Having safely reunited with Mister Donkey, we were going to spend the night in Wulds. I was a little worried that this small town wouldn’t have an inn, but to my surprise, we were invited to stay in the mayor’s manor. The VIP treatment.
With food and booze, it was a party. He had even brought out the pretty ladies to serve us. Which was definitely unnecessary. I had a fiancée, and the very lady was sitting next to me. Under the guise of her human shell, she was a dragon. If I dared cheat on her, she could very well eat me raw. Head first. Crunch crunch. Without even any seasonings.
In any case, the safe bet was to redirect that kind of service to Ruey. I stuck to conversing with Mister Dolitos.
“I must confess, I don’t know how to act in such an extravagant welcome, Mister Dolitos.”
“Please, Sir Eiji. You’ve already refused a reward. At least let us do this much, for our sake.”
That being said, I wasn’t going to rob this not-so-affluent town of any money. Especially when the battle earlier had caused some damage. There were no deaths, but fixing up fences, buildings, and farms could be pricey. No one in his position should be handing off a small fortune to some adventurers who dropped by.
“I appreciate the offer, but please mind your own time. Winter is fast approaching, and you can’t have enough food stocked.”
If he gave us too much food, they might struggle to make it through winter. In fact, no rice was served to us. As a town by a forest, I imagined that they hunted for their food a lot. With lots of meat on the table, their main source of food was rye bread. Dry, crumbling rye bread. Like the ones we packed on our travels. When that sort of thing is served, I couldn’t help but think that they didn’t yield much rice that year.
“Actually, we don’t grow rice in Wulds,” Mister Dolitos smiled, having picked up something from my expression.
That was surprising. This was our first meeting with non-rice-eaters.
“I see. Everyone I’ve met on my journey ate rice, so I assumed that was the norm.”
“We buy rice from traveling merchants when they bring it, but they’re not on a schedule. We stick to these.”
Tearing off a piece of the rye bread with his teeth, he washed it down with a wine-like liquor. Good thing he had healthy teeth and jaw.
“Is there a reason why you don’t grow rice? I think it’s a very efficient crop.”
“We don’t get much water. Our wells are enough for us to get by, but not nearly enough to manage rice fields.”
“Really?”
I raised my brow, but also understood. There had been several rivers and springs in the forest we passed through. It must have been my modern mind that gave me the idea of digging a canal from one of those water sources. That would be a major project. Not something they could start at the drop of the hat, and they would need some knowledge of hydrological engineering.
“So that’s why you grow rye?”
“Before my time, we used to grow wheat, but rye grows in worse soil, at the end of the day.”
With a nod, I glanced at Tiamat to request an explanation. I didn’t know the difference between growing rye and wheat.
“Both rye and wheat are harvested from the same field. Since it was similar to wheat, the rye plants were left untrimmed. Then, the ones most similar to wheat continued to survive. Over dozens of generations, rye evolved to become similar to wheat.”
And, since rye plants were weeds to begin with, they can apparently grow in soil too weak to grow wheat in. Rye was amazing! Talk about an underdog.
“Long ago, when the entire world was burned to ash by the Demon Lord, our hero gave us rice. However, when our ancestors were lost, having discovered that our land was unfit for growing rice, they found a grain sprouting in the burnt field. Rye.”
I hadn’t heard of this tale before. So that was the background for my brother-in-law popularizing rice. He didn’t just bring over Kirara 397 for his personal preference. Now, co-ed bathing was definitely introduced only for his personal interest. He was a teenage boy, after all.
“Now it makes sense. Your fighters are healthy because you don’t constantly eat rice.”
With that, I told him of the beriberi epidemic in Azur. Not to scare him, but to basically illustrate that everything should be had in moderation.
“Mm. Brumotactillophobia is bad for you.”
Tiamat jumped in for the assist. But what was with the technical language? Mister Dolitos was staring back at us blankly. I tried to rephrase it, but I couldn’t come up with an alternative. This was the fear of one’s food touching another kind of food. Eating one dish at a time at a meal is considered rude in Japan, and it really didn’t improve one’s health either.
“AKA being an isolationist.”
“Right. If you knew the layman’s term, I wish you would have opened with it.”
“But did you know the layman’s term?”
“Touché.”
I’d never heard of the non-technical term.
“In any case, overeating is not healthy. I see,” Mister Dolitos laughed after watching our comedy routine. We are the beloved Hermits. Damn it.
Wulds was a small town, but they had a jail. Of course they did, I should say. Any settlement needs a facility to keep criminals captive. This world wasn’t so la-la to say that there were no criminals in a small town.
A shadow approached said jail. It was the dead of night after the sun had completely set. The figure was in all-black, hiding their face with a mask. Noticing the figure, the goblin leader approached the bars of his cell. A rescue, he must have thought.
Just as he was about to cry in glee, the figure in black stopped him by holding up a single finger of his left hand in front of his face. Catching the drift, the goblin covered his mouth with his hands. The next moment, the figure’s right hand seemed to blur. With the goblin’s hands still where the mouth used to be, his head fell to the floor of the jail cell with a ludicrously light note.
With a glance at the pitiful goblin, the figure in black turned to leave... and froze, as they locked eyes with me, who had been watching this event unfold. This fly on the wall was found out.
The figure acted quickly. They sprinted without a word, a charred dagger flashing in their hand. The weapon they just used to kill the goblin. The figure charged me, trying to kill me, too. We were just a few steps apart. I had no way to dodge the attack.
Still, the attacker’s blade never reached me. After a whish, the figure in black backflipped. More accurately, Tiamat’s tail slammed into their face straight-on, flipping the figure and dropping them on the ground headfirst.
The nightscape shifted as the rest of my party emerged. Ruey rushed over and tied the figure behind their back after making sure that they hadn’t been killed.
“Came to tie up loose ends. Rather thorough of them,” Hieronymus chuckled, his mustaches dancing.
It was a simple trick when it came down to it. We had been concealing ourselves with his spell. Invisibility, he called it. We went through the trouble because the goblin we had captured was too unyielding. He gave up no information and didn’t fold to any of Baze’s threats, despite the fact that, accordingly, monsters usually can’t disobey a creature above them.
Guessing that the goblin was confident of an incoming rescue, we set out a trap. We thought that the goblin would finally break if his rescue team was captured too. However, the one who appeared wasn’t a rescuer but an assassin. I couldn’t help but move to try and stop the act, which caused the spell on me to break and our eyes to meet. I had no excuse for myself.
“We simply have a dark elf prisoner instead of a goblin one now. This one may be a little more reasonable,” Tiamat said, as if to reconcile my mistake.
Ruey tore off the assassin’s mask, revealing bright silver hair that flowed in the wind.