Here’s the thing about me. I—
—stumbled into a mission that dispatched me to a foreign dimension, a world where I now spent my days as an adventurer. I’d had good times—and agonizing moments; I’d consecrated a covenant with a gorgeous goddess and gotten married (in a sham wedding). I’d gained a little sister, met friends I could wholeheartedly trust, and lost some forever. Lots of ups, lots of downs.
This cycle of meetings and farewells made me the tiniest smidge more mature as a person, but as an adventurer, I still fell squarely in the initiate category. What’s worse, I had perhaps unwisely spread unsavory rumors about myself, a choice that continued to drag my personal reputation through the mud. I desperately needed to fix the situation, but I’d have to go above and beyond to prove myself if I wanted to clear the stains on my name.
Above all else, as the party leader, I had to prioritize the safety of my comrades before anything. I wouldn’t let any more of them die, no matter what. Nothing could stop me from keeping that promise. If any of us had to fall, it would be me. That was how I’d atone for letting my best friend perish before my eyes. This had become my life’s mission, though I hadn’t told any of my party members that. I swore to keep this vow and prided myself on upholding that duty.
With renewed determination, my friends and I delved further into the dungeon. But as expected, that proved a formidable task. There was no such thing as an easy path—just a never-ending cycle of gaining ground and returning to home base. Even so, little by little, we began to make progress. Although we didn’t exactly have an abundance of time on our side, we moved cautiously, at the pace of a casual stroll, slowly but surely taking one step forward at a time. That was how we approached adventuring.
All that aside, disregarding everything I had on my plate, I now inexplicabley found myself…making pasta.
It all started five days prior when my merfolk friend, Ghett, came upon a phantom ship that drifted into a nearby port of Remlia shortly thereafter. I investigated it thoroughly but found no clues as to which country the ship came from. There had been zero signs of any crew members aboard. The only thing she carried—a load of flour.
If you were to bake the whole load into bread, it would feed the entire Kingdom of Remlia for a week; it wasn’t an inconsequential amount, but it wasn’t worth the trouble for such a prosperous nation, especially since the person who had found it first was not one of its citizens.
In a show of great generosity, King Remlia graciously granted ownership of the ship’s load to its discoverer, though his true motivations were probably more along the lines of I’ll be damned if I stir up trouble with another race over such a measly heap of flour. That discoverer, Ghett, had then said, “I don’t eat flour, nor do I want it. Take it,” and passed the whole lot on to me. I probably don’t have to spell this out, but it would take my household and party ages to finish using it all up. That left us but one choice.
But first, a brief detour. In Japanese, we often refer to the concept of a “dietary staple” with a more symbolic meaning than the corresponding perceptions held in the Western world such as Europe and the United States. Rice, which serves as the foundation of our cuisine, supplies a well-rounded helping of nutrients. So nourishing is this crop that you only need to have two extra side dishes with it to sustain yourself. You can argue that wheat products count as a “staple” in that same vein given the large populations of people who have them regularly, but for some reason, whether it be for taste or nutritional value, you don’t hear many people say their diets consist exclusively of bread or wheat foodstuffs. This country, the Kingdom of Remlia, followed the Western model. Wheat, potatoes, meat, and beans were the foundation of a whole variety of dishes that filled its people’s stomachs.
Going back to what I was saying, the kingdom had no use for the flour found on the phantom ship. Compared with flour made from wheat grown in this land, it looked a little yellow, which made it seem of inferior quality to those unfamiliar with it. Even if I wanted to sell it for cheap, I’d still have to set the cost higher than the whole-wheat equivalent made from unrefined grains that was sold here. Dirt cheap prices would send the local markets into turmoil and turn the merchants’ ire against me.
I’d had a Remlian artisan bake some bread out of the new flour as a test product, but it garnered only negative reviews. Its hard crusts and doughy insides made for an unusual, crumbly texture. Personally, I did not find the taste nor texture to be unpleasant, but it didn’t beat the bread currently on the market. As a rule, to have any hope of outperforming the most popular baked goods, your new product would have to be tastier, cheaper, and simpler—qualities the phantom-ship flour simply did not have.
In any event, I’d tasked the artificial intelligence robot I’d brought with me to this dimension to analyze our newest acquisition. The results showed the phantom variety bore many similarities with the durum semolina flour found in the modern world. In other words, it was more well suited for making pasta. After that, I built a warehouse to turn the flour into pasta, dried it all, packaged it, and dubbed it “Phantom Pasta.” Using the experience I gained from the failed mayonnaise business, I came up with a strategy and presented the pasta to the king, in part to lay the groundwork for the project.