Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 8 Page 5

  That made sense. So some of the elves were sleeping to preserve their precious memories.

  It would be unthinkable for any living creature’s brain to retain new information indefinitely.

  “Are the high elves the same?”

  Unlike ordinary elves, the high elves like Miss Aialize had lived for hundreds of millions of years.

  “High elves have the memory archive, so they don’t have to worry about their memories fading. They only use the sleep tanks because they’re bored of living, or else they loathe themselves so much that—”

  A serious-looking elf abruptly elbowed the drunken one, cutting off his explanation.

  I must have touched on one of the elves’ taboo topics.

  Just as things were getting a bit awkward, Mia’s bright voice bailed me out.

  “Satou.”

  Mia, who’d been hanging off her father’s arm not long before, now came over with three youthful elves.

  The tearful reunions had died down since the second day or so, but there were still a few elves coming in for the first time, each of whom Mia politely introduced to me.

  “Soya. Puya. Aea.”

  …Actually, there wasn’t anything particularly polite about that intro.

  “So you’re the Satou who beat Laya at shogi.”

  “Strong.”

  “Well, Laya is the weakest of the Bolenan Game Association’s Four Kings of the Dawn! Do you really think your shogi can defeat the likes of us?!”

  That was definitely a startling level of bravado, but I’d learned over the past few days that Daisaku the Hero was behind a lot of the elves’ cultural oddities.

  Laya, Mia’s father, frowned and muttered, “Mrrr, rude,” but to his disappointment, everyone ignored him.

  As an aside, I should note that the Game Association had several series of kings besides Kings of the Dawn. There were Kings “of the Dusk,” “of the Gale,” and so on.

  Since I’d been crushing the elves at shogi for a while now, I’d gained titles like Shogi Master and King of Games.

  “You’d like to play me in shogi? Fine.”

  “All right, me first.”

  “Since you’re all here, why don’t I take on all three of you at once?”

  “Arrogant.”

  “Hmph, you’ll live to regret those words!”

  Most elves seemed to hate losing, which meant a lot of them demanded extra time like Mia’s father, so I decided to keep things quick by taking on all three “kings” at once.

  Since my youthful new body in this parallel world had a maxed-out INT skill, playing multiple games at the same time was no problem for me.

  As a result, I wound up getting a skill called “Parallel Thoughts.”

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t as impressive as the name made it sound. In CPU terms, it was comparable to multi-threaded parallel processing rather than multi-core, so my total processing power remained the same.

  If anything, I’d describe it as making me a master of multitasking.

  Just as all three games were stopped by simultaneous “Wait!” demands, Lulu came upstairs from the kitchen in an apron.

  The elf girls who loved cooking were with her, too.

  Nea, a girl who was studying the Japanese cuisine Daisaku the Hero described long ago, was first to arrive.

  “Mr. Satou, I made the hamburg steak we discussed yesterday. Could you evaluate it for me, please?”

  “Yes, I’d be happy to.”

  Nea placed a line of her steaks in front of me. Since they were just for tasting, they were all bite-size portions.

  One was essentially a meatball, one had been made into a paste and cooked, one had been cut into noodle-like shapes and then braided together before being grilled, one just looked like a lump of meat, and finally, the last one actually looked like hamburg steak.

  The reason so many of them looked nothing like hamburg steak was that the only description this Daisaku had given was the vague “a grilled dish made of kneaded meat.”

  This guy knew even less about cooking than I did.

  “Only one of them actually looks like hamburg steak, but they’re all pretty tasty.”

  “Yes, I agree.”

  Although I wasn’t sure why Arisa was helping me evaluate.

  “This paste one and the braided noodles here are especially tasty.”

  They weren’t hamburg steaks or any dish I’d ever seen on Earth. They’d fit in just fine at a restaurant specializing in creative cuisine, though.

  The other reason Nea’s hamburg steaks weren’t coming out like hamburg steaks was that she was using nothing but meat.

  She described them as “100 percent beef,” so this was probably another misguided description from Daisaku.

  With no ingredients but meat, a dish could easily get dried out, but evidently the elves had solved that problem through a few hundred years of trial and error.

  A few hundred years, huh…? Elves really did have a different grasp of time from ordinary humans.

  Still, I had no idea how she’d managed to make noodles out of meat.

  After Lulu did some sampling as well, she went back to the kitchen to make hamburg steak the way I’d taught her.

  “I have over a hundred other variations, but I think these five are the closest to the dish that Sir Daisaku described.”

  “That’s remarkable. I’d love to try every one of them during the course of my stay.”

  “Of course! You saved Mia’s life, after all. I’ll happily cook them all for you.”

  It was a brazen request on my part, but Nea was quick to agree.

  The other elf girls with her wanted to share their recipes with me, too. Lulu and I had a lot of cooking and learning to do while we were here.

  Grrrrwwwl.

  I heard two stomachs growl adorably in unison and turned to find Tama and Pochi gazing at us hungrily.

  You’d never guess from their expressions that they’d just had a jerky-eating contest.

  “Do you want to try?”

  “Aye-aye!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “If I can be of help, it would be my pleasure.”

  Tama’s and Pochi’s hands shot into the air before I even finished my offer.

  Liza, too, appeared behind them, seemingly out of nowhere. Her expression was composed as usual, but her tail was whipping back and forth, so no doubt she was waiting for this chance.

  I let Tama and Pochi try first, but…

  “Huuuh? This isn’t hambuuurg.”

  “Hamburg steaks are softer and juicier, sir! They make you happy when you chomp into them, sir!”

  Pochi was waving her arms wildly as she addressed Nea, so I took the fork out of her hand, just to be safe.

  Liza nodded sagely after tasting each sample. Her tail had calmed a little, so I was guessing she judged them to be only satisfactory.

  Then Lulu brought up her freshly cooked hamburg steak.

  It was plated like a proper restaurant dish: a hot cast-iron skillet on top of a wooden plate.

  Nea inhaled the scent with what could only be described as a rapturous expression and then stared at the steak as if trying to memorize every last detail. You should probably eat it before it gets cold.

  “Go ahead and try it.”

  Cutting off a small portion with her fork and knife, she carried the first bite to her mouth.

  Pochi and Tama were drooling as they followed the fork with their eyes.

  I glanced at Liza, but while her mouth was open a little, at least there wasn’t any drool. There was no need to specify what she was looking at, of course.

  All that being said…

  I think crying while you eat is a little bit much, no?

  But for Nea, it was her first taste of a legendary dish, so I guess maybe it was understandable.

  Considering her skills, I figured she’d be able to reproduce it in no time now that she’d tasted the real thing.

  “Satou.” Mia, who’d been watching fr
om next to her parents, was suddenly at my side. “Tofu steak.”

  Mia clung to my neck, rubbing her cheek against mine pleadingly.

  Arisa promptly began trying to peel her off, her smile twitching.

  Quit being so childish, you two.

  I kept this thought to myself, instead patting Mia’s cheek gently to pacify her.

  “As you wish, milady,” I said teasingly.

  She relinquished her grip on me at that, so I picked up Pochi and Tama and brought them with me to the kitchen so that Nea could eat in peace.

  Lulu came along to help, so aside from the tofu hamburg steak Mia requested, I also made Japanese-style steaks, hamburg stew, hamburgers with tomato, and so on.

  Including plates for certain hungry little girls, of course.

  When I returned with the finished tofu hamburg steak, we had more visiting elves than before.

  As far as I could tell, the rumor had spread via word of mouth that you could eat a real hamburg steak here.

  “I’ll be right back with more hamburg steaks, so please wait a little longer.”

  “Mm, okay.”

  “I’m so excited, I can hardly wait!”

  I greeted the elves lightly as I brought Mia her tofu dish. “Here you go, Mia. Your order is ready.”

  “Mm. Thanks.”

  When Mia’s parents and the other elves saw the dish I placed in front of Mia, a ripple of surprise ran through the crowd.

  All eyes were on the youngest elf as she brought a piece of the tofu hamburg steak to her mouth.

  After a moment of chewing, Mia closed her eyes and let out a little noise of contentment.

  “““Mia ate meat!””” the elves exclaimed in a chorus.

  You don’t need to react that dramatically, do you?

  “Good.”

  “We’re so proud, Mia. That’s wonderful. We’ll have to make red rice to celebrate, now, won’t we?”

  Her parents both embraced her joyously, but Mia looked a little perplexed about why her meal was being interrupted.

  No, if anything, she looked triumphant.

  Yep. My plan was a success.

  I cackled inwardly at pulling off my scheme.

  After checking with Mia’s parents in advance to make sure she didn’t have any meat allergies, I made this particular hamburg tofu with about 10 percent meat mixed in, no fat included.

  It didn’t taste meaty when I tried it, and sure enough, Mia hadn’t noticed that there was meat in it.

  I decided to wait until after I’d increased the amount of meat a little more before letting Mia know.

  Bwa-ha-ha. I’ll get you to eat a balanced diet yet!

  > Skill Acquired: “Trickster”

  “That’s a scary smile you’ve got there, master,” Arisa remarked.

  My villainous thoughts must have snuck into my expression somehow.

  I guess “Poker Face” didn’t work as well if you let your guard down too much.

  Just then, Lulu returned with a mountain of various hamburg steak dishes.

  Liza looked like she wanted to help, so I had her bring up some spare plates.

  “Thank you for waiting. Please enjoy.”

  With that, the elves set about trying each of the kinds of steaks.

  “Tasty.”

  “This is delicious! It’s so soft, it practically melts in your mouth!”

  The elves gave the hamburg steaks rave reviews all around.

  With Lulu’s and Liza’s help, I cooked up more hamburg steaks, but I couldn’t seem to churn them out fast enough. The allure of “the legendary hamburg steaks the hero spoke of” was too strong.

  I might have been stuck in the kitchen until the following day if Nea and her two friends didn’t step in to help. Once I taught them the recipe, they were able to start mass-producing hamburg steaks in other tree houses to lighten the load.

  I went through a lot of my regular meat stock, but I still had plenty of monster meat even if you didn’t include all that whale, so it wasn’t a big deal.

  In exchange, the overjoyed elves presented me with livestock like giant sheep and crimson chickens.

  These would be kept in the large stable carved into the roots of this tree, where living dolls were already taking care of our horses, the runosaur, and so on.

  “Good work today, Lulu.”

  “It was nothing.”

  When our work was finally finished, Lulu and I ate some of the local cuisine the elves had brought us, watching with satisfaction as the last of our guests devoured their hamburg steaks with visible delight.

  “““Hey, boy, you’ve got a visitor.”””

  After breakfast on our seventh day in the elf village, the mysterious carvings that hung in the living room suddenly started talking all at once.

  Thoroughly alarmed, Tama froze in the middle of our game of shogi-piece Jenga, her tail poofing up immediately.

  Pochi’s eyes widened, too, and she almost fell out of her chair but managed to catch herself before Liza had to pull her up.

  Obviously, these mystery carvings were some kind of intercom.

  They hadn’t moved once during the party, which had finally wound down, so some kind soul must have activated them for us on their way out.

  I wondered if the mirror hanging next to them would reflect an image of the visitor, but I guess it wasn’t quite that advanced.

  As soon as I stood up, the carvings stopped talking.

  “I’ll go and look.”

  Lulu hurried downstairs to welcome the guests.

  “Good morning, Mr. Satou.”

  “Good morning.”

  I was surprised to see who Lulu had returned with.

  “Welcome, Lady Aialize, Miss Lua.”

  I invited the shrine maiden Lua and the high elf Miss Aialize into the room.

  “Come on, Lady Aaze.”

  “Nnngh, I know, I know. Don’t push me, Lua.”

  Miss Aialize was stiff and quiet, so Lua prodded her shoulder a few times.

  “Master, we’ll go take the horses on a walk.”

  “Sure, thanks.”

  Noticing that Aialize seemed to be having a hard time speaking, Arisa tactfully ushered the rest of the party out of the room.

  “I’m terribly sorry if we’ve caused any trouble…”

  I reassured Lua that everything was fine and offered the two a seat.

  Miss Aialize, who was obviously shyer than I realized, just stared at the floor and fidgeted without saying a word.

  “Come on, Lady Aaze. I understand you’re upset that he saw you at your worst, but being shy about it won’t get you anywhere, all right?”

  With that, Lua grabbed Aialize’s head and jerked it upright, forcing her to look at me directly.

  Yikes, no violence, please!

  I understood her feelings, but I’d hate for Miss Aialize to get hurt in the process.

  Now that we were making eye contact, Aialize looked even more panicked, but she forced herself to speak.

  “I-I’m sorry about earlier!”

  She ducked her head without any further explanation.

  She was probably referring to the illusion of the little silver-haired girl.

  “No, no. If anything, I should apologize for taking your words literally and kissing you directly, Lady Aialize. I hope it was not too unpleasant an experience.”

  Her face flushed at that. “N-no, it wasn’t…”

  I would have turned a bit red myself if not for the help of my “Poker Face” skill.

  “Let us agree that neither of us was at fault, then, shall we?”

  “If that’s all right with you, Satou…”

  Aialize sighed with relief, and an awkward silence descended.

  “The rumors were true. Your spirit light is beautiful, Mr. Satou.”

  Miss Lua, her eyes now silver, kindly changed the subject for both of us.

  “Is that right?” I responded. “I’m not able to see this ‘spirit light,’ so I can’t really te
ll myself…”

  “All that light, yet you don’t have any ‘Spirit Vision’?”

  Lua looked surprised.

  “Heroes have the strangest gaps in their abilities, don’t they? Daisaku was the same way,” Aialize commented, casually dropping the bombshell. The first to respond was Lua.

  “Mr. Satou is a hero?”

  “You knew that, didn’t you, Lua? He’s the hero with the rainbow-colored spirit light who was fighting the black dragon.”

  That’s right. When Hei Long and I were doing battle, Miss Aialize used some kind of Clairvoyance spell from the World Tree to look at me.

  At the time, though, I was disguised as Nanashi, so I’d better play innocent for now.

  “Erm, what might you be referring to?”

  Aialize tilted her head.

  “When you were fighting in the mountains… Wait, hmm? You don’t have the Hero title today.” Analyze was among Aialize’s many gifts. “Now that I think about it, your name was blank back then, and your levels and skills are different now, too.”

  “Couldn’t it have been someone else, then?”

  “Ah-ha-ha, of course not! There can’t be anyone else with such a strong and distinctive spirit light.”

  I tried to feign ignorance, but Aialize simply laughed at me.

  “Neither the sky dragons nor even we high elves can emit such a splendid spirit light.” As she gazed at me in utter fascination, the only word for her expression was beautiful, but I couldn’t appreciate it at that moment. “Oh dear, were you trying to keep your identity a secret?”

  “Well…yes. If anyone powerful were to find out that I’m a hero, I’m afraid it would lead to all kinds of trouble…”

  It’d be one thing if I were alone, but I couldn’t have my friends getting caught up in anything dangerous. Besides, all I really wanted was to enjoy a laid-back sightseeing journey.

  “Hmm. I see.”

  Miss Aialize didn’t seem convinced. Then, Lua leaned over to whisper something in her ear. She must have used some kind of security magic tool or something, because even with “Keen Hearing,” I couldn’t make it out.

  Normally, I’d probably brace myself for an “I’ll keep your secret if you do this and that for me” kind of threat, but I doubted these elves would say anything of the sort.