CH 56

「Are you okay, Yuuri-san… Sorry, I didn’t explain enough. It would’ve been nice if it was at least salted, but… If we’re only preserving it, then the taste will be…」

Yes, I know.

It’ll stink. I thought that the boar would stink in a similar way to pork. As expected though, if I don’t use alcohol to remove the stink, or dress the meat with soy sauce or ginger, then the smell remains. It’s hard to eat.

It tastes bad, but…

Well, it’s been prepared, and it’s not like I’ll die from how bad it tastes, so… Auu. I ate everything with teary eyes.

However, I understood what the texture was like. Alright. If I cut the meat into thin slices and put them between bread, it should taste good. Making it kakuni-flavored should be fine too.

「Okay, I’m going to start making the kakuni. Um, we have to make a portion for breakfast, and we’ll dry a portion overnight to use for the bento. How much should we make?」

「All of it!」

Rofas-san pounded his chest with a triumphant look.

Huh?

「Ehh? Rofas-san, I don’t think you can eat all of it.」

Kirika-chan made a sound argument.

「Didn’t Bryce say to turn them into dried meat? If we can’t finish it, then just turn the leftovers into dried meat. Then the flavor will stay…」

What? Is he seriously saying to make all of it?

「Please wait, all I said was to dry the meat overnight though. I don’t know if we can dry meat we used potions on.」

That’s right, exactly what Bryce-kun said.

Even back in Japan, I’ve never heard of dried kakuni meat.

「Do you plan on wasting Yuuri-san’s cooking by turning it into some failed dried meat?」

Rofas-san went quiet.

「Um, how about we do this? I’ll only make however much the largest pot can carry. We’ll dry everything else but the portion for breakfast. If we dry them all overnight, we should be able to eat them during lunch, dinner, or even the morning after, so please take as much as you’d like. Let’s test what will happen if we turn some of it into dry meat.」

「Ah, okay, the largest pot, mhm, I see. That way, we can see if we can turn the boiled meat into dry meat… Alright, I got it.」

Rofas-san was finally convinced.

Now that the boar was finally turned into meat form, it’s my turn. Since this is my first time cooking with such a large pot, I’m a little worried about the amount of seasoning I have to use… I should use ten times as much as normal… No, twenty times… We have a lot of seasoning, or rather, potions, so it should be fine. Ah, but…

「We don’t have enough winning potions though.」

The losing potions belong to everyone, but winning potions are supplied individually. Everybody has to give up some of their own, or there won’t be enough.

Huh? Wait a minute.

No matter how much food is eaten in total, the amount that Kirika-chan eats versus Rofas-san’s is quite different, right?

If we all gave up the same amount of potions, wouldn’t it be unfair?

Well, I guess we can say that Rofas-san supplied the meat so it’s okay, but everybody else helped gather vegetables from the fields and cook, so it evens out…

Okay, let’s do this.

「Rofas-san, we don’t have enough potions to use for cooking. Usually, we get everyone to offer a fair portion of their potions, but…」

I didn’t say we gave up the same amount, I said we offered a fair portion. I wasn’t exactly lying.

I wonder how many grams a child’s bowl is versus an adult’s. Ah, but Rofas-san eats more than a regular adult, so how many times should I multiply his by? As I calculated in my head, Rofas-san left the hut and brought back something from the storage next door.

The storage is where we store the things gathered from intermediate and upper-level dungeons. Of course, there is a lock to prevent theft.

「Heave-ho.」

He dropped a large box onto the table.

There were probably around a hundred bottles of MP potions inside.

「Eh? Um…」

I wasn’t asking for MP potions, I wanted regular potions.

I looked back and forth at the potions and at Rofas-san.

「Sorry, but can you make do with whatever you gather here? There’s quite a wait for beginner-grade potions, so…」

「Eh? Could it be that you can only get beginner-grade potions at the dungeon here?」

Even so, was it okay that we used the potions, considering we could barely gather this amount ourselves?

「No, beginner-grade potions appear in the intermediate and upper-level dungeons too, but nobody picks them up because they don’t make much money. There’s a limit on how many they can carry too. Ah, of course, there are other potion fields, but they’re all quite far from here.」

I see.

It makes sense for people to bring back the things that make them the most money.

「Also, beginner-grade potions don’t mean much to me. I only bring upper-grade ones with me, so I only have stuff that you kids shouldn’t be drinking.」

I thought about Rofas-san’s HP. Yeah, one beginner-grade potion is more than enough for me… I only have 15 HP. I feel better after an hour of drinking one. Uuu, I have to work hard and level up.

Huh? But didn’t he say that MP potions are worth more than regular potions?

Even if he eats a lot, all these MP potions don’t exactly balance out the amount of HP potions we actually need…

「Well, if you have this much, you can do a lot of experimenting to make an MP potion dish, right?」

Ah, that’s why. That’s right. He accounted for that too.

I already forgot about it.