushrooms that looked perfectly ordinary.
“We’re normally much more cautious, you know? The elves seemed to eat bees regularly, so their safety had already been established.”
“I see.”
After finishing our meal, we put away the dishes and equipment and entered the container house.
For the past few days, Anemone and Lilith had been giving me an earful about the time I had spent fooling around with the elves—but they had finally gotten over it.
Inside the lit room, we all lay down on the beds arranged one behind another.
“But Boss~ What are you going to do after getting involved with elves?”
“I gave them bean seeds and nut-tree saplings. If they can cultivate them successfully, we’ll be able to trade.”
“Do you think such an isolationist bunch will do business, nya?”
“They seemed to want supplies. Even elves living in the forest need things.”
“So there is an advantage for you as well?”
“Of course. They’ve lived here since before recorded history and know a great deal about this world. That information is important.”
“I had never considered that before...”
The elves were also knowledgeable about magic, and every one of them was a mage.
“Anemone’s magic might improve if she learned from elven magic.”
“Yeah!”
Anemone hugged me, so I stroked her head.
“There is also the Imperial Witch.”
“Well, I don’t intend to force anything on them. If I end up clashing with Akira, things could become seriously troublesome.”
“Oh, there are definitely people like that. They’re the best allies, but troublesome enemies.”
Nyamena rolled around on the bed, her tail swaying back and forth.
“That’s right, nya.”
“Meow.”
Bell climbed onto the bed and rubbed herself against me.
Apparently, she had someone like that too.
In any case, another stretch of surveying would begin tomorrow.
I decided to sleep so we would be ready for our next adventure together.
------◇◇◇------
――The next morning. We ate a simple meal and resumed surveying.
The beach continued without end, and we could travel by car, so the survey proceeded smoothly.
If it stayed like this, we would finish quickly and easily.
Over the next three days, we mapped about forty kilometers.
At night, we used heavy machinery to dig a hole in the beach and soaked in an open-air bath.
Looking up, I saw a sky full of stars. It was the very definition of a slow life.
Surrounded by naked beauties, I enjoyed the atmosphere—long live another world.
I was thoroughly satisfied, but it wasn’t all good news.
Every so often, I had to prepare a separate room and attend to the women.
I had to record the number of times I did it in my secret notebook so things would remain fair.
I hated recording my bedroom activities like some kind of pervert, but it was necessary.
Today, too, I brought out a second container house a little distance away and spent some time with Lilith there.
This container house was seriously convenient. If only I had realized it sooner...
Once we had finished doing this and that, Lilith, lying naked on the bed, said—
“You should treat the women as fairly as possible.”
She knew a great deal about the circumstances of kings, nobles, and other men with numerous women.
She said that treating them unequally often caused friction between the women.
“So that means... The more women there are, the less often each one gets her turn, and the more dissatisfied they become.”
“Exactly! That is why I am telling you not to increase their number any further!”
“Probably...”
“Probably? Don’t tell me you promised something to those elven women too?!”
She sat up and leaned toward me, still naked.
“It wasn’t exactly a promise. I just told them to come to the mansion if they wanted to trade.”
“Hmm... Perhaps I should bite off Kenichi’s thing right here...”
“If you did that, I’d never be able to have children!”
“Hmph! Chomp!”
“Owwww! Hey, Lilith!”
“Mmph-mmph-mmph!”
It hurt far too much to be funny. Reluctantly, I stroked her head and used my holy-knight power.
“Fwaaaah! Kenichi! That’s cheating!”
Lilith pulled away from me.
“Even so, it hurt.”
“Fah! Wait! Ah! You always try to use your holy-knight power to get out of trouble!”
Even though Heal could patch me up, I could do without being bitten.
“It’s my power, so I should be free to use it however I want, shouldn’t I?”
“Aaaah!”
In any case, Lilith eventually went limp and quiet, so I pulled her close and went to sleep.
------◇◇◇------
――The next morning. I woke Lilith, stored the second container house, and went to join everyone else.
The equipment from dinner had been left out, so Anemone had baked bread for us.
“Morning~”
“Good morning, Boss.” “Morning, nya~.”
Bell came over to my feet.
“Good morning to you too, Bell.”
“Meow~”
“...”
Anemone and Lilith were in bad moods.
“What’s the matter? Is Anemone upset this time?”
“Hmph. Then you can just be nice to Lilith, right?”
“Don’t say that~ I’ll sleep with you tonight.”
“...”
The beastfolk laughed as they watched me try to placate Anemone and Lilith.
“The Boss has it rough.” “That’s right, nya~.”
This morning’s meal was instant soup and Anemone’s bread. For the main dish, I made ham and eggs.
Come to think of it, I had forgotten about the dried food the elves had given us.
I took it out of my Item Box.
“They said it was a tube worm.”
It was a long, reddish-brown creature with stripes. They called it an insect, but I wasn’t sure whether it really was one.
The closest thing I had seen in my old world was an earthworm, but annelids weren’t insects.
People called lugworms and the like insects too, though, as a general term.
“Normally, those live in wetlands, nya.”
Myaaree explained, and I thought she would be fine with it, but she was making an unpleasant face too, so she apparently disliked them.
“Oh? What about you, Nyamena?”
“Boss, please stop...”
Nyamena gave me a deeply weary look.
Apparently, she wasn’t fond of long, slender things.
“What about snakes?”
“Boss... Please stop talking about snakes during a meal...” “That’s right, nya~.”
“Come to think of it, Myaaree dislikes snakes too.”
“They give me goosebumps, nya.”
Her fur apparently stood on end like a cat’s. For humans, it was like getting goosebumps.
“Myaaree seemed fine with the kraken, though.”
“When they get that big, they don’t look much like snakes, nya.”
That was how Myaaree saw it, but Nyamena couldn’t handle them.
The beastfolk disliked it, but the elves had gone to the trouble of giving it to us.
I decided to try eating it and see what it was like.
Judging from the food we had eaten in their settlement, I didn’t think their tastes were all that different from ours.
“It’s dried, but I wonder if it’s seasoned?”
I broke off a small piece of the dried creature and put it in my mouth.
“Eek!”
Nyamena stared at me with an appalled expression.
It was hard, but as I chewed, it softened with saliva. It seemed to have been boiled in salted water before being dried.
It was like salami without the fat.
“Hmm... It’s pretty good.”
It might not have tasted very good when eaten fresh.
The drying process had probably broken down the proteins making up the tube worm’s body and converted them into amino acids.
I understood why it tasted good, but as a Japanese person, I wanted to simmer it with soy sauce, ginger, and garlic.
Perhaps I would try that the next time I caught a tube worm.
Bell begged for some, so I gave her a piece.
Too much salty food wasn’t good for animals, of course.
Bell ate the dried food happily, so it seemed she liked the flavor too.
“What do you think, Lilith? Want to try some?”
“Very well.”
Lilith was the type who would eat anything as long as it was genuinely delicious.
“I quite like the flavor.”
“Oh! This is a rare delicacy!”
“Of course, Princess. Kings and nobles wouldn’t normally eat tube worms.” “That’s right, nya.”
“Kenichi, I’ll try some too.”
I gave Anemone a little, and she cautiously brought it to her mouth.
Lilith ate everything, so Anemone seemed to be trying not to lose to her, but I didn’t think she needed to force herself...
“I’ve never even seen tube worms in town...”
“They probably sell them pickled in jars.”
Pickled—that sounded just like salted fish guts.
“They smell, so only certain people eat them, nya.”
So they really did smell—perhaps they were like salted fish guts or anchovies. Fish sauce, but made from insects.
Even though something like that existed, I had never seen it used as a seasoning.
What a waste.
I had an idea, so I bought squid salted guts from Shangri-La.
It was a slightly expensive variety that cost 1,200 yen per jar.
“Click.”
A small jar with a wide mouth dropped onto the table.
“What’s that, nya?”
I took off the lid and showed the contents to the beastfolk.
“This is the sort of salted food you mean, right?”
“Uwaaah! Why do you even have something like that, Boss?!”
Judging from Nyamena’s reaction, the tube-worm insect sauce must have been similar.
While the beastfolk watched in horror, Lilith’s eyes began to sparkle.
“Kenichi, is that delicious too?!”
“Huh? Well, I like it, but it’s one of those foods people either love or hate.”
“If you eat it, surely it must be safe!”
“I don’t know about that.”
“If it is delicious, why would people go to the trouble of making it?”
“That isn’t necessarily how it works, which is what makes it interesting...”
She clearly wanted to try it, so I let her. It should be easier to handle than natto, at least.
I spread the salted guts on bread and put cheese from Shangri-La on top.
“Anemone, warm this up a little with magic.”
“Okay! Warm!”
The yellow cheese melted over the bread almost immediately.
“Oh! The yellow stuff is cheese?”
Lilith’s eyes lit up. She took the bread from me, opened her mouth wide, and took a big bite.
“Mairen would scold you for eating like that.”
“Oh! What a deep and complex flavor!”
Lilith stared intently at the cheese and salted guts on the bread.
“What about the smell?”
“It certainly has a strong character, but this cheese smells quite strong too.”
“A lot of people dislike it, though.”
“To dismiss such a delicacy as lowly food and miss out on it... Snobbish nobles are wasting their lives.”
Akira might want to try salted guts too.
Perhaps that kraken could be used to make them, and tube worms might turn into something similar if prepared properly.
With a little ingenuity, we could find all sorts of ingredients suitable for Japanese cooking.
Anemone had been trying to keep up with Lilith, but she couldn’t match the princess’s appetite and gave up.
Well, it couldn’t be helped.
After the meal, I thought of a little prank and bought something from Shangri-La.
“Lilith, want to try eating something bad for a change?”
“Something bad? What is that?”
What I took out was a black candy.
“It’s a sweet. You said that if someone went to the trouble of making something, it had to be delicious.”
“Exactly. Would anyone really go to the trouble of making something bad and selling it?”
“Well, try it.”
“Very well.”
Lilith took the black candy from me, put it in her mouth, and froze.
“...”
The shock of its appalling taste seemed to have robbed her of speech.
“W-what is this?! Is it poison?”
“It isn’t poison. I wouldn’t feed you something like that.”
“Heh heh... Its flavor is beyond description, yet my saliva won’t stop flowing... How strange...”
“You can spit it out, you know?”
Lilith fought desperately to endure it.
“N-no. A member of the royal family cannot be shaken by something like this, but... I cannot believe it.”
“You mean that people would go to the trouble of making something bad?”
“Exactly! They would deliberately make something like this...”
“And yet some people get addicted to it and eat it all the time.”
“How extraordinary... The world has grown larger once again.”
Everyone else wanted to try it too, so I let them—but they froze as soon as they put it in their mouths.
The beastfolk let drool run freely from their mouths.
They didn’t spit it out, but it must have tasted truly awful.
After finishing breakfast, we cleaned up, stored the container house, and resumed surveying.
We had the beastfolk go ahead, measured the direction and distance, marked them on the map, and moved by car.
The endless beach made the work easy, but as we approached the north side of the lake, rocky ground gradually began to appear.
Mountains eight hundred to a thousand meters high exposed their bare rock and plunged directly into the lake, forming cliffs.
“The terrain on the north side of the lake looks pretty rugged.”
I took out the binoculars and peered at the cliffs.
“At this rate, there won’t be anywhere for Kenichi’s summoned beast to walk, let alone for us.”
“Whoa... Ah! Kenichi, there are tons of birds!”
I let Anemone and Lilith look through the binoculars too.
Many black-and-white birds had built nests in hollows along the cliffs, which seemed to be a breeding ground.
“I wonder if we’ll be all right traveling by boat for several days.”
“Heh heh, I don’t think we’ll have any trouble finding prey.”
“That’s right, nya~.”
The beastfolk were optimistic, but that place was on the water, not on land.
Everything would be completely different.
“Can you really hunt from a small boat?”
“It’ll be fine, Boss! We’ll manage somehow!”
“You say that, but if it gets dark while we’re on the water, we’ll have to spend the night on the boat, you know?”
“Indeed. If we were attacked by a monster like the one before, we would have nowhere to escape.”
Nyamena’s expression changed when she heard Lilith’s words.
“Boss! We defeated that monster, right?!”
“Well, we hurt it badly, so I don’t think it’ll attack us again. But it might have companions.”
“Y-you’re kidding, right?”
“Honestly, Kenichi and Tiger are both such worriers, nya! It’ll be fine!”
Myaaree’s baseless confidence was impressive, but Japanese people were generally worriers.
Perhaps it was because our old world had so many natural disasters.
I understood that this undertaking involved danger, but mapping the territory and understanding my lands was also part of a noble’s duties.
“Hmm...”
As I worried, Bell came over.
“Meow.”
“That’s right. At times like this, I should ask the most important person in my territory—Mother. What do you think? Do you sense any danger?”
“Meow.”
Her behavior was no different from usual, so I made up my mind.
“All right! We’ll cross the north side of the lake by boat!”
“Let’s do it, nya! Tiger, you can turn back and take the long way around if you want, nya.”
“We’ve come this far. How can I turn back? I’m going too.”
“You don’t have to push yourself if you’re scared, nya.”
“Shut up!”
Nyamena and Myaaree began circling around me.
“Anemone, Lilith, I’m sorry for dragging you into something dangerous.”
“We have already been dragged into plenty, so it is too late for apologies. We knew the risks and came along anyway.”
“We’re adventuring with Kenichi, so it’s fine! I’ll help you with my magic!”
“Then I’m counting on you.”
“Yeah!”
Anemone had grown tougher too.
As for me, a middle-aged man, I couldn’t change much more than I already had.
I put my decision into action and took my family across the north side of the lake by boat.