A Veteran Explorer Came Seeking a Mermaid; What Food Can You Eat in Hot Summer?
A Veteran Explorer Came Seeking a Mermaid; What Food Can You Eat in Hot Summer?
Among the explorers of the Empire, there was a story passed down like a legend.
In the southern sea, mermaids dwell.
Mermaids.
An ancient race said to have vanished centuries ago.
A mysterious people who aided the first Emperor in subduing all the barbarians of the south when he conquered the continent.
The legend further held that the first Emperor later slew sea monsters alongside them to repay that debt.
A race whose legend traced all the way back to the Empire's founder.
Unlike elves, dwarves, and other beastkin, however, records of mermaids were exceedingly scarce.
That held true for historians, mythologists, and explorers alike.
The reason was simple.
After the legend of the first Emperor, virtually no records of mermaids remained.
There were occasional old documents that claimed to have captured one.
— In the seventh year of Emperor Lirul, a fisherman reported the capture of a mermaid.
But nothing beyond the bare statement that they'd been caught. No record of what became of them afterward.
Not even a magic photograph or an illustration existed.
Considering that the magic of that era was already capable of producing crude images, the sheer absence made you wonder if they'd ever really existed at all.
So any legend that actually contained genuine mermaid lore was precious.
Of course, troublemakers looking to make a quick score kept insisting they'd discovered mermaids through fabricated materials.
They can't fool my eyes.
Gerard, a veteran explorer and the man widely considered the finest active explorer of the age, had yet to encounter a single account that genuinely piqued his interest.
Most were fakes. None held solid information.
Except for one.
— A woman whose hair shone sky-blue like transparent seawater, or darkened black like the night sea, or gleamed ultramarine.
A blue-haired mermaid.
A wandering bard was singing of her.
— At the Empire's southernmost sea, the thing that stole the fishermen's souls seemed human, yet once it slipped beneath the waves it was a fish.
That grabbed Gerard's attention.
He'd learned something over his years as an explorer.
In a profession that chases unknown mysteries, trusting your instincts matters most.
At least for Gerard, he'd always trusted the gut feeling he got when he encountered a piece of evidence more than any chain of rational deduction.
And his gut told him one thing.
This is genuine.
— Whenever the waves crested, sea creatures leaped forth: such was the blessing of the ocean.
A short tale, but it stirred his instincts.
So he bought the bard's information, mounted his horse, and rode blindly south.
Some fisherman had allegedly seen a mermaid near a small village at the very bottom of the Empire, on the southernmost edge of Britten territory. Ask there, the bard had said.
Don't get your hopes up, though. It's probably a tall tale.
Gerard had already been keen to escape the capital and its noisy succession disputes. A leisurely jaunt to the south suited him perfectly.
And so his gaze fell upon—
"That'd be... Britten Viscounty."
The Empire's southernmost edge. He'd arrived in the modest domain of Viscount Britten.
Clop, clop.
He guided his horse at a slow walk toward the castle town.
"What on earth?"
Something was off.
He'd heard Britten was the sticks of the sticks — the kind of rural backwater where geography capped its possibilities.
A tiny territory with barely thirty household troops.
So why are there so many people here?
The well-kept roads teemed with merchants and their entourages hauling goods.
Usually, the roads of a little territory like this would be occupied by farmers done with their day's work, hunters, and woodcutters.
With so few people, roads were naturally narrow and ill-maintained.
That was the standard feature of any rural domain.
Yet Britten Viscounty, despite its remote location, was absolutely swarming.
Why?
Why this many merchants—
Some of them hadn't even brought cargo.
Merchants who came to sell goods, coming without goods?
That made no sense at all.
There's something in this backwater worth buying?
It was strange. There was no reason for anyone to come all the way out here just to buy crops.
One possibility flickered through Gerard's mind.
Mermaids.
Mermaid treasure.
Or some rare article of comparable value?
Could be.
The idea began to form that the mermaid rumors might not be baseless after all.
"Halt!"
A guard at the gate stopped him.
"Identification, please."
Even identity checks — the kind you only saw in cities drawing large crowds.
Which means this hasn't been a one- or two-day affair.
Privately, Gerard began to feel certain he hadn't wasted the trip.
Even if it wasn't mermaids, investigating whatever anomaly was drawing this many people to a rural viscountcy was bound to turn up something.
"Gerard Dry. Explorer."
"Wait — truly? You're Gerard?"
The soldier's face lit up.
"That's me."
His name had spread even to this distant countryside.
He smiled inwardly, thinking he'd chosen the right profession, and held out his identification plate.
The guard's eyes sparkled as he studied it.
"Oh! It really is you, sir! I heard your expedition tales from a wandering bard! Is it true you explored the Winter Mountains in the north?"
"It is. I nearly died to a snowman-beast, and an elf I'd never met before saved my life — barely scraped through and finished the expedition."
The memory was still vivid.
The sight of that elf's back as she carved apart the snowman that had been about to kill him in a single stroke.
Sharp as a honed blade, the elf had killed the snowman, then stood over him with her sword still dripping blood.
— Human. If you're weak, get out of here.
Those cold eyes still blazed in his memory.
She had butchered the freshly killed snowman on the spot and given him some of the meat.
If not for that snowman meat, he'd have died long ago.
That was already ten years ago, huh.
Where was she now?
Probably training alone in some other remote wilderness.
"Anyway, I'd like to ask you something—"
"Ah, of course. You must be here, like everyone else, to eat at the Knight Restaurant in our viscountcy?"
"Knight Restaurant?"
"You don't know it? A knight in our town runs it, and the food is out of this world. When I'm off duty, I go with my family — it's incredible. Even people on business from Lilyan drop by sometimes!"
"A restaurant, you say?"
Gerard said it like it was the first he'd heard of it, and the soldier looked more surprised than he was.
"Wait, you didn't come to, uh, explore the restaurant?"
"I'm an explorer, not a gourmand. I don't have a hobby of eating and rating food like some Michelin inspector."
"Ah, my apologies."
There was something you had to give up if you wanted to be an explorer.
And that something was fine dining.
For someone whose daily life meant heading into the back of beyond, delicious food was a rare sight.
Dried jerky, bread, dehydrated flour you soaked in water to eat.
Most of an explorer's diet was food seasoned with nothing but salt and pepper.
Sure, you could eat well once you returned to the city. But that was only brief.
So for explorers, good food wasn't something they went out of their way to care about.
He'd heard recently about something called "powder soup" that let even people who couldn't cook produce reasonably tasty food, but—
That's got nothing to do with me.
The reason he'd come here in the first place wasn't some restaurant run by a knight. It was the circulating rumors about mermaids.
"Since we're on the subject — have you heard any firsthand sightings of mermaids?"
"Mermaids?"
"Yes."
The soldier shook his head.
"Can't say I have. The coast is at the very edge of our territory, so we get almost no reports from there."
"I see."
So I'll have to pound the pavement after all, he thought.
He'd need to visit the village directly.
Cleared through the guards, Gerard rode into the town, the stifling southern heat pressing down on him.
A huge number of inns. Shops and restaurants everywhere...
It was as though someone had anticipated that crowds would descend on this place.
Gerard spotted the initials G.W. affixed to the side of a building.
"Golden Wagon?"
The trading company that always turned up wherever there was money.
Its head, Camilla Wagon — wasn't she famous for her uncanny eye for profit?
Not just an eye for reading the currents, but the know-how to turn that into gold. She'd built Golden Wagon into the Empire's top merchant house.
And that same company had put up buildings here?
No doubt they'd also been the ones to pave the roads.
Golden Wagon never did things by halves when they invested.
Ah, now he could smell something.
He could smell it.
The scent of mermaids!
His certainty was growing.
There was something in this little castle town.
Something significant enough to capture Golden Wagon's attention.
They say the restaurant's famous, but...
He was confident that a single restaurant, no matter how renowned, wouldn't be enough to draw Golden Wagon's interest.
Has Camilla Wagon already gotten wind of something? She's probably running some operation in secret.
He'd heard she'd played a role in the saintess's abduction case, bought up mines in the northeast, and had even recently handled weapons procurement for the Northern Legion fighting the barbarians.
And with all that going on, she's paying attention to a place like this?
The Empire's top merchant house didn't earn its rank for nothing.
"Hmm..."
As Gerard looked around for a place to stay, one establishment caught his eye — a restaurant with a conspicuously long line of people waiting.
"That must be it."
The Knight Restaurant the guard had mentioned.
Its signboard bore strange lettering, and in front of the entrance hung a bulletin board of the sort commonly seen in the capital.
The large board was covered in countless posted reviews.
==============
★★★★★
.......
- Liana, Administrator of the Viscount's Territory -
==============
==============
★★★★★
.......
- Louis Britten, Viscount -
==============
==============
★★★★★
.......
- Camilla Wagon, Chief of the Golden Wagon Merchant Group -
==============
Residents, nearby merchants, the administrator and the lord himself — even Camilla Wagon had left her mark here.
"Well now, that's some guest list."
==============
★★★★★
Vegetable Gimbap.
.......
Recommended dishes: White Porridge (Highly recommended for a pilgrim who has embarked on ascetic travels!!), Vegetable Gimbap (Highly recommended if you find yourself questioning the food of your penance!).
- Amelia, Saintess of the Order -
==============
"The saintess came here too?"
Gerard stared at the list of patrons, jaw hanging open.
"Camilla, perhaps — but the saintess? What ridiculous posturing. Using the saintess's name to drum up business. Keep this up and you'll be hauled in by the heresy inquisitors before long, in a world of trouble."
The board claimed the saintess had eaten here during her pilgrimage, but there was no way the saintess had actually come all the way to this place.
The saintess, who fled Bellosa and took refuge in Lilyan, came here?
Absurd.
Gerard clicked his tongue, blaming the owner's shoddy business sense.
The man was asking for trouble.
They might as well have claimed the imperial princess stopped by.
Impregnating the princess was a capital crime, sure — but impersonating the saintess got you flayed alive.
Still, he had no intention of meddling.
He was an outsider. No reason to stick his nose into the locals' affairs.
Finish investigating the mermaids and leave.
That was the plan.
He urged his horse forward, looking for an inn.
"Hm-hm-hmm~."
And then he saw her: a blue-haired woman strolling out, humming to herself as though she'd just finished a deeply satisfying meal.
The humming woman walked with light, airy steps, dressed in clothes that looked exceedingly fine.
What's this?
Gerard felt his explorer's instincts give a sharp jolt.
What is this?
He couldn't tell if it was the woman herself, or the Knight Restaurant.
Something's here.
Gerard looked at the Knight Restaurant.
Maybe I'll stop by once before I leave town tomorrow.
***
"So hot..."
"It's hot."
"So hoooot..."
The tail end of summer.
Though autumn should have been just around the corner, today was scorching.
In the Empire, they called days like this "the fire spirit's prank."
A joke about a spirit throwing a sulky weather tantrum as its power waned.
"Andrea, you're an elf — can't you put it to sleep with a spirit or something?"
"I can't do that much. No matter how friendly I am with the spirits, I can't do anything about this level of heat."
"So useless. Perverted elf."
"Shut up. Gukbap addict."
It was the kind of day you couldn't get through on restorative food alone.
"Should I make something cold to eat?"
I slumped in my chair, staring at the ceiling, and muttered to myself.
