DAY 120
AFTERNOON
Picnics are the hot new thing—wait, I thought we already had a picnic chapter?!
THE PLAINS IN THE FRONTIER
I SET OFF FOR A PICNIC with the orphan squadron in tow. We gave each of them a souvenir Talisman Flower Crown, and the orphans insisted on returning the favor by making flower crowns for us. Then there was nothing for it but to troop out into the wild. This threw a wrench into my plan—dungeons would have to wait. Flower crown making with faux-flower-crown-wearing orphans was in. Yeah, we were having a picnic?
“Awwwwww! You’re so cute!”
“Oof!”
“Wagh!”
The orphans descended on the twins for a round of furious petting. The twins burst into tears. Are you being bullied? Wait, no—you’re just overwhelmed with feels.
“There, there. No one discriminated against you for being beastfolk back in the capital either, right?”
“Yes, but we…we still feel like we stood out.”
“Oh, not in a bad way!”
“Yeah! It’s because you two are gorgeous. People were too self-conscious to say hi!”
“Not to mention, you both looked pretty freaked out—probably ’cause this was your first time in a city of so many people.”
“Yeah. Your nerves rubbed off on everyone else.”
But people didn’t stand on ceremony here in the frontier. People struck up conversations at the slightest provocation; people trotted up to you with smiles day in and day out. The orphans snuggled up to and petted the twins in genuine delight—here were people who looked just like their kitty- and puppy-ear pajamas! Animal-ear onesies were all the rage when we’d left the frontier, so it was no small wonder that real-life, super pretty animal girls became instant celebrities.
The twins cried when they were happy. The twins cried when people called them cute. The twins cried when people were nice to them. So, when the orphans took turns petting them and ruffling their hair, three guesses what the twins did. In the Kingdom, beastfolk discrimination was dead, and on the frontier, everyone had hopped on the beastfolk bandwagon. You know what that means—animal-ear goods will sell like hotcakes!
“Hey, so…you guys are really heavy? Do we really gotta try to flatten me into a pancake under Mt. Orphan every single day? I can’t move? Kids, I can barely walk, let alone fling myself out of the way of your high-powered child missile launcher maneuvers.”
The whole not-moving thing was why I’d wanted to come back to the frontier, but I’d wanted to fix the situation, not be weighed down by a heavy mass of orphans!
“That was not an open invitation to pile on, No Longer Tiny Tanuki! Ouch—stop biting me! Isn’t that tantamount to admitting I’m right? Where’d your words go? Why is biting always the answer? This is wild animal behavior, and I won’t have it. Back to the wilds you go! Go on, shoo! Into the woods without delay—ouch!”
Chomp, chomp, chomp!
Forget flower crowns, I need anti-tanuki equipment… How did people get ’em out of gardens again? Hot pepper powder? Yeah, that’d work—a Red Cap(saicin). A piece of headgear so explosive it’d strip the hair right off my head!
“How about this spot? It’s got pretty flowers, and the forest is right nearby. That means I can stock up on spellstones and get rich! Money can’t buy happiness, but it can get me pretty darn close since money can buy the frontier’s prosperity and food from the Beastfolk Kingdom. I’m glad I went and set up that trade agreement. I’m also glad I went to the Theocracy and set up an agreement to see pretty girls in tight uniforms. And I got to beat up an old guy! Win-win! But he didn’t turn into a spellstone afterward. Even dead, old men are useless. Anyway, who wants barbecue?”
“Me! I do! Barbecue, barbecue, bar-be-cue!” Ba-da-dump, ba-da-dump, dump, dump, dump!
The earth shook under the rhythmic stomping of the girls. Ladies, please! Wait like civilized people.
“You don’t want to set a bad example for the orphans.”
The girls stamped their feet in time to their song in a terrifying, to say nothing of loud, display of gluttony. The idiots joined in, banging their swords and shields together in a horrible din. This calls for drastic measures. I pulled out my new, Sorcery-powered, highspeed barbecue skewer rocket launcher and let ’er rip! Magic cocooned around each skewer of meat, hyperaccelerating it until they all shot forward with the speed of bullets and…nearly killed my classmates?
“Watch where you’re aiming those things! You could’ve poked an eye out!”
A shame the idiots’ animal instincts caused them to leap out of the way in the nick of time. The meatheads dropped their shields the moment I launched the protein projectiles—I guess they realized these were armor-piercing meat skewers.
“This kebab put a hole in my shield!”
“Jeez! I’ve got friggin’ goosebumps.”
“Uh-oh, not a goosebump outbreak! There’s only one thing to do with gooseflesh—cook it, bake it, fry it to smithereens! Yum, roast goose! And on another note, you all need to calm down. I mean it! Smashing your swords and shields together is just bad manners. The orphans will pick up these bad habits! Your idiocy will spread! And wait a second—I thought you were going to go see your girlfriends? Why do you only come back for meal times?!”
The nerds, on the other hand, had gone to the duke’s palace. Not to turn themselves in (alas), but to present some agricultural development proposal something-something. They’d unlocked the secrets of making organic compost and were now set on implementing the Norfolk four-course crop rotation system.
No matter how often I oh-so patiently explained that we didn’t need the full Norfolk method with so many varieties of fertilizer at our disposal, the nerds refused to listen to reason. They believed in one thing and one thing only: Every isekai kingdom-builder must have the Norfolk four-course farming method. Fertilizer, they said, was an open invitation for growing wheat. It was the rules, people.
“Bro, we’re not gonna pass up free barbecue.”
“Yeah. We’re going dungeon diving later. Gotta load up on barbecue first.”
“Is it ready yet?”
“Go, boys! Get that meat! How come he lets the girls go first? I’m gonna tattle, Haruka!”
“Can I take some to go for my girlfri—waagh!”
Bah! They dodged the surprise shower of fire bullets too. Breathe deeply; breathe silently; be calm and cool. Let the only heat be the burning passion in my soul. My breath sent qi coursing through my meridians, twining with my blood to engulf me in magic.
“Mwa ha ha. You dare, dare ask this forsaken, forever-alone soul if he will prepare a doggy bag—a doggy bag!—for your girlfriend? You demand I cook for your love interest? Oh, I’ll cook all right. And you’ll be the menu! You’re cooked! You’re all cooked! Five well-done idiots, coming right up! Go, ambient magi; go, wild magic; go, O tremulous heart! I summon thee, O ultimate spell: If Thou Be an Airhead, Go in the Oven to Bake! Fly, mine magic, fly; eviscerate yonder oaf—bllllrrgh!”
“Careful, Haruka-kun! What if something happened to the orphans? Or worse, the barbecue?! We’ve told you a million times: no evisceration!”
Huh? Why were the girls mad at me? Hey, ow—what was that for?! Why’d they hit me? Oh, girls… They’d just never understand the uniquely masculine grief known as that feeling when no gf.
“What’s wrong with a little evisceration? That’s just how the world works: some guys get hot sexy barbecue dungeon times with their girlfriends, and loners get to light them on fire. Besides, their meat was getting cold. I was just…helping reheat it. Everyone knows you need to stab an idiot and light him on fire, or he won’t actually die.”
“Or…you could skip lighting us on fire and make our darn food!”
Wiggle wiggle!
Wow, tough crowd. All they wanted was their barbecue. Which was weird, ’cause it wasn’t like barbecue was anything fancy. It’s just grilled meat. You didn’t need magic or Skills or nothin’. But no one tested their culinary chops on chunks of charcuterie, not even Cooking Club Girl. Everyone knew meat tasted better when grilled by hand—that was, my hand.
“Fresh hot barbecue, right off the grill. Eat ’em up, eat ’em up. You’ll never grow up big and tall if you don’t eat your fill, and some of you have some serious growing to do. Big cups to fill and all tha—oouuugah! Vice Rep A, please! I know you can oct-wield swords, but stabbing me with eight skewers at once is a little much! And you’ve got the wrong idea. I wasn’t alluding to your lacking cup size, I was merely…discussing the geographical difference between flatlands and mountain ranges. Yes. That’s all i—yeeargh! Watch where you’re waving those things!”
Eight metal barbecue skewers were not, technically speaking, the most threatening objects in the world. But when Vice Rep A got ahold of them? Yowch. She left eight afterimages seared into my retinas; the eight bits of meat-laden metal moved with a single deadly purpose. Her accuracy was off the charts. I zigged. I zagged. I darted, feinting and lunging that would’ve made a master fencer proud. If I wasn’t careful, I’d end up as the next piece of the kebab!