#046 Loss
#046 Loss
"This is bad, Arthur. Witch says she bought ingredients and is going to cook." "Master is...?"
Rosemas, who had returned to the lodging, hurriedly relayed the situation to Lucius.
She had said they should eat something delicious to celebrate the promotion.
Come to think of it, she had not said they should buy something to eat.
He had never imagined that would lead to the outcome of "she is going to cook."
"Witch, have you ever cooked before?"
"No. Not at all...."
Not when she was in the village.
Not while traveling.
Witch Bel did not cook.
She waved her hands as if she detested cooking itself, and she delegated all meal preparation to Arthur.
"Then does Witch not cook at all?"
"Ah, no. That's not it. Master...doesn't like eating food itself."
"What?"
"Well, rather than having meals, it's more like a means of extending her life...."
Witch Bel, quote.
-Consume food, decompose what is inside into mana, and absorb it. That way there are no physiological phenomena either. Heh.
Witch Bel's meals were the absorption of mana contained in food.
-No physiological phenomena means...?
-It means there's no need to go to the bathroom.
-Is that possible?
-I developed it.
-D-developed it...?
-Yeah. A body that can absorb even food eaten in nature entirely as mana. Though maybe "modified" would be a better word. Haha.
She said she absorbed everything she ate as mana, and burned impurities in her stomach with mana.
"She eats in order not to die."
"......No. That can't be. Whenever we brought back takeout, she ate it with relish. She really seemed to enjoy it."
"That's...."
Lucius recalled the witch's words.
"Master said...."
-If I'm alone, I can just not eat, but when we're together, making you eat alone would be lonely.
That was the only reason.
Even while grumbling that no matter how much she ate, the mana obtainable through food did not even reach the level of a slime, Witch Bel always ate a fixed portion in time with Lucius's eating pace and shared meals with him.
It was the same after Rosemas joined.
The witch barely ate food.
"But she's going to cook? Arthur, have you ever seen Witch cook?"
"No, I haven't. I've done the cooking up until now."
"C-can we trust this?"
"......"
Lucius agonized.
"I think, objectively speaking, my cooking is above average."
Lucius was a hunter.
As a hunter, he fundamentally knew well how to dress hunted beasts, how to drain blood, how to roast them over firewood, and so on.
"Master left the cooking entirely to me. I was worried at first, but she happily ate even the dried meat I brought her."
-The food my disciple made is delicious. Keep making it often from now on.
And on the day he used his hunting skills to treat the witch, the witch finished the meal Lucius had prepared without any hesitation.
-I only need to eat a little. You eat it all. You caught a chicken? I can just...eat the breast.
-Huh? Why the breast? Because I like the dry parts.
-The legs? You eat both of them.
Whatever Lucius prepared, the witch ate it without complaint.
-It's food my disciple made, so I shouldn't complain. At this level, there'll be no problem living on it for the rest of my life.
Even though proper spices or salt did not exist, the witch ate the food Lucius made well, without any complaints.
"Master ate my cooking without complaint. Even though it was all just grilling meat, and grilling meat again...."
"So you're saying you've never seen her cook?"
"Yes."
"...Hey, you know this is usually one of those cases, right?"
Rosemas made a judgment based on experience, common sense, and preconceptions.
"Usually when this happens, it ends with someone who can't really cook getting enthusiastic, trying anyway, and ruining the meal."
"...Master is not that kind of person."
Lucius shook his head with a serious expression.
"Will we be able to eat our lunch properly?"
"M-Master will definitely make it delicious. I believe in her."
"Arthur, your voice is shaking."
"...Master is not someone who would lie and say she's good when she isn't."
"What if she's someone who believes she's good?"
"......For now, let's try believing."
Lucius had no choice but to believe.
"Didn't the innkeeper also allow us to borrow the kitchen? Master is good at everything. She's someone who would even cook using magic."
"Then let's go down and see for ourselves."
"S-see for ourselves...?"
"Yes. Are you worried?"
"Ah, no. I'm not worried at all. It's just...Master told us to wait until she was done, so I will wait."
"Arthur, if Witch told you to die, would you die?"
"Isn't that a strange thing to say? This isn't even that serious a situation. And...."
Lucius frowned.
"If Master told me to die, she would definitely have some kind of plan, or know a way to bring me back, so she would tell me to die. Master is not someone who would say something like that carelessly."
"...Really, is Witch that trustworthy a person to you, Arthur?"
"Yes."
Lucius confidently thumped his chest.
"It was none other than Master who chose me as the Holy Sword Hero among countless people. Just as Master chose me, I will trust and protect Master."
"......What a hopeless person."
Rosemas bit her lower lip and trembled her fists.
"...But I'll say this clearly. If Witch's cooking is terrible, I'll go down and cook."
"What?"
"There may only be vegetables and fruit, but at least it'll be better than steak burned to a crisp or things where you can't even feel the shape when chewing. So...."
Knock knock knock.
A knocking sound came from outside.
Lucius carefully opened the door, and outside stood the innkeeper with a dazed face, having loaded a wooden cart full of food.
"Um, sir...?"
"Enjoy your meal. My, what an...enviable person...."
The innkeeper looked Lucius up and down and clicked his tongue.
Lucius was dumbfounded by the food piled high in the wooden cart.
"Wh-what is all this?"
"That companion of yours gave me a recipe and I had a good opportunity to learn beside her. Good heavens. A person with cooking skills that would even work in the royal capital...."
"Th-the royal capital...?"
"That's right. However, the unfortunate thing is...."
The innkeeper reddened around his eyes and shook his head lightly.
"No, it's nothing. Enjoy your meal...sniff, do."
".......Um, why is Master...?"
"She said she was making dessert and would come, so the two of you should eat first. Sniff...."
After the innkeeper left,
The two swallowed hard at the feast filling the table.
"H-hey...."
"...This looks even better than what we would've gotten by eating out."
It was a feast that looked as though it belonged in a first-class restaurant in the royal capital.
"......."
At the food that looked so appetizing, Rosemas clenched her fists tightly.
"This is...too much...."
* * *
Cooking.
It was the ultimate act of satisfying appetite, one of humanity's three great desires.
Back when I was in the Demon Realm.
Cooking was not my hobby.
But once I learned that I could deal with heroes through cooking, I began to learn to cook.
The trigger was the annihilation of a certain Hero Party.
When they had lit a campfire and were sleeping.
One party member foamed at the mouth, had a seizure, and collapsed.
The second party member could not move as if their body had become paralyzed, and the third party member developed delirium, killed the second party member, and took their own life.
And the remaining fourth party member, the porter, leisurely scattered into the darkness.
The cause of their deaths was food.
The porter was in charge of making the food, and had put poison into the food the party members would eat.
If two people had cooked together, at least one would have noticed the poison being added.
But the Hero Party had dumped every odd job on the porter and spent their time laughing together, only to be poisoned to death by the resentful porter in the end.
-Oh?
-If I become the food person for a Hero Party, can't I poison them easily?
-If I just mix paralysis poison into the soup and call it spice, can I wipe them all out at once? This...is a total jackpot?
Through this, I became a member of various Hero Parties and, whenever I had the chance, had quite a bit of fun with poisoning.
-Hero! I'm telling you that guy put something in the food!
-Don't lie! There's no way a guy who makes food this delicious would do something strange! I'll try it first myse—, ghk!!
-I've been caught.
-Aaaah!! The hero, the hero's body?!
-Hahaha! I put in a sex-change drug! Now the hero you all loved is no more!
-Actually, that's better.
-......Everyone, attack!!
If I made delicious food, they rarely suspected me.
Even when someone grew suspicious, if I mixed the poison carefully enough—or made even the poison taste good—no one noticed.
In the process of dismantling Hero Parties through food like that, my cooking skills improved.
I practiced cooking both to avoid suspicion and to be naturally assigned the job because people expected, “This one will make good food.”
For the day when I would eventually cook for Lucius's party, I needed to casually establish now that I knew how to cook.
That way, I could slip them drugs later without raising suspicion.
'Even so, I can't cook food from 500 years ago.'
While staying in Normance, I had borrowed a cookbook from this era and quickly learned its methods.
Even after so many centuries, basic cooking had not changed much. If anything, culinary culture seemed to have declined, and it looked as though my cooking might become surprisingly popular.
'I should be careful.'
Acedia itself did not concern me much, but some lunatic might recognize me and shout, “Wait, this is the food they served Demon King Army prisoners 500 years ago! Whoever made this must be connected to the Demon King!!”
So I would adapt modern food to my own style as much as possible.
Creeeak.
I gathered the dessert and opened the door.
"What, why aren't you eating? The food's getting cold."
"How could we eat first when Master hasn't come?"
"You could have eaten first."
"Hey, Master."
"Yeah, what?"
"Master, just how good are you at cooking...?"
Lucius seemed to have noticed my cooking skill from the aroma of the food alone.
Ah, could that guy.
'Is he protesting that I made him do the cooking?'
If so, I'll throw out the excuse I prepared in advance.
"A long time ago, I planned to open an inn after retiring and cook in the kitchen. It's an old story, though."
"What?"
"I don't have a sense of taste. I lost it."
This is true.
Because I'm undead.
"Then, this is...."
"The innkeeper checked the taste, so there shouldn't be any major problems. He said it was delicious."
"How, without a sense of taste...?"
"Well, you know."
"My hands remember."