Chapter 222: Hunting in the Forest
Translated by Zzonkedd
Edited by Gumihou
I held on to Fer’s back as he ran non-stop for about an hour.
When he finally slowed down, we were deep in the middle of a forest. [6] I was still trying to recover from the ride when Fer said, [3] “Umu, this seems like a good place. There are no humans around.”
[6] I slipped off his back. To be honest, I’m fairly used to riding on Fer by now, but I will always be glad to have my two feet on the ground. “Alright, I’ll stay here and make our travel meals. Please put up a barrier for me.”
“Very well. Let’s go, Dora.”
“Ou!”
Fer and Dora were about to leave when Sui suddenly popped out of her leather bag. “Sui wants to go too~!”
“Eh? Sui too?”
“Sui wants to pew pew some monsters~”
If Sui leaves, I’ll be all alone here… “Fer, your barrier will stop any monsters from coming in, right?”
“Of course, there’s no doubt about it.” Fer’s confidence about his barrier was just very reassuring. Also, I have the Absolute Defence granted by the gods, so… yeah, I should be alright here, right?
Right.
“Alright, Sui. You can go as well.”
As soon as I said this, Sui began to bounce around happily.
As my familiars made to go, I said, “Ah, hold on a minute, Fer.”
I hung a magic bag (medium) around Fer’s neck, “By the way, please bring back edible monsters so that we can restock our meat. Don’t bring weird things back.”
“Nuu, I understand.”
“Yeah, yeah,”
“Ye~es~”
Hopefully, they will all remember it. Otherwise, the non-edible things would just end up becoming fertilizer inside my [Item Box].
“Let’s go!” Fer howled his battle cry.
“Yeah!” Dora-chan and Sui echoed and off they went.
Maa, guess it’s time for me to get started on our travel meals.
~
First, let’s make lots of meat-based dishes.
Since it’s food on the go, I wanted to make things that could be served on top of a rice bowl or inside a sandwich.
After slicing up Orc and Bloody Horn Bull meat, I pickled them in a Miso based marinade before stir-frying them. I also made some Ginger-fried Orc and stir-fried some sliced Wyvern and Bloody Horn Bull meat with onions and soy sauce to make the meat topping for gyuudon.
Although it felt a little extravagant, I also stir-fried some Wyvern and Orc meat with vegetables. I stir-fried a whole lot, some seasoned with the rich Garlic Yakiniku Sauce and others with the Medium Spicy Yakiniku Sauce. These will be great when served on rice.
The next meat dish involved mincemeat. [6] Thanks to my special mincing machine, I could make pounds and pounds of mince in no time flat. Soon, stacks of Salisbury Steaks made with the combination of Orc and Bloody Horn Bull was done. Bolognese sauce was made with the same meat combo with plenty of vegetable and onions. [1] Since I have loads of minced, I also made some Keema Curry because that goes very well with rice too.
Of course, since we all love fried food, I got started on those too. Leftover minced Orc was made into Menchikatsu or Minced Pork Cutlet. [1] I wanted to make some Karaage, but I’m currently out of bird type meat so I had to make do with fried Sea Serpent.
Normally, I just make the standard soy-sauce based marinade for the fried stuff, but this time I made a salt-based marinade as well. [1] Because I enjoyed multi-tasking, I also roasted some Wyvern meat in the oven.
Meanwhile, to maximise my cooking time, there were several pots of rice being cooked over portable stoves as well. Any free time I have is spent on shredding cabbages. [6] Lots and lots of shredded cabbages to supplement our meat-filled diet.
“Fuuuh~ I guess that’s enough for meat-based dishes.” That took a lot less time than I had expected. I guess having levelled up meant my speed and strength have increased as well. Although, I mostly used my speed and strength on making food for my familiars…
I feel kind of offended about how the Gods and Goddesses seemed intent on getting their way despite my feelings… Nevertheless, I do want to try my best in the next dungeon quest. Yes, that’s right, I’m going to do my best and not just rely on Fer and the rest.
I have no intention of opening up more tenant shops, but levelling up also meant that my strength, speed and attack power will increase. [6] In other words, my sword strikes would be more powerful.
Levelling up also meant increasing my Magical capacity, which translates to an improvement of my Fire and Earth magic as well.
Yoshi, let’s look forward to the dungeon.
Oh, right. I’ve been using the sword all this while because it felt traditional for this RPG world, but it might be a good idea to consider getting a spear. I don’t have any real skill with the sword after all. [2] All I’d done was randomly swinging my short sword around trying to hack things up. As long as it connects, it’s good enough for me. However, compared to a short sword, being able to hit an enemy from a farther distance seems very attractive to me.
Alright, it’s decided. Let’s buy a spear at Avering.
Anyway, now that I’ve decided on this course, I should focus on cooking more seafood while Fer and the rest are not back yet.
It’s really easy to make Grilled Kraken. So I made lots. They’re very delicious anyway. [1] I also made Stir-fried Kraken with vegetables. I seasoned one set with only a little salt and the next set with oyster sauce for variety.
The Kaaki Furai last night was crazy delicious, so it’s time to make some seafood Furai. [1] Also, the horse-mackerel like fish could be split and breaded to make Aji Furai. I’ll also be making Breaded Fried Shrimp, Breaded Fried Kraken and Breaded Fried Yellow Scallops.
Oh, let’s deep fry the Big Hard Clams too. The Big Hard Clams were so large that I decided to cut them into half before breading and frying them. Fish are delicious when fried, so I decided to add Aspidochelone and Tyrant Fish into my Furai ensemble.
… I think I got a bit out of control.
I had been frying this and that, thinking about how so and so would be so delicious when eaten as a Furai that I ended up with this huge pile of breaded fried stuff.
Ah, well. Everything looks delicious so let’s put them into the [Item Box] and not worry about them~
Since I made so much Seafood Furai, I’ll need to make tons of Homemade Tartar Sauce. Oooh, once the sauce is made I could not resist and secretly crunched on some pseudo Aji Furai and a Scallop Furai to taste test. It’s just taste testing!
“Fuh… I wonder if this is enough, na…” I’d really made a huge pile of food. Luckily the [Item Box] could keep food fresh… “I wonder where Fer and the rest are. They sure are late. Have they gotten so absorbed in hunting that they forgot all about lunch and dinner? It’s going to get dark soon…” [5]
[6] I had lunch alone. It was kind of strange and it made me wonder just what these foodies were up to. What’s so interesting about hunting that they actually forgot to come back for lunch.
An hour after sunset, everyone came back.
“Ou, sorry for being late.”
“Ahhh…. Hunting was so fun that I had forgotten the time, na~”
“It’s really, really fun ~”
-erk. As expected, these bunch had been too caught up in hunting.
Moreover, Sui was in her Giant Slime form and there were lots of things on her back… is the Magic Bag (medium) so full that you can’t fit stuff in there anymore?
“We need to return before the city gates close. We’ll eat at the villa once we return, alright?”
“Nuu, I guess there’s no other way around it.”
“I’m really hungry, but I suppose I can wait until we’re in the city…”
“Tummy’s rumbling~”
“You all arrived too late. So there’s no way we could eat and reach the city before curfew so just be patient. By the way, what did you get? And… what is Sui carrying?”
“Umu, show him, Sui.”
“Oka~y~” Sui moved over and dropped 4 Cockatrices, 2 Rock Birds, and a thing that was about the size of a light truck and was basically shaped like a huge rabbit but with horns. [1] There was also a cow-like creature that was slightly smaller than the truck-sized rabbit. The cow had a gold-coloured back but otherwise looked edible enough.
This was the first time I saw these two creatures. The [Appraisal] told me that the rabbit thing was a [Giant Horned Rabbit] and the cow thing a Golden Back Bull. Both were B Rank monsters.
More importantly, all of these creatures were the edible kind.
“We have this too,” Fer used his wind magic to unfurl the string on the magic bag and-
“Wh- wh- wh- what the heck did you bring inn!!!!?????”
-a huge red and black body was thrown down in front of me.
[Gumihou: Ahahaha, what could it be?]
[1] Structural Change: Combine 2 paragraphs
[2] Structural Change: Combine 3 paragraphs
[3] Structural Change: Combine paragraph & dialogue
[4] Structural Change: Change passive sentence to dialogue
[5] Delete Repetitive or Pointless Information
[6] Additional Information for Aesthetic Purpose
[7] Add Dialogue Tag