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DESPITE thinking I couldn’t sleep, I ended up passing out that night. I must’ve been really exhausted. In the morning, Vice Captain Velrey and I went to a nearby lake to wash our faces.
I decided to conduct a water quality test to see if it was drinkable. Lakes and rivers all contained parasites that could render water unfit to drink.
“I didn’t know they made tools like that,” Vice Captain Velrey said as I pulled my water quality tester out.
“Oh yes!” I replied. “It uses an enchanted stone to accurately measure the water.”
Magic spells could be used to make enchanted tools. But this wasn’t something just any sorcerer was easily capable of, so these magic items were never cheap. Most tools operated with enchanted stones as their sources of power.
The water quality tester was one of seven tools provided to combat medics. Since this was my first time using it, my fingers were trembling slightly.
“…All right. I’ll test it now,” I said as I put my tool in the lake.
The test was simple enough. All I had to do was dip the cross-shaped tool into the water. If it was safe to drink, the enchanted stone within the cross would glow blue. Red meant it wasn’t safe.
“Oh!” I cried.
“How does it look?”
The stone lit up blue, showing that the water was safe. I didn’t hesitate to quench my thirst.
The lake water was clear and refreshing. As I cupped my hands to take gulps of water, I took in the delicious flavor.
I decided to fill my helmet with water to bring back for breakfast.
It was then that I spotted a familiar herb growing next to the lake.
“Ah! Rosemary!”
With its light-blue flowers, the rosemary plant had a refreshing flavor perfect for eliminating any unsavory odors in soups or meat dishes. I plucked as many as I could, since there appeared to be many plants there.
Vice Captain Velrey called out to me in interest, “Impressive, Medic Risurisu. That looked like ordinary grass to me.”
“Well,” I explained, “us Fore Elves rely on the forest plants to get by.”
I’d spent eighteen whole years learning how to live in the woods. It was nothing to bat an eye at.
After returning to camp, I started up another soup pot. Garr even chopped the hard bread and jerky for me. Despite being the stoic type, Garr was quite the gentleman of a wolf.
The ingredients in the soup were essentially the same as yesterday’s. But with the rosemary to give it a strong aroma, today’s soup had a much more refreshing flavor. Despite the delicious, soft fat on the jerky, the flavor was still far from the norm.
Normally, you’d remove the fat before drying the meat like this. Who exactly made this jerky? The bread’s no different—how could it all turn out as hard as rocks?
My village’s preserved foods were much better than what the capital provided.
If all rations for knights were this bad, I was eager to see some improvements.
“Now that I think of it,” I said aloud to no one in particular, “Captain Ban— Captain Ludtink sure is taking a long time, huh?”
He’d said he was going on a walk quite a while ago now.
But just then, I heard the sound of distant footsteps, and Garr perked up too.
“Oh! Sounds like he’s back.”
Ulgus’s eyes went wide when I said that. “Wow, Medic Risurisu. Those are some powerful ears you’ve got there!”
“Only compared to humans, I suppose,” I said matter-of-factly.
A minute later, Captain Ludtink returned to camp, grinning wildly. “Breakfast is served!”
He suddenly thrust some sort of brown bird right in front of my face, totally shocking me.
“EEEEK!”
The bird was missing its head—probably to drain the blood. I saw he’d brought plenty back, enough for everyone in the unit.
“Aaah! Please don’t scare me like that!” I clutched my chest to soothe my racing heart as I pleaded with the captain. He laughed heartily, completely ignoring my request.
Despite his rough beard, I wondered if Captain Ludtink was actually younger than he looked. I would have guessed he was somewhere in his mid-thirties, but he acted no different from the annoying brats in my neighborhood. I decided that I needed to act like the big sister here in that case, so I simply grinned and accepted it.
“You already ate breakfast?” Captain Ludtink asked.
“We did,” I said as I took some string out of my bag and wrapped it around the birds’ feet, then hung them from my horse’s saddle.
“Huh… You know what you’re doing, don’t ya, Wild Rabbit?” the captain asked as he watched me.
“We hunt for all our meat in the forest, after all,” I replied.
“When I saw how ya jumped, I thought maybe you hated this kind of thing.”
“It wasn’t that. Who wouldn’t jump, suddenly coming face-to-face with a headless bird? Please don’t do silly things like that anymore,” I insisted.
Once we all finished our breakfasts and prepared for the day, we moved on to our main task of exterminating monsters. We were going to be traveling to a new location today.
Garr began by scouting for any nearby monstrous presence. Ahead of us, he reported, was nothing but monster after monster.
This came as a surprise to me. The forest I grew up in never dealt with any monsters.
But even more shocking than that was the way my squadmates were able to conduct themselves in battle. Their strength was hard to comprehend.
Mists of blood covered everything. Pieces of torn flesh fell to the ground. Entire monster heads flew off toward the distance.
There were many times I had to stop myself from losing my breakfast. I’ll just have to get used to this… I realized.
After a few battles, lunchtime was suddenly upon us.
We were, of course, planning to eat the birds Captain Ludtink had caught for us earlier that morning. I was looking forward to it. But that didn’t seem to be the case for the other members.
Vice Captain Velrey muttered under her breath, “Captain Ludtink really caught us those birds again…?”
“Their meat isn’t very tasty,” Ulgus agreed, and Garr nodded. This conversation came as a surprise to me.
“But,” I said, “I think those birds are delicious.”
“Even though they really stink?”
“Right, that’s the issue…” Garr chimed in.
Perhaps humans and wolfmen had different senses of taste compared to my own. I decided to ask Vice Captain Velrey about how they ate these birds, just to be certain.
“Captain Ludtink kills them, drains their blood immediately, plucks the feathers, and roasts the birds whole,” she said.
“Does he roast the feathers too?” I asked.
“No, he just plucks them.”
“What about the organs?”
“He roasts the whole birds, as-is.”
“Then that’s why they stink!”
Birds’ feathers and organs had to be removed properly and washed. Without this step, they’d always give off a bad odor.
I can’t believe they’ve been ruining such a delicious bird!
“I know how to prepare them,” I said, “so please follow my instructions. Birds are delicious when roasted whole. But unless you do it just right, the flavor is totally ruined!”
But as I explained this to them, it hit me.
The people before me were my senior knights and direct superiors. I didn’t think about how bossy I might sound to them.
But Captain Ludtink, Vice Captain Velrey, Ulgus, and Garr all simply nodded their heads obediently. I sighed in relief.
Feeling better, I decided to begin the process of cleaning the birds.
My first step was to boil some water. Letting the birds soak in it had the effect of loosening their pores and making it much easier to pluck all the feathers.
“Wow, look at that! They just come right off.”
Captain Ludtink, with his casual reaction, seemed amused by how quickly I was able to pluck the birds.
I planned to bring the feathers home with me—once I washed them, I could use them to make things like fishing bait or pincushions.
Once I plucked all the feathers I could, I cut off the remaining stubborn ones with a hot knife. If I didn’t remove them all cleanly, the bird would retain its bad odor when we ate its meat.
I finished removing all the feathers, meaning it was time to clean the insides. I stuck my knife through each bird’s butt one by one and removed their organs. I then washed their empty stomachs and filled them with the hard bread, rosemary, garlic, and black pepper mushrooms.
Next, I stuck a few rosemary stems into the surface of the meat. When I muttered to myself how I needed some kind of metal pole to roast the birds, Garr lent me one of his unused spare spears.
I washed it in the lake, boiled it with hot water, then stuck it through the birds’ bodies.
Once I made holders for the spear’s left and right sides out of sticks, I started up a fire underneath and allowed the meat to roast over the flames.
I rotated the spear, letting the birds get heated on all sides.
Once the meat was nice and brown, my “Whole-Roasted Wild Bird” meal was complete!
“They sure look good,” Captain Ludtink murmured, eyeing the roast birds.
Absolutely. You bet it is!
I took the birds off the spear and placed them atop a large leaf. Before I dug in, I said a prayer of gratitude toward the birds’ lives and the nature that had provided for us.
I opened my eyes again to see the rest of the knights in our squadron praying as well.
Watching them pray was a strange sight. They almost looked like real knights… No, that’s exactly what they were.
We all took out our knives and began cutting into the freshly roasted meat.
The bird’s skin tore with a snap, making way for the warm fat to ooze to the surface. It really did look delicious.
Captain Ludtink stuck his knife into a bird’s thigh, biting into the meat while the bone was still attached.
He sure looked like a bandit just then.