Master
Quieter than I expected.
May in the northern territories was that brief season when the snow finally melted. Melted snow became water, and once that water soaked into the unpaved dirt roads, mud was inevitable. Thirty minutes out of the Grand Ducal Castle and my shoes being caked in the stuff was simply the natural order of things.
Laying paved roads across the entire vast Winterfell Grand Duchy must have been impossible. The ones inside the castle and along a few select streets were probably all they could manage given the limits of resources and technology.
Even so, every step that sank deep into the muck still felt light.
This is pure romance, all right.
There were things I had always wanted to try if I ever got isekai’d into a medieval world. Nothing grand, really. I just wanted to walk the streets, taste the street food, and breathe in the smells of the city.
For someone who had always preferred the freewheeling romance of a mercenary’s life over the rigid existence of a noble, a rough wooden table laden with rustic cooking sounded far more appealing than a lavish meal laid out on fine linen. I would rather walk forest paths with companions who shared my goals than trail servants across the marble floors of some palace-like mansion.
Of course, if this had been a historically accurate Middle Ages—full of slaughter and savagery instead of adventure and romance—the story would have been different. But this world was a medieval fantasy. A fantasy world seasoned with modern conveniences and modern tastes was bound to contain exactly the kind of romance modern people longed for.
Well, a little of the wild still remains, I’m sure.
If a fantasy genre were nothing but pure romance, it would stop being romantic at all. Just as light needs darkness to shine, romance needs a healthy compromise with the wild realities of the world.
The underside of the medieval age. War and the hunt. Traces of the wars against the demi-human tribes and the monsters still lingered in the northern territories, and signs of the witch hunts that symbolized barbarism were scattered here and there as well.
Yet rather than disgust, what I felt was romance—because it didn’t look all that different from the twenty-first-century modern world I had come from. In the Middle Ages those things simply lay out in the open; in the modern era they were merely softened and hidden. Wars born of ideology and military profit never stopped, and as communities flourished, so did the agitation, fabrication, and witch hunts that followed false information. Hatred and conflict had only changed their shapes to fit the environment.
That was why I felt neither revulsion nor any particular nausea.
Wherever people live, it’s all the same.
Children shrieking with laughter as they splashed through puddles left by the melting snow. Adults chuckling at the sight of them. Thugs scheming in alley corners. A merchant fretting over a carriage wheel stuck in a mudhole, people pushing the cart to help him, and others snatching the goods that had fallen off and running away with them. The streets were every bit as lively and vibrant as I had hoped, so full of freedom and adventure that simply walking them felt like healing.
Perhaps that was why the words slipped out before I remembered the presence trailing behind me.
“This place really is wonderful.”
And an answer came to my private remark.
“Is this your first time in the northern territories?”
Unlike everyone else who had fallen silent the moment the infamous berserker Elden appeared, Rachel—true to her role as escort knight—had kept quiet until now. Yet she spoke up easily. A question she could only ask because she was not afraid of Elden. I answered gladly.
“Yeah. You?”
“I stopped here once for training.”
“How was it then?”
“Quite bad. We were at war with the demi-human tribes. Corpses lined the streets, and screams filled the air.”
I glanced back. Rachel was surveying the cityscape with a look of distinctly different nostalgia from mine. Sharing a similar texture of feeling, even if the memories themselves differed, was a pleasant thing.
“And now?”
“It looks good. I threw myself into the battlefield partly for training, but also for the sake of the northern territories.”
“I see. You must be proud.”
“You flatter me. I was merely one more soldier. I did not contribute to the peace we have now.”
“They say even dust gathers to make a mountain. You’ve earned the right to feel proud.”
“…Thank you.”
I was savoring the romance I had looked forward to for so long. Simply walking the streets, however, kept the peak of that romance rather low. Ending it here would be a shame. Anyone who had dreamed of medieval fantasy romance owed it to themselves to step deeper into that world.
It was still early for lunch, but a light snack would do just fine.
“Rachel, mind showing me around, then?”
Her time spent in the northern territories made her perfect for the job.
“Show you around, you say?”
“Yeah. From the sound of it you stayed quite a while, and I figure you’d be disappointed if we just headed straight back too.”
“Understood. Follow me.”
Huh?
I hadn’t even named a destination, yet Rachel strode right past me and took the lead—with confident, open strides no less.
“Where are we going? I never said where I wanted to go.”
Rachel stopped dead and looked at me as if to ask why I was questioning the obvious. When the destination left her lips, I had to press my fingers to my forehead beneath the hood.
“The red-light district is on 18th Street West.”
……Hmm.
Living as Elden Raphelion.
Not easy.
Gevinna Restaurant
After correcting the destination, Rachel and I arrived at a certain restaurant.
It was the first restaurant I had visited since transmigrating into this world, and it was packed with exactly the kind of romance I wanted. A boisterous atmosphere, the faint scent of grilled meat, the clink of tankards, hearty and battle-ready laughter, plus a dart game and an arm-wrestling match underway in the corner. Romance distilled into a single place. We took seats on the periphery.
“…This really does not seem appropriate.”
“What am I supposed to do when there are no other seats? If sitting face-to-face is too hard, just move over next to me.”
“I will remain here.”
The brief argument over seating arrangements ended quickly. I had dragged Rachel inside after she offered to wait outside until I finished eating. She was the one who had recommended the place—how could I eat alone? Besides, an escort knight performed better on a full stomach.
The problem was that only one seat remained, so Rachel ended up sitting across from me as the solution. A short while later the dish we had ordered arrived: the Red Longer Tail Stew Rachel had recommended.
“Ohh.”
A sigh of pure appreciation left me unbidden. My mouth watered on its own. And Red Longer Tail Stew was the kind of dish that could only fill you with pure fantasy romance—a meal made from monster ingredients you could taste only in a medieval fantasy world. Specifically, a pig-type monster called a Red Longer.
Monster meat was also a lowly ingredient found only among commoners. The grotesque appearance of monsters provoked revulsion, after all. That made it an ingredient that filled me with even more romantic thrills. Fine cuisine prepared by a noble house’s chef was wonderful, of course, but in a medieval fantasy story you absolutely had to eat fare like this.
I was about to grab my spoon and dig straight into the stew when I felt Rachel’s gaze and had to look up.
“…?”
“Please rescind the order. If anyone sees this, they will speak ill of you at length, Young Master.”
…As if a little “ill” would even show on Elden Raphelion’s reputation at this point. I tapped the hood covering my head with my spoon.
“A baron’s son and his escort knight sharing a table is something no one will notice as long as you keep quiet.”
“Even so…”
“Eat.”
“Yes.”
Romance was about to enter my mouth. After that cool command I began shoveling romance into myself in a hurry.
“Mmm. This is really good.”
“It tastes even better if you dip it in the sauce.”
“Does it?”
I promptly picked up a piece of tail meat with my fingers and dunked it. The chewy texture met a sauce that was salty-sweet, faintly tart, and bright with the refreshing note of lemon—an absolute match made in heaven.
Delicious. Genuinely delicious. The kind of flavor that flooded the mouth and assaulted the salivary glands until amylase poured out without mercy. The kind that scrunched your brows into a capital W and made your head bob like a nodding doll. The kind that made you want to set off on a culinary journey right that second.
Especially since the dish was nothing more than meat stripped from the tail and a shallow pool of broth, finished with a plain-looking sauce that contained not a single vegetable—yet it could produce a taste like this. Some talent who ought to have become a noble house’s chef was clearly working in this kitchen.
After sending silent praise toward the kitchen, I finished the meal by lifting the bowl and draining it. My first meal had scored a perfect mark, so I was already looking forward to a second—but unfortunately, going outside the Grand Ducal Castle was forbidden in the evening, and tomorrow’s lunch was taken up by the meeting that would announce the start of the final evaluation matches. It would be hard to come back here for a while.
Clack.
I set down the bowl I had scraped clean of every last drop of broth.
“This is a real delicacy. I don’t think I’d ever get tired of it even if I ate it every day.”
“I was worried because you have always kept your distance from monster cuisine, but I am relieved.”
“To have stayed away from a flavor this fine—what a lamentable thing.”
I rinsed my hands lightly in the water bowl set beside me. A perfect meal with nothing left to improve. Enough to make me want to come back that very evening and try other monster dishes. Enough to fill me with absolute anticipation for how the different monsters native to each region, and the dishes made from them, might taste.
Medieval fantasy worlds especially had extremely distinct regional character. The culinary travel plan that sketched itself in my head was only natural.
This won’t do.
Indeed. Getting isekai’d into a romantic medieval fantasy world only to hole up in a dull mansion was practically a crime, and spending my days locked in fierce mind games with noble young masters and ladies was a complete violation of natural order.
The culinary travel plan drawn in my mind. To lay the foundation for that plan, I stared straight at Rachel and smiled.
“…Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You. Starting tomorrow, you’ve got a job.”
“What sort of job?”
If I was going to travel the whole country on a romance-filled culinary journey, I needed to become a versatile fighter rather than a mindless battle maniac. And my escort knight Rachel, in particular, was someone born with the romantic temperament of a magic swordsman who could pour magic into her blade.
“Become my master.”
“…Pardon?”
If it was Rachel, she was more than qualified.