No Part of the Cow Goes to Waste
No Part of the Cow Goes to Waste
"A wild Tuu?"
"Yes! It's absolute chaos right now! And this had to happen while the Viscount and the Commander are both away..."
This world had several types of cattle.
The Black Cow — an ancient breed of impossible strength, long since domesticated, now indispensable for farming and heavy draft work.
The Milk Cow — an uncommonly rich udder on four legs, responsible for the single largest share of the empire's dairy industry.
And the Meat Cow, raised exclusively for food near the imperial capital and other major cities.
All of these were cattle that humanity had tamed, livestock now so interwoven with civilization that the two could hardly be pried apart.
But there was one breed humanity had never managed to domesticate.
The Tuu.
A Tuu is not merely a large cow.
Fierce-tempered and fiercely independent, it cannot abide confinement. It is classified, for all practical purposes, as a monster — notorious for being impossible to tame. Its population is sparse to begin with. They don't move in herds; they roam singly or in pairs. Even if someone did succeed in domesticating one, mass breeding was out of the question.
"But it isn't mating season right now, is it?"
"That's what we can't figure out. This is the worst possible timing — none of the traps we normally prepare are ready, and the only person in the viscountcy who can put the thing down is Commander Lancelot, and he left for the nearby city as the Viscount's escort... We sent a messenger, but by the time he gets back it'll be far too late."
I understood why Liana had come sprinting to me in such a state.
Even for a knight, a Tuu wasn't a monster you could handle without proper trap gear. The four knights out there — Heimer included — were still green, barely more than squires. There was no way they'd ever faced one before.
They'd gone anyway. Because that's what a knight's duty demanded.
Liana looked at me, her face the picture of helplessness.
"Hmm."
A Tuu might be a savage brute, but under normal circumstances it rarely caused trouble. Its instinctive aversion to humans kept it deep in the forests or roaming the open plains for most of its life, keeping its distance from settled lands.
With one exception. Mating season.
When mating season hit, males and females alike went ranging for a partner, and that was when every farmer's blood ran cold.
A single Tuu in rut was rumored to be capable of leveling an entire orc settlement. That kind of monster.
And one of those had just turned up in the farmland?
That meant the fields — and the villages around them — were about to be flattened. The Viscounty of Britten's tax base was, in practical terms, crops and livestock. If its fields and farmers took a hit?
This wasn't a small problem.
This is directly tied to our restaurant's revenue.
On top of that, if our regulars — the knight order and the soldiers — got themselves injured, tomorrow's sales were guaranteed to drop.
What kind of injured man eats donkatsu?
He's stuck with hospital gruel.
My thoughts had barely settled when Liana made her plea, voice tight with urgency.
"Sir, I've heard you came from the Imperial Knight Order. Please, help us. You'll be compensated properly."
Not everyone from the Imperial Knight Order was some kind of powerhouse.
That said, it wasn't as if I'd never handled a Tuu before. I'd volunteered for cook-knight duty precisely to avoid killing people and getting my comrades maimed, but that didn't mean I'd walled myself off from real combat entirely.
— Even a cook knight is deployable to the front at any time! That's the law!
Commander Luke had made that abundantly clear, too.
But my real motivation was pure personal curiosity.
It's a cow. A cow.
One of the single greatest land-animal ingredients on the planet.
There was no way I was letting this pass me by.
"You said you'd compensate me properly, yes?"
"Yes!"
"Then I'll be taking all the meat from the Tuu once it's down."
"Of course! Take all of it! I'll take full responsibility."
Liana didn't so much as blink.
No hesitation at all — she meant it.
With the Viscount and the young lord both absent, she was the ranking authority on the ground.
"Understood."
Having work drop into my lap on a rare day off was deflating, sure — but if that work meant acquiring premium ingredients, the equation changed.
"Let's move."
I grabbed my sword. The Sword of the Lake I'd received from Lancelot came with me.
***
For all its fearsome reputation, the Tuu was a sought-after ingredient.
Not every cut was prized, of course. The bones, the loin, the chuck-end, and the tenderloin commanded the highest demand.
The meat carried a depth of flavor wholly unlike any other beef, which made it a regular fixture on noble tables.
The other cuts, however, enjoyed considerably less enthusiasm.
The reason was simple.
— Tuu meat is tough.
— Tuu meat is a destructive ingredient that only a top-tier chef can handle properly. Roast it wrong and even the tenderloin turns to leather.
— Isn't Tuu especially notorious for its gamey stench?
— Even with proper cooking, that particular smell is hard to eliminate.
Tougher meat than other cattle.
A much stronger odor.
And so, as a rule, people discarded almost everything from a Tuu except those four cuts. What they did keep was simmered forever into stock, coaxing out whatever distinctive richness survived the smell.
But if you knew a deboning and butchering method that preserved tenderness? If you knew a way to process the meat so no trace of that stench remained?
Then you were looking at the single greatest cooking ingredient in the world, with a depth of flavor beyond anything else.
Just imagining it makes my mouth water.
I swallowed as I rode, urging on the horse Liana had lent me.
"How much farther?"
"Almost there!"
Soon enough, shouting reached us from the distance.
Waaaaah!
Hold it!
"That direction would be Conwell Village. It must've already come down that far."
No time to think.
"Then I'll go on ahead."
"What? Sir!"
I wrenched the reins and spurred the horse faster.
If the noise carried that clearly, it meant they'd already engaged the Tuu.
Injuries would be a problem.
Our customer base shrinks.
When I reached the outskirts of the village, a cow easily more than twice the size of a normal one stood snorting, squared off against the soldiers.
Under Heimer's direction, they'd formed a line with their long spears, maintaining distance, straining to keep the beast from entering the village proper.
They're holding out better than I expected.
Lancelot had clearly trained them well. They were executing the fundamental anti-Tuu tactic by the book: exploit its instinctive fear of sharp objects, hold it at spear's length, buy time until it calmed, and lure it into a trap.
The problem was there was no trap to spring.
They're not trying to trap it. They're stalling until Lancelot arrives.
An effective tactic — but with one flaw. He was still a long way off.
I drew a deep breath.
"Awoooooo!"
My wolf howl cut through the air, and every eye — Tuu included — snapped toward me.
"Sir Lucas?"
"Run! It's too dangerous!"
The second method of hunting a Tuu.
Mimic the call of its natural predator, the Werewolf, to draw it in.
I'd learned this one from Commander Luke.
— Tuu in rut have an instinct to kill Werewolves. It's a defense mechanism. Werewolves snatch their calves and eat them.
He'd called it the single most effective way to bait a Tuu in heat.
The beast's attention fixed on me. Maybe I looked like an easier target than that bristling wall of spear-points.
Shring.
I drew the longsword I'd carried since my squire days.
"Hoo."
I kept my eyes locked on the charging Tuu and tightened my grip.
Focus.
Screw this up and you don't walk away with a scratch.
Mana flowed into the blade.
Cooking Sword Technique, Second Form.
Meat-Cutting Art, Chapter One.
When you slaughter a cow, you finish it through the crown of the head. Always.
The Tuu's body surged into striking range, and I drove the sword home — straight through the crown.
The mana-laden blade sank deep.
— MoooOOO!
The Tuu, mid-charge and aiming to gore me, lost all its momentum and crashed forward into the dirt.
Kuuung!
The moment the monster toppled, every gaze converged on me.
Now. Time for the line.
"Ahem. Enemy commander... vanquished!"
I'd always wanted to do that.
A beat of silence.
Waaaaah!
The roar washed over me.
Yeah.
That's the stuff.
"Hah... hah... Sir! If you go charging off alone like that... huh?"
Liana, arriving late and out of breath, looked from the fallen Tuu to me and back again, eyes going blank.
"H-How did you...?"
"Liana, you know the saying? There's no part of a cow you throw away. Doesn't matter if it's a monster raised in the wild."
She blinked.
"...What?"
Man, why are people so slow on the uptake.
***
Tenderizing Tuu meat required two conditions.
First, the animal had to die before it even registered pain.
A Tuu that fought long and hard, agony driving it the whole time, would instinctively swell its own muscle tissue to bulk up further. The heat generated in the process rapidly melted its fat and hardened the muscle fibers. This was the source of the Tuu's monstrous strength.
In the process, the muscle fibers swelled and tore, and the meat grew denser and tougher than it ever should have been.
Fat disappeared, taking the deep richness of the oil with it. The muscle hardened into leather.
Worse, in the torn gaps between the fibers, blood seeped in and saturated the flesh, leaving behind the Tuu's notoriously rank, metallic musk.
That was where most of what people called "Tuu stench" came from.
The hardest part is done.
If you pulled that off, all that remained was the second condition.
When butchering and deboning, you had to break the carcass down swiftly using a blade soaked in mana.
I was fairly confident exactly one person in the world could manage that.
"Beginning deboning."
Once I'd confirmed the Tuu had bled out sufficiently, I drew the Sword of the Lake — the blade Lancelot had given me.
A cow this big demanded a blade of equal scale, something large and razor-sharp.
And I happened to have a very good one.
The Sword of the Lake, courtesy of our own Commander Lancelot.
The edge was unreal. It was obvious the thing could slice clean through bone without slowing down.
"That's Commander Lancelot's..."
"Why does Sir Lucas have that sword...?"
Cooking Sword Technique, Second Form.
Meat-Cutting Art, Chapter Two.
When butchering meat, be swift. Be clean.
The Sword of the Lake bit into the dead Tuu's flesh and bone.
Fwoosh!
The mana-infused blade carved through the meat like it was tofu.
"Now that's what I'm talking about."
The admiration slipped out before I could stop it.
At this rate, this thing was going to earn its keep in samgyeopsal alone.
Shhk. Shhk.
I worked the Sword of the Lake fast, stripping away unnecessary fat, slicing the meat, sorting cut by cut.
The reason for using a mana-laden blade on a Tuu was simple. Same principle as prepping Pog.
When you slice meat with mana flowing through the edge, the grain opens up and comes alive.
The same held for Tuu. The mana must have been slipping between the muscle fibers and loosening them before the meat had a chance to tense up and turn tough.
If there was a difference from prepping Pog —
"Huff, huff."
— it was that the sheer size of the thing demanded full strength the entire time.
Without the Sword of the Lake, I'd have collapsed halfway through and been a wreck by now.
Under the eyes of everyone present, I delivered a full-power, no-holds-barred Tuu breakdown show.
Might as well call it free advertising for the restaurant, right?
Wait. The knights and soldiers are all already regulars.
Tch. Shame.
Head, chuck, foreleg, loin, chuck-end, tenderloin, ribs, brisket, round, rump, shank, tail — and on and on.
The dismantling show was nearly finished when —
"Is everyone all right?!"
Viscount Britten and Lancelot came pounding up on their horses, lathered and wild-eyed. They'd clearly taken a frantic detour mid-journey; the horses were foaming at the mouth.
Horse foam. Is that horsefoam, then?
"Everything's already handled."
I tapped the last thing left — the bare skeleton that had once been a Tuu — with the flat of the Sword of the Lake.
"That sword... don't tell me..."
"It's a fine blade, isn't it? I'd say there's nothing quite like it for deboning."
Lancelot stared, utterly poleaxed, at the Sword of the Lake and the pile of bones that was all that remained of the Tuu.
"Aigu."
Stagger.
He reeled hard.
That's payback for the samgyeopsal.
Does that count as revenge?
The sword's just doing its job well, really.
Shhk-shhk.
Ah, it cuts so clean.