A satisfying sizzle rang out as the indescribably delectable aroma of meat wafted through the extravagant kitchen I’d found myself in. I was holding my trusty frying pan over a burner, cooking up a hefty chunk of red dragon meat.
I hadn’t seen any way I could simply say goodbye and make tracks after Fel and Gon had spilled the beans about our dragon meat dinner, unfortunately. That would’ve been excruciatingly awkward. I mean, imagine if a guest told you that they were about to go home and have a dinner that was way fancier than anything you’d ever eaten, all on their own! I was so uncomfortable with that thought that in the end, I’d decided to offer to cook some dragon meat for the earl’s family and Willem as well.
Fel and Gon, of course, had started complaining about how we shouldn’t be sharing our food with them and how we only had so much dragon meat in stock, but they were the ones who’d gone and run their mouths in the first place, so they’d just have to deal. I had borrowed the kitchen in the earl’s estate, which was where I was currently working.
I heard a very loud gulp from somewhere off to the side. Yeah, fair enough. It sure smells good, all right...but do all of you really need to stand around and watch me cook?
I was literally only cooking steaks in a frying pan, but every single one of the earl’s cooks had elected to stick around and watch me do my thing. It was making it a little hard to cook like I usually would, honestly, but on the other hand, I had essentially invaded their kitchen. I wouldn’t have been happy if some rando barged into my workplace and started using my tools.
Anyway, to start things off, I cooked up a huge quantity of red dragon meat. I still had a little earth dragon meat in stock as well, but my red dragon reserves were much more plentiful, so it seemed like the safer option this time. That’s “much more plentiful” on a relative scale, of course. Dragons that we could hunt were few and far between, so it was really precious meat, no matter how much I had left. The moment one of the ultra-valuable steaks was cooked to my liking, I stored it in my Item Box so it’d stay nice and hot, then slapped another piece down to cook without missing a beat. I cooked steak after steak after steak...
“All right! That should hopefully be enough to last,” I finally said before asking one of the maids to serve Earl Langridge’s family and Willem their portions. I’d plated everything up onto flatware that I’d borrowed from the earl’s supply, and seasoned their helpings with a very simple mix of salt and pepper. It was best to let the natural flavor of the meat take center stage when you served something this fancy, in my book.
My familiars, on the other hand, would be getting dragon steak bowls, just as promised. I pulled out an earthenware pot full of freshly cooked rice and filled up everyone’s personal bowls with it, then topped the rice with enough slices of dragon steak to completely conceal the grains. Finally, I dressed the meat with a bit of steak sauce that I’d transferred from its supermarket container into a simple sauce pot earlier. I was using a soy-based, garlic-flavored variety of sauce this time, which I knew for a fact that my familiars all loved.
Putting the sauce in another container was definitely the right call, I thought to myself. I’d made that decision the moment it became clear I’d be cooking at the earl’s house. I couldn’t exactly bring out a very modern steak sauce bottle in front of all his cooks, after all.
“Okay. Time for me to head over as well.”