Meanwhile, in the Skyte region...
“This is so good! Roc is incredible!” the Skyte hunters, who had missed their dinner, all cried out in surprise once they finally got the nerve to take a bite of the roc meat.
“Hee hee. I covered it in yogurt to make the meat more tender.” Melsa smiled as the hunters went to town on her meal.
“Wha— Lady Emma! Y-You don’t need to feed me anymore...” The lord of Skyte shrunk back as Emma brought the meat closer to his lips with a big smile...though he didn’t actually seem all that bothered by it.
“No need to be shy, milord! Say aaahhh!”
She’s so cute... The lord thought as he “said ahh” and took a bite.
“There’s plenty more tandoori roc to go around!”
“‘Tandoori roc’?”
“Yeah! It’s like the roc version of tandoori chicken!” Emma beamed as she gave the lord the best service ever.
Prince Edward was watching the whole fiasco with a rather displeased expression.
Then, three older men (or beasts...) came rushing over, unable to contain their jealousy.
“E-Emma! Let Papa have a bite too!”
“E-Emma! Let Unkie Arven have a bite too!”
“E-Emma! Let the king have a...”
Seeing the three old men gathered around Emma like moths to a flame was, to put it nicely, pretty gross.
“Quit with the yucky PDA already!” William’s protest echoed throughout the campground.
“Pfffft!” Arthur, who had finally recovered from laughing so hard, was back at it again.
Even with all of Joshua’s schemes, he couldn’t prevent the Fogey’s Fancy from having her usual effect on people.
✦ ✦ ✦
The next day, the field trip started for real.
“In other words, a characteristic trait of many monsters that appear in the Skyte region is their ability to use psychological attacks.” The teacher was explaining that even within the kingdom, the types of monsters that appeared varied by location.
“Did the roc we saw last night use psychological attacks, professor?” one student raised their hand and asked. With the king in attendance, the kids were a lot more serious about the lessons and listened attentively.
“No, rocs don’t really...show up all that often. This kingdom would be long gone if they did.” The Monster Studies professor glanced at the Stewart family, who were dutifully listening. He really wondered if there was anything he could even teach a family who was able to take down a roc in a single shot and cook it like it was nothing.
“Yeah... Flying monsters don’t tend to show up all that often...” Emma whispered with a sigh, remembering the taste of the roc curry and tandoori roc from the night before.
“Uh. Why do you sound so sad about that, sis? Do you realize how hard it would be to pin them all down if they were around en masse? The professor’s not kidding; it really would be the end of the kingdom.” William chided his sister as she puffed out her cheeks and carefully kept drawing whatever flying monsters she could remember. The way she was talking made it sound like she was hoping more would be around.
“Yeah, but...avian monsters are just so...” Emma trailed off, realizing that her mother would get angry at her for being unladylike if she kept talking...
“Soooo tasty...”
...but George picked up right where she left off without even thinking.
“That’s true. Avian monsters don’t tend to have much of a smell, so they’re pretty appetizing. Y’know, come to think of it, the monsters around here that do all those psychological attacks? They smell pretty awful and aren’t even tasty. The monsters around here are mostly pretty small and not exactly filling... I do remember some of the monsters around here made me really want noodles, though...” Leonard chimed in to agree with Emma and George’s opinion. As the lord of a region, he’d have a very rough time with it if there had been more flying monsters in his area, but he’d happily welcome them as food. The Monster Studies professor’s lesson about monsters that did psychological attacks reminded him that those types weren’t all that good either.
“Wait, you’ve eaten one that uses those kinds of attacks, father?” William asked, confused since there weren’t very many that appeared in Pallas.
“Hmm? Oh, yeah. Whenever school was on break for a long time, I’d have to pay the transportation fees to get back home, so I’d work and travel at the same time. If I took a carriage that drove along the borders and worked as their bodyguards, I could eat whatever monsters attacked us on the way. But I was still a growing boy, and that wasn’t enough for me, so I’d sneak out at night to catch more until I was full.” Leonard sighed wistfully, remembering how he used to pass through the Skyte region on many of those trips home. But while he was waxing nostalgic, everyone else was doubting their own ears over the poverty-laced, survivalist story that no noble would normally ever have experienced.
Did he really just say he sneaked out in the middle of the night to hunt monsters? Even though monsters prefer coming out at night, and a lot of them are more active at night? He did that on purpose? And if he’d met with one of those monsters that used psychological attacks, they’d intentionally intensify his fears. Even a grown adult would be terrified!
“Wow, you really were the survivalist of the Stewart family when we were poor! Did you travel home with him, Uncle Arven?” Emma asked her uncle who was looking over the paperwork for the Pallas region. He’d brought a tremendous amount of paperwork with him as a condition of participating in the field trip.
“Hmm? My travel fees and tolls were all included in my scholarship, so I just came home like normal. But it was about the same as it is now... I had to do a ton of paperwork even when I was on break. Having Lady Melsa stop by to help me out was always such a blessing...” Arven put his paperwork down, then placed his hand on William’s shoulder. After all, his nephew was about to meet the same fate as him.
“Eep!”
“Sorry, but there’s no escape, William.”
William had started trembling, but the truth was, he’d long been prepared for that inevitability. He’d only gotten a glimpse of the papers, but they were numbers as far as the eye could see. There was no way he could let his brother George handle that. It was the same reason Uncle Arven wouldn’t show Leonard his paperwork.