Bram and the rest of the higher-ups apparently wanted the leviathan’s skin to be removed in pieces that were as big as possible. That meant that a large number of butchers would have to work together in tandem to pull the task off. Doing the whole monster in one piece just wasn’t feasible, given its size, so Elrand started by walking along its length, slicing it into pieces with my magic sword. Clusters of butchers would then gather around each chunk and start working to remove its skin, which they did with astonishing speed and efficiency. I could really tell that they were all seasoned veterans of their craft.
Watching the leviathan’s enormous form be gradually skinned was a pretty breathtaking spectacle. I wasn’t the only one fixated on it either—Fel was lying nearby, watching with his eyes wide and his breath bated as the monster’s white flesh was exposed.
“Today, at long last, we shall feast on leviathan,” Fel said, his tail wagging furiously.
《Sui’s really excited too!》 the slime chimed in with a happy little bounce.
I hope you guys are right. I would’ve hated to disappoint them after they got this excited. I’ll have to think up a good meal plan in advance.
The work carried on in much the same manner until finally, it was called to a close for the day. They hadn’t been able to remove all of the leviathan’s skin in the end, but several of the sections it had been cut up into had been fully skinned, leaving their glossy, whitish flesh fully revealed.
“Good. We shall claim the pieces that have been skinned,” Fel declared. “Tonight, we dine on leviathan! At long, long last, its meat is ours!”
Fel was, to say the least, very eager for dinner. He was literally drooling in anticipation.
《Yaaay! Leviathan meat!》 Sui squealed in a singsong tone as well. Its expectations were sky-high too.
Just then, Gon and Dora-chan returned from their overhead vigil.
“Oh? I see the meat is finally ready for us to consume!” Gon said.
《Woo-hoo! Friggin’ finally! Feels like we’ve been waiting for years!》 Dora-chan chimed in.
“Well? Hurry and collect the meat. We shall return home at once,” Fel said as he prodded my back with his nose.
“Okay, okay! You don’t have to push me, sheesh,” I replied. However, before we could do that, I figured that I should check in with Elrand first. “Hey, Elrand? Are those pieces of meat ready for us to take home yet?”
Elrand gave me a genuinely horrified, wide-eyed stare. “No! Absolutely not!” he shouted in such an openly menacing tone, I was actually taken aback.
“What?” Fel said in a low growl, his snout wrinkling as he bared his teeth slightly.
“What could there be to explain? The butchering process isn’t finished yet!” Elrand replied. He hadn’t even flinched in the face of Fel’s intimidating aura.
“Not finished? Its meat has been bared. What else could there be to accomplish?”
“How could you possibly not know?! Its bones! It’s still full of bones, isn’t it?!”
Oooh, right. He actually does have a point. They hadn’t deboned the monster at all, and it was pretty easy to guess that those bones would be just as valuable as the rest of its anatomy. Fel kept insisting that the meat had to be ready for cooking now that it was exposed, but I had to admit that Elrand’s explanation made a lot of sense.
“Th-The bones are no obstacle. He can simply prepare the meat bone-in style. That is an option, is it not?”
Oh, come on, Fel! Did you really have to pull me into this?
“M-M-M-Mukohda!” Elrand exclaimed, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me wildly. “Y-You aren’t about to tell me that you actually plan to cook the leviathan, bones and all, are you?!”
“Whoa, whoa, hold your horses! Calm down, Elrand, please!” I shouted back. “I guess I technically could cook it that way if I wanted to, but I never said a word about that being my plan!”
“You could?! How could you even say that?!”
N-Nope, it’s no use. He’s worked himself into a total frenzy.
“Listen to me, Mukohda! As I told you before, even a single drop of a leviathan’s blood or a single fragment of one of its bones would sell for a tremendous price! They’re unbelievably high-quality materials! Why would you even entertain the possibility of throwing its bones on a grill?! Those are valuable even by leviathan material standards! They can be made into arms or medicine!”
Supposedly, leviathan bones could be crafted into swords, spears, or even bludgeoning weapons. They could also be ground into a powder, which turned them into a potent ingredient for medicines of all sorts. They were a material that any craftsperson would want to get their hands on, and Elrand spent nearly an hour lecturing me about how completely absurd it was to even consider using them as part of a meal.
My familiars tried to quietly excuse themselves a short way into his tirade, but for once, they weren’t so lucky. “Where do you think you’re going?! You four need to hear this as much as he does!” Elrand had barked, and just like that, they were in for the long haul right along with me. Serves you right, Fel.
When Elrand finally wrapped his speech up, all of us scurried away without wasting a moment.
“Grr... How dare that elf preach to a mighty fenrir,” Fel bitterly grumbled.
“That was altogether unpleasant, yes,” Gon tiredly agreed.
《Yeah, and why did I get dragged into it?》 Dora-chan weakly griped.
《Masteeer, Sui’s huuungryyy,》 Sui chimed in. One of us was behaving more or less the same as ever, at least.
Ugggh, I’m beat. Man, though, who knew that Elrand had it in him to lecture a fenrir and an ancient dragon like it was nothing when he was mad? Guess he’s a guy you should never underestimate.
✦ ✦ ✦
The day after Elrand had taught us that painful lesson on the value of leviathan bones, the guild’s butchers continued to work on removing the leviathan’s skin. It was a momentous task, and it ended up spilling over into the day after that as well, once again putting my familiars’ long-awaited leviathan meat meal on hold. Fel, Gon, Dora-chan, and Sui’s spirits could hardly have been lower.
Fel was particularly surly. He had a perpetual scowl on his face, and when I offered to cook whatever he wanted to make up for the delay, he replied with the single grunted word “Karaage.”
That was a favorite for all of my familiars, so I went ahead and whipped up a batch that evening for dinner. The one problem: Everyone was still deeply upset about not getting to eat the leviathan, and they seemed to take their frustration out on the meal. They ate, and ate, and ate, quicker than I could even fry the stuff, and I ended up running out of poultry equivalents to make more with before they were finished. I was forced to dip into my dungeon pork and beef reserves to cook up cutlets for them instead, and by the end of the meal, I was as exhausted as I’d ever been.
The day after, the skinning process finally came to an end and the deboning process began. They didn’t get all that far, relatively speaking, but they did manage to remove all the bones from one section of the monster, which meant that its meat was finally ready to be handed over to us, for real this time. The fact that my familiars had made it very clear that they wanted to eat the stuff as soon as possible had probably been a pretty big motivating factor—Fel and Gon all but menaced the butchers, really—and the guild’s staff had somehow managed to grant that wish in the end.
And so, four days after the leviathan’s butchering began, we’d finally secured a portion of leviathan meat, albeit a relatively small one. Unfortunately—and to be clear, I had seen this coming a mile away—the second the meat was in my hands, my familiars started kicking up a fuss, urging me to head home right away. I’d been planning on taking a moment to talk to Elrand and Johan before I left, but Fel grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and threw me onto his back before I even had the chance to try. Sui was already sitting in my bag, perhaps to ensure it would be ready to go at a moment’s notice, while Gon and Dora-chan said that they’d go on ahead and had already headed back to the capital even earlier than the rest of us.
That was how I ended up clinging to Fel’s back as he raced through the streets of the capital so quickly, you’d think there wasn’t a moment to spare. I told him to stop, but he ignored me, so instead I tried shouting, “Slow down, or so help me, I won’t cook any of the leviathan meat tonight!” out of desperation. That got him to lower his pace, at least, but he still took me straight to the house we were renting in the capital anyway, now grumbling all the while. The instant I stepped inside, I was herded straight into the kitchen without even a moment to rest.