“If you considered just the single noodle, then maybe, but when you lift multiple at once, it picks up less than straight noodles. This is due to the capillary force of the liquid entering the small gaps between noodles. Curly noodles have too much separation between them, so their absorption power is much less!”
“Y-You know a lot about this...”
“It was written in this magazine!”
And so, Arcia proudly presented Ramen Kingdom to me with the exact same expression as Lu. They really were related.
“Now, father, please give it a try.”
“Sure...”
Arcia had such a bright smile on her face, but a second bowl of ramen would be tough. I could probably manage, but...
For now, I’d at least try the soup broth. It really did look like shio ramen.
“Oh...!”
Just one spoonful had a variety of flavors exploding in my mouth. The Dragon soup had a more refined taste, a more defined flavor, but this Wyvern broth wasn’t losing to it. It had a very lively flavor. I could see it starting to taste a little too strong if I had too much, though.
Next, I slurped the noodles.
I see. I do mind the flavor of the soup a lot less with the curly noodles. Or at least, I think I do.
The chashu was... It wasn’t Dragon meat.
“It’s wild boar.”
Wild boars were magic beasts that looked a lot like boars, as the name implied. They weren’t very dangerous—green-rank adventurers could take them down easily. It wasn’t the cheapest meat out there, but this amount likely wasn’t that expensive.
Oh, is this how they used the boar meat that Karina had an excess of?
I looked beside me and saw Karina and Uncle Kousuke enjoying their own bowls of ramen. Karina’s was chashu ramen with the meat arranged like a lid, while Uncle Kousuke was having tanmen stacked with vegetables. They looked delicious too...
“Wyverns may be cheaper than Dragons, but they’re still pretty expensive, no?”
They were a red-rank monster. One alone could destroy a whole small village.
“Right. We managed to cut down on overall costs, but it would still go for about a hundred gold coins per bowl.”
Even cheaper, it cost a million yen?! This would be just as impossible to serve to the common people...
“And that’s why we have this Swiftdrake ramen instead!”
Lu once more proudly slammed a bowl of ramen down onto the counter.
You’re kidding me, a third kind? I haven’t even finished the Wyvern ramen... Swiftdrakes are those creatures that look like Ornithomimus dinosaurs that people raise as a form of transport in the Sea of Trees, right?
“Despite their names, Swiftdrakes are not considered true Dragons—they’re even further branched off than Wyverns. Their bones contain a lot of mana, though, so very unique flavors are concentrated in them. Swiftdrakes are already raised as livestock that can be ridden in the Sea of Trees, so we can get them at a cheap price, making it a perfect substitute for ryukotsu ramen.”
I knew what she was trying to say, but in that case, she should’ve given me this to try first. I was already pretty full. But being watched with eyes twinkling with confidence, I couldn’t refuse her.
“Hm? What are these stands?”
“Lu-dono? Have you made something new again?”
The moment I heard those voices from behind me, I could tell that my saviors had arrived. I turned around, and there Yae, Yakumo, Hilde, and Frei were, wiping sweat off their brows with towels over their shoulders—did they just come back from training?
“Lu and Arcia are trying to make a new ramen flavor. They want to popularize it like this if they find a good one. Do you guys want to try some?”
“Ramen, you say? It is one of my favorite foods, it is!”
“Same here! I love ramen!”
Yae and Frei, our resident big eaters, easily took the bait. I not-so-subtly shoved the bowl of Swiftdrake ramen to Frei when she sat beside me.
“It looks delicious!”
Frei picked up the chopsticks without hesitation and dug in, slurping up the noodles with gusto.
“And it is! I’ve never had this kind of ramen before, but it’s amazing!”
With a massive smile on her face, Frei continued chowing down. The same was placed in front of Yae, who sat beside her, and she also began to eat.
“Hm?! This is indeed different from any ramen I have had before, this is! The broth is especially delicious!”
Yae continued eating with the same vigor as Frei. They seemed to like it, but these two would say anything was delicious... It wasn’t that they had no sense of taste, but their standards for what was bad were pretty much on the ground. They would never say it was bad unless it was really disgusting, and they weren’t very picky eaters either.
Hilde and Yakumo, who had sat themselves down at the stall next to ours, were also happily eating away. This ramen seemed fine, in that case. Not that I could vouch for it myself.
When I glanced at Yakumo, it looked like she was enjoying her meal, but her head was also tilted slightly.
“What’s up, Yakumo? Something wrong?”
“Oh, no, it’s nothing big. I was just thinking that the broth tastes so nice that the flavor of the noodles is almost too subtle.”
Yakumo’s honest critique left Lu and Arcia in shock.
“The noodles don’t have the strength to take the flavor of the Swiftdrake broth!”
“The balance with the noodles...! I was so focused on the taste of the soup that I neglected something so basic!”
I gave the Wyvern ramen another taste. The soup was delicious, but right enough, the noodles felt like they were losing to the taste of the soup. In this case, it barely mattered what noodles you used. I understood Yakumo’s criticism.