I Was a Sword When I Reincarnated (LN) - Volume 9 - Chapter SS

Bonus Story:

Fran and Cooking

Hacchacha~ Tatata~

“?”

“Arf?”

Nananana~

“Teacher?”

Dadadadada~

“What’s gotten into you?”

“Woof.”

This is a ritual to make delicious food.

“Uh-huh.”

I had to admit I was in a very good mood today. To think that Fran would actually ask me to teach her how to cook! I was so happy to see how much she’d grown!

Welcome back to the Restaurant to Another World! Thank you, you’re too kind!

“Wow.”

“Aroo.”

Fran applauded. Jet did the same, slapping the ground with his tail in order to clap. We had traveled many miles together, and it was nice of them to play along with my shenanigans.

On today’s menu, we have—

“Curry?”

Not quite!

“... Oh.”

“... Ruff.”

Fran flopped her ears and Jet tucked his tail, dismayed to hear their favorite dish wasn’t on the menu. They were so cute. But I digress.

But not to worry! We can have yesterday’s curry later!

“Really?”

Yes, really.

“Okay.”

“Woof.”

They recovered as quickly as they’d been dismayed. Fran’s ears and Jet’s tail returned to their neutral positions. In fact, Jet looked more dignified than before, which irked me somewhat.

But we will not be cooking curry today. I say we, but you’re going to be the one cooking, Fran.

“Oh yeah.”

Did you forget about that…?

“I thought we were just having curry again.”

I-I see.

Fran’s obsession with curry was terrifying.

All right, Chef Fran. What are we eating today?

“Today we’re having wild greens.”

Wild greens, really?

“Hm.”

Fran nodded confidently, but I had my doubts. They might not seem like much, but wild greens were tricky to cook. The options available to us for preparing them were limited, and you had to counteract the bitterness in most of them. I didn’t even know what wild greens we had in stock.

“I asked around the other day.”

In that village we stopped by?

“Hm.”

Fran and I would sometimes split up during our journeys; me staying stay back at the inn to cook while Fran and Jet went out for a walk. Apparently, she’d used some of that time to learn the basics of cooking.

Do you have your ingredients in Pocket Dimension?

“Hm? No.”

What?

“We’re looking for an elusive wild green which withers an hour after it’s picked.”

Which means?

“We’re going to pick these elusive greens right now!”

And here I thought Fran had everything prepared. Can you blame me? Earlier, she’d said, “There’s something I want to eat so I’ll do the cooking today.”

“Apparently, it grows deep in those mountains. We’ll get Jet to sniff it out.”

“W-Woof?”

“We’re counting on your nose, Jet.”

I guess she didn’t ask around for details…

Doesn’t look like we’ll be done in three minutes.

Thirty minutes later.

Fran! No flame magic in the mountains! This could go really badly!

“Hrm.”

Come on, Jet!

“Grrrr!”

We were currently surrounded by monsters.

Moments ago, vines had shot from the ground to lash at us; I’d thought at first that they were the tentacles of a worm or roper monster, but the leaves revealed that we were dealing with some kind of plant creature. The Poison Pot Killer, to be exact. It had to be an expert at camouflage, because we only realized what it was doing after it surrounded us.

That said, it wasn’t a powerful monster—we just had to be careful with its poisonous thorns. One round of Fran’s fire spells and Jet’s dark spells quickly took it down.

Fran sniffed the air.

What is it, Fran?

“Something smells good.”

Oh. I think it because you burnt parts of that plant monster. These things look edible, although they’re probably not tasty. Should we store them?

“Hm… No. It’s not good.”

Of course.

As rare as this monster was, it had average nutritional value and tasted gross. We didn’t need it, since we were on the hunt for tasty wild greens.

“Its name is popoki.”

Popoki? Never heard of it.

“Apparently it’s white, long, and slimy.”

Uhh… Are you sure it’s a wild green?

“Hm. It grows underground.”

Oooh, it sounds like mountain yam.

I guess that counted as a wild green. The Japanese mountain yam was white, long, and turned slimy when you grated it. My Cooking Skill identified it as a type of mountain yam, though it had some differences from the Earth version. I couldn’t find the term “popoki,” but given that people had local names for their vegetables back on earth, it was probably what the locals called mountain yams here.

“Go look for popoki, Jet.”

“A-Arf.”

Jet whined pathetically at Fran’s orders. As good as his nose was, he couldn’t track something he had never smelled before.

“No?”

“Woof.”

“Hrm…”

Fran folded her arms, thinking of another way to find the elusive root. Conventional wisdom dictated that you should look for the vines and go from there, but I wasn’t sure whether I should tell her. Hunting down wild greens on her own might be a lot of fun, but it might also take a lot of time…

“We’ll turn up the earth with land magic and—”

Stop! I know how to look for it! We couldn’t go ruining the environment just to find wild greens!

“You do?”

Yeah. See if you can’t find some slender vines.

“Now that you mention it, that’s what the old man told me to do.”

We had to find these mountain yams before Fran lost her patience and dug up our surroundings. Thankfully, our efforts were soon rewarded, and we spotted leaves that looked exactly like the ones back home.

That’s the one! Get digging, boy!

“Woof!”

Jet happily obliged my command. The direwolf was a dog, all right. He dug joyously into the ground, kicking up dirt everywhere. A few minutes later, the head of a large mountain yam revealed itself.

“It looks brown.”

That’s just the soil. All we need to do is wash it and—voila!

“It’s white now.”

A quick water spell revealed the white skin of the mountain yam. The long and white plant was the wild green we were looking for.

“We’ll cook it and eat it,” Fran said.

She cut the mountain yam into round slices, produced a frying pan, and began to sauté them. She’d said this thing was only good within an hour of picking, but it didn’t seem to be withering fast… Maybe it was a matter of freshness.

Fran, who had to be starving by now, plucked one of the yam rounds out of the pan with her fingers and popped it into her mouth. She gave Jet a mountain yam steak and he devoured it immediately.

“Munch, munch.”

How is it?

“Hm. Tasty!”

“Woof!”

The mountain yam steak was crispy and delicious. Afterward, they enjoyed curry with freshly grated tororo and with mountain yam tempura. Both Fran and Jet were replete and satisfied by the end of their meal.

We should head back.

“I promised the old man I’d bring back extra.”

Fran was willingly giving away delicious food to other people… She really had grown!

All right! We’ll find as many as we can!

“Hm!”

We continued digging for mountain yams and ended up with a haul of twenty. They were easy enough to dig up with earth magic once you knew what to look for.

The Poison Pot Killer we killed earlier was already withering when we came back. A swarm of insects had covered it, eating the bits that Fran had burned. Its remains would soon return to the earth.

When we returned to the village, Fran made a beeline for the store.

“Oh, you’re back! Did you manage to hunt down some popoki?”

“Hm. I got some for you, too.”

“Why, that’s very nice of you. It’s awful dangerous out there in the mountains. One wrong step can cost an old man his life!”

“Here.”

Fran took our leftover mountain yams from Pocket Dimension, still as fresh as the moment we picked them. But the old man only tilted his head upon seeing them.

“Aren’t those mountain yams?”

“Hm? I thought these were popoki.”

“Oh, these aren’t popoki.”

Fran glanced at me.

Uhh, seriously?

The old man went om to explain that the popoki was a plant type monster.

“You burn the creature’s vines and peel it back to reveal its long, white, and slimy inner parts. That part’s the delicacy. It’s not particularly tasty, but it certainly is unique. You don’t see many of them here, and it’s a tough monster to fight because of its poison.”

Hang on. Poison, vines, rare? That sounded awful familiar.

“Is it the Poison Pot Killer?”

“That’s the one. We call it Popoki for short, you see. I thought I mentioned that.”

“You might have… Probably.”

Fran!

“All I remember was that it was elusive, white, long, and slimy.”

… I see.

“Well, I’m happier with these mountain yams, anyway. Popoki are rare, but they’re not very good.”

“No. I have to try it. I’ll go back.”

We are?

“Of course.”

Of course…

“Hm.”

The sun’s going down, though. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?

“No. I’ve made up my mind. We have to eat popoki by the end of the day.”

A-All right.

We returned to the mountains, but it was midnight by the time we found and killed another popoki. Judging by Fran and Jet’s expressions when they ate it, it tasted… dubious. They even topped themselves up with another round of curry afterward.

“...Mountain yams are good enough.”

“Woof.”

Rare foods weren’t always delicious as well.

Well, as long as you’ve learned—

“I hear there’s a legendary fruit over in the next village. That one has to be good.”

Look, that’s not—

“We’re going to eat it.”

“Woof!”

…All right.

“Hm!”

Well, I would humor her until she got bored.