Almost immediately after I got to work making poisoned meals, I had to stop so that I could walk to the entrance of my farm to show in the crowd of people that had gathered there.
“Thanks for coming,” I greeted them.
“Omigosh! Yoo-hoo, Bear Bear!”
“You are as cute as ever, Miss Tree Nymph.”
“Wow, you’ve got so many food ingredients! This place is wonderful!”
They’re not even listening to me!
“Aha ha ha. Sorry, Yuto. Everyone’s just really excited...”
“Jeez, Sawyer, you’re the only one paying attention to me!”
The players who had arrived were the crafters joining in on the raid boss fight.
At first, I had only contacted Fuka to ask for cooking advice. Ashihana had happened to be with her and insisted she come along too since she wanted to show something cool to Bear Bear. I seemed to remember she had already been coming to my farm every day to see Bear Bear, though.
Sawyer had called me to thank me for inviting him to the raid, so I had ended up inviting him to come to my farm as well. As for Sukegawa, well, I just felt bad leaving him out, so I went ahead and invited him over too.
All these individualistic crafters gathered together meant everyone was doing whatever they wanted. If Sawyer weren’t here, they’d be even more chaotic.
“Anyway, you mentioned you’re making items for the raid?” Sawyer asked.
“Right, I did. Here’s the thing...”
I told the group about the broken trap I’d found and what I had learned about adding poison to cooked meals.
“Interesting. That definitely sounds like useful info for fighting the boss.”
“I thought so too. So, my thought was to make a poisoned meal and bait to lure the boss to the trap.”
“So that’s why you called me! Let me show you what I can do!” Fuka exclaimed.
With her cooking talents, Fuka would be able to whip up a tasty dish. Sawyer could help make the poison, so together, I was sure we could make something effective.
“I’ll devise a container for it,” Ashihana said.
“A container?”
“Yeah. There are plates that have an effect that can draw an enemy’s attention.”
“Great idea! I didn’t think of that!”
I had once used my Engraving skill to make a plate that diffused a meal’s scent around the area. Something like that could very well be useful in this fight. That thought hadn’t crossed my mind until now.
I took out the plate I had inscribed using Engraving (Wind) and showed it to Ashihana. She started examining it with keen interest.
“Ooh, this could work too.”
“Is this not what you were thinking of? Then, what was your idea?”
“This is definitely a good option too, but I was thinking of making something more like this.”
Ashihana pulled out what looked like an ordinary plate. The surface was free of any designs and engravings. It just looked like your standard, simple, easy-to-use plate. But when I appraised it, I saw it wasn’t just any old plate at all.
“It has a lure effect?”
“Yup. If you put food in this dish and place it in the playing field, it’ll attract monsters that like that food.”
“That’s a pretty interesting effect.”
“Yeah, but it’s not super practical.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it doesn’t always work.”
Unlike incense, the plate didn’t always successfully lure monsters to the meal. At best, it had a slight possibility of luring monsters who were in the area if they liked the food that was being offered. And sometimes it was so effective that it would lure too many monsters, and then you’d have to fight a larger group than expected. As a substitute for incense, it wasn’t the most practical choice. Not only that, but adding poison to the meals reduced the lure effect, so there was no guarantee that it would work for our purposes.
“Changing up the materials and paint will give us a different effect too. And if we make plates with a monster-luring effect and then engrave the character for wind on them, I think we can get some interesting results.”
“I hear you.”
“If I make a bunch of plates, can you handle the engraving?”
“Sure thing.”
Now the only one left was Sukegawa...
“What should I do?” he asked.
“Hmm...”
“Huh? Silver-Haired?”
“Um, give me a sec.”
“What?”
I had invited him here on a whim, but I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t have a job for him. Think, Yuto! Think!
“I-I know! Sukegawa, maybe you can make plates with Ashihana! I’m sure metal plates and wooden plates will give us different results!”
“Uh...but I’ve never really made plates before.”
No dice! After giving it some more thought, I decided to take the now bummed-out Sukegawa away from my farm. We made our way quickly through the Great Wilderness until we arrived at the entrance of the Beast Hybrid Village.
“Whoa, so this is the hidden village! Awesome! Look at all the cute beast-girls!”
I was glad Sukegawa liked the village, but I didn’t bring him here to charm him with the locals.
“This way, Sukegawa.”
“Is this the blacksmith you were talking about?”
I had brought Sukegawa to Yadan’s workshop. I called out to let him know we were here, and we walked in to find him in the middle of working.
“Oh? What brings ya back here, traveler?”
“I came to bring my friend here, actually. He’s a blacksmith who’s going to help fight the boss, so I thought he could take a look at the trap.”
“Is that right? Come on, then. It’s over here.”
“Th-Thanks very much!”
Sukegawa bowed deeply and then followed Yadan. He looked pretty nervous around the stern-faced older man. Was this a side effect of being so girl-crazy? But once the two of them were in front of the trap and talking, it didn’t take long for Sukegawa to loosen up. The two got into the nitty gritty details of their craft, to the point that I couldn’t follow what they were saying at all. They totally clicked in just three minutes of conversation.
“Ga ha ha! Boy, yer a hoot! And ya know yer stuff! I like ya!”
“Th-Thanks!”
“I’ll teach ya how to make traps so long as you give me a hand here. Whaddya say?”
“Huh? Uh...”
Sukegawa glanced over at me, so I nodded, giving him my go-ahead. And just like that, Sukegawa would stay here to help Yadan in his workshop while learning all about traps in exchange.
“Silver-Haired.”
“Yeah?”
“Can your tree nymph stay as my assistant-slash-cheerleader—”
“Well, I’m off. Good luck.”
A few hours after I had foisted Sukegawa onto—I mean, left Sukegawa to learn all about traps from—Yadan, the rest of us managed to finish up making a successful poisoned meal.
“Finally, we made odorless poisoned dishes.”
“We did it!” Sawyer cheered.
“That took forever,” Fuka sighed.
While Sawyer and Fuka were celebrating our success, Reflet had long left the premises. Not because she couldn’t bear watching us waste food, but because she had to. At a certain point, we had shifted to adding the poison in during the middle of the cooking process, but that had caused the poison to evaporate and permeate in the air as we were simmering and grilling the food.
The process had successfully lessened the smell of the poison by a great deal, but the poison was so pervasive in the room that we were continually being affected by it. The three of us almost died because of that. If Sawyer hadn’t provided us with equipment that acted as gas masks, we wouldn’t have been able to continue cooking. Monsters couldn’t equip the gas masks, so Reflet had no choice but to leave. The rest of us, decked out in translucent gas masks that covered our faces as we cooked the poisonous food, must have looked like we were working in some evil laboratory.