Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 17 - Chapter 1.1

Chapter 1: The Agriculture of the Daleim Lands

1

It was now the eleventh of the indigo month, the day after I had manned a kitchen alongside Varkas.

We were in a wagon heading south. Normally, we would be doing business at our stalls off to the side of the road in the post town, surrounded by densely packed buildings, but instead we were following the highway south, heading for the vast fields of the Daleim lands.

“Are we almost there? I’m so excited!” Rimee Ruu energetically exclaimed from inside the wagon.

“Soon,” I replied with a smile, feeling soothed by her earnest and innocent nature.

The plan for today was to visit Dora, the man who we always bought vegetables from, to see his home and the fields he tended. Considering how well his youngest daughter Tara got along with Rimee Ruu, it was no surprise that the young Ruu girl was so enthusiastic.

Naturally, everyone else’s eyes were sparkling with anticipation too. After all, it was a chance to observe how they grew the vegetables we used. Of course those studious girls would get excited about it. Heck, I had been truly looking forward to this field trip too.

We had a group of six for the trip, which included me, Reina, Rimee, and Sheera Ruu, Toor Deen, and Yun Sudra. Gilulu was pulling our wagon, and alongside us was another totos being ridden by our guards, Dan and Deem Rutim, who had protected us yesterday as well. Since they were taking time off their giba hunting due to their injuries, they had volunteered to act as bodyguards again today.

“Ah, take that road to the right,” Reina Ruu instructed.

“Got it,” I said back as I tugged on the reins. The second Ruu daughter had visited the Daleim lands once before as part of the search when I was abducted by Lefreya.

The Daleim lands were part of the overall Genos territory. The house of Genos ruled the castle town, the house of Saturas governed the post town, the house of Turan handled the lands to the north, and the house of Daleim was in charge of the lands to the south. Add to that the forest of Mount Morga and the settlement at its edge, and you had the region known as Genos. Normally we only ever had business with the post town, so even heading to the Daleim lands was a fresh, fun experience for us.

However, we had an even bigger trip waiting for us ten days from now. The plan for our overnight visit to the neighboring town of Dabagg, which was half a day away and had vast karon ranches, was finally coming together. In a way, this field trip to the Daleim lands was like a dry run of sorts.

After we continued a bit farther west down the path and made it past the southern tip of the post town, our field of view suddenly opened wide.

“Whoa, so much space! It’s totally different from the forest’s edge and the post town!” Rimee Ruu shouted energetically.

She wasn’t wrong. It really was a lot of wide-open space. Since they had removed any excess trees, we had a shockingly clear view of the whole region. I could spy a short grove of trees far off in the distance, kilometers away, but there was nothing except vast fields before that. All along the well-trodden, twisting path between fields, there were wooden houses scattered about. It was such a peaceful, idyllic sight that I almost felt like sighing.

“I’ve never seen such a vast land before! It feels completely different here than in the forest’s edge, the post town, or the castle town,” Dan Rutim said from over on the Rutim totos Mim Cha, sounding like he was greatly enjoying himself. “Well then, let’s hurry on over! We can just keep on following this path for now, right, Asuta?”

“Yeah, that should be right.”

We proceeded down the path that ran through the middle of the fields at a nice, relaxed pace. Since there didn’t seem to be any people out and about working nearby, we didn’t have anyone gawking at the arrival of hunters from the forest’s edge.

It sure is tranquil... I love it when things are so peaceful.

Genos was far removed from the enemy nation of Mahyudra, so there was no risk of war finding its way here. Thanks to the guards patrolling day and night, the town was well protected from bandits and the like too. All the folks on the Daleim lands had to fear was the occasional giba appearing from the forest.

“Hey, Asuta, over here!” an excited voice called out from our left after we had proceeded down the path for a bit. It was Tara, who lived here in the Daleim lands. She was wearing an orange dress and was running over from one of the branching paths.

“Yaaay, Tara! Long time no see!”

“Yeah! It’s been a while, Rimee Ruu! You really did come here to the Daleim lands!”

As Rimee Ruu leaned out from the wagon, the two young girls grinned at one another. Though Rimee Ruu came to the post town once every three days, they usually greeted one another with a “Long time no see.” Maybe they were just so close that those two days in between felt long to them. After enjoying that charming sight for a while, I held out a hand toward Tara.

“Thanks for coming to meet us. Could you guide us to your house, Tara?”

“Yeah!”

Once Tara had climbed up into the wagon, she pointed us south down a narrow side path.

No matter how far we went, it was still all just fields around us. However, now I could see people here and there hard at work on their harvesting, and a fair number of them stopped and stared dumbfounded at us. We people of the forest’s edge normally only ever showed up in the post town, but here we were, driving a totos wagon through the Daleim lands. I was sure it made for a strange, normally unthinkable sight.

Naturally, we had gotten permission from the house of Daleim before today’s trip. Polarth actually wanted to accompany us and seemed quite disappointed that he was too busy entertaining the envoys from Banarm to do so.

“Ah, there it is! That’s my house!” Tara exclaimed as she stood beside the driver’s seat along with Rimee Ruu.

The home we were heading toward that she pointed to was far larger than I had expected. Well, part of that was surely adjoining storage for the harvested vegetables, though. It definitely looked much too big for a single family. It looked like there was a structure with one floor built right up against another with two floors. The single-story building made of logs was the larger one.

“Hey there, Asuta! And all the rest of you from the forest’s edge! Welcome!” a voice called out from beside us before we reached the building. Looking that way, I found Dora approaching from the fields with a large basket on his back. “You sure are early. I haven’t even prepared tea.”

“Ah, sorry for interrupting you while you’re busy. Please, don’t mind us. You can take care of whatever you need to first.”

“Aw, it’s just a bit of an early break. And I can’t just ignore my special guests.”

Dora had swapped work shifts in the post town with his son just so he could be here for our visit. As he wiped the sweat from his brow with a dirt-coated hand, he shot me a grin.

“For now, you can go ahead and leave the wagon in front of the house. Then I’ll show you all around my prized fields.”

“Right. Thanks.”

After that, we left him there and moved the wagon over to where he had directed us.

The building appeared to be empty, so everyone must have been out taking care of their various jobs. Tending vegetables, harvesting them, and then selling them... It must have kept the folks in the Daleim just as busy as everyone at the forest’s edge.

After parking the wagon along the wall so it wouldn’t get in the way, we tied Gilulu and Mim Cha to a nearby tree, then returned down the path on foot, where we found Dora waiting for us with his basket set down next to his feet.

“This is the tarapa field. They came out pretty well, don’t you think?”

Sure enough, that basket was filled to the brim with some pretty nice-looking tarapa. Though the color and taste of tarapa was just like tomatoes, they were closer to pumpkins in terms of size. Though they were a bit dirty right now, they looked seriously tasty.

“Hmm, the ones sold in the castle town are smaller, right?”

“Yeah, though we only grow a few of those ourselves. But you can go ahead and see with your own eyes.”

Leaving his basket packed with tarapa at the side of the path, Dora guided us down into the fields. They sat lower than the path by about forty to fifty centimeters, where the ground was composed of a really soft-looking brown dirt. Between the rows of huge green leaves that came up to around my knees there was just enough open space left for people to pass through.

Dora turned over one of those leaves to reveal a tarapa growing underneath. The plants seemed to grow one fruit per stalk, and it was a thick stalk at that, to support all the weight.

“These are the ones for selling in the post town. The ones for the castle town are farther in.”

We all moved forward, taking care not to trample any of the tarapa. Once we had traveled across roughly a fourth of the large field, Dora stopped and once again lifted up a nearby leaf.

What was revealed underneath was a tarapa around the size of a human fist, of the sort I had seen in the pantry in the castle town. This variety was closer in size to the tomatoes I knew, but it was all shriveled like a dried persimmon.

“It doesn’t look all that great, but when it gets shriveled like this it becomes a whole lot sweeter. It takes a lot more growing time to get them to this point, so these little guys cost a lot more too. There just isn’t anyone able to buy them outside the castle town.”

“Seems so. The ones I saw in the castle town were more than good enough to eat by themselves. Plus, they’re just as juicy on the inside as the big ones.” I had used them yesterday in my dishes for the welcome banquet. “But the big tarapa taste great too when you boil them with aria, so I prefer purchasing those when cost is a factor.”

“Yeah, it’s become totally natural for us to eat them boiled with some aria that we’ve sliced up and grilled.” Dora smiled at me, turning back down the path. “Well then, what should I show you next? Aria and poitan, do you think?”

“Yeah. I’m interested in seeing everything, but those two especially.”

“The aria are around the back of the house. Once I get those tarapa carried back, I’ll show you.”

As we walked along, I looked around to check on everyone. At the very least, nobody seemed to be bored. Rimee Ruu and Dan Rutim seemed to really be enjoying themselves, while Toor Deen’s and Sheera Ruu’s eyes sparkled with curiosity. However, Reina Ruu looked like she was worrying about something. It was the same expression she had been wearing ever since eating Varkas’s cooking last night.

“This way,” Dora instructed, guiding us around to the rear of the house.

Contrary to my expectations, what awaited us there were rows of trees. I was just starting to think that maybe the fields were on the other side of these woods when Dora patted a nearby trunk with his hand.

“This is an aria tree. They’re coming in nicely, aren’t they?”

“Huh? Aria grow on trees?” When I looked around in shock, I saw that sure enough there were familiar bulbs dangling from the tree branches. Aria were just like onions, and yet they were growing from those high branches as if they were apples or something. I really hadn’t imagined this at all. “Huh... I thought for sure they would grow in the ground.”

Aria had green skins rather than brown, so from a distance they would just look like fruits. Now that I thought about it, there was a means of classifying fruits as growing on trees back in my old world, but what exactly differentiated fruits and vegetables here in this land?

“It sure is something, right? We need to use a ladder to get the ones growing on the high branches. These are still developing, and I’d say they’ve got half a month or so left till harvest time. It’s not that you can’t eat them when they’re this little, but if we harvested them too early we’d end up running out of stock.”

“It just occurred to me that it’s been around half a year since I came to this land, but I’ve never seen any vegetables run out.”

Thinking about it further, that must have meant pretty much all the vegetables were perennials, not just the aria. Maybe there wasn’t much point in trying to judge them based on my past understanding of plants. Still, if I was able to enjoy those same delicious vegetables all year round, I certainly had nothing to complain about.

“Back in my home country, the types of vegetables that could be raised changed based on the time of year. But here in Genos the climate is fixed, so I guess you don’t have to deal with that inconvenience.”

“That’s true. Well, except for tarapa and pula.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Yeah. Once the rainy season comes and the ground gets all mushy, you can’t grow tarapa and pula and the like any longer, so we grow other vegetables that handle the rain better during that period.”

“So Genos has a rainy season, huh?” I questioned in surprise, and Dora looked even more caught off guard than I was.

“Of course it does. For two months out of each year, we get rain day in and day out. We don’t see much sun at all until the season ends. That means the aria and poitan can’t grow very big either.”

“This is the first time I’ve heard anything about that. By the way, when will the next rainy season be?”

“The rainy season starts in the brown month, so it’s still a while off. Roughly four months, I suppose.” In that case, I had ended up coming to this world shortly after the end of the last rainy season. It certainly was an unexpected bit of information I had received there. “Still, it’s not like the vegetables during the rainy season are anything to sneeze at. I’ll definitely be looking forward to seeing what sorts of dishes you can make with them too,” Dora said with a blissful grin. “Well then, I suppose the poitan’s up next? They’re on the other side of this aria field.”

That aria field or orchard or whatever was even more vast than the one for tarapa. That was no surprise, considering we were using over a hundred a day in our business. Though I had heard aria didn’t see much use in the castle town due to how cheap they were, considering how many were eaten in the post town and at the forest’s edge, it made sense that a huge number of them needed to be grown. It was even possible that the grove I had spied from far off when we first arrived was an aria field belonging to some other house.

“These are the poitan fields.”

Beyond that vast aria orchard were similarly huge poitan fields. But this time there were a good number of people harvesting them. Though they were spaced all out over the vast expanse, there had to be dozens of them hard at work.

“Wow, this one’s on a whole other level.”

It wasn’t all flat ground, but rather seemed to rise and fall. Atop those waves of earth were densely packed light-green shriveled leaves. The farmhands seemed to be checking those leaves and then pulling up the poitan one after another.

“Those ones farther out were cleared in just the past few months. I told you about the nobles ordering us to expand the poitan fields, right? Well, we’re finally able to harvest those new plots too.”

Fuwano had been a staple food in the post town up until recently, but the number of homes and shops handling poitan instead had grown by quite a bit. Dora’s earnings had supposedly gone up significantly thanks to that.

“Still, it’s been decided that the poitan to be sold in town needs to first be boiled once and then turned into powder. The nobles provided a facility and tools to boil them, but we’ve had to provide the personnel to carry out the work, so it sort of evened out. In order to increase our profits, we’ll need to keep on expanding the fields more and more.”

“I see. So your farming business is becoming even more of a low cost, high volume venture, huh?”

“That’s right. Still, it’s definitely not an issue considering how we can sell them right after they’re finished growing. Right now, everyone’s in the middle of scrambling to expand their poitan fields first.”

And the more popular poitan became, the more difficult the financial situation of the house of Turan would become, since they sold fuwano instead. When I thought about how Torst, who managed the house of Turan, had been looking so exhausted lately, I didn’t think I could be unreservedly happy about how things had turned out.

Still, you need fuwano too for making pasta and udon and the like. If they become popular in town, that should help balance things out a bit.

At any rate, I still didn’t have much of a relationship with Torst yet, so in the balance I was more than happy to see Dora’s smiling face. And I felt like it was a good thing that some of the excess wealth that had been going to the house of Turan was now making its way to the people of the Daleim lands instead.

“Little Ruu lady, your name’s Rimee Ruu, right? You wanna try pulling up a poitan?” Dora asked.

“Can I?” Rimee Ruu replied, her eyes sparkling.

“There isn’t much point in coming to see them when you’re just looking at them from above ground. Let’s see... How about you give this one a try?”

“Yeah, okay!”

With that, Rimee Ruu grabbed onto the light-green leafy stalk Dora had pointed toward. However, it seemed to have taken root pretty deep, as the poitan just wasn’t coming up.

“I’ll help too!” Tara called out, reaching in from the side. Then, with a “Heave-ho!” the two pulled together, and a fair number of poitan were dragged up from the earth. There had to be at least ten of the potato-looking things strung together there. When the last one was dragged out of the dirt, the force they were pulling with caused the two young girls to fall back onto the ground.

“Ooh, those are some fine poitan! Looks like you got the whole plant, all the way to the tips of the roots,” Dora said with a smile as he helped Rimee Ruu and Tara up. “That means after we harvest the poitan we can bury the remaining roots again. Then several months from now, new poitan will grow.”

“That’s so interesting! This is how you grow poitan?!” Rimee Ruu said with a smile as she brushed the dirt off her harvest.

Then, Dan Rutim stared at her hands and said, “Hmm... Interesting is right. By the way, do giba eat these poitan too?”

“Yeah, giba seem to love aria and poitan. With the aria, they’re real nasty with how they ram into the trees to get the ones growing on the branches to fall. But, well, they’ll make a mess of the tino and tarapa fields too...”

This was the first time I had heard Dora and Dan Rutim talk to one another, but the farmer didn’t seem timid in the least. Instead, he wore the same carefree smile as always.

As Dan Rutim stroked his beard, he smiled back. “I see. It’s our job to protect the bounty of Genos, but we eat the vegetables from these fields too. Thinking about it like that, it’s like the giba would be snatching our share as well.”

“Yeah, it’s thanks to you guys hunting giba that we can carry out our own work in peace. And now that you mention it, the damage from giba seems to be on the decline these past several months...”

“Indeed! Thanks to those folks in the Suun clan now hunting giba like they should, we’ve gained even more strength to devote to the task than before! Of course, I haven’t been able to hunt for this past month, myself...” Dan Rutim explained, scratching his bald head with the grip of his cane. As he looked up at the huge man, Dora narrowed his eyes and smiled.

“That’s an injury from your work as a hunter, isn’t it? Let me just say how grateful I am to all of you.”

“Hey, it’s our job to hunt giba, while yours is to grow vegetables. As long as we all do our jobs properly, the end result is a delicious meal! It’s a wonderful system, isn’t it?”

Dora nodded back with a smile, and then he turned my way.

“Well then, on to the next set of fields. If we’re not careful, the sun will hit its peak before you know it, so let’s try to wrap up our sightseeing before that happens.”

After that, we went around to the tino, pula, and nenon fields, completing our full tour around Dora’s farm.

However, the main event for today’s field trip still remained: the kimyuus hut.

“We’re just vegetable sellers in the end, so we only raise kimyuus to produce eggs for our own families,” Dora explained as he guided us around to the rear of the house. Sandwiched between the two-story home and one-story storage facility was a small hut, only around five meters square or so.

Dora opened the door, and the dimly lit interior came into view. Inside, there were some little white things flapping about.

“Those are kimyuus.”

Not far from the entrance, there was a fence that came up to around my waist. Something like dried straw was spread out on the ground beyond that, and then...there were the kimyuus.

“Those...are kimyuus...?” I parroted back without thinking. They certainly didn’t look like what I had imagined.

Just as I had been told, they didn’t seem capable of flight. A couple were hopping around within the smallish space, though. However, it took a good bit of time for me to recognize them as being a sort of bird.

Like I had heard, they had wings at the base of their necks. Their bodies and legs were similar to those of chickens, and they had short, tight plumage all over their bodies, like ducks, with just their tails and the big wings on their necks having voluminous feathers.

Their necks were short and stout, and their round heads were a suitable size. Then, they had flat, smooshed yellow beaks sticking out of their faces. They were truly strange animals that felt like a mix between a chicken, a rabbit, and a platypus.

“What is it? You look rather surprised.”

“Well...this is actually my first time seeing a bird here aside from a totos. These kimyuus have an awfully strange appearance.”

“Strange, huh? Well, it’s true that it’s a bit difficult to tell if they’re birds or some sort of land beast.”

Dora grabbed a handful of cream-colored granulated feed from the jar at his feet, then tossed it inside the pen. The kimyuus that had been flapping all about hopped on over in quite the humorous display.

“This feed is made by mixing together imperfect poitan and aria with crushed-up dried maru. They lay big eggs if you feed them lots of poitan,” Dora explained as he reached out and grabbed one of the kimyuus. While he held on to it at the base of its neck, right under its wings, the kimyuus started squeaking.

“Whoa, it’s actually sort of cute, isn’t it!” Yun Sudra said excitedly.

“Is it?” Dora questioned, his eyes opening wide, and then he held out the kimyuus. With a smile, Yun Sudra accepted it.

If you asked me if it was cute...well, I guess I would have to say it was. Those wings made me think of the two long ears of a rabbit, while the face really did seem similar to that of a platypus. However, it had surprisingly round and cute eyes, and I couldn’t help but feel like that smooshed beak was wearing a smile.

“I could see myself getting attached to something this cute. But the townsfolk eat kimyuus meat, don’t they?”

“That’s right. But these kimyuus are for egg laying, so they won’t be eaten until they’re old enough that they can’t produce any more.”

“I see. Well, I could never see myself eating these little birdies,” Yun Sudra said as she affectionately hugged the kimyuus. It seemed as if she might start rubbing her cheek against it at any moment.

“Hmm, well, it’s only natural to find small animals cute. Even giiz have surprisingly adorable faces when they aren’t coated in dirt. And have you ever seen a young giba, Sudra girl...?” Dan Rutim asked, causing Yun Sudra to turn his way with a look of confusion.

“I haven’t, but why do you ask, Dan Rutim?”

“Well, I’ve seen them plenty of times when out hunting, and those little roly-poly critters sure are cute. If you don’t believe me, should I catch one for you sometime?”

“Huh?! Please don’t! If I start feeling for giba, then I won’t be able to keep on living as a person of the forest’s edge!” Yun Sudra replied with a sorrowful look, making several of us break out in laughter, starting with Dan Rutim.

But behind the laughter, I thought I heard a little “Tch!” or something, so I turned around to look. There I found Reina Ruu standing separate from everyone else and wearing a sour look. When she noticed me staring, her face went pale so fast I could almost hear the blood rush from it, and then she swiftly grabbed my arm.

“D-Did you hear that just now?”

“What do you mean? I just got the feeling I heard some sort of sound.”

At that, Reina Ruu’s face went even more pale.

“N-No, you see, my body just reacted on its own... I swear, I didn’t do it on purpose,” she swiftly mumbled. From how flustered she looked, I was able to grasp what was really going on.

“Huh? So then, did you actually click your tongue just now?”

Still grasping the sleeve of my T-shirt, Reina Ruu hung her head with a look full of grief. Then her face shifted from pale to scarlet.

“Th-That’s kinda surprising. Were you really that annoyed by what Yun Sudra was doing?”

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly... It’s just, it’s been weighing on my mind from the very start, wondering what that girl was doing here in the first place...”

“I mean, she’s here because she’s passionate about manning the stove, right?”

“Is she truly that passionate?” Reina Ruu grumbled back, her cheeks still flushed.

Well, it was true that Yun Sudra didn’t seem to have as much passion as Reina Ruu, Sheera Ruu, or Toor Deen. I figured she half saw it as a bit of a pleasure jaunt, like Rimee Ruu.

“I wanted to accompany you in order to grow more skilled at cooking, even if only just a little. But I can’t sense that sort of sincerity from her.”

“Yeah, but forming deeper bonds with the folks from the Daleim lands is also part of the goal here. I don’t think you need to be so strict with your thinking, okay?”

“But...”

“Right, I haven’t forgotten your warning from before. I’ve tried to avoid talking to her as much as possible today, you know.”

Yun Sudra seemed to possess romantic feelings toward me. Reina Ruu had told me a few days ago that if I wasn’t planning on marrying anyone, I should maintain an appropriate distance from her.

“But still, even putting that aside, you’ve seemed depressed since yesterday. Are you still feeling the shock from Varkas’s cooking?”

Reina Ruu remained silent, biting her lip.

I went ahead and patted her on the shoulder, making sure I only touched her shawl so as not to be impolite.

“Like I told you before, don’t worry about it too much. I was surprised by Varkas’s cooking too, and it got me worked up as a chef, but it’s not exactly something you can do anything about overnight. The only path forward is to do whatever you can step by step.”

“Right... I know that,” Reina Ruu replied, but her expression hadn’t changed.

Then, there was a voice from overhead. “What are you two whispering about? I’m getting pretty hungry over here, Asuta!”

“Ah, right. Then I guess it’s about time for a snack, huh?”

We had agreed to prepare a snack at Dora’s house for today. Hopefully, eating something delicious would improve Reina Ruu’s mood a bit. So, with one more pat on the second Ruu daughter’s shoulder, I exited the kimyuus hut.