CH 6

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I stand in the kitchen with Sylphy and listen to her explanation of the seasonings in this world. I understood the salt, but I’m not sure about the others. There seemed to be an abundance of spices, so I actually got to lick a few of them. I first understood the pepper, chili pepper, mustard, cinnamon, garlic, and ginger-like stuff. But I’m not sure about the others.

Also, there was no sugar, but there was some kind of honey-like stuff. It was sweet and thick, but the flavor was different from honey. Could it be the honey of a flower? And there was no soy sauce or miso as well. Well, yeah.

“What do you eat for your staple food?”

“We knead this and then bake it.”

When she said that, Sylphy pointed her finger at what looked like a large burlap sack. I opened it and looked inside. There’s a silky powder in it. Is it something like flour?

“Hmm, I’ll try it anyway.”

For now, I’m going to shred the chicken-like Lizarf meat, sprinkle it with salt and mix it with honey. It’s chicken-like, and I think the sweet and spicy seasoning would go well with it. Then I chop up a piece of garlic and rub it into the meat.

Leaving the meat as it is to let the flavors blend in, I check the vegetables. There’s a lot of stuff, but I don’t know how to eat it. There are root vegetables, leafy greens, cabbage-like ones, fruit-like ones, and so on, but I don’t know how to eat them.

“Which one can be eaten raw and has a crisp texture?”

“That round cabbage or that thick black daikon.”

Sylphy points to a bright red cabbage-like vegetable and a daikon-like vegetable. Hmm, let’s try the red cabbage. Using a knife from the kitchen, I cut the red cabbage, or the cabbage, in half, takes out the core, and then shred it a bit. Yes, it’s a cabbage though it’s red.

There was also a purple onion, so I tried it too. Yes, it’s just a typical red onion. Is the spiciness a little strong? Also, it’s red or purple on the inside. Hmm, I’ll use these too. I cut them both into strips.

I’ll skip the black thick daikon or daikon-san for today.

“The problem is this one… the flour is kinda different.”

I don’t know if it’s flour or cornmeal or something else, but I’m sure it will harden if I knead it with water and heat it up. So I tried kneading a small amount of it with water. Hmm, it was not so sticky. Well, that’s okay.

I looked at Sylphy, and she was watching me with a grin on her face while drinking something straightly from a ceramic bottle. What’s that, alcohol? Damn, just because you’re in good standing, huh? Master?

“I’m telling you, I’ve never seen any of these ingredients in my life. So I don’t know if things go wrong.”

“What? Well, we’ll know about that later anyway.”

Sylphy is still grinning. With all these seasonings and vegetables, she must be able to cook reasonably well, but she’s not going to interfere. That’s fine, that’s fine, I don’t know what’s going to happen anyway!

Sylphy lit the furnace, but it’s hard to adjust the heat. You have to be careful because if you throw too much wood into the fire, it’s going to be super hot… For now, I’m going to try dropping a little bit of grain flour that has been loosely dissolved in water on top of the hot frying pan. Yeah, is it really flour-like? Well yeah, It’s probably flour. When I dropped a little more of it, the thin dough was baked just as I expected.

“I think you’re grabbing it too much.”

“It’s the first time I’ve dealt with this stuff, remember?”

While dealing with some jeers, I grill the meat to blend the flavors. I cooked the meat thoroughly and sprinkled salt for taste. It may not be enough, but if it’s the first time, it should be good. I add a little water to the pan after frying, then make a sauce or something similar and put it on a small plate.

Then I bake the dough with melted grain flour to make thin bread―a tortilla-like shape. Then bake all over. I bake six slices and stack them on a platter. I put them on the table with a plate of chopped vegetables, a plate of thin bread, and a plate of grilled meat.

“Fumu, how do you eat this?”

“It’s like this, and then this.”

I put chopped veggies on top of a large thin slice of bread, put a lot of meat on top of it, and present it wrapped around a little bit of sauce. It’s a Lizarf meat taco… No, it’s a burrito-like taco.

“You can just go and gobble it up.”

“Fumu….”

Sylphy did as I asked and took a bite of the capris and burritos. She chewed for a while and then swallowed it.

“Not bad.”

“I see. Can I have a bite, too?”

“Yeah.”

I rolled up the burrito and ate it too after getting master’s permission. Yeah, the texture of the crispy cabbage and purple onions is good. The flavor of the slightly thickened Lizarf meat is okay, too. I want to use a little more stimulation, so I bring some peppers and chilies from the kitchen. Sylphy was a little under-stimulated also and started using the chili.

“Yeah, it’s just okay. I think it’s pretty good for a first-timer that use these ingredients.”

“Yeah, not bad. Maybe you could wrap it up in leaves and take it with you for lunch.”

“Maybe if you make it in the morning and eat it for lunch. Beyond that, I’m afraid of food poisoning.”

“Sure. But why don’t you keep it in your inventory?”

“I dunno. Let’s see if the food I’ve put in my inventory is damaged… or if I can leave a slice of raw meat in my inventory.”

“Yeah. The rest of them just need a good pinch of salt to keep them fresh for a few days.”

We discuss my inventory function over burritos. And then I roll up the burrito for Sylphy. Yes, I’m a slave, so I have no choice. This is the least I can do since she lets me live here.

“Well, well, it wasn’t bad food. I’m going out; you just stay here and be quiet. You’re not a child, so you know what’s right and wrong, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be very quiet.”

She told me where the bathroom is, and there’s nothing to worry about. I don’t know what Sylphy will do, but she said I should accompany her on a hunt tomorrow. It doesn’t sound like she’s going to decide to execute me anyway.

There are also some crafting menus and inventory-related things I want to examine while Sylphy is out there. It’s a win-win situation.

“Be a good boy, okay?”

After saying that, Sylphy left the house. And then, after a short food break, I started to move as well.

“If I were to measure the passage of time in my inventory, this would be the best way to do it.”

I ignited the rest of the fire in the crater and put it away in my inventory. Then a burning crater is added to my inventory. Even if I wait for a while, the burning crater is still there. It won’t extinguish.

When I put it out on the furnace’s ashes, it looked almost the same as when it was ignited. It was quickly burned out, though.

“Hmm, I can’t be certain yet…”

The theory is that time is stopped when stored in the inventory. When I was thrown out into this world with my clothes on, I thought to myself what a shitty game it was, but I’m relieved to see that the inventory characteristics were in easy mode.

I make a large number of ignited craters and store them in my inventory. So, goodbye to troublesome ignition. And goodbye to the pump-drill igniter. No, I’ll keep it in my inventory because I might use it.

Once I’ve finished experimenting with my inventory, I can now play around with the crafting menu. Unfortunately, there’s no particular creation that’s growing. No, the number of crafting items made from Lizarf bones, skins, and fangs has been increasing, but I’m passing them off as they seem to be close in performance to those made of stone. I’ll at least make some arrows made from Lizarf fangs. There’s no shortage of arrows. But when it comes to making iron, I’ll be able to make arrows with an iron arrowhead… Well, it might be useful in tomorrow’s hunt, so I’ll make one.

Since the composite bow is my trump card at the moment, I’ll make an ordinary bow that can be used to show Sylphy a regular bow. I’d like to train my bow as well. I can’t train with a bow in the room, and if I do, Sylphy will probably kill me if I make a hole in the wall. Not figuratively, but seriously.

Then there’s nothing to do… No, let’s check out the house first, and if there doesn’t seem to be a bed for me to sleep in, I’ll make a bed for myself. She’ll at least allow me to hang a hammock.

That’s why I’m going to explore the inside of Sylphy’s house. However, I can only take a peek at all the rooms except for the living room and bathroom because of her privacy. I don’t have any special propensity to go around in women’s rooms and pick up their clothes and underwear, either.

Sylphy’s house was large, but the layout wasn’t too difficult to figure out. At the far end of the living room is Sylphy’s bedroom; next to it is a storage room, or rather a storage room that seems to be used for storing household goods. Then there is a toilet at the end of the corridor that leads from the living room and a slightly larger garden in the back. The garden is made of hardened soil, so it looks more like a playground rather than a garden. And there was another storage shed of sorts on the plot. It was locked, and I couldn’t get in, though.

“Fumu… I wonder where I will sleep?”

I think it would be effective to hang a hammock in the living room or in the corner of the living space where there is a kitchen with an earthen floor. Or maybe in the locked storage shed in the garden? I guess that’s about it.

Anyway, the hammock will be hung in the room. I’m gonna need a hammock stand.

“I’m pretty sure there’s one on the crafting menu.”

I make a hammock stand out of wood and further craft a freestanding hammock by combining it with a pre-made hammock.

“Hou… Yeah, not bad.”

When I set it up in the garden and laid down on it, it was quite comfortable. The freestanding hammock is constructed so that the ends are spread out with wooden sticks, which wasn’t the case when I was hanging it from a tree, so my body doesn’t curl up as much, and it’s more comfortable to sleep. But I was able to sleep in that one, hiding in less space over there… I’ll also make the original hammock, too anyway.

After I finish my hammock crafting appointment, I walked every inch of the yard. Stones and grass will be used as crafting materials, so I’ll keep collecting them. Even a small pebble can be used to make arrows if I collect enough of them. Grass also becomes material for ropes and hammocks, so it won’t go to waste.

Once most of the materials have been collected, I open the crafting menu and create more and more intermediate materials. What is an intermediate material is, for example, if I make a hammock, I craft it from grass to fiber, then I craft more fiber to rope, and from there, I make a hammock out of multiple ropes. In this case, the fiber from the grass and the rope made from the fiber is the hammock’s intermediate material. I sit in my hammock in the garden and use the crafting menu to make a bunch of those materials. By doing this, I can save time when I’m making something.

And as I make more intermediates, new crafting items may be added to the menu. I silently make gravel and stone blades from stone, sand from gravel, and so on.

“Hmm, not much more.”

I stuffed the cotton made from the fiber into a bag that was also made from fiber and grumbled to myself as I cushioned it. I didn’t get as many craftable items as I expected, whether it was the lack of some essential tool or merely a lack of material.

“Hmm, what a disappointment.”

I mutter to myself as I play with my newly made weapon, the Bola.

The Bola is a weapon that looks like a trident chain weight made of rope and stone. A stone is tied to the end of the trident rope, and by throwing it while spinning it, you can capture your opponent. Of course, it’s very painful to hit someone with it as such.

I’ve never actually used it, so I don’t know how effective it is, but there’s nothing better than being prepared with something like this, right? It’s probably a bit better than just throwing stones.

As I took out each and every weapon I would use for the hunt and checked them out, Sylphy came back. She comes out into the garden and grins at the free-standing hammock and the crude weapons laid out on the ground.

“That’s a pretty good collection. Can you use it?”

“If you mean whether or not it has the ability to kill as a weapon, then yes. The stone spear definitely pierced the Lizarf’s oral cavity, and the stone ax was powerful enough to break its head. I haven’t tried the bow, but it’s proven to be powerful enough to pierce a tree. And in terms of whether I can use it, I’m not sure I’m good with it, to be honest. I’m an ordinary person who has never trained to handle a weapon like this, let alone have a decent fight in a fistfight.”

“I see. Some of those things are very unusual, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, this was called Bola.”

I explained the whole process of how to use the Bola, which Sylphy showed interest in. Then Sylphy liked the Bola and asked me to give her one. I still have the materials, and I can make a crafting arrangement in the back of the house, so I’ll just give it to her. I’m sure she’ll be able to use it better than I am.

“Can you make anything else?”

While grinning, Sylphy asks me a question. Now, I don’t know what the intention of the question is, but I’m not sure if I should answer it honestly. I’m afraid to tell Sylphy everything at this point. I’m still not sure what Sylphy’s purpose in protecting me is. However, if I tell her the truth, and she thinks it’s actually worth her time, my life might be safe. It’s a difficult decision.

“I can create a lot of things. But I can’t make something out of nothing. Of course, to make something out of anything, it needs the right materials.”

“Hou… all you’ve got here are stone weapons, but can you make metal weapons too?”

“I don’t know. As I said before, I’ve only been on this side of the world for a few days. I don’t even know what I’m capable of.”

My head spins as I muddle through the conversation at random. She has definitely already figured out that my abilities are not just inventory. It’s safe to assume that she has a general idea of what I’m talking about based on my words and actions. I’m sure that hiding it overtly here would be distrustful.

And I’m almost certain that I’ll be in Sylphy’s care for some time to come. Since this woman seems to be interested in me, I should try to keep her interested in me as long as possible. I think this woman probably likes interesting things, or perhaps she’s just hungry for some amusement. Then I should continue to fulfill that.

“However――.”

“However?”

“I think I have a good prospect of being able to make a metal product. But I don’t have the materials to test it out. More specifically, iron ore and fuel.”

“Fumu, the materials, huh…?”

Sylphy put her hand to her chin and thought about it. It seemed to grab her interest for now.

“I have a guess about the iron ore, but the fuel is the problem. You can’t just smelt iron with firewood, can you?”

“I don’t know. My common sense won’t allow me to do that, but I might be able to make it with my ability. But generally speaking, I think we’ll need coke made from processed coal, or at the very least some charcoal. Either way, I won’t know until I try it.”

“Fumu… Can’t you just try it now?”

“I’d like to have some iron ore. Or scrap metal.”

“Then I’ve got something for you.”

Then Sylphy grinned. It was an incredibly evil-looking smile. Scary!