CH 20

There was a familiar flavor mixed in the potion.

「It looks similar to an energy drink.」

Certainly, drinking energy drinks would help with fatigue, but… could it be?

「Let’s see, it tastes a bit spicy and sweet… what was it?」

Gulp, gulp.

After drinking it all at once, I looked at my status. My HP went from 4 to 5.

「Eh? I only recovered 1 HP from this?」

Or so I thought, as it rose up to 6 HP.

After a bit, it went up to 7. I was healing 1 HP per 20 seconds, roughly.

The effects were a bit different than I had thought. I had assumed that my HP would recover as soon as I drank the potion.

As I stared at my status to see if there were other effects, the now-empty potion dispersed into light particles.

A faint smell wafted through the air as it disappeared.

「Ah! I remember now! I haven’t drank anything that had the spice flavor in it for a while, so I completely forgot what it was. The potion tasted like ginger ale.」

Back when my husband and I were dating, he took me to a restaurant that served alcohol. Since I couldn’t drink liquor, I ordered some ginger ale. Except, they served me some actual ginger ale made from freshly ground ginger.

…Geez!

I didn’t like this. Even though my husband probably lost his feelings for me long ago and told me he wanted a divorce, I still end up thinking about him a lot. There was nothing I could do about it though. I had spent ten years mostly at home, and so I didn’t have any opportunities to meet new people and make better memories. I only met with my job-hunting friends once or twice a year, at most.

Those ten years of mine were filled with memories of my husband… and that detestable woman’s two adorable children.

「Ah! That’s right!」

I left the hut with a potion in hand.

「Everyone, prepare one potion each! We’ll use it as an ingredient for the party!」

I could’ve used my own, but the children, who were senior adventurers compared to me, would never agree to it.

「Eh? You’re going to use the potions in the food?」

Bryce-kun looked shocked.

「Hm? Is it bad if we do?」

「No, I’ve never heard of people mixing it for cooking, but…」

「Could it be that the potion becomes poisonous if it’s mixed with other things? Or it might cause something crazy to happen, like explode?」

「Isn’t it fine?」

Kurtz-kun replied with no worry.

「When people try to get young children to drink a potion, they usually mix it with milk or hot water, and nothing happens. 」

He explained. Bryce-kun nodded.

「Yeah, that’s true. While I’ve never heard of anyone using the potions for cooking, I’ve heard of them diluting it so that young children could drink it. Well, beginner potions aren’t very effective to begin with, so there should be no issues using it for cooking.」

Beginner potions were not effective?

I thought about the color, which resembled energy drinks.

Certainly, just juice with carbonic acid wouldn’t be as effective. Maybe the higher grade potions were more effective like Orona**n C or Yunke**. Though, I wasn’t sure if those were considered high grade energy drinks either.

「Can they be turned into something yummy like the losing potions? Kirika is excited.」

Kirika-chan went to grab a potion from her room. Kurtz-kun and Bryce-kun did the same.

「Ah, Bryce-kun, this is your farewell party, so you don’t need to bring one. Right, Kirika-chan, Kurtz-kun? Think of it as a present from us.」

It was just a simple potion, but here it was treated like the earnings of one’s hard work. It was a priceless bottle for these children.

「Mhm, that’s right. I want to give them to you as a present, Bryce-oniichan!」

「Me too. Yuuri-nechan, tell me if you need more!」

Everybody smiled.

「Thank you…」

Bryce-kun looked like he was about to cry. He must be happy enough to cry tears of joy.

「Alright, let me start cooking!」

Since the children had been smoking the meat outside of the hut, the hut now smelled like a smokery. The smell was strong.

That made me realize that the fire magic stones did not produce any smoke. They used firewood to smoke the meat, it seemed.

While bread would’ve been fine for the meal, I already used up a lot of potions, so I cooked rice instead.

That reminded me, they had a ton of rice (or as they called it, the bad wheat) in the food storage, but they didn’t seem to have any wheat. If we had wheat flour, there would be so much more dishes we could make. We could even make udon noodles.

Now then, I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes or I’d be wasting a ton of ingredients, so first I poured some of the potion, sake, and soy sauce into a small bowl.

I let it boil, then tasted it to see if the flavor was okay. It tasted good!

Even though I didn’t have sugar nor real ginger, I could just use ginger ale without any problems! Ginger ale was made from sugar and ginger, after all.

Now, I let the meat simmer.

Simmer together with the spring onions.