“Hey, Akari. Have you taken a look at all the fish delivery requests yet?”
“No, I haven’t. Did you notice something weird?”
“Yeah. The part where it lists the fish we need to deliver, it says Begini Goby, Begini Sea Bass, and Begini Black Porgy.”
All the names of the fish that we had caught in the pond started with “Cave.” But not these three.
“I’ve never heard of those fish.”
“Me neither.”
I had done what I would call a good amount of fishing in this game, and Akari was a bona fide item collector. We should have caught all the fish that had been discovered thus far. If neither of us had heard of these fish, then there was a good chance they were completely new.
Something else about these names had stood out to Akari. “You know, aren’t goby, sea bass, and black porgies all fish that live in brackish waters?”
“Brackish water? Isn’t that where a river meets the sea?”
“Yes. I’m pretty sure those three are fish that can be caught in brackish waters.”
Akari explained that she knew a bit about fish because one of her family members fished as a hobby.
“If we consider the fact that there may be some requests left over from when people could access the other side of the cave, then...”
I finished Akari’s thought. “Then the cave must lead out to brackish waters, which means there’s a sea over there?”
“There has to be! And I’m sure we’ll find many new ingredients and items there!”
The sea, huh? I had experienced the sea on the event island, but not yet in the main game. If there really was a sea over there, then there’d be plenty of food ingredients and other new things to discover. And new monsters too. Man, the possibilities were endless!
“We have to defeat that raid boss, Yuto!”
“Yeah. We can do it. And we need to get this trap fixed so we can use it against it.”
“Right!”
Feeling some renewed motivation, we picked up the pace and sped to our destination. Yadan’s house was in an isolated spot a short distance away from the other houses in the village. Once we saw the detached house with a barn, we knew we were in the right place.
“Is anyone home?” I called out.
“Yeah! Come on in, the door’s open!”
Yadan was a pretty trusting person. He didn’t even come out to check who we were.
As he instructed, we walked inside the house, where we saw an older bear-human hybrid grilling fish while having a drink. It was weird to see a man with such clearly Western facial features skillfully using chopsticks. But now that I thought about it, I had never paid much attention to how NPCs ate food. The developers of this game were Japanese, so I guess this wasn’t that odd.
“Hrm? Who might you be?”
“Hello, sir. I’m Yuto, and this is Akari. We’re travelers who recently arrived in this village.”
“Oh! You’re the travelers! Welcome, welcome. We’re happy to have ya here! Oh, and drop that formal stuff. We’re equals here, y’hear?”
A lot of people in this village seemed to dislike overly polite speech. Behind this man’s foreboding appearance, he was actually an incredibly friendly guy. He grinned and offered me a drink and Akari a cup of tea.
“So, what can I do ya for? What brings ya out all the way out here?”
“Well, we found a trap sunken at the bottom of the pond.”
“Didja now? Can you show me?”
“Sure.”
As asked, I took the broken trap out of my inventory and showed it to Yadan.
“Yep, there’s no mistakin’ it. This is my trap. That blockhead Pollick dropped the darn thing.”
“We’re planning on fighting the boss in the cave, and we’d like to use this trap when we do.”
“Are you now! Imagine that!”
Yadan had no more use for the trap, so he was more than willing to let us use it. And he’d be able to fix it for us too.
“Let’s see here, I think I should be able to get it back in workin’ order by tomorrow afternoon.”
“That’s great!”
“But you’ll hafta give me somethin’ in return.”
“Money?”
Money was no problem for me! But of course, I should have known better than to expect such an easy deal in this game.
“No, I don’t need yer money.”
“Oh, of course.”
“What I want is to chow down on some tasty fish. Bring me three fish dishes. If I like ’em, I’ll give ya the trap.”
Perfect. This was just the sort of request I was capable of fulfilling! In fact, I could fulfill it right that second. From my inventory, I took out my highest quality cooked seafood dishes and placed them down in front of Yadan. They were meals intended for Reflet, but I had enough to share. Akari looked a little crestfallen. I guess she’d been excited about the thought of cooking the dishes. Sorry, but it’s much faster this way.
“These look great! Are they for me?”
“Yeah, dig in.”
“Don’t mind if I do!” Yadan said before taking a bite. “Holy smokes, this tastes great! This stuff’s amazing!”
It sounded like the meals were a hit. Yadan polished off all the meals in only three minutes, never once taking a break to put down his chopsticks. His appetite was truly something to witness.
“Ga ha ha! I’m stuffed! I can’t remember the last time I ate fish this good. I think I might just be able to rig up an even better trap than before!”
Did the quality of the meals not only impact whether or not he would agree to lend us the trap, but also the quality of the trap itself? If so, then I was really glad I had given him my highest-quality dishes.
Yadan continued to sing his praises for my food. “I’d bet even that big brute in the cave would wanna sink its teeth into somethin’ like those meals!”
“Big brute? Are you talking about the lion?”
“You got it. We tried all sorts of things to distract that beast. What we found out was, it likes fish more than meat. And it likes cooked fish over raw.”
“So it prefers cooked meals over just the fish itself, huh?”
“That’s right. Oh, and we think it’s resistant to poison, since poisoned food did nothin’ to it. Though if you can make a delicious seafood meal with poison strong enough to overcome its resistance, ya might get some interestin’ results.”
This was obviously crucial information that would help us in the boss fight to come. We had better keep asking around the village to see what else we could find out.
I looked over at Akari, and she looked back at me and nodded. We were both thinking the same thing.
“All right, we’ll be back tomorrow,” I told Yadan.
“Sure thing! I won’t let ya down!”