CH 14

「Kurtz-kun, you took me to the field, and you did your best to help me polish the rice. Bryce-kun, you watched the heat for me, and taught me all sorts of things. Kirika-chan, you helped me with many things and also cleaned up the potion bottles with me. All of you put in so much effort, so I don’t need anything else. Please eat as much as you’d like.」

「Eh? But that’s…」

Kurtz-kun looked at Bryce-kun to see his reaction.

Was there some sort of dungeon rule about this?

However, Bryce-kun stayed quiet.

「In my hometown, we have this saying: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.” In other words, people who do work should get to eat, right? It was thanks to everyone’s hard work that I managed to make these yaki-onigiri, so of course, everybody deserves to eat them.」

Bryce-kun stood up and left. He came back with potions in his hand.

Eh? Was he saying he won’t eat them without trading? I won’t accept his offer though.

Instead, Bryce-kun went to the vending machine and bought fire magic stones, then brought them to me.

「Yuuri-san, we’ll help you again, so please let us eat your cooking. We’ll contribute by giving you ingredients and materials.」

Ah, I see. It was because I bought the fire magic stone (although I bought it by borrowing a potion).

「I’ll contribute something too!」

Kirika-chan said and raised her hand, with rice grains stuck on her cheek.

「I’ll help too! I’ll bring you whatever you need! I want to eat more of your food!」

Ahh, why were they such good children?

If there were no dungeon rules, I might have ended up spoiling them lots. However, these children could not live in this world with that sort of lifestyle.

I was willing to cook for them no matter what, as long as they smiled and told me they enjoyed the food. In fact, I would probably force them to eat so they stayed healthy.

However, I couldn’t do that.

「In that case, I’ll make food for everyone as long as you help me cook, provide the material and ingredients needed, and help clean up at the end.」

「Yay! Then, I want seconds!」

I served three more yaki-onigiri to Kurtz-kun.

Bryce-kun and I had two. Kirika-chan ate one more, and we ended up having no more left for lunch.

Since everybody helped with the cleaning, we finished very quickly. Well, all we had to do was wash the pot and the plates and forks used.

「Okay, let’s get ready to head to the dungeon. Kurtz, check your stamina to see if you’ve recovered.」

「Kay. Status open… Uwah!」

Kurtz-kun exclaimed as soon as he looked at his status menu. The rest of us didn’t understand why he yelled of a sudden, since we couldn’t see his status.

「What’s wrong? You haven’t recovered yet?」

「N-n-no, I did, but I got some sort of buff effect attached to me, even though I have no armor on.」

Buff effect?

「Calm down, Kurtz. Can you explain it a bit more?」

「Well, my defense is at +10 right now.」

「That’s around the amount you get when you equip on pelt armor with an iron breastplate…」

Oh, that was what he meant by buff effect. I see.

「Ahh! Kirika’s went up too. My defense is at 5, but it says +10 in brackets next to it.」

Bryce-kun looked at his own status, and he stared in amazement.

「It’s true. I have a buff effect too… There’s only one explanation for this.」

Bryce-kun looked at the bottle of soy sauce.

「It’s because of the loot the monsters drop in the dungeon.」

Bryce-kun picked up the soy sauce.

「It doesn’t recover our health, but it gives a different effect instead…」

As expected of fantasy.

「But when I drank one of the bad potions, I never got anything like that.」

「Ahh, I remember you doing that. I think it was on the third day of you living here, Kurtz. I told you the potion tasted bad and did nothing, but you drank it anyway.

Bryce-kun recalled the memory and laughed.

So I wasn’t the only one who tried drinking it as a test.

Or rather, I only stopped because Kurtz-kun tried his hardest to stop me so I didn’t end up puking from the terrible taste.

「I checked my status to see if there really were no effects, and I found out my stamina actually decreased instead of increase, because I threw up. I didn’t get any buff effects either.」

I see. Since those potions made them lose their stamina, they started ignoring them.

I’m sure that drinking even one sake cup of soy sauce would be difficult…

「That’s right. There were plenty of people who tried drinking the potions before Kurtz did, so if the potions gave us some sort of buffing effect, we would’ve found out long ago and that information would have spread. I’m sure there are people desperate enough to drink the potion no matter how bad it tastes, just to get the effects.」

Well, of course.

Some people drink aojiru because it’s good for your health, even if it tastes terrible.

「Well, there’s no point in discussing this if we don’t understand why it works. Let’s ask Rofas-san when he comes by. Oh, that’s right. Yuuri-san, will this work as a weapon?」

Bryce-kun gave me a large plank of wood about the size of half a tatami mat.

「It used to cover the window in one of the unused rooms.」

「Thank you! You took it off just for me, didn’t you? I’ll try using it. Let’s work hard together!」

Kirika-chan nodded at what I said.

「Dungeon rule, party members should cooperate with each other.」