Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 3 - Chapter 1.2

2

The townscape didn’t continue on for quite as long as I expected. After less than a ten minute walk the wooden buildings suddenly disappeared, only to be replaced by an even more jumbled flea market of sorts. The land seemed to be cleared out pretty far to the sides around the highway stretching off into the north, and there were plenty of shops aimed at travelers set up there, some being wooden stalls with roofs over them, while others were simply set up by spreading out their goods atop a cloth on the ground.

“Wow... This sure is something.”

The majority of the goods being sold were foodstuffs, with most of those being vegetables. I could see all those countless different vegetables from the Ruu pantry spread out here. The lettuce-like tino that helped me out last night, the thick ginkgo-esque pula, the bright red one that looked like a mix between a pumpkin and a tomato, the massive burdock that was bigger than me, and the creepy one that looked like a coiled snake... they were all here.

Since these shops were part of a post town alongside the highway, naturally their main clientele was travelers. They were also selling stuff like some huge chunk of grilled meat that I didn’t recognize, fur cloaks, wooden and metal bowls, pots, daggers, and bows and arrows.

I was also frequently spying those giant totos birds like the one we ran into earlier, and nobody seemed to treat them like they were anything unusual. I even saw some pulling a massive wagon, so I guess they were treated like horses and oxen from back in my old world.

My head was still feeling a bit dizzy, but rather than feeling terror, I was currently looking at everything with curiosity in my eyes.

And then, finally, I realized something: Here in this post town, Ai Fa was attracting more attention than I was.

There were all sorts of people wearing all sorts of outfits here, so I could see how I sort of blended into the crowd. But still, I would think that’d also mean Ai Fa wouldn’t be too out of place here either, with her wild outfit and everything. I mean, there were plenty of people with fur cloaks around, and it didn’t exactly seem rare to spy someone with a blade dangling from their hip. Plus there were a good number of women dressed in even more risky, revealing clothes, and I just spied a guy wearing some sort of feline pelt over his head rather than one from a giba.

But in spite of all that, there were a whole ton of gazes on Ai Fa, and most of them didn’t seem all that friendly.

One old-timer scowled at her and then looked away. A girl looked positively frightened and hid behind a stall. A man grinned and whispered into the ear of the guy next to him. Some folks even seemed to get frightened and adjusted their paths to detour around us.

Apparently, in this place Ai Fa was even more abnormal than I was. Of course since I was right by her side I got some attention too, but it was more like I was picking up her leftovers than anything.

It really is like a single wolf being loose in a flock of sheep...

Despite all of this, Ai Fa just kept silently walking on ahead. She didn’t look to be in a particularly bad mood, nor was she trying to intimidate anyone. No, she was just like a leopard out in the wild gracefully strolling along.

Naturally, when you were talking about a crowd of this size, there would be some who don’t know their manners. It was only occasionally, but I spied scoundrels drinking in the middle of the day and laughing up a storm, scarred men in leather armor who looked to be conspiring, and folks loudly complaining at merchants. But even they didn’t seem to be getting as many chilly glares as Ai Fa.

It can’t be... Do people seriously have this much contempt for “giba eaters”?

That thought made me seriously irritated. No, scratch that, I could feel some rage really boiling up inside.

I had heard that the people of the forest’s edge had come from the Southern Kingdom. So was everyone here a citizen of the Western Kingdom? But regardless, the people of the forest’s edge had dedicated their souls to the Western god for 80 years now, so didn’t that make them true and proper comrades?

As someone from another world, I just didn’t get it. I didn’t understand, but still, it definitely pissed me off.

While those thoughts were running through my head, Ai Fa stopped in front of a particular stall and said, “We’re here.”

It was a small wooden stand, with a curtain hung overhead to ward off the rain. There was a withered old person seated there, and I couldn’t quite make out if they were a man or a woman. Despite the fact that it was pretty nice out, they had on a cloak with a hood pulled over their head, and they had all sorts of decorations on their fingers and wrists, which looked like they were meant for some sort of spell. Yeah, this was seriously one unusual old person. From what I could see under their hood their face frankly looked like it had collapsed, and that creepy toad-like visage soon broke out in a grin. They seemed to be blind in one eye as it had gone white, while the other was a pale green, which was fixed on us.

“Giba horns and tusks, is it? How many?”

I still couldn’t tell their sex, even after hearing that voice.

And apparently, this place wasn’t actually a shop where goods were sold. Aside from the countless different animal pelts dangling from a pillar behind the old-timer, there didn’t look to be anything that could reasonably be for sale.

“Four giba worth,” Ai Fa replied, pulling a jangling necklace from a hidden pocket inside her cloak as she did so.

Giba each had a set of horns and tusks, so that meant with four giba worth she was handing over 16 of the things in total. However, Ai Fa had hunted five giba in this half a month alone, plus she received nine blessings from the Ruu clan, so there were surely plenty of horns and tusks left in her cloak.

The elder took the necklace from Ai Fa and carefully examined each and every tusk and horn carefully with their one good green eye, running their trembling fingers over the smooth white surfaces, before eventually breaking out in an eerie grin.

“Looks like there are some rather big ones mixed in here, aren’t there? Did you take them all down yourself?”

“That’s right.”

That must have meant that the nine blessings were still safely stowed inside her cloak. She probably was just moving through them in order of how old they were, but that news honestly made me a little happy to hear.

“That certainly is something. After all, strong hunters like you form the cornerstone of our lifestyles...” the elder said while leaning over behind the counter. There was a light jingling sound, and then the old-timer reappeared holding a small cloth bag and three little metal rods. They’d gone pretty black from oxidation, but they were probably made of copper. They were about 10 centimeters long, two wide, and they were crushed flat to a thickness of around five millimeters. There seemed to be some sort of insignia in the middle, but the elder’s fingers were in the way so I couldn’t see too well.

“This is just a little added tip from me. The rest is four whites and eight reds, which you can go ahead and count.”

Ai Fa took the bag and then dumped out the contents on the stand.

They were the same sort of rods the old-timer was holding... No, they were actually more like small planks than rods. Anyway, those little metal planks spread about with a jingle. With that I could finally see the insignia clearly, but it was just a sort of spiral symbol that didn’t mean anything to me.

Ai Fa’s graceful fingertips moved over the metal planks, checking them.

Four of them were a dull silver color, while eight were a sort of black-brown color.

“...Yes, this all seems to be in order.”

“Well then, take this too, alright?” the elder said, adding the three brown planks they were holding on top.

“Much obliged...” Ai Fa quietly muttered, and then put everything back into the bag.

“It seems to have gotten rough around these parts lately, so make sure nobody snatches that from you. Geez, those folks in the castle only seem to think about exploiting us. Don’t they know the saying that you can’t get eggs from a dead kimyuus?”

Sorry, but I don’t know it, either.

“Well then...” Ai Fa said, and turned around.

As I went to follow her, a hoarse voice called out from behind, “You’re from town, but you’re dressed like a giba eater, aren’t you? I’ve never seen anyone like that before. Did that pretty-faced hunter girl violate you or something?”

So even someone who did business with the people of the forest’s edge like this old-timer was a racist, huh?

I was pretty damn annoyed, but I let my natural sociability take over and gave a thumbs up.

“Giba are crazy delicious. Make sure you try having some if you ever get a chance, alright? Well then, excuse me...”

With that I turned my back to the stall and found Ai Fa waiting for me two meters away.

“What are you doing? Don’t get separated from me. It’s like you have copper dangling around your neck, you know? No one would be foolish enough to steal horns and tusks at the forest’s edge, but this is a domain of the city of stone.”

“Yeah, there certainly do seem to be stones under our feet.”

I gave the path a kick, making a little clunk sound. Now that I thought of it, these shoes actually seemed to be getting pretty worn out...

“Next up is the aria and poitan,” Ai Fa said as she resumed walking.

It sure seemed like the traffic was slowing down for some reason. The stalls were also getting sparser, causing my field of view to open up a bit.

“Ah...”

Another unbelievable sight had come into view.

Beyond the greenery growing past the stalls on our left, a wall made of gray stone was now clearly visible. It should still be pretty far off, but even so, the gaps in the trees were completely filled with that gray color.

“That’s the stone wall around the Genos castle town,” Ai Fa said in a voice devoid of emotion, sparing little more than a glance in that direction. “The nobles control this land of Genos from inside those walls.”

“Hmm...”

It wasn’t as if I had any sort of premonition. I just had a bit of a negative feeling towards the place, knowing that the folks who lived there pushed the current social hierarchy on the people of the forest’s edge. They were forbidden from gathering the blessings of the forest or farming, and could only hunt giba. And then, they were looked down on as “giba eaters” on top of all that.

The people of the forest’s edge were tasked with protecting the Genos fields from giba, so they were undoubtedly responsible for part of the town’s prosperity. So why was it that the townsfolk looked coldly on them? But the people of the forest’s edge had no complaints and instead took great pride in that fact, but I just plain couldn’t accept that.

The nobles in the city of stone, huh...? I hope I never have to go anywhere near them, I thought to myself while walking down the highway alongside Ai Fa.

As I was no god, there was no way I could have known... I was thrust into this other world and carved out a little place for myself at the forest’s edge, but in the not too distant future, I would end up facing off against those who held the greatest power in the Genos domain, inside those very stone walls.