Chapter 118: The Second Day

Chapter 118: The Second Day

Fran and I started getting everything ready for tomorrow after seeing Urushi on his way.

I was originally planning on saving the spicy kind so I could introduce it on the second day, but all the stress had gotten to me, and I accidentally ended up having them sold alongside our other two flavours. In other words, I’d have to introduce a brand new flavour in order to make sure everything went according to plan.

「Master. Thought up new curry dish.」

『Oh? Sounds interesting. What kind?』

「Combination of Master’s best dishes. Curry sushi.」

『Not bad. The name’s got a good weight to it.』

I can’t really speak for the taste though. The combination seemed so odd that I couldn’t even fathom it. Moreover was the fact that the concept itself didn’t really seem all that applicable to curry bread in particular.

But that aside, I did have a pretty good idea myself.

What I needed to make was a super spice that transcended the realm of super spices, a super spice that went even further beyond. Naturally, a flavour as potent as that would need itself a pretty solid name. I’d considered a few things like Death Spice and Ogre Spice, but I ultimately ended up going with Dragon Spice. Dragons were considered the world’s most powerful creatures, and the whole idea was that the spice was the same. I was thinking of giving it a dragon themed slogan too. I could totally see it selling if we said that “eating it’ll make you breathe fire, just like a dragon!”

The Dragon Spice Curry Bread had a bit of alteration put into three different parts of its cooking process. First was the filling. Most of my other curries had been made Japanese style. They’d also only used a single type of meat. The Dragon Spice, on the other hand, was a pork and beef curry that moreso followed the Indian Qeema style. The dough I was using for its breading had a bit of black spice mixed into it, and as a result, shone with a much darker lustre. The final change was the manner in which it was deep fried; I mixed quite a bit of lard into the oil so I could fully draw out the curry’s taste.

I then came up with an iteration of our mildest flavour. The idea was to remove a bit of spice, add some cheese and ultimately craft a batch of Cheese Curry Bread.

Furthermore, I’d improve the recipe even further by grabbing all the bread crumbs I’d gotten from the whole frying processes I’d done over the past few days. The point was to rub them into the Cheese Curry Bread’s dough. I figured children would enjoy the texture more that way.

I couldn’t make all that many of either of the two new variations, but I estimated that I should be able to ramp production up enough to get us at least a solid two thousand of each. Besides, the idea was to call these products limited edition anyways. We’d them at twenty Golde a piece, with a limit on four of each type per customer. I was almost completely sure that our strategy would cause them to sell. The urge to collect the scarce was something that would have an effect on people regardless of what world they resided in.

「As expected of Master.」

『I’ll work on the two new products I just introduced. Fran, you focus on deep frying the stuff that’s already been prepped.』

「Nn.」

The two additional types we’d come up with ended up leaving us with a total of five different product variations.

With that in mind, the two of us silently worked until the clock struck midnight. It was only then that I finally finished getting a large batch of curry bread ready to be deep fried.

『Whew. That’s half done.』

「Good work.」

『Thanks. Wait, what’s that?』

Fran had finished with all the frying she’d been assigned a bit earlier, so she’d moved on to cooking up a little something in a pot.

「Curry sushi. Complete.」

Fran would normally mind how tedious the work was, but today all her reluctance had been thoroughly suppressed by her curiosity. The pot beside her looked like something along the lines of curry. She’d swapped one of the ingredients out for a fishy stock, and caused the pot’s contents to moreso resemble a soup than a curry. Beside said batch of soup-like curry was a few pieces of the tuna sushi we’d made back on the ship.

「Put sauce on sushi. Eat.」

『I see.』

Fran immediately began pressuring me into consuming her creation.

「Try?」

『Sure...』Fôll0w current novÊls on n/o/(v)/3l/b((in).(co/m)

I’ll admit the dish was a bit weird and off putting. However, Fran was its creator, and thus, I had absolutely no choice but to eat it. Period. Full stop.

Thus, I made a doppelganger, grabbed a piece of sushi and dipped it right into the pot of curry. Again, I couldn’t help but note that it didn’t look delicious. Seeing a piece of tuna smothered in yellow sauce did nothing but curb my appetite.

But that didn’t matter! There was no way any real man could possibly back off from a situation like this one!

「Here goes.」

「Nn.」

Nom nom nom...

Huh? That’s weird. It doesn’t taste bad at all. In fact, I’d say it was pretty good. For some odd reason, the curry’s spices actually managed to draw out the Tuna’s flavour. The vinegared sushi rice actually seemed to work decently well with the whole combination too.

Or actually, I guess this does make sense. Fran’s cooking is maxed out, and she’s even got a title for it. She would actually be even better than I am at it should she give it her all. Needless to say, the making of this dish had caused her to do exactly that.

Unfortunately, I still don’t really think that the whole thing she’s got going here is something we can actually apply to curry bread, but, she seemed satisfied with the result, so all was good. After confirming my approval, she polished off the rest of the sushi before heading back to the inn with her spirits high.

I, on the other hand, had no choice to get back to work. That said, I’d just managed to get myself a portion of Fran’s cooking, something that was pretty much of legendary rarity. Hence, I was as pumped as could be, and ready to fry all night.

The first thing we did the next day was submit a few documents to the cooking guild so that we could get our new merch approved. We’d written all ingredients in the documents we handed over, so they ended up giving us an immediate thumbs up after giving the products a quick sample.

Our second day went much better than our first. News about our products had spread through word of mouth overnight. As a result, we ended up being permanently stuck with a line about two hundred heads long. Our two new additions were doing just as well as anticipated, and as I’d expected, the cheese type was especially popular amongst children.

Moreover was the fact that we’d yet to experience any sort of trouble.

Speaking of trouble, The Noble’s Dish had managed to benefit from it greatly. Rumours of their “benevolence” had spread throughout the town, and as a result, they ended up being much more popular than they’d been the day before. I heard that they’d also hired a few adventurers as guards as a result of yesterday’s occurrences.

I thought it to be odd, so I ended up appraising the people going around spreading the aforementioned rumours.

The chefs immediately began bad mouthing him as they took their distances. Looked like he wasn’t what you’d call liked.

「The name’s Waint. I hail from The Noble Dish, and like the others, I have also recently had the opportunity to sample Curry Bread.」

「Nn.」

「It was quite the wonderful dish. It had a novel taste to it, and contained within it a series of vivid flavours.」

「Nn.」

「I wish us both luck in this competition going forward.」

Pretty much everything that came out of his mouth had been a lie. Moreover, the guy totally started wiping his hands off after exchanging handshakes with Fran.

「What an extraneous amount of effort that must have taken. I never would have expected you to not only be obligated to exchange handshakes with, but also compliment a filthy beastman.」

「Fret not. It’s not too hard a task to complete if you think it an act done in good humour.」

These sons of b*tches start sheet-talking the moment they thought they were out of earshot! You know what? Fine. If you think your hand’s all that dirty, I’ll solve your little problem by cutting it the hell off. That way, you’ll never have to deal with having a dirty hand again.

Sheet! Where the hell is Urushi? He’s probably got some sort of evidence by now. I swear I’m going to use whatever he found to shove that piece of sheet convicted of literally everything at the very first possible opportunity!

I can’t do anything for now, but polish that head of yours, you piece of sheet! Cause I’m making a trophy out of it!

We, or rather, I headed back to the kitchen we rented out with my mood as sour as could be. Unlike me, Fran didn’t really seem to care. She was rather neutral about the whole thing.

「Master.」

『Yeah, I know.』

Fran was on guard, she looked at the restaurant we’d borrowed with her senses turned up to max. Likewise, I toned down my anger and began focusing on the much more important task of observing our surroundings.

We sensed several people within the former restaurant premises despite that fact that we were the only ones that should’ve had access. This time around, our guests really were completely uninvited; they were trespassing on our properties whilst we were away. I wanted to just get in there and slaughter them all, but we didn’t own the place, so I didn’t feel right busting it up or getting blood stains all over its woodwork.

『Let’s sneak up on them and incapacitate them for now.』

「Got it.」

We thinned out our presences and silently approached the kitchen door. We sensed four intruders in total. Two were in the storefront part of the building, and the other two in the kitchen part.

Our first move was to cast Silence and stick the key into the door. Strangely enough, the lock was still in the same state it’d been in the morning when we left. Did they break in from the storefront side? Oh well, no point thinking about now. We’ll just beat it out of them later.

We ever so slightly opened the door just enough so that we could see into the building. None of the intruders looked to be in plain sight, they were hiding.

Were they trying to ambush us? Yeah, that’s not really going to work, not on us at least.

『I’ll get the one on the right. You get the one on the left.』

(Nn.)

I rushed into the room whilst expanding Silence’s range to cover its entirety. I then immediately struck the man hiding behind the door frame with a bolt of lightning and caused him to pass out with his lips flapping wildly.

Likewise, Fran had also paralyzed her target with the magic equivalent of a taser. We then promptly had both restrained before moving onto their companions.

The other two invaders met a similar set of fates. All four were actually decently strong. Even the weakest of them was at least level twenty. They probably would’ve been able to beat Fran if she was just any other D ranked adventurer. Did they not learn from what happened last time? Wait, were these people even connected to the other group that attacked us?

We lined up the four assailants and began our usual interrogation processes. To be specific, we started with the highest level dude, the one that looked most leaderlike.

「Awake?」

「What in the... Untie me!」

「Might. Depends on answers. Here, why?」

「The hell? Like I know! You think you can get away with this, girl!?」

And so, ten odd minutes passed.

All four men were now sitting with their legs tucked underneath their thighs and their butts on their heels. A single glance at their faces revealed that they were now but shadows of their former selves. What a wonderful sight.

「Summary. Attacked me to stop participation in King of Cooking?」

「Yes Ma’am.」

Weren’t we getting attacked a bit too often? Like, could they cut it out already? It isn’t even threatening, it’s just annoying.

Asking about the person behind all of this ended up providing us a with a name that we’d yet to know.

「Man behind this. Named Rynford?」

「Yes ma’am.」

Apparently this Rynford guy was some old man staying alongside a few subordinates at the manor we identified a few days back. The men here were hired by said Rynford.

So why was Rynford they trying to mess with us anyways? Was he trying to back up the Lord’s third son and increase his chances at winning? Or was it maybe something related to the whole alchemist thing that was going on a few days back? Or maybe this Rynford guy worked for the alchemist? But if that’s the case, then why try to stop us of all people?

We need more information. At this rate though, it really seemed that we might have to end up raiding the manor after all...

『Looks like we’re stuck waiting for Urushi.』

「Nn.」