Side Story 2. The Eastern Expedition (2)
The security of the Imperial Palace is strict.
If one were to pick out the most heavily guarded places, everyone would think of the main palace where the emperor's bedchamber is, the armory, and the guard facilities.
There is one more.
The huge banquet hall and the adjoining food storage, and the cooking facilities including the kitchen.
At first glance, it seems to be a facility that handles only daily tasks, but in terms of security level, it is no less than the emperor's bedchamber.
Co to think of it, it's natural since it's the place in charge of the emperor's food and drink.
Especially in the current empire.
Because historically, the ti when a new dynasty was established was the period when the risk of assassination, including poisoning, was at its peak.
'Of course, His Majesty seems to be virtually immune to poison.'
Still, it's always good to be thorough.
You never know what might happen.
Karen let her thoughts wander and stopped her steps.
Following the strange stench and commotion, she had reached just outside the guard's patrol range of the banquet hall building.
'It's even stricter than I thought.'
Karen tilted her head.
No matter how important the facility is, the surveillance is excessive.
All entrances to the building were blocked by the Imperial Guard in golden armor.
Guards in stealthy attire positioned in the shadows of the roof or under the walls, and in the gaps between buildings were a bonus.
It was almost as if it were the main palace guard.
Karen, suppressing her presence and observing the guards with a raised eyebrow, soon found out the reason.
Here, in addition to the original guard force, an escort force had joined.
There could be only one reason.
The commotion she had heard a mont ago.
The owner of that voice was clearly the officially recognized saint of the Church and the spouse of Emperor Ash, Empress Alina Wolfskrig.
Clang!
The sound of a plate breaking ca from inside the building.
Karen's pointed ears twitched slightly.
Is she trying to cook?
But Alina has no talent for cooking.
Suppressing the subtle foreboding that was rearing its head, Karen continued to ticulously survey the building.
Before long, she was able to find a gap.
A warehouse at the end of the 6th-floor corridor.
The gap of a window opened by a finger's breadth, seemingly left open by a maid who was cleaning for ventilation, but which no one was paying attention to.
It was a gap difficult for a sparrow to enter, but since it was a window opened for ventilation in the first place, wind could pass through.
'Skywind. Can we assimilate and go in there?'
- It is possible. Lend your body for a mont.
The spirit agreed.
Karen took a breath.
She relaxed her body, took three or four deep breaths.
Then, her body began to gradually fade.
People often compare spirit masters to mages of good lineage, but that is a wrong comparison.
If a mage forces the world to move with mana, a spirit master assimilates themselves into the flow of the world itself.
To use an analogy, it would be like building a dam on a river and controlling the flow of water, or adjusting the rudder and letting the boat move along the flow of the river.
Of course, unlike a helmsman, an excellent spirit master can go beyond using the river water and beco the river water itself.
Just like this.
- It seems to be done.
- Let's go.
Karen, who had beco a spirit for a mont, floated up into the sky.
A wind spirit is the wind itself.
It is not caught by a knight's sixth sense, nor is it detected by mana detection.
Naturally passing the guards, she seeped through the narrow gap of the window.
When she entered, she found it was a warehouse for storing fresh ingredients.
Karen materialized her body again and went out into the corridor.
It was not far to the kitchen.
As she got closer, the sowhat chaotic atmosphere beca more pronounced.
Karen, suppressing her presence, cautiously peeked inside through the crack of the kitchen door.
[The texture of the octopus leg is important, so it should be… whole without cutting.]
[Hah, you're spouting nonsense again!]
[Miss Eyeball, you seem to be getting out of line a lot lately.]
[It's because I'm frustrated, frustrated! Who is teaching whom when they can't even roast a single marshmallow properly?]
[Woof! Woof woof!]
“……”
Should I just go back?
***
A famous painter of the Empire once said, 'To see a painting is to gather small stories and read a large plot.'
Karen had no knowledge of art, but as a queen, she had accumulated so level of culture.
The reason the painter's adage suddenly ca to her mind must be because the scene before her was that shocking.
“……”
That's right.
There was no other way to describe it than shock.
To the point where the brain's escape attempt of perceiving the situation before her as a scene depicted in a painting, rather than as reality, occurred.
So, in short, it was a scene that shook the identity and pride as a cook that she had built up since her rcenary days, or even before that.
Anyway, if we break down the entire scene into its parts according to the painter's adage, it would be as follows.
The first thing that caught her eye was a bundle of tentacles swimming chaotically in the air.
The servant that Ash called 'Kkumteuli,' the representative of the sugar-addicted Outer God group.
[Now, look! Isn't it written here! Octopus, especially the legs of a rare species of Kraken larva, are a delicacy when boiled whole and torn off!]
At the end of his tentacle was an object that was clearly not of human make, a cookbook or a grimoire filled with strange pictures and characters from the cover, it was hard to tell.
Next to it, Empress Alina of the Empire, wearing a white apron, was stirring a pot with a determined expression.
[Yes! Just stir it like that! The flavor of the risotto cos from the relentless ladle… uh, where was it? Anyway, it was written sowhere!]
“Are you sure?!”
[Of course!]
‘……?’
What on earth is of course.
The flavor cos from the ingredients, temperature, and water, not from the stirring.
Maybe the texture, but.
Anyway, it was a sight as if a great war had already been fought.
Especially Alina.
Her bright blonde hair was caked with so unknown red and black powder.
Her beautiful face was sared with sothing that could be soot or sauce.
If you only saw this much, it would have been a romantic scene of a passionate teacher and a hardworking student, albeit a bit chaotic.
The problem was that that wasn't the end of it.
[Shut your mouth, you octopus-headed bastard! That's not a cookbook, it's the adventure journal of a new continent pioneer!]
The next scene.
A ladle flies.
The ladle, thrown with a fierce shout, accurately hit Kkumteuli's regular octahedron—presumably his head.
There was a thud, the bundle of tentacles slowly fell, and a black eyeball floating in the air glared at Kkumteuli and spat out sothing.
That thing is also Ash's servant.
Was its na 'Eyeball'?
Of course, it's still not over.
“Kiiing… kiiing kiiing!”
On the cooking counter, octopus legs the size of an adult male's forearm were rolling around, and next to it, a starfish-shaped servant was writhing its whole body and making an unknown sound.
[Srr-rr-rr. Srr-rr….]
On the opposite island, a small spinning wheel was clattering with its thread and needle, stuffing all sorts of vegetables and rice into the belly of a raw chicken and then sewing it up.
[Arrrr, woof! Woof!]
[Om nom nom nom!!]
On the floor, a beetle and a tentacled mongrel were growling over a spilled honey pot.
Besides that, scenes that seed to be a taphor for chaos were unfolding all over the kitchen.
An ice storm having a staredown with the gas fla on the Empire's state-of-the-art gas stove.
A living lump of at slowly entering a container of ground at.
A pendulum that, after spilling the whole peppercorns, drags a salt shaker as if nothing had happened.
A statue of a goddess sparring with a pair of spears against a large crab that was just taken out of the tank and is writhing.
And so on.
In the rhapsody of chaos, Alina's hand movents beco faster and faster.
To the point where it's hard to tell if she's stirring to prevent it from burning, or mixing it.
Perhaps she had half-lost her mind.
Wouldn't anyone?
She wants to learn to cook.
The ones who said they would teach her are all just making a ss.
The head chef and the cooks, who couldn't bear to watch the tragic scene, were already tied to chairs and had lost their minds.
Instead, the bundle of tentacles that said it would be the head chef is waving around sothing that isn't even a cookbook and is still spouting crazy shouts like 'tears of a cockatrice' and 'venomous fangs of a fla naga.'
“O-one hundred thousand tis! I've stirred it all!”
[Ooh…!]
[Kiiing?]
[Nyom?!]
[Tick-tock!]
[Srr-rr-rr…?]
In the midst of the pandemonium, the cooking was finished.
Alina, who had turned off the fire, tilted the pot and poured the stew onto a luxurious porcelain plate.
“H-it's not coming out well? Did stew not flow like this?”
No.
It wasn't stew.
It was burnt black, no, burnt, no, a disgusting gel-like form.
To be precise, the result of achieving all three fell with a plop.
The semi-solid with an alien texture fell onto the plate with a thud, then burst open like the mbrane of an egg, and its contents poured out onto the floor.
A black sli. A whole octopus leg. A half-cooked red mushroom. A crystallized sugar lump. And a hornet in a honeycomb with its shape still intact. Crushed rice grains and a fish head. And so on.
A sour and tangy, yet sickly sweet, and at the sa ti, a foul sll like improperly fernted food filled the kitchen.
To the point where anyone, no matter how bad a cook they were, could tell if it was a failure or a success.
“Hic…. It's… burnt again….”
[W-well, isn't it an ink risotto? It's originally black.]
[Tick-tock-tock!]
[Tick-Tocky, you shut up.]
Alina collapsed onto the floor.
Her shoulders trembled faintly as she buried her head between her knees.
It must have been the first ti she had felt so helpless since becoming empress.
A small prayer flowed out between her suppressed sobs.
O Luark, why did you not grant the talent for cooking.
Is this another trial that I must endure.
[H-how about dessert? Yes, let's make a pie! The book says that among the indigenous tribes of the new continent, there are those who make pies with the honey that ants collect through aphids….]
It must have been around that ti that the string of patience in Karen's mind snapped.
“Stop! Stop! Stoooop!”
“Ah, sister Alina?!”
“You, Kkumteuli? From now on, don't even open your mouth. No. Ifrit, just burn that grimoire! Skywind, Eternal Spring, you two clean this up a bit.”
In an instant, the queen of the elves, who had started to clean up the pandemonium and its cause by commanding the top-class spirits of fire, water, and wind, let out a deep sigh.
“I let it go, thinking there must be sothing, but I can't anymore.”
“Uh, sister.”
“At this rate, either the entire palace kitchen will be blown away, or you'll have a lifelong nightmare about cooking.”
Karen gently pushed aside the puppy servant that was awkwardly blocking the passage, covered in honey, and approached the empress.
And she squatted down next to the empress.
A face full of soot.
Although she had quickly wiped it with her sleeve, the tear marks were still clear.
Karen suddenly recalled the appearance of Alina who had just been rescued from the necromancer's den more than ten years ago, during their rcenary days.
She wrapped her arm around Alina's shoulder with a smile.
“Sigh. You're having a hard ti too. First, co here. I'll hug you.”
“……Hic.”
“Your Majesty the Empress, no, Alina.”
“...Yes, sister.”
“Don't worry. I have a good idea.”
Peek.
The saint, who had been sobbing in her arms, slightly raised her head.
“First, instead of learning useless tricks from those who have no hands or feet, I'll teach you how to cook myself.”
[Q-queen! No matter how you put it, that's a discriminatory remark…!]
“And second. Let's, go on a trip. To where His Majesty is.”
“To the Eastern Empire?”
Karen smiled brightly.
“Yes. I'll tell you the secret to delicious food. In fact, for food to be delicious, there's sothing more important than the recipe or the ingredients.”
Alina felt as if she had seen the manifestation of Luark.
Reviews
All reviews (0)