King Frost's Future (2)
At present, Winterhome was bustling from end to end.
All of it to welcome none other than royalty.
...In truth, there was no real need to be quite this busy.
The visitor was not even the king himself.
Just his younger brother.
Even if he was the king's brother and doubled as a Great Sword Noble who would hack off the heads of anyone who defied a royal order, he still ranked far below a duke—of which the kingdom possessed only seven.
There was no need for such grand preparations. Still less reason for them. So why all the fuss?
Karem figured there was no special reason.
Strip away every lofty title and the current king of Seophon, Ianmark, and Alfred had been friends since childhood. The man arriving now was that king's younger brother.
Great Sword Noble or not, when a close friend's little brother came calling, the urge to welcome him with an open heart would be strong.
Of course, mixed into that were the duke's dignity, his friendship with the (royal) friend, the chance to show off to the outside world, and various other purposes and motives all tangled together.
Still, this really is a spectacle.
Karem suddenly recalled the Iceworm dismantling site from around this time last winter.
The Iceworm the subjugation force had brought down had been nearly the size of a whale.
It might have been larger still.
Processing a body that vast had been less "work" than a construction project for dismantling a building.
That same scene of heavy labor was now unfolding inside a warehouse completely converted into a kitchen. The space that would once have been packed with supplies was filled with ingredients both thoroughly familiar and utterly alien to Karem.
—Thud thud
When he looked down, he saw Jigmeser's smooth head.
The bald, beardless dwarf wore a wicked grin.
"Quite the spectacle, isn't it?"
"It certainly is. Yes."
He answered the dwarf, who looked ready to explode with excitement. The sight inside the vast warehouse-turned-kitchen could only be called a spectacle.
Griffons, owlbears, grizzly beavers, even wyverns and other lesser dragons... Is that a hunter drake? Do they eat those too?
The monsters he had seen once or twice were the mild ones.
The other ingredients around them were worse.
A sky-blue snow runner the size of a carriage, a bear sprouting a carapace, an eagle as huge as a pterosaur, grotesque clusters of roots, green fruits that bulged and writhed, mushrooms the size of buckets with arms and legs, various lesser dragons, and more.
Things for which the distinction between animal, plant, or monster was meaningless were being cleaned, washed, butchered, seasoned, cut or cooked whole—fried and stir-fried—right there on the floor. It was a sight hard to describe in concrete terms.
Yeah. He was a little startled.
"Keup, kuh-heuk."
Suddenly Jigmeser covered his mouth with a thick hand.
A single tear rolled down.
Was this really something to cry over? Karem was so dumbfounded he lost his words for a moment.
"...Is it really something that warrants tears?"
"Keup. To think the day would come when we'd prepare a feast worthy of a duke's banquet with ingredients matching the dignity of a great noble. Sniff."
"What do you mean by that?"
Taken at face value, the words meant that the food at every previous banquet and festival had fallen short of the proper standard.
"What, so everything up till now was modest?"
"Of course it was! Without a single powerful or rare monster or beast in sight, just roasting and frying dozens of ordinary livestock a day—how could that possibly match the dignity of one of the kingdom's seven great nobles!"
Jigmeser roared and slapped Karem hard on the back.
Karem staggered and thought back over the evening banquets so far.
Lavish spices as a baseline, mountains of meat dishes including whole roasts and steaks, fresh fruits and vegetables or dishes made from them—which in Iceland were themselves synonyms for luxury—plus desserts loaded with sugar and butter. Plenty of those had come out too.
Where exactly was any of that "modest"?
"Things you can just buy with money could never match the dignity of a great noble, a duke. Powerful and rare monsters and creatures that are hard to obtain even with money! And this time His Lordship has even given permission to use the treasury without holding back!"
At Jigmeser's bellow, the cooks in the former warehouse kitchen all nodded in unison. Indeed, a banquet prepared with rare and powerful monsters, beasts, and the rest would certainly have dignity going for it.
Huh? Wait. Three days—no, four days ago this place had been a warehouse.
That meant they had torn it apart and started cooking like this in just four days?
"By any chance, that king's younger brother. When is he arriving?"
"That is, two days from now."
"...It seems like time is a bit short."
"Well, I only heard about it suddenly too, so of course time is short. But Karem. You seem to have forgotten something important."
"What's that?"
"What's lacking, you buy with money."
That certainly was not wrong. The saying that if money cannot solve it, perhaps you do not have enough money had been famous in his past life as well, and since this was a place where people lived, it applied just the same.
"Provisions blocked by winter? Starving and turning violent? Time running short? Just stick gold in their mouths and think about it. And with double—no, quadruple bonuses guaranteed, adventurers will come running!"
"Treating them outright as provisions."
"Well, they're all things you can eat!"
"But aside from them being rare, isn't making them delicious the bigger problem?"
"As a matter of custom, you're a noble, so take a bit of interest in luxury."
Jigmeser clicked his tongue and stood on tiptoe to tap Karem's shoulder.
It felt exactly like parents telling you to study a little harder.
"Of course, since those things lived wild and free, some of them will taste bad. But tell me. What is the purpose of cooking?"
"To make more delicious food."
"Right. If it's rare but tastes bad? Just make it taste good, and that's that."
Jigmeser's words were sound doctrine. Making stock, tenderizing, brining and prepping ingredients—all of it existed for delicious cooking.
And for that, one premise was required.
"Then time is even shorter... Ah."
Karem started to ask and then trailed off.
The answer to his question was right beside him.
A cook was rubbing a wyvern's wing with a strange rod—long, oval-shaped, and fitted with a handle. The thick seasoning painted on the surface was seeping in like slime.
It looked as if the brining and seasoning process had been filmed and played back hundreds of times faster.
They're really buying time with money.
Green flames surged up from a pan. Fruits receiving a coating of seeds remained unharmed without a single wound; the surface of meat pierced by a stick rippled and flashed, and so on.
Karem could not even begin to guess the functions of most of the magic tools, except for a few of them. Not at all.
"These magic tools. Were they all made by the Magic Tower?"
"Well. Some of them? Most of them were in the treasury."
"If from the treasury..."
One place came immediately to mind.
That room said to be packed full of practical magic tools.
"Yeah. Your kitchen knife was probably in that room too? Most of what we're using now are things that were rotting away in that room of the treasury."
"Ahh. Definitely."
Starting with the hundredfold magic barrel that insulted time, which had been there.
Familiar-shaped objects and tools hard to describe in any detail.
Magic tools, each with its own different function.
"I've never seen them used in ordinary times, though."
"Well, you can't go swinging a longsword to kill a chicken. Using those on cows, pigs, chickens would be way too powerful. Probably turn them to mush."
"Mush."
"You can't expect magic resistance like a monster's from ordinary livestock, after all."
Jigmeser pointed to the side with one finger.
"Still, you shouldn't let them get into bad habits, so normally they do it all by hand like that."
Young cooks were peeling onions with tears streaming down, stripping skins, boiling stock at a rolling boil, and running whenever they were called.
They really look like they're having a hard time.
Unlike the cooks of the main castle who had to feed countless people, he only needed to prepare a large amount for one person. Mary's share was a bonus.
He did not even need to handle the prep work, cleanup, dishwashing, or kitchen cleaning—all the tasks every cook hated but still had to do.
Someone else, Mary, even got angry while volunteering for them.
Even when he had cooked in his past life, he had never enjoyed such luxury.
"The warehouse door is too low! It won't go in!"
"You idiot! Lower your stance! Lower it, I said!"
"Everyone careful—one. Two! Heave-ho!"
The only warehouse entrance that remained the same as before was noisy.
Several laborers were carefully bringing in a box that looked questionable whether it would even fit through the door. Fortunately, it did not get stuck.
On the box, large letters read King Frost.
They were probably adjusting its size with magic or magic tools while moving it.
"But how do you plan to use that?"
"What, ah. King Frost?"
"So it is King Frost. Can you even eat that in the first place?"
"Well, even if it were inedible, if the order came down I'd have to cook it so it could be eaten, but there's no way His Lordship would do that."
Jigmeser shrugged and clicked his tongue as if Karem were asking about everything under the sun.
"Every single ingredient I brought in here with full authority is something people can eat. Nothing with poison or curses."
"Even that King Frost?"
"Of course!"
Karem recalled the sight of Jack Frosts shattering.
Breaking apart into ice and leaving materials behind, or something of the sort.
If King Frost was simply an enlarged version of that, it would probably be similar.
"But do we really need that?"
"Well, it was lacking in symbolism."
Only after tasting the stock and adding more salt did Jigmeser relax his expression.
"We've gathered all sorts of rare ingredients, but as decoration food symbolizing Iceland, they all lacked impact."
"So that's why that?"
"Yeah. It hit me the moment I saw it. Ping—. You've lived here for about a year, so you know what's most common."
Karem snorted.
"What, winter and snow, ice?"
"Right. And a King Frost that froze to death, at that. How satirical is that!"
Indeed, a fairy-monster that scattered into ice when it died remaining whole because it had frozen to death was something that would leave anyone who knew the truth speechless.
"And it even died to magic that Duke Atanitas unleashed at full power! Kuuuuh— This is storytelling right here!"
"Was that the purpose?"
The fact that the duke had deployed his subordinate mage—a sage-level archmage, no less—to entertain a guest was perfect advertising even from the perspective of Karem, who did not know much about that side of things.
"Well, the actual reason for going all-out was different, though."
"It's fine. It's fine. No problem at all. People don't usually take that much interest in the detailed backstory!"
"So, have you decided what to make?"
Thud— When the box placed in the center of the warehouse opened, the King Frost's corpse swelled up like an inflating balloon and floated into the air. The laborers attached ropes and slowly brought it down to land.
"What, with the King Frost?"
"Yes. No, I can't even imagine what you'd make."
Ice had been a symbol of wealth until modern times.
Because of that, the wealthy of East and West had utilized it widely.
Cold liquor and drinks with ice, sorbets, ice cream, shaved ice, fruit punches and similar desserts had existed regardless of country or race, and in modern times technological advances had produced dishes people could scarcely have imagined.
But if you do it that way, it loses meaning as decoration food.
In the end, to cook any of those things you would have to smash the King Frost.
But then the meaning as decoration food would fade.
Karem had seen countless dishes directly and indirectly through books and videos in his past life, but when it came to decoration food he was a complete outsider.
So he was looking forward to it.
"Ahem. Ahem! The dish to make with King Frost..."
A water droplet formed on Jigmeser's smooth head and slowly trickled down.
"You haven't decided?"
"What do you mean I haven't decided! What kind of talk is that! It's just that since I only managed to get one for now, I'm carefully conceptualizing the menu, and saying something like that is hurtful!"
He hasn't decided, huh.