I came out of the waist-high grass on the far side of the wagon after making sure that everyone else was all together on the other side.
Making my way around the wagon with the horses tied to it's side, my eyes caught the sight of a fully erect tent and all four of my travelling companions huddled around a small campfire, the sound of their conversation drifted over indistinctly.
"Oh Miss Scarlet, welcome back."
The first to notice me was Mint, the only one on the far side of the fire. As he spoke up, the other three turned towards me with a smile.
"Miss Sc..."
"You're back! The soup was amazing!"
"The soup you made was such a delight! So much so that I would love to eat it every day!"
"As much as I'd hate to agree with anything this cat in heat says, it would be nice to eat your food all the time."
The quarrelling duo interrupted their third as they rushed over to me, eyes glittering. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the other guy. Despite being their mediator, he had little success at his job and was now being completely ignored.
"Ahaha, thanks. I caught a boar just now, so I'll make something for breakfast as well."
"Ah, that's why she smells like blood again..."
The cat boi whispered something to himself but it seemed like my hearing was better than he thought.
"Miss Scarlet, we left some soup for you along with some of our rations. Please have some."
The pot was sitting beside the fire keeping it from getting cold. Taking a glance inside, there was enough for a single serving left. Beside the pot was the rest of the food Mint promised sitting inside of a simple wooden mug that probably belonged to one of them.
"Ah, thanks. I'll have it when I get hungry."
The bread and meat, along with the entire pot went into my bag. The bowls and spoons the others used were next to where the pot was, neatly sitting in a little circle.
"Oh sorry, I was going to wash those in the stream in a bit."
The non-argumentative guy got up when he noticed I was looking at the bowls.
"Ah, no. It's fine. It's faster if I do it."
Picking one set up, I applied some magical water and quickly rinsed the bowl and spoon out before doing the same to the rest. In less time than it would've taken him to walk to the stream, I had already finished cleaning all the utensils.
Seeing that, he slumped down beside the fire.
"Miss Scarlet? We cleaned up the remains of the rush rabbits and put them on the back of the wagon for you to take."
"Ah, you can keep them. Didn't you say that the monsters hunted during an escort go to the employer?"
"They do, but that's usually only for monsters that attack along the way, not monsters that the escort hunt on the side."
(So there's a differentiation?)
"Well, I don't need them anyways. You can keep them."
"Is that so? Well, I'll graciously accept them then."
I sat down at the campfire and the five of us chatted a bit about random topics. As random as it was, it was informative. Apparently monster sightings had increased in the recent few years, especially in the south and west, and it was suspected that it was connected to the defeat of the demon lord. Without him to lead the demons, they scattered around. As a consequence, lots of monsters ended up getting displaced as they were forced from their normal habitats as groups of demons moved through their territories.
"Well, it's starting to get dark, so let's all go to sleep. Are you sure you'll be fine keeping watch for the whole night Miss Scarlet?"
After a while of talking, Mint made his suggestion.
"Yea, I'll be fine. I'm not even a little sleepy."
"...if you say so. Don't hesitate to wake us up if something happens Miss Scarlet."
With some encouraging words from the others, the young adventurer party all went to their tent and Mint lay down on the wide driver's seat on the wagon. I sat down at the campfire to tend to it for a little while, but once I was reasonably sure that everyone had fallen asleep, I killed the fire only to notice that there were charred bits of meat and bones in the flames. It looked like that was how they disposed the rabbits' unused bits.
I lay down on my back to watch the stars above.
The three moons floated high above, each a different primary colour. My eyes gravitated towards the red one, the one my name may have originally come from. The thought that vampires may have originally came from that moon felt pretty ridiculous, but at the same time, I couldn't really dismiss it. This world had things in it that couldn't be explained no matter how much I tried. The dungeon I lived in for almost my entire second life being the most principal example, but my own body was another.
Like, how come I didn't need sleep unlike pretty much every living being aside from bacteria on Earth? Even plants slept, in their own weird way. I think. How was I able to survive on nothing but blood? How can I drink more blood than the volume of my body?
I could only answer those questions with the answer: magic. But that was an obvious cop-out, and wasn't satisfying in the slightest. Not to mention that magic was a thing in this world.
After a while of staring, I switched gears and went back to working on the skill to revive Alicia while paying attention to the presences around me in the corner of my mind. Every once in a while, I threw some mana treats to the fluffballs.
As the starry sky started to retreat, I sat up and dusted myself.
Taking the boar out of my bag, I got to work skinning it, removing the organs, and cutting the meat up into little cubes. Removing another iron ingot, I reshaped it into a pair of large serving plate and a bunch of skewers and stabbed the cubes onto it. Applying some crushed salt and pepper, I filled one of the wide plate with a large pile of meat skewers.
The organs and loose bones were all thrown into the remains of last night's campfire and I ignited it all with magic. The fire didn't take well, so I had to sustain the spell to get rid of the garbage. In the meantime, I formed a simple legged grill from some leftover iron and placed it over the fire before putting the skewers on top.
Moving the meat around as it cooked, the fat drizzled down, causing small up-flames in the fire as the meat sizzled. It was really unfortunate that I couldn't eat any of it, but I liked to imagine that it did wonders for hiding the fact that I was a vampire.
That, and it was strangely enjoyable. I had always enjoyed cooking, and while making food for Alicia was especially nice, making it for others wasn't bad either. It felt nice how the others responded well to the soup I made the night before.
The scent of cooked meat started to drift around, and after a while, I heard some rustling in the tent.
After more rustling, a bonk and a small yell, then more rustling, the adventurer trio came out one by one from the tent. One of them was rubbing a spot on his head and the girl's face was a little red it seemed.
(Not my problem.)
It was most likely prudent to not ask about it. The guy who wasn't rubbing a bump out went over to the wagon and woke Mint up.
"Oh what a sight to wake up to! If only I could be greeted by such a sight every day!"
"Wow, there's so much meat. Can we really have this?"
The two just ignored each other rather than fight for once as I placed the serving plate covered in the cooked skewers as I continued to roast the rest. The last two members of our camp quickly came over and they grabbed a skewer each to eat.
I continued to grill the meat up until all the prepared skewers were done, then cleaned up the ad hoc grill and used plate before putting them into my bag.
Faking a yawn, I went to the back of the wagon and made some space for myself to hide my body double in. Mint asked about eating, but I just said I already ate. Pulling out my body double, I activated [Spirit Form] and started to play a bit with the fluffballs after giving them some breakfast of their own.
(Am I feeding them too much? Spirits can't get fat, can they?)
As I idly wondered about something a bit asinine, I kept an eye below me as everyone else got ready to head out. After they ate, they covered the remaining skewer filled plate and placed it neatly in the wagon before they took turns to clean the used skewers and have a drink at the nearby stream. Once they were done, Mint reconnected the horses back to the wagon and they started back on the road.
The day passed by pretty uneventfully for the most part. A small group of three slimes appeared out of the tall grass at one point, but I fired off some ice lances and took them out mid-hop the moment they showed themselves.
Everyone looked shocked and turned to where my double was laying. In a panic, I rushed back down to it, clipping my body through the wagon and materializing a single arm to wave at them lazily before pulling it under. They all mumbled words of amazement to my embarrassing mistake. I didn't think before killing those monsters as they showed up on my [Sense Presence] well before the wagon got close at it's slow walking pace, so from my perspective, I only attacked when they showed signs of aggression. To everyone else, well, it looked like a pretty super human feat.
If only they knew how inhuman I was.
That evening I fried up the rest of the meat in thin strips and sandwiched them in between the hard bread everyone was carrying along with some ground mustard seeds and some ketchup I found I still had. Seeing how well received this meal was, it made me realize that not only I need more vegetables, but I needed to prepare some sauces as well. If only I could settle for a while somewhere to ferment some stuff, as well as get someone who can taste test, I could make soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, tonkatsu sauce, or at the very least Roman garum, though I've never had it before, so anything I made would be nothing but a blind recreation of a recipe I once read.
As everyone ate, I went and found myself some loam wolves and brought the two back in my bag after finishing my own meal.
Once the others went to sleep, I started work on the wolves. Wolf meat was tougher and gamier than boar meat, from what I've heard at least. I couldn't really tell as I was cutting it up, but I made nice and thick steaks from them, then after emptying and washing the pot that I had used the day before, I made a new batch of ketchup before adding a bunch of honey, the last of my tomatoes as well as several strong herbs and spices.
After letting it simmer for a while, I threw the meat onto the serving plate, extended the edges up and turned it into a wide pot, and poured some of the sauce inside to marinate the meat before magically forming a simple top from another iron ingot.
Iron was another thing I was running out of. This was my last bar I had left. There was plenty of other ingots though, and even a few of those weird metals from those golems I had so much trouble with. The trouble was that I wasn't sure which ones were safe to use for cooking or eating off of. If I needed more, it was probably better to use clay or something from here on.
Taking my own advice immediately, I made a new jar from clay and poured the rest of the BBQ sauce into it and put it and the wolf pelts into my bag before cleaning up the area. The pot of meat was placed in my little spot on the wagon to let sit and I incinerated the wolf remains.
When I finished everything, I activated [Spirit Form] and floated up to play a little with the fluffballs. I wasn't making as much progress on the skill to revive Alicia as I had wanted, so I just wanted to distract myself for a bit before working on it.
(No, it's just procrastinating, no matter how I tried to word it. If I keep doing this, Alicia won't ever come back...but maybe if I only do it today...)
Even knowing full well that I was only making things worse, I did my best to keep my mind off of my lack of progress and just tried to enjoy myself with the fluffballs. They certainly didn't mind at all.
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