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“I am not weak against ice cream! I just like it,” He repeated while blushing again.
Suddenly, I came out with a malefic plan to tease this old dragon even more than before. Hehe…
“If you like it so much, you can eat some here,” I said, as I pointed him my spoon.
“H-Huh? W-What are you doing? T-That’s…”
“What’s wrong? Didn’t you want to kiss me before? How about an indirect one?” I asked.
“Eh?! Sh-Shut up! I won’t let myself be teased by… your… smile….” He muttered as I smiled coquettishly at him.
He swallowed saliva as he slowly approached the spoon with ice cream.
However, Partner caught it like a furious and adorable shark and ate the ice cream on it.
“Ah! Partner?!” Exclaimed Lucifer angrily.
“You were taking too long, idiot dragon,” Muttered Partner.
“Who are you calling idiot dragon?!” He roared.
“W-What happened here? I feel like there’s some hidden sexual tension in between you three….” Muttered Emeraldine.
“Funnily enough, that’s exactly it….” I sighed.
“Well, you were incentivizing it!” Shouted Lucifer.
“Why don’t you act like a civilized person and just be more open?” Suggested Emeraldine.
“Eh? Ah… It’s hard….” Sighed Lucifer.
“I guess he has a hard time being a civilized person, so it’s hard for him to open his emotions and all of that,” I said.
“He was never civilized,” Said Partner.
“I was! S-Stop teasing me…” Muttered Lucifer.
“I am sorry, but it’s very hard not to tease you… you become very funny when you’re teased,” I said.
“Tch…” Lucifer clicked his tongue as he continued eating his ice cream.
We continued eating ice cream while enjoying the cold breeze of the night. It was getting a bit late after we enjoyed the ice cream, though, so I made the caravan stop moving for the moment, and we decided to cook up some more food for the people.
While cooking, there were some new things that I wanted to experiment with. There was some oil around, some spices, meat, eggs, and above all, stale and hard as rock bread.
“What are you doing?” Asked Lucifer, as he saw me pouring oil over a large pan I got from one of the rich dude’s kitchens.
“We are doing tempura!” I shouted.
“Tempura? What’s that? Looks fun!” Said Partner.
“Uwah! Tempura? Really?” Asked Takeshi.
As a Japanese, this boy knew what it was.
“Tempura is just fried and crunchy food. Usually meat, shrimp, and all sorts of other things. It can even be veggies too. You cover them in batter and then deep fry them in boiling oil. The result is crunchy meals filled with the flavors we all crave, greasy ones,” I said.
“Sounds strange…” Muttered Lucifer.
“But I am intrigued,” He continued.
“Sounds interesting. I had never eaten fried food before. How is it even made? Just the oil?” Asked Emeraldine.
“I already told you how it’s made! But I will show you how it’s made in real life!” I shouted.
“Oooh, sounds like fun! Make something yummy, master!” Said Partner.
“Alright dear, our first candidates for today’s tempura are… Bear meat, boar meat, strange bird meat, and snake meat we just hunted!” I said.
Just now, we came across a nest of strange gigantic snakes. I had tried to tame them because I thought Gorgons could do that, but they ended up trying to gang on me. The snakes were around 10 meters big and were named Giant Boas. They were D-Rank threats.
They were big and filled with tasty and tender meat, so we butchered a bunch of them. A few dozen of them are being grilled in the fire with some simple spices and salt for the people to eat, but we’ll try them out in other ways.
I had already washed them out, and Partner helped me clean the blood out of the meat we had, and I had cut them into different cuts and stored them inside my inventory. Now, I slowly took them all out, putting them over a table I had also stolen.
I am not a pickpocket for nothing. Stealing is my life, after all.
The meat of the snakes was white and silky, rather beautiful, and also tender, like chicken. There was also the meat of the bear, which was very red. I had cut the softer areas and had some grease on them, and when grilled, they had tons of tasty juices. There was also the boar meat, which I cut off into cutlets.
And lastly, the strange bird meat. There was this weird colorful bird we found on our way here, and it looked like a two-meter-tall chicken with colorful feathers named Dancing Kokaroo. I had intended to make it a tamed pet because it was honestly very pretty, but Lucifer crushed it before I could say anything… but from these chickens, we got the breast meat, which seemed tender and tasty.
Having everything ready, I began my cooking session. I started to make the batter and mix the eggs together. After that, I ground the super hard stale bread into crumbs, and when that was done, I took out the meat from the marination I was doing, which was being covered in all sorts of aromatic and medicinal herbs alongside lemon and orange juice.
When that was over with, I put some salt on them and passed them through the egg, and then the bread crumbs until completely covered…
“The oil is ready,” Said Lucifer, who had been looking at the oil boil.
“Alright…!”
I took the pieces of varied meat with chopsticks I made myself and began to deep fry them.
The smell of fried bread-covered meat filled the entire camp, and quickly after that, we ended up having a whole army of people looking at us cook… they were all drooling.
“Here, the first batch is ready!” I shouted, picking up the fried meat.
It was perfect! Golden brown and perfectly cooked inside!
I put some salt on it and then sprinkled some extra lemon. And it was ready! It looked tasty as fuck! I wish there was soy sauce… Sniff.
Crunch.
The delicious crunchiness and strong flavor of fried meat, accompanied with the spices we added, the lemon and orange juice, and all of that made for the amazing and perfect combination of flavors. We were losing our minds.
“W-What is this?! It’s actually amazing?!” Exclaimed Lucifer in shock.
“W-Wooow!” Shouted Emeraldine.
“More… I want more!” Chanted Partner.
“Amazing, this is just like the Tempura I remember! I wish there was tempuras sauce to go with it… or soy sauce! But the salt and the lemon are good enough!” Said Takeshi.
“Good!” Shouted Laura, stuffing her mouth.
“Mrao!” Kuro even ate a bunch himself.
In the end, I had to make most of the meat into Tempura, and we ended up using all the stale bread nobody wanted to eat into these. I also made some mayonnaise using eggs and oil, which was nice with the tempura.
We also enjoyed it with some nice booze and wine, and we got almost drunk, but sadly, I can’t get drunk, so I just enjoyed the spiciness of it.
The night had already fallen, and I enjoyed it with my friends while looking at the moonlight.
It was a nice night.
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