The Last Dryad's Amadeus Roche
The joy and anticipation lingering in the goddess’s eyes.
The reason he had been invited to the divine realm of Issvid…
The situation right before the invitation.
Adding those three together left only one conclusion about what Skadi wanted.
Karem reached into his coat with quiet certainty and politely drew out the heavy pouch he had prepared as both offering and gift. When he started to rise from his seat, Skadi stopped him.
“Stay seated where you are.”
The pouch resting in both his hands suddenly sprang into the air and settled lightly into Skadi’s palm like a bird alighting on a branch.
“Mmm. To think the day would come when I would smell this fragrance again…”
Her face, pale as a snowfield, flushed the crimson of twilight. The calm, noble air of a refined lady vanished in a flash, replaced by the overflowing excitement of a girl.
Karem found himself thinking—rather rudely even by his own standards—that the gods were more human-like than he had expected.
Well, one of them was human before ascending, after all.
Even setting that aside, Skadi getting worked up like housewives yelling at melodrama in their dreams was not so different from Tutatis.
“So, is the content of that pouch the thing you said you wanted to eat again whenever you had the chance… that Ama-whatsit? I thought I heard it was a drink—”
“Darling. I’ve told you several times it’s Amadeus.”
“Ama-whatsit or Deus—it’s only a three-syllable difference.”
“Honestly, warriors…”
Skadi carefully opened the pouch and shook her head in resignation.
“Amadeus?”
Was that the name of the thing he had been calling a chocolate substitute (provisional)? The Mozart moniker? No—judging by the atmosphere, it seemed more like the name of the tree Flora had grown.
“Yes. A tree that can only be grown by a dryad who has realized love and taken a spouse. Hmm, I thought it was only ever drunk as a beverage, but it seems it can be made like this as well.”
Skadi took from the pouch a lumpy brown sphere thickly coated in crushed nuts.
“This round confection form is a first for me.”
“You originally consumed it as a beverage?”
“Yes.”
Examining the chocolate in her hand this way and that, Skadi nodded with a smile.
“It was something sweetened with honey and cream and drunk.”
The sweetener was honey, true enough—but the description was exactly hot chocolate.
“Oh. I understand the feeling.”
“Sounds like something similar existed in your previous life as well?”
Tutatis, who had been looking bored and uninterested, suddenly showed interest.
“So there are dryads over there too, as my wife says?”
“Uh, the raw material in my previous life was made by processing the seeds of a tree fruit. The civilization that first discovered Amadeus also made it into a drink and consumed it.”
Skadi, who had been rolling the chocolate in her hand with curiosity, frowned at Karem’s next words.
“They drank it like a tonic with pepper added—”
“Good heavens. Pepper in Amadeus? What kind of insulting preparation method is that? Still, the tonic part is somewhat similar.”
Skadi took out a new chocolate and handed it to Tutatis, who was beginning to show interest.
“It was also an aphrodisiac that couples and spouses ate before making love.”
“Oh, this is quite tasty, huh?”
Crunching away at the Roche, Tutatis suddenly froze on the spot.
Karem immediately understood why.
Skadi was staring at Tutatis like a bird of prey eyeing its meal.
“Ahem. Well, I’ve eaten my fill. I just remembered something I’d forgotten. I’ll be back later tonight!”
Tutatis, twitching in a way that did not match his robust frame at all, vanished outside the longhouse at an invisible speed before anyone could react.
“Honestly, who’s calling whom a softie…”
Skadi covered her mouth with her hand and chuckled. She finally popped the chocolate she had only been rolling in her hand into her mouth in one bite.
Crunch—
“Mmm. Explain how you made it.”
“First, I mixed finely ground hazelnuts with Amadeus to make a jam, wrapped that around the core, then covered it with a round cookie, and finally coated it again with chopped almonds and Amadeus and let it set.”
“Solid form, is it. Definitely—chewing something that was only ever drunk as a beverage makes both the taste and the sensation new.”
“I somewhat recreated a famous high-end Amadeus from my previous life.”
Nothing special—it was just FeXero Rocher. He had not copied it exactly, but recreated it similarly. It took a lot of work, but using divine power made it not that difficult.
The Nutella wrapping the hazelnut core was a thick, sticky hazelnut jam with Amadeus and the other ingredients mixed in the optimal ratio he had found. For the crunchy cookie part, he finely crushed shortbread cookies, mixed in a little butter to coat them, and set the mixture; the outer shell had been the easiest.
“I would have liked to put a thin gold leaf on it, but…”
“That would certainly look unique and luxurious. But why not?”
“If I did even that, Lord Atanitas or Mary would definitely notice.”
He was already getting curious looks for going in and out of the greenhouse more than usual. Karem thought he should not give any more room to be found out.
“Be careful when you gift it to your lover.”
“Yes? Careful? What do you mean by that…”
“Even a small amount of Amadeus would sometimes affect people too strongly, making them overly excited.”
Crunch crunch. Unlike the first, Skadi bit into the second Roche with a crisp snap and lamented.
“Really, I don’t know how a dryad appeared in the domain of Richard’s son Alfred, but I’m truly glad.”
“How it appeared… the Nameless Traveler gifted the seed—”
“Hm? A seed? What on earth—”
“Pardon?”
“Hmm?”
Something about the conversation did not quite match up.
“Um, Lady Skadi? Do you remember that sacred relic?”
“Of course. I gifted it to you.”
“…That wasn’t a gift, it was Tu—”
“I gifted it.”
“…Anyway. At the time, it seemed like the Nameless Traveler had given it and left.”
Hearing that it had simply been in his grasp at some point, Skadi blinked with an incredulous expression.
“No, where on earth did that fellow get the seed of the last dryad and do this.”
“…Come to think of it, when the empire fell—”
Mary the brownie had said that the dryads had gone extinct together with it.
“Yes. Dryads were one of the most important races that made up the fallen empire of Palatino.”
“Uh… that perpetually cheerful kid was that important…”
Come to think of it, dryads were called forest fairies. Considering that Mary the house elf was nearly the best (though she restrained herself because the work decreased) at housework, dryads would be similar in their own field. She had grown that Amadeus-like chocolate fruit tree in a single day, hadn’t she?
“Of course—a third of the food the empire produced was thanks to the dryads’ abilities. The problem was that the Demon King’s army knew that fact all too well.”
“Then the talk of them going extinct by the Demon King’s army is true—”
“It was a scheme by the Demon King’s army to collapse the enemy’s food and supplies.”
Mewng— A strangely shaped crow divine beast that had approached at some point. Reyna began gnawing on the Roche Skadi offered.
“Whew, still, if your daughter Flora has children, the numbers will increase albeit slowly, so no need to be impatient.”
“…I’ll attach them sometimes when I offer dishes as requested.”
Karem almost had his facial muscles twist at the thought of the thoroughly messed-up family tree that came to mind, but somehow maintained his composure.
Skadi lightly laughed and pointed it out.
“Don’t be too bound by the notions of your previous life, Karem. In this world, your case is quite common. Especially among nobles.”
“…I’ll try.”
Being asked for medieval sensibilities with a modern person’s mind was troublesome, but Karem decided to take it a bit seriously. For starters, Catherine herself was, contrary to appearances, easily more than five times older combining past and present lives, so nitpicking too much felt a little unfair.
“Anyway, since I’ve received something beyond expectations, there should be a proper gift.”
“Uh… is it that much?”
“As a god, having received a treasure beyond imagination, if I don’t give a reward to my believer, I look far too lacking in dignity, don’t I?”
Saying he should check his chest later, she tightened the mouth of the pouch full of Roche.
“More than anything, even so, exchanging betrothal gifts between lovers and ending it with just a snack is unacceptable.”
“Pardon? Betrothal gifts?”
“It’s nothing. I should leave that as a joy for then, shouldn’t I?”
The atmosphere was slowly wrapping up. Karem casually rose from his seat.
“But, um… how am I supposed to go back…”
“Hm? Go back? What do you mean?”
“Pardon?”
Karem was the one who got flustered at Skadi’s reply.
“You have never left that spot even once.”
A fierce winter wind blew in. His eyes closed involuntarily at the sudden gust. Wind indoors? Before he could even think it, the wind stopped at once.
And the surroundings had changed in an instant, just as when he had arrived in Issvid. The crow divine beast and the goddess, the antique interior of the longhouse were nowhere to be seen, as if he had been seeing things.
Instead stood the coming-of-age ceremony participants, their guardians, Catherine and Mary, the Felwinter couple and Godwyn, William, the bonfire and the blazing heat felt from it.
“….”
“Uh.”
No—the blazing heat was not only felt from the side.
“…The wind that blew just a moment ago.”
“Could it be that the Mistress of Winter has descended?”
“Look at the ground under your feet.”
At the words that casually reached him amid the murmuring, Karem lowered his head.
Snow piled thickly on the stone floor. Upon it, inverted icicles—no, ice stalagmites. Transparent crystal-like ice slowly melting in the bonfire’s heat.
…This looks similar to what I saw in Issvid.
Skadi, Tutatis, Issvid. The emptiness of the Roche pouch, of which only one remained, proved that everything had been real.
From his empty chest he felt something flat and round like a coin. There was no time to check it, and he had no wits about him. The murmuring grew louder and louder.
“Come to think of it, at the coming-of-age ceremony decades ago, something similar—”
“Old man, what do you mean by that. Speak properly.”
“Doesn’t it mean the goddess was pleased with the offering Chef Karem presented and descended in person?”
He had regained his senses, but now it was a headache in a different sense. They were drumming and gonging among themselves and drawing their own conclusions. The killer part was that, even to Karem’s thinking, that was not particularly wrong.
Ha, shit. Do I have to clean this up myself?
How? As Karem fretted, he decided to give up entirely. Yeah—whatever happens, happens.
“Truly auspicious events have stacked year after year.”
Just as Karem made up his mind, Alfred suddenly strode out, stood beside Karem, and turned to face the crowd.
“At last year’s Winter-Ascend, Lord Tutatis was impressed by the skill of the blacksmith Gopain, who has now departed on a journey from which he will not return, and descended in person.”
At Alfred’s words the murmuring, far from decreasing, grew even louder.
“And this time, upon my vassal’s chef, Karem, She descended in person and took the offering with Her own hands. For two gods of the Three Gods Sect to personally descend one after another—something that happens maybe once in decades.”
Contrary to Karem’s hope that the situation might calm down, Alfred’s words were making it bigger and bigger.
“So that young man over there is that chef? I thought he was a kid.”
“Talking like a country bumpkin. How long has it been since he grew from the curse.”
“So the advisor wasn’t raising a kid to his own tastes?!”
“I heard that too.”
At the crowd’s words, Karem’s head ached. Catherine seemed the same; the face of the woman standing before the crowd was twisted beyond description.
“However, the coming-of-age ceremony is not yet over! For those ready to stand alone in the world, everyone settle your excitement!”
No sooner had Alfred’s words fallen than the noise of the excited crowd cut off as if snapped. But Karem felt it—the hot gazes from both sides and the back of his head.
Gift or reward or whatever, once this was over, he had to run first.
Attached Materials
Chapter 234: The Last Dryad’s Amadeus Roche
-Roche-
-Roche Cross-section-
A picture drawn by ChatGPT.