ITK C50: The Newly-Wed’s Stay
“…Huh?”
What are you saying, Miss Astres?
…Mrs., rather.
“This series of events made me fully realize that I still have a long way to go. I fell victim to those conspiracists’ cunning plan owing to my lack of prudence and compassion, making you, Lord Zedan, suffer a lot.”
Okay, that may be true, but still…
“That’s why I’d like to stay here and train myself. If I work diligently under the Saint’s guidance, I can abandon my past foolish self and turn over a new leaf.”
“I wonder about that.”
Hey, hey. We don’t run training seminars here, you know?
“If that’s how things are, please let me stay here for a while as well.”
“You too, Demon King?!”
Are you sure?! Won’t your people be troubled with their ruler gone?!
“The war between the human and demon race is currently in turmoil. A ceasefire was issued.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. Thanks to the dragon that came flying on the battlefield, both factions are still shaken. Until both sides have obtained information, no troops will be dispatched.”
Ah…
I see Veil whistling like some innocent bystander from the corner of my eye.
“Me being stationed at the frontlines also allowed me to discover what was going on, so everything turned out all right in the end. Besides, it has been a while since I spent some time with Astres.”
“Lord Zedan…”
Mrs. Astres totally looks like a woman in love now.
“Of course, only if Lord Saint agrees. What shall it be? Will you permit us to stay here for a while?”
In short, they want to spend their honeymoon as newlyweds here?
“Sure.”
“That fast?!”
I bet they won’t even have the time to do this when they return to the capital, anyway.
Helping lovers like them is also a moral way of life.
“Well, if Dear says so, then we have no objections!”
“But are you okay with that? If I heard things right, people in your faction are ignoring their leader’s orders. If you leave them be and stay here, won’t they plot some nasty stuff again?”
Platy and Veil even think about the political side of things. After Veil pointed that out, I could’ve sworn I saw the Demon King make a troubled face, but…
“Worry not. For that has also been taken into account.” says the Demon King as he smiles boldly.
Thus, my reclaimed land welcomes this married demon couple.
I made a new room separate from the main house for the Demon King and Mrs. Astres to stay in.
They’re newlyweds, after all, so they might be heard and stuff…you know?
I entrusted the construction of that same room mainly to the orc team, but the Demon King himself offered to help. I thought it was discourteous of me to let him, but he’s surprisingly skillful with raising pillars and nailing. Thanks to everyone’s help, the building was finished in a matter of days.
But isn’t it a little too fast? Then again, the couple has been emitting this lovey-dovey aura these past few days. The reason why the construction proceeded at a relatively rapid pace has probably got something to do with that. Nothing beats eroticism in terms of motivation!
There are also all sorts of inconveniences that might occur when a couple attempts to conceive, after all, so now that they have a proper bedroom, I want them to take their time.
On the other hand, Mrs. Astres took a break from fieldwork and hunting and started learning how to cook with my help. In order to become a good wife, one must be good at cooking. But since she’s the Demon King’s wife, A.K.A. the Demon Queen, wouldn’t it be better to leave meal-serving to dedicated personnel?
When I pointed this out to her, she wasn’t up for it. Her husband, the Demon King, and even her aides Batemy and Belena, all understand that she’s the type of person who aims for perfection in anything she does. And it seems learning to cook from me was the biggest reason she decided to stay here.
I haven’t had the chance to know how cooking works in this world until now. It seems they don’t have the concept of adding condiments to enhance a food’s flavor. At most, all they know is salt– not as a condiment but as a natural food preservative. Spices don’t exist.
That must be the same reason why Platy and Veil crave my cooking so much that they decided to live here.
“Unlike Mrs. Astres, neither of you is showing any gusto towards learning how to cook.”
“We’re fine the way things are, thank you very much!”
“Yeah! You already make them for us, so why do we have to go through the trouble of preparing them ourselves?!”
These two…
I learned something new about this world today.
I guess it’d be best to put more effort into making condiments.
Maybe even start a mass production system of it?
I wish I was good at raising pillars and nailing too 😏
Just how backwater is that world that they don’t even have the concept of condiments? Every culture has had that concept since forever, mostly herbs and sauces, and it even got to a point where some condiments were even used as currency or fetched prices more expensive than their weight in gold.
I’m struggling with the idea, really. They know that salt preserves food, but haven’t figured out that salt makes it taste better? And once you know that adding X makes food taste better, then you start adding everything you can n an effort to discover new tastes.
I believe it all comes to the deep-rooted idea japanese people have that, despite all evidence you can find against it, everything is better if it’s done by them. The worst thing is that we often believe it.
Foodwise, they even go out of their way of tampering with categorization: a good number of popular “japanese” dishes are, in fact, european dishes (with perhaps some minor ingredient substitution), but they mask it by making a couple of simple dishes invented in Japan in recent times as “european cuisine” (like curry rice or omurice).
PS. they also seem to mistake modern sanitary regulations with traditional culture.
Because if they did Japanese food(which is one of the blander cuisines IRL) wouldn’t be so special.
Yeah, technically speaking, it’s japànese food the one that tends to lack in the condimental department, as they mostly use salt (for coastal dishes), soy sauce (since the Middle Ages, imported from China) and miso (in Owari, a minor province, since the 16th century and in the rest of Japan after that, since they originally thought it was a food onlñy those weirdos from Owari would like).
I’d say with fantasy worlds that things are not just a 1 for 1 ratio for comparison. Just because it’d be around medieval period doesn’t mean it is.
Not only that, the cultural difference in having monsters in addition means that world isn’t really safe to be able to hunt normally. I’d say even in our world around that time period it was already hard to hunt and gather and we didn’t even have monsters to worry about.
Include monsters into your normal routine and just having food (that’s not been eaten by monsters if you’re not eaten first) makes it harder to progress with food culture; your first thing is to secure food for just eating.
Now, regarding Veil and Platy, both are from different cultures since one is a dragon and one is from the sea. A dragon has no need for seasoning since they can eat things in one bite.
I do think the mermaid race should have a better food culture since they’re neutral compared to the human/demon race and their war. Granted, being under water, I don’t know how’d they cultivate seasonings since they only live in the sea.
They have agriculture. While there was some advancement in kitchen skills in hunter-gatherer societies, the coming of agriculture is what made that field advance faster.
Having agriculture means less danger for your food and more leeway to check things, not to mention that bad harvests and famines also help improve condiment research, mainly in the form of fermented products.
Meatbun Delivery~
Thank you for the chapter ( ●w●)
Platy and Veil: “we dont want to embarras ourself comparing to you. So no thank you!”