She beamed, as if unshouldering some heavy burden. Maybe she had just climbed over some kind of tall barrier in her mind. It’s not like I could see anyone’s souls, exactly, but if that won over Shion, then great.
Team Reborn didn’t seem to have any issues, either. There was no apparent bad blood with the paladins, and like Shion, I think they had it in them to judge people on their own merits. Nice of them. I sure was proud.
So then it was settled. I accepted the apology and let the mistakes fall into the past. The borderline between forgivable and unforgivable was always tricky to discern, but we had made up well enough this time. If you can speak the same language as the other side, it’s always possible for both of you to accept each other’s feelings.
But enough of this gloomy stuff. All this food we prepared wouldn’t be nearly as good cold—and considering Veldora’s lack of a role so far, keeping him waiting any longer would just piss him off and make my life a hassle.
He wasn’t supposed to require food at all, I didn’t think, but from the moment of his resurrection, he had been demanding it for some reason. His love for cakes and such was already common knowledge, but he whined at me a lot about other types of cuisine as well. I knew he was revved up about the feast we had for tonight. Let’s get him involved.
But before that, a toast. I made one up on the spot to get things started.
“Well, here’s to the battles we’ve all fought—and all the ones to come. Cheers!”
A nice, cold mug, straight from the hot bath. No better moment in your life. And I was prepared, of course—we had all the treasured liquor my nation had to offer, and there would be no holding back. No mistake about it.
Wine was the staple drink in Englesia, I had learned. Beer existed, but it just wasn’t very good. It lacked carbonation and the aroma from the bubbles, and being served at room temperature did it no favors, either. My nation had conquered all those problems—don’t let anyone tell you I didn’t have a passion for food. After all this research, day and night, our selection of offerings was now far more robust than it was when I first visited the Dwarven Kingdom. Sheesh—it’s almost like I say something, and they immediately begin development on it. Was this because I was a demon lord now? Actually, I guess it was kind of always this way…
…Well, regardless, my beloved monsters were doing their very best for me, and as a result, my diet was now no different from when I lived in Japan. The food in Tempest is seriously good, trust me. I figured the paladins would be blown away, and I was right.
We kicked things off by having a group of women, all well versed in holding banquets like this, pour drinks for everyone. The first mouthful was a surprise to them, I could tell, but the moment they tucked into their food, they paused and looked at the others around them to gauge their responses. The taste must have astonished them. I grinned to myself, relieved.
Tempura was the main dish, but we also offered seafood—some freshly prepared sashimi. We had found something close to soybeans, so we even had some ersatz soy sauce to go with it—another fruit of Shuna’s labor. It wasn’t a perfect match flavor-wise, but you wouldn’t notice unless you knew the real thing. To someone trying it for the first time, this was what it was supposed to be. Soy sauce came in all kinds of varieties anyway, so maybe there was something like this produced by some local outfit in Japan, for all I knew. Either way, I was more than satisfied.
Preparing sashimi had become a specialty of Hakuro’s. He wasn’t with us tonight, but a number of chefs had been training under him. That whole process—developing the next generation of kitchen staff—was going pretty well, too. You could see them improve as time passed, their offerings growing more diverse and mouthwatering by the day.
It was an entirely Japanese-style meal, but nearly everyone in the hall seemed to enjoy it. Hinata, in particular, looked like she was having a life-changing moment, putting her inexperienced paladins to shame as she expertly used her chopsticks to eat. Then she turned to me, likely noticing my attention on her.
“Don’t you think this is going too far?”
“Too far how?!”
I wasn’t expecting this complaint. It kind of annoyed me, so I fired back. This triggered a rant that must have been building for a long time.
“We stopped at a tavern on the way here that had ramen and gyoza dumplings. You offer free fresh water on the highway. This is supposed to be a remote forest, and yet you’ve built these enormous bathhouses. And now this! How did you even find fresh sashimi in the middle of a huge forest? And going out of your way to find these wild plants for tempura… Don’t you find that crazy at all?!”
I had definitely broken her cool facade. Man. Wasn’t expecting that.
“Well, um, I wanted to eat it, so—”
“What?”
“I… I mean, I wanted to eat it, so I tried remaking it for myself. And the sashimi… You know, we’re on good terms with the Beast Kingdom of Eurazania, and they’ve got a coastline, so I had some fish brought over. We don’t really have the logistics for refrigerated transport yet, though, so that kind of thing’s still skill-dependent. But what’s the harm in splurging a little bit?”
“Skill-dependent?”
I gave her a reassuring nod.
The skill in question was Gourmet, a unique one possessed by Geld that granted him a Stomach to pass items between high orcs. Food couldn’t be ferried around with teleportation magic, but skills didn’t have any such restrictions. Of course, we still only brought enough over
