After that, when Caesar-sama saw Luna attempting to carry out her plan to have the Wyvern subspecies stuffed, he hurriedly pulled Luna away from the Wyvern subspecies, and a knight with a Magic Bag collected the remains and left.
Luna grumbled to Caesar-sama about it, but she ended up getting scolded instead and looked quite dejected. Then, she deftly turned toward me,
and upon seeing the half of the Wyvern subspecies that had been cut into block meat, her shoulders slumped.
Since Caesar-sama had the payment for the Wyvern subspecies brought to us right there, we simply received it and headed back to the manor.
I was curious about Tida, who hadn't shown up even once, but Luna being dragged away by Caesar-sama intrigued me even more. She was probably about to get an earful.
On the way back from the royal castle, as I strolled through the food stalls, appetizing aromas wafted from every direction.
Most of the scents were from grilled skewers and other meat dishes, and they all smelled delicious.
From among the tempting options, I bought a few of each and ate them with Shiromaru and the others as a taste test.
Then I bought large quantities of the ones I liked and stored them away in my bag.
As I wandered around, I occasionally caught the words "Earth Dragon" floating through the crowd. It seemed the rumors were spreading.
My disguise hadn't been exposed so far, but lingering too long in one place might give me away.
So I kept moving, wandering through various spots without stopping for long.
After walking for a while, I arrived at a venue that resembled a flea market.
Hoping to find some hidden treasure, I browsed the stalls, but all I found was junk and knockoffs.
Just as I was thinking the good stuff must have already been sold and was about to leave, a stall selling books in the corner of the venue caught my eye.
In a world where printing technology hadn't yet developed, books were precious and expensive.
Curious about a stall that dealt in such items, I headed over and was surprised by the remarkably extensive selection.
When I checked the prices, even the cheapest were a thousand G per volume, with the priciest tagged at twenty thousand G.
The shop owner didn't seem particularly motivated either — when I stood in front of the stall, he merely glanced at me before quickly looking away.
As I was browsing through some book titles, I came across one with a familiar name in it.
"The Youthful Days of the Great Sage Merlin..."
I picked it up and flipped through the pages — sure enough, it was a novel based on Grandpa.
The price was five thousand G. As I was debating whether to buy it, I noticed the shop owner watching me.
His gaze practically screamed "don't bother," and before I knew it, I'd already pulled the money out of my bag and paid.
"Thanks for your patronage..."
As I was about to leave, listening to his halfhearted voice, several grimy books with no titles on the covers caught my eye.
I picked one of them up almost absentmindedly and peeked inside — what I found was astonishing.
There was no price listed, so I had no choice but to ask the shop owner.
"How much for this book?"
"Hm? Oh, that one... It's just a bunch of scribbled notes, so a thousand G for the whole lot."
There were five books in total. I thanked him and left.
Right now, my face wasn't something I could show anyone. If someone saw it, they'd probably report me — I was grinning that hard.
At times running, at times leaping across rooftops, I hurried back to the mansion.
"What's with you, Tenma? That goofy grin... you gone crazy or something?"
The moment I stepped through the gate, I ran into Namitarou, who was out for a stroll.
It seemed the banquet was over — there was no one else around.
"Namitarou! Look at this!"
Still riding high, I opened the untitled books I'd just bought and showed them to him.
"What the... Wait, seriously?!"
The contents left even Namitarou stunned. They were—
"This is Japanese! And it's a cookbook!"
Indeed, this was a cookbook, apparently written by another reincarnator.
The reason the shopkeeper couldn't understand the contents was simple: it was written entirely in Japanese.
In this world, the writing shared some common ground with the script from the previous life. That common ground was—
g
,
m
—alphabetic letters like these, along with Arabic numerals.
But this book was written entirely in kanji and katakana. That was why nobody in this world could read it.
At the very end of the book, the author's name was written.
"Taro Yamada"
……Thank you! Yamada-san! I'll put this to good use!
The variety of recipes was limited relative to the book's thickness, but the ingredients had been substituted with items available in this world, so it was extremely useful.
It included recipes for sweet red bean paste, rice-based sweet amazake, how to make sake, miso, and soy sauce, and even the spice blend for curry.
As I was wondering what to try first, Namitarou suddenly got excited.
"Tenma! This one! Make this!"
I looked at the page Namitarou had open, and there I found……
"Sweet potato yokan…"
"That's it! Sweet potato yokan! In my past life, some fishermen used to use it as bait sometimes! I used to—like this—pop it off the hook and eat it, and I loved it!"
Come to think of it, I used to use sweet potato yokan as bait for carp fishing sometimes... The ingredients were easy to gather, and it didn't take much time. The only thing I was worried about was that the method I knew used agar to set it, and there was no agar here.
Fortunately, the recipe in the notebook used a method without agar, so it might work out.
When I checked the ingredients in the kitchen, I was in luck — there was something that looked like a sweet potato, so I decided to go ahead and make it right away.
The process was straightforward: steam the potato, mix in sugar and a pinch of salt, mash it up, pour it into a mold, and let it cool. Done.
I already had a rough idea of how to make it, so it wasn't too much trouble, but if this had been a dish I didn't know how to cook, I would have struggled deciphering the recipe book.
After all, it had been fifteen years since I'd last read Japanese, and the recipe book was written in things like "Steam the potatou for seventy minutes", so I had to read it carefully.
I really need to translate this in my spare time.
Anyway, using my general sense of the recipe along with magic to assist with the cooking, it took roughly two hours. Finally, something that looked like sweet potato yokan was complete.
I sampled a corner of it, and there didn't seem to be any problems.
I divided the finished yokan into two portions and put one half into my bag.
"Tenma! Hurry up! Hurry up!"
When I brought the sliced yokan over, Namitarou was flapping his pectoral fins in urgency. Beside him were the usual gluttons, as always.
I tossed a piece into each of their mouths, and they all chewed happily.
Namitarou in particular kept exclaiming about how nostalgic it tasted, requesting seconds at a pace that outstripped even Shiromaru and the others.
I was sure I'd made quite a large batch, but it vanished in the blink of an eye. Namitarou had eaten most of it, so Shiromaru and Solomon looked a little put out.
Leaving the gluttons to their own devices, I set about deciphering the recipe book.
On my way back to my room, Jeanne and Aura — who were in the middle of cleaning — questioned me about the sweet smell wafting from the kitchen, and half of my remaining yokan was confiscated.
After that, I worked in my room until dinner, but because I kept nibbling on the yokan while I worked, every last bit of it ended up gone.
And then the one person who hadn't managed to get a single bite — the old man — got sulky about it, and I ended up having to make another batch just to smooth things over.
Lesson of the day: an old man's sulking face is terrifying...
"Tenma, aren't you going to the auction?"
The day after the yokan incident, Jin and the others showed up first thing in the morning. They came to invite me to the auction.
I had entered the crocodile shark taxidermy for sale, so I'd originally planned to attend, but thanks to some uninvited guests who'd shown up before Jin's group, those plans had gone out the window.
"Tenma's playing with us!"
"He's ours!"
"Don't get in our way!"
"I want to play with Tenma too."
Three cats and one tiger cub were bickering at the entrance.
And Aina was watching the whole scene with a sharp glare. In her hands were a laundry basket full of clothes and the limp, drooping form of Aura, which she was gripping firmly.
"You should probably stop them soon, shouldn't you?"
"Um, maybe you should stop them around... now?"
Jeanne and Primera were doing their best to rein in the four of them.
"It's tough being a popular guy!"
Jin clapped me on the back and teased me about it.
He was getting a little annoying, so I decked him in the gut, and he quieted right down.
"Well, can't be helped, I suppose. Tenma, don't be too hard on them."
At Menace's words, the Dawn Sword group took their leave.
Jin was leaning on Garat's shoulder, but he seemed well enough to walk, so he should be fine.
"Tenma!"
"Tenma's going to eat his way around town and hunt in the forest!"
"Which one's better!"
"The forest is what I'd recommend..."
"Can't I just stay home and sleep?"
"N-n-n-no!"
It was obvious that whichever option I picked would lead to trouble.
So I tried voicing my own preference, but it was immediately shot down. Are you guys really that close?
"Um, Tenma-san. There's a party at the royal palace the day after tomorrow, but... have you gotten ready?"
Primera's question sounded to me like a revelation from the heavens.
Right, there was that. The Earth Dragon business had made me completely forget about it, but for ordinary people, being invited to the royal palace was a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Well, not that it had anything to do with me.
"Now that you mention it, there was that! You four — sorry, but you've got yourselves something to do!"
As I said that and turned to head back to my room, the sleeve of my robe was suddenly tugged.
When I looked back, Amour was pulling on it.
"I've been invited too. I'll get ready together with Tenma."
Amour declared this with her chest puffed out proudly. Seeing that, the three girls ground their teeth in frustration, but then suddenly seemed to strike on an idea and started discussing among themselves.
"That's right! Amour needs to get ready too!"
"Getting ready is really tough, you know!"
"So we'll help you out!"
With that said, the three of them executed a flawless coordinated maneuver to pull Amour away from me and started dragging her off.
However, even working together, the three of them apparently couldn't match Amour's strength. She dragged all three of them along while steadily, inch by inch, making her way back toward me.
"Let~! Go~!"
"Hey! She's smaller than us but has insane strength!"
"Give it up!"
"No way, no way, no way! Primera! Help us!"
Primera had been standing there wondering what to do, but when the three called out to her, she obediently went to help.
Primera wrapped her arms around Lily's torso, who was clinging to Amour's back, lowered her center of gravity, and began to brace with all her might.
Gradually, Amour's advance ground to a halt, and after a few seconds, the two sides had reached a complete stalemate.
"Hnnngh!"
"Fiiight!"
"Put~! Your~! Back~! Into~! It~!"
"O-oh... um..."
Primera's unenthusiastic voice rang out, but the other four didn't seem to hear her at all.
The contest of strength between one person and four was perfectly deadlocked for the time moment, but it didn't look like it would stay that way for long.
Because someone was closing in at breakneck speed to intervene in this struggle.
That person blew past all five of them like the wind and planted herself directly in front of Amour.
"Branca, perfect timing. Help me pull—"
*GOTCHIN!* With a loud crack, Branca's fist came down hard on top of Amour's head.
The blow drained the strength from Amour's body, and the scale that had been balanced tipped violently in the three girls' favor.
As a result, Amour was yanked free with tremendous force, and the four pulling from behind all toppled over together.
"NYAAAAA!"
"Kyah!"
Four screams could be heard. They came from the four girls who had been standing behind Amour. Amour was rolling on the ground, clutching his head. It seemed he didn't even have the composure to let out a scream of his own.
"Sorry about that, Tenma... Amour! I told you we had to prepare for the party today! We're heading back!"
"W-wait... Tenmaaaaa!"
Amour reached out toward me as Branca dragged him away.
"Bye-bye! See you later, Tenma! Let's go play!"
The troublemaker
was gone, so the three sisters, their mood improved, invited me to come play with them again.
"I already told you, I have things to get ready! Go have fun by yourselves."
In truth, the preparations would only take a matter of minutes. All I had to do was prepare the formal outfit Lady Isabella bought me and tidy up my appearance—the rest would be handled on the day itself.
However, if I went out to play with the three sisters now, Amour would definitely throw a fit afterward. And then he'd drag me along on some outing whether I liked it or not.
So I chose not to play with the three sisters. It wasn't because I found them troublesome or anything like that.
"Awwww!"
"There's nothing we can do about it. Tenma has things he needs to take care of, you know..."
Primera tried to console the sulking trio.
"Hmm... I guess we have no choice."
"Primera, let's go play!"
"Stress eating it is!"
The three seemed to accept their defeat despite still being in a huff, and instead tried to take Primera along with them.
But Primera just looked at the three of them with an apologetic expression.
"I'm sorry... Actually, I also have to attend the party, so I need to get ready after this..."
"Wha—?!"
Primera's words stunned all three of them — and me too.
"Why?!"
"How come?!"
"That's not fair!"
The three of them crowded around Primera, complaining left and right. At first I couldn't understand why she'd been invited either, but after thinking about it, it made perfect sense. After all...
"You seem to have forgotten, but despite appearances, I am the third daughter of a ducal house."
"Oh..."
And that was that. Primera herself hadn't won any prizes in the tournament, but if the daughter of a duke had made a splash during the Preliminary rounds, it would be strange if she weren't invited. Moreover, House Sanga was a heavyweight of the Royalist Faction. If anything, it would be stranger to be in the Royal Capital and *not* be invited.
Even if she hadn't been formally invited, Duke Sanga hadn't brought his wife along, so it would be perfectly normal for Primera to accompany him as her mother's stand-in.
Incidentally, your partner didn't have to be of the opposite sex — some nobles even brought their guards along.
As for me, I had no intention of bringing a partner. At first I thought about inviting Gramps, but apparently he'd received a personal invitation. It seemed to be because he'd protected the King during the Wyvern subspecies incident, and because he was on good terms with Ernest?
That was the official reason, anyway.
In reality, he was more like my bug repellent.
At this party, there would no doubt be nobles falling over themselves trying to recruit me. Starting with the King, Duke Sanga and Marquis Samons would be keeping a watchful eye too, but the concern was that someone might still try to seize me the moment my guard was down — so Gramps decided to attend as well.
As for Slarin and the others, I had intended not to let them participate, but one of the royals had specifically requested their presence, so the arrangement was set: everyone except Namitarou would stay inside the Magic Bag.
The story had gotten sidetracked, but the three of them were staring at Primera as if they couldn't believe their eyes.
Primera, under their collective gaze, looked extremely uncomfortable and shrank back slightly.
"TRAITOR!"
"Why?!"
The three of them screamed something completely off the mark, then lunged at Primera.
Primera, with even sharper reflexes than usual, took off running, dashing through the garden in an attempt to shake them.
That chase was a more thrilling spectacle than watching a poorly played match.
The three girls, who had the advantage in burst speed, worked together with the coordination only triplets could manage, herding Primera as though on a hunt, closing in to catch her—but Primera read their patterns and countered, deploying every trick at her disposal to keep running.
The chase went on for nearly an hour, and before long, neighbors and passersby who had heard the commotion were watching from outside the gate, and it even escalated to the point where bets were being placed.
The bet was whether the three would catch Primera or she'd escape within a set time limit, and as the bet got underway, the first time limit was fast approaching.
At the first time limit, Primera still didn't look like she'd be caught anytime soon.
Just as the people who had bet on Primera were about to celebrate, a "Rule Breaker" appeared in the garden.
"You're being way too loud! If you want to play, take it outside!"
The "Rule Breaker" who emerged from the mansion was Aina—the woman who served as the
shadow ruler
of this estate. Well, since she did it on a part-time basis, the title technically had "temporary" tacked onto it, but...
Aina, who appeared directly in the four's path, tripped Primera—the one running out front—sending her tumbling, then proceeded to toss the other three aside one after another.
As a result, the bet was declared void, and boos rang out from the gate, but Aina silenced everyone with a single glare and sent them packing.
"It's fine to have energy and get excited, but could you please choose the right time, the right place, and the right circumstances?"
Where Aina was pointing, mountains of laundry were hanging out to dry, and furthermore, numerous windows had been thrown wide open to ventilate the mansion.
However, because the four had been running around nearby, the laundry and the interior of the mansion had been covered in kicked-up dust and scattered dirt, reducing everything to a sorry state.
"While I was busy cleaning the kitchen, I looked away for just a moment, and everything I'd scrubbed clean since morning has been utterly ruined... What are you going to do about this?"
Aina's intensity was overwhelming, and the four girls, being scolded, were trembling so badly they couldn't even stand.
Even though the Preliminary was only a preliminary, the fact that Aina could reduce four girls who had performed impressively in the tournament to trembling just through intimidation alone made me want to ask what on earth she really was — though I knew full well it would end with "I'm a maid."
While I was lost in those thoughts, the four of them looked to me for salvation, but at the same time Aina's gaze also turned my way, so I reflexively looked away.
At my response, the four of them turned from pleading to despair.
As for what happened after that, I have no idea.
I was so afraid that Aina's intensity would splash onto me as well that I fled the scene entirely.
No doubt the four of them will give me an earful about this later.
But when that time comes, I plan to say this: "If any of you were in my position, could you have spoken up against Aina in that state?"
I shut myself in my room and was preparing for the day after tomorrow when I occasionally heard screams from outside, but those were surely just my imagination.
When I went to the bathroom midway through the corridor, I saw Jeanne and Aura huddled together, trembling — that was certainly a hallucination.
Nearby, I thought I saw Shiromaru and Solomon trembling too, but that was definitely just my imagination.
Gramps was also acting restless and fidgety, but I chose not to worry about it.
Aina must have finished her lecture, because she came back to the mansion carrying the soiled laundry. Behind her followed the four girls, each carrying their own bundles.
Jeanne and Aura let out sighs of relief only after confirming that Aina and the others had moved far enough away.
However, the two of them were later discovered sitting in the hallway by Aina, who had come to check on the corridor's condition, and were told to clean the hallway after the lecture.
And then, as if it were only natural, all seven of them ended up cleaning the entire mansion. As a result, the six girls aside from Aina were plagued by terrible muscle soreness the next day.
Since nobody caused any trouble that day, it became the most peaceful day since I had arrived in the Royal Capital.
"But the preparations — the preparations still aren't done yet~"
Only one girl was still trying to make her way back despite being tormented by muscle soreness. She was walking on trembling legs with tears threatening to spill, so I cast a healing spell on her, but it didn't completely fix things. Aina, feeling responsible, escorted her all the way to the knights' quarters and ended up helping with preparations as well.
The reason I didn't escort her myself was that a man shouldn't be helping with a woman's preparations, and I wanted to avoid any strange rumors before the party.
As for Jeanne, Aura, and the three sisters, they were apparently exhausted to the point that they showed no sign of waking well past noon, and it was Aina — freshly returned from helping with the preparations — who had to physically drag them out of bed.
"No issues then. Shall we head out?"
"I hope there won't be any fools causing trouble."
"Well, that's unlikely, but one can dream. Jeanne, Aura, make sure you guard the house properly. We're counting on you."
On the day of the party, Grandpa and I boarded the carriage that had come to pick us up from the royal castle.
Aina was accompanying us because she had duties to attend to as Maria's maid during the party. It was easy to forget since she'd been home so much lately, but Aina was originally Maria's personal maid.
A lot of people probably wondered why a maid attached to the Queen was spending so much time at our house, but the biggest issue was that she was essentially acting as our head maid despite only doing the job part-time.
Just that fact alone showed how incompetent Jeanne and Aura were as maids.
If I had to be generous, Jeanne was excusable since she used to be a young lady, but I really wanted to say that Aura had been a maid from the start. When I first met her, she gave off a capable impression, but opening that package revealed a total fraud. Well, Grandpa and I never really needed maids in the first place, so those two were more than sufficient.
Aina seemed to pick up on my thoughts, muttering something like, "Maybe I should discipline them more strictly for my own peace of mind..."
We arrived at the royal castle slightly ahead of schedule, and after stepping out of the carriage, we were escorted to a waiting room.
Only those who had received special invitations were gathered in the waiting room, and among them, I could spot Jin.
Our eyes met once, but he was surrounded by other attendees and couldn't move.
Most of the people circling Jin appeared to be small-to-medium merchants, and it looked like their goal was to forge connections with influential figures and celebrities through this opportunity.
"Well then, I'll be heading back to Lady Maria."
Aina, who had guided us this far, bid us farewell and returned to her duties.
As if they'd been waiting for that moment, several attendees were about to rush toward me, but they froze upon seeing the person who had entered behind me.
"Oh, you made it, Tenma."
The one who walked in was Lyle. The sudden appearance of royalty silenced everyone except Grandpa and me.
After chatting briefly, it seemed that Lyle's role this time was to oversee the attendees, and he was making his rounds checking on the various waiting rooms.
"So that's the situation — thanks in advance. And Tenma, don't cause any scenes. If you stir up pointless trouble, I'll have you thrown out no matter who you are."
Prince Lyle was issuing his warning to me as a way of keeping the other participants in check.
It seemed he had come preemptively upon hearing of my arrival, making sure no other participants would cause any scenes on my account.
The ones who were here—
Lyle—
—were apparently all people who would quiet down once he warned them, so things should more or less be fine now.
Incidentally, Amour had been guided to a different waiting room from mine, and Branca was stationed by his side as both bodyguard and lookout.