by CHIROLU
At any rate, both Kenneth and the rest of the group were entirely focused on dissecting the creature. And when they started seeing how delicious the chunks of meat looked with the fat clinging to them, any thoughts of the dragon they used to belong to more or less vanished.
“It can be a little tough to look at a whole roasted lizard sometimes. But when it’s this big you’ve got to cut it up anyway, and then it’s hard to even picture its original shape.”
Still, it wasn’t such a bad feeling, hunting down a dragon for its meat. There weren’t any that lived near his home village, so they’d never had the chance, but if there had been, he was certain the hunters would have jumped at the chance.
They would be able to sell off the large bones like the spine and ribs. And so, while Dale set about using magic to return the harbor to its former state, the rest of the party was silently cleaning those off. In the middle of all that, though, they suddenly realized that both Kenneth and Karel were conspicuously missing.
And yet, nobody in the group found that strange in the least.
Later on, they loaded the luggage into the carriage Karel had procured and fixed it in place. Then after that, they all bathed at the inn and washed off their equipment. And unsurprisingly, when Dale’s paralyzed sense of smell started working again, he couldn’t help frowning at the residual stench clinging to him.
While Dale didn’t bring a lot of them, a few spare everyday shirts and pants were among the minimal luggage he brought along. Granted, the amount he could carry was limited on such a nomadic journey. It was something he hadn’t really ever considered back in his home village.
As he stepped outside of the inn he saw the sun was starting to set, dying the sky red.
He looked around as the salty ocean breeze blew through his damp hair and spied that a bonfire had been prepared, and the women from about town were walking all around. The flow of people was mainly centered around a makeshift outdoor stove, where a familiar large man was standing and skillfully working away.
I guess I probably shouldn’t go asking him which one he sees as his real job...
Seeing how the clean apron he wore fit him perfectly, it must not have been borrowed. And the blade he held in his dominant hand didn’t look to be any ordinary knife, but rather one meant for cooking that he was well accustomed to using. It felt odd to realize that he must have been using a fair portion of his limited luggage space just for cooking tools.
Apparently, the women from about town had gathered to help out.
To a novice like Dale, it sure was an impressive sight seeing Kenneth not only briskly throw out orders to those around him, but also prepare a number of dishes at the same time all by himself.
Around when the red sky started shifting into a deep indigo, the prepared bonfire began serving its purpose of lighting up the surroundings. It was a setup reminiscent of a night festival, and in fact it served as a celebration of the unprecedented threat of the aquatic dragon being wiped out, as well as the fact that they would be able to get back to fishing from tomorrow on.
It was the type of ingredient that rich dilettantes would pay plenty for, but it was hard to sell, due to being difficult to preserve and ship. And so, they ultimately had to resign themselves to using up all of the meat. Those who gathered at the ensuing banquet held in the town couldn’t hide how they felt daunted by the unfamiliar ingredient, but alcohol gradually drove away any residual misgivings about the beast, and they started showing interest in such delicious food.
“Yum.”
The meat skewer seemed to have just been made by sprinkling salt over it and roasting it, and yet the amount of salt and roasting time were just perfect, making for an exquisite dish. It was lighter compared to farm meat, but it had a nice, firm texture to it, and a delicious flavor came gushing out when you bit into it.
“It definitely is good, but it’s hard to think of what to compare it to,” Dale muttered to himself while glancing at the next dish.
The stringy parts had been boiled long enough that they became viscous like gelatin, and then steeped in the flavor of potherbs and tomatoes. It made for a really unique texture of a sort that Dale had never tasted before. The deep fried dish was quite interesting, too. It was seasoned a bit on the strong side, but it paired perfectly as a snack alongside the drinks.
Then there was a dish made through steaming, prepared in a way based on the local cuisine of this port town, using a citrus-based sauce. Even the scraps didn’t go to waste as Kenneth used them to make a soup, which had a salty flavor and was served in a bowl with noodles and more citrus.
Dale had his cup filled with fresh wine and took a sip. It was a cheap wine, but it wasn’t overly sour and went down easy, which earned it passing marks in his book.
As Dale moved towards the center of the banquet while picking at the dishes on offer, he soon noticed the man who should have been the star of the moment was instead staring out at the dark nighttime sea. He spied the man’s cup was empty at the moment, though, so he borrowed a bottle of wine before going on over.
“Kenneth.”
“Dale...?”
“What’s with that face? You were so energetic just a little bit ago,” Dale questioned while pouring wine into Kenneth’s glass.
“Was the food tasty?” Kenneth asked, with a bizarrely listless look to him.
“Yeah.”
“An agate-eyed dragon, huh...?” he muttered with a sigh, causing Dale to look a bit puzzled.
He didn’t say it often, but Dale really did think his “big bro” was someone worthy of respect. And so, he gulped down the contents of his own cup and grasped for what to say.
“Even working as an adventurer, it’s unlikely you’ll ever run into one of those incredibly rare beasts. And even if you do, taking it down is a whole other matter entirely. It’s possible to set up a specialized fishing trip in order to take on the challenge, but for that, you’d need to find an investor with a massive fortune first,” Kenneth stated.
“Right...”
“It’s rare enough that I’d call it a once in a lifetime opportunity, even for famed adventurers. That’s how legendary of an ingredient it is...”
“It sure was tasty.”
“Yeah, it was... I had wanted to try eating it, just the once...” he muttered, his words coming out bit by bit. He really wasn’t acting like his usual self.
As Dale searched for words of wisdom that had come from the man himself, Kenneth gave another sigh.
“It was my goal in becoming an adventurer...”
“Huh?”
Kenneth paid no attention to how taken aback Dale looked, though, and instead stared into the darkness towards the far-off horizon line.
“Now that I’ve accomplished my goal, what’ll I do from here on out...?”
Dale’s impression hadn’t been wrong.
Now that Kenneth had completed his life’s goal without Dale even realizing it, he was undoubtedly at a loss.
†
After hearing “The Epic of Wal” from Dale, Latina asked the question she was most curious about: “You can eat dragons?”
In a way, he had totally expected that.
“The agate-eyed dragon we ate back then tasted totally different than other meats or fish, but it was crazy tasty... I don’t really have the words to describe it, but it sure was good.”
“Ooh...”
When he saw the curiosity sparkling in Latina’s gray eyes, Dale started thinking maybe he’d go catch an agate-eyed dragon or two, no matter how much trouble it may prove to do so. He really was serious about it too, making all sorts of plans in the back of his head on how to best use his connections and authority.
“The only dragons I’ve seen before were flying dragons at the capital. But still, you and Kenneth sure are amazing to have taken on such a large magical beast...”
Despite her words, there was a clear look of concern on Latina’s face. Noticing that, Dale gave a strained smile and patted her on the he
ad like he did when she was little.
“It’s true that you start to get a reputation of being a first-rate adventurer when you take down a dragon. But put another way, it happens enough for that not to be so rare an occurrence. Plus Kenneth and I are just fine, so there’s no reason for you to worry, Latina.”
“Right.”
When he thought on how Latina had worried like that when he left her home and headed out for a job ever since she was little, he thought it really may have been for the best that he hadn’t had much of a chance to tell her the details of his work. After all, the Seventh Demon Lord’s troops made a real habit of bringing dragons along with them. It was true that you were called first rate for taking one down, but he dealt with them so often that he had grown completely numb to that fact.
It made him glad to see Latina concerned for him, and he could understand why she felt that way, but fighting a dragon was far from an unusual job for Dale.
“Well... That agate-eyed dragon was seriously tasty, but from what I hear, most land-based dragons aren’t suitable for eating.”
“Really?”
Dale felt relieved that he had managed to so swiftly shift her attention.
“Their meat is tough to start with, and a lot of them have a resistance to fire, so you can’t really soften it through cooking, either.”
“I see...”
“Flying dragons have great strategic importance so nobody eats them, and supposedly they wouldn’t be tasty even if you tried, anyway.”
“But if we know they’re not tasty... Then that means someone has eaten them before.”
Dale was at a loss as to how to respond to that.
Most of his knowledge on such things had come from Kenneth, and he hadn’t ever questioned why he would know such things in the first place, but now that he thought on it, Latina was absolutely right.
He wanted to think that Kenneth just learned it from someone else too, but he really couldn’t say that with certainty.
“I guess that’s true.”
“So dragons aren’t very tasty... Huh?”
Dale had been tempted to ask if she wanted to try eating one even so, only for Latina to think of something partway through her statement and tilt her head before continuing on.
“＊＊＊＊＊＊ meat could be... I mean, I thought it was some type of giant lizard, but maybe it’s not...? Huh...?” she muttered, mixing in a word from her home country.
“Well, maybe there’s no helping that it tastes bad, then...” Dale said while averting his gaze a bit.
Latina, meanwhile, furrowed her brows and looked to be struggling to search distant memories. When she seemed to finally be satisfied with her search, she met eyes with Dale and then let out an odd little giggle.
“Hmm? What is it?”
“It’s just... You were a whole lot younger in that story than the you I know, so it’s kind of a strange feeling.”
“I mean, to put it bluntly, I was still just a kid back then...”
At the time, he put on a front far more than was necessary, hoping to get the people around him to acknowledge him. Now that the years had passed, he could tell that actually must have made him seem even more childish to them, though.
“I mean, you were an adult ever since I first met you.”
“By now, you’re actually older than I was when I found you, though.”
“Ah...” Latina muttered, blinking her eyes in clear surprise. “That’s true, isn’t it? How strange.”
“Well, I mean, pretty much all the old-timers making up the regulars of this shop have known you since back when you were a kid... and honestly, it’s not all that different for me, either.”
A great number of the senior adventurers centered around Kreuz had known Dale since back when he was just a fledgling Kenneth had taken under his wing.
“I mean, there’s some stuff you can only really see when the years have passed, but it can be real embarrassing to think back on.”
Would he even have been able to take charge of a young girl so utterly unrelated to him without the impetus of youth to spur him on? He had thought he was a proper adult back then, but in actuality he was still young and inexperienced, and so perhaps the people around them saw him not too differently from the young girl he cradled in his arms.
“So you’ve all done work here in Kreuz since way back then?”
“No, Kenneth and them just used Kreuz occasionally, but from what I hear it wasn’t their base of operations or anything.”
“Really?” Latina questioned.
With that, Dale resumed his story of the past.
“It’s a bit of a strange twist of fate, that the reason Kenneth’s party started working out of Kreuz was because we had taken out that agate-eyed dragon.”
†
The next destination for Kenneth’s party was Kreuz, after slaying that agate-eyed dragon in Wal. The reason for their destination was to sell off the hide, bone, and other valuable parts of the dragon they’d prepared. And since their condition would affect what they could be used for, Kenneth’s party wanted to find buyers before anything started to deteriorate. That was even more true because they were rare, valuable parts.
A great number of merchants did also gather in the port town of Qualle, but if you were trying to maximize profits, then Kreuz was on a whole other level.
Kreuz was the second largest center for trade and distribution in all of Laband, so it was very welcoming to outside merchants and adventurers who visited. That reputation came from the fact that it was easier to find a place to sell something there than in other towns, and because the conditions weren’t set to be explicitly favorable to residents, so even adventurers without any backing had a chance to maximize their profits.
The carriage they rented took them from Wal to the nearest port town. From there, they traveled by ship up a large river that connected to the coast, heading towards Kreuz. The vessel carried not only people but also crated goods. And for Dale, the trip made for yet another learning experience.
Once the ship moved from the ocean to the river, the whole journey became incredibly smooth. While the rest of the party took it easy and saw this as a chance to relax, Dale decided to use this time effectively in order to write a report to send back to his home village. Of course, to those around him he looked like a high-level student buried in homework, causing them to break out in awkward grins.
Eventually, the boat came up alongside the bridge to the north of Kreuz. Apparently, past this point it was difficult for large ships to advance due to the depth of the water. In order to go further, you would need to bring your luggage down to the nearby riverbank prepared for these situations, and move it to either a small boat or carriage to continue onwards.
It was Dale’s first time visiting this part of the river, and he actually thought it was a town.
There were a great number of people working there, and there were also inns set up there for them. Plus there were stalls there lined up to do business with the workers and folks using the boats, making it a lot more lively than the rural villages Dale was familiar with.
“A bit of a settlement naturally popped up here, but it’s not officially considered a town,” Karel taught Dale. “Since it’s not a town, they don’t collect taxes. But in exchange, there’s no guarantee of protection and you’re responsible for yourself here.”
“Is that really alright? What about magical beasts and bandits...?”
“I wouldn’t say it’s perfectly safe or anything, but it’s close to Kreuz, so apparently they can take care of themselves to some degree.”
Plus, he explained to Dale that during long periods of turbulent weather, stalls and luggage could be quickly packed up and everyone could retreat to safety. Though, put another way, such events were frequent enough in the area that a proper town couldn’t be established there in the first place.
While Karel was teaching Dale all that, they arranged a carriage and gathered information on places in Kreuz that
might buy rare ingredients like the parts of an agate-eyed dragon.
Kenneth had seemed somehow listless since that night in Wal, but there weren’t any clear changes in his work to indicate that. It was even possible that he was in a slump since they hadn’t handled any dangerous jobs since them, so perhaps he would return to normal once he threw himself back into such a situation.
It’d be nice if that was the case, but still...
Dale was seated in the back of the carriage as it rattled along, and he gave a sigh as he stared up at the sky. To someone like him who grew up in the mountains, both the sight of the ocean reaching out to the horizon line and a river so wide it would be hard to swim to the other side were fresh to him. And even with such thoughts racing through his mind, the sight of the sky reflecting on the sparkling blue water looked quite beautiful. So even though he was essentially just another piece of luggage being transported by the carriage, it still felt like a deluxe seat as it allowed him to relax and enjoy the scenery.
Ultimately, they ended up entering Kreuz through the eastern gate.
The crafting district in the east was far more bustling and lively than any town that Dale had visited thus far. You could really sense Kreuz’s prosperity as one of Laband’s most prominent towns from both the goods lined up in the shops along the way and the people passing by.
“We already got information back at the riverside about a place that’d probably buy it all, but to be safe, I guess we should check things out at a shop with an Akhdar flag,” Kenneth stated as they approached the center of town.
“I think there’s one in the southern district,” Karel replied.
“Ah, that envelope with wings is the insignia of the postal service, right? I’d like to stop by that office to send my report and the scales you guys let me have. Would that be alright?” Dale asked.
“The shop has a green flag raised to distinguish it, plus it’s alongside the main street, so you can just catch up to us later.”
