Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 10 - Chapter Pr

Prologue: The Past Blue Month

With my farewells to Shumiral’s and Pops’s groups, the blue month had come to a close.

I didn’t learn about this world’s calendar until after this month started. I didn’t even know months were denoted with colors here until I heard that the clan head meeting was on the tenth of the blue month. And apparently it had already been 70 days since I came to this world. That meant the month had already changed over twice before I learned how the calendar worked.

My chance meeting with Ai Fa seems to have occurred at the end of the yellow month. That soon ended, and then we entered into the green month. That was when I was tasked with manning the stove for the Rutim wedding, met Kamyua Yoshu, and started doing business in the post town.

Those days were already plenty hectic, but things got even more busy once the blue month rolled around. Even after the clan head meeting was over, there was still the whole incident with Zattsu and Tei Suun, and then we became aware of the mysterious noble Cyclaeus, too.

I had thought all the strife centered around the Suun clan would come to a close with Tei Suun’s death, but that sadly wasn’t the case, because next the question had been raised as to whether or not Cyclaeus was the one who had been manipulating the Suun clan from the shadows.

Cyclaeus was one of the nobles who ruled over Genos. And since their settlement fell on Genos land, the lord of the people of the forest’s edge was naturally Duke Marstein Genos. Cyclaeus, in turn, acted as a mediator between the lord and the forest’s edge. And so, he stood in a position to serve as Duke Marstein’s proxy when talking to them.

The ones to first cast suspicion on Cyclaeus’s role in the Suun clan’s actions were Duke Marstein’s oldest son and the next lord of this land, Melfried, and his sworn friend, the bodyguard Kamyua Yoshu. Apparently, Kamyua Yoshu was the first one to suspect the noble, and he passed those suspicions along to Melfried.

Honestly, Kamyua Yoshu’s position felt rather complicated to figure out. To start with, young Leito served as his apprentice. And that boy’s father had been the leader of the merchant group that was attacked and massacred by Zattsu and Tei Suun ten years ago.

On top of that, the brother-in-law of The Kimyuus’s Tail’s owner Milano Mas had also been a member of the group. The man had died clutching a hunter’s necklace, which was the starting point of everything.

Based on that evidence, it was whispered throughout the post town that the people of the forest’s edge were the ones behind the attack. And it didn’t help that the Suun clan kept breaking laws left and right, bringing mistrust and fear down on all of their people.

However, the nobles of Genos took no action to properly judge the people of the forest’s edge. And that didn’t just go for the incident with the merchant caravan. On top of that, the envoys from the nearby town of Banarm and the leader of Genos’s militia had been killed by people thought to belong to the forest’s edge, but in the end those actions were all blamed on the Red Beard bandits instead.

The Red Beards had a rule to never kill and only ever targeted nobles and wealthy merchants, and then distributed the riches they gained to the poor. Thanks to that, they were known as heroic outlaws. And yet, they were charged with those crimes without evidence, and every last one of their members were executed.

It had been the new leader of the militia who had sentenced them, a man by the name of Ciluel... and he was also Cyclaeus’s younger brother.

That had been enough to make Kamyua Yoshu confident this was a plot put together by Cyclaeus. He had instigated the Suun clan’s attacks in order to get rid of anyone who stood in his way, and then thrust the blame on the Red Beards, killing two birds with one stone. Then the truth was all buried away, leaving Cyclaeus with his current power and authority... That was what Kamyua Yoshu deduced, and what he brought before Melfried. Since the son of the lord of Genos had a firm belief that crimes must be met with punishment, he quickly set in motion an in-depth investigation into Cyclaeus’s activities.

However, they were unable to find any proof that Cyclaeus was the mastermind behind everything, so they made up a fake merchant caravan heading to Sym to use as bait to lure out the criminals. The end result of their plan? The Suun’s crimes were brought to light. Thanks to the events at the clan head meeting, the Suun were removed from power, and then their previous head Zattsu Suun and his one follower Tei Suun attacked the caravan, leading to the former being captured.

Zattsu Suun confessed to committing the same crime ten years in the past while spitting out his curses, and then he died while imprisoned. As for Tei Suun, he also died while martyring himself to Zattsu Suun’s disastrous cause. At the very least, that made it quite clear who was responsible for attacking that old caravan, and it wasn’t the Red Beards.

Kamyua Yoshu and Melfried then grasped at that one single thread and started putting together a plan to expose Cyclaeus’s old crimes. The first step there was searching out the one survivor of the Red Beards, the wife of the bandits’ leader.

For that, they borrowed the aid of three hunters of the Ruu branch houses. Bringing them and Leito along with him, Kamyua Yoshu departed from Genos on the morning of the last day of the blue month.

However, something surprising happened to us in the early afternoon of the same day: A boy calling himself the son of the bandits’ leader appeared in front of us.

He had given his name as Jeeda, son of Goram Redbeard. His hair was a blazing red and his yellow eyes were like those of a beast, but he was still just a young boy. And apparently, he had come to Genos for revenge against the people of the forest’s edge, since his father was executed in their place.

Kamyua Yoshu had been trying to find his mother, but they had completely passed one another by. Fate was playing a little joke on them. And on top of that, Jeeda ended up disappearing again rather than listening to anything we had to say.

Cyclaeus, meanwhile, had ordered that the people of the forest’s edge hand over all members of the Suun clan to the castle as criminals. And he wasn’t just aiming at the clan head Zuuro Suun, but every last person in the main house. Diga, Doddo, Mida, Yamiru Lea, Tsuvai, Oura... Their blood ties had been severed and their crimes forgiven by the forest’s edge, but Cyclaeus kept on persistently coming after them.

There was only half a month left till the next meeting, whether we chose to obey or resist. And so, the people of the forest’s edge needed to decide on a path forward by the 15th of the white month.

Would it be possible to expose Cyclaeus’s old crimes and turn everything around before then? As we were in the midst of pondering that question, Jeeda had suddenly appeared. It was like he was the living conclusion the hectic blue month had been leading up to.

Would Kamyua Yoshu be successful in locating Jeeda’s mother?

Why was Cyclaeus so insistent that we hand over the members of the main Suun house? And just what was he planning, stretching the meeting date out till halfway through the month?

Would the people of the forest’s edge be able to reconcile with Jeeda?

As the blue month came to a close, that multitude of questions lay before us unanswered.