Chapter 479: Southern Island 6
As for Rabines, Tetes with a very nice smile brought out a woodworking saw (full of rust) out of nowhere, saying, let’s sever the tendons in both legs and I thought, well, I can leave it to her, but Hilda ignored Tetes and magically severed them without bloodshed.
“So it’s meaningless”
“Eh. ……Let’s do it with no good! Now that Master is in a brutal mood. He’s going to do something stupid again”
“You know, Tetes-chan. I sometimes wonder if you are a little hobbyist in your cruelty?”
“Do I look like that?”
Naris was a little taken back by Tetes, who was smiling. But Almeida, another colleague, was calm.
“Many young people who are exposed to bloodshed at an impressionable age develop a taste for it, like Tetes”
“Eh. I feel like I’m being talked down about”
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think there’s a part of me that can’t help it”
……I see, thinking about Almeida’s remarks for a moment, I agree. If I think about it, it’s a super-combat-oriented Renfangas and Tetes has a track record of being selected at a young age……that means she went through a lot of turmoil at a young age. It’s also a matter. Either you are resistant to bloodshed and cruelty from the start, or your values are pulled in that direction……but either way, you can’t rise in the ranks if you remain resistant to such things. When they are older, they will be able to distinguish between their peacetime and combat selves and come to terms with it, but it is difficult for children who are not yet old enough to stand on their own feet. Tetes seemed to almost unknowingly embody this distortion of Renfangas.
“Tetes. If it’s not necessary, don’t do it. If you’re not going to kill him, it’s Hilda’s job to take care of him after all”
When I instructed her to do so, Tetes reluctantly put down the saw.
“I still think it’s best to kill him”
And another cruel faction member, Neia, is dealt with by taking away her hat.
“Ah, give it back, please”
“Hilda-san isn’t just letting him survive out of kindness. I´ll say it again”
With Neia’s hat on my head, I go out for a breath of fresh air. The air in the cave smells foul with the stench of Rabines’ body and blood and once again, my violent nature, which has almost risen to the point of murderous intent, needs to cool down a bit. I step out onto the beach in the late afternoon sea breeze, wiggling and leaning to block Neia’s attempt to retrieve her hat by jumping up and down.
—————————————–
I find Maia, who is once again organizing the net of food barrels and crates.
“Are you making progress?”
“I’m just getting started”
When Rabines was cleaned up, one of them ran back to the beach to make sure that the food left on the beach didn’t go bad.
“Barrels of salted meat……barrels of booze. This crate over here is fruit. If we don’t eat it soon, it will go bad”
“It’s still spring in this heat”
I tried my best to keep Hilda-san’s wounds out of my head and speak in a normal, disgusted tone. Everyone can’t settle if I keep my edgy atmosphere. The strength of will that Hilda had shown would have been wasted.
“What are you going to do tonight? If anyone’s going to cook, I’d better let them pick out the ingredients they’ll use and the ones they won’t”
“Ah, yes……come to think of it, everyone seems to be not good at cooking”
“Who’s better, Anzeros or Aurora?”
“I wonder if it’s……”
Then the worst would be a dinner of just pickles, meat and sake served whole. One meal is fine, but I don’t like to have several meals in a row where I have to wash down the salty taste with sake.
“Fruits……are they citrus fruits?”
“There’re also apples. That box over there”
“This one? How did you remember that?”
“I know everything by smell”
Oh, yeah, right. How could a dragon, with a nose like that, not be able to smell the strong aroma of food?
“Give it back, please”
And Neia, who had been relentlessly chasing me (though she had been accompanying me in a way, since it would have been easier if I had tried to force her to take it), finally reached my head and took her hat back. After putting it back on with a relieved look on her face, she looked over at the barrels and crates strewn across the netting rope and said.
“If the problem is that the temperature makes them go bad, why don’t we just freeze them?”
“If we freeze them, it will be difficult to eat them. And it’s not like we’re in the snow in winter, so we can’t just leave it frozen”
“Ah, no, I could make an ice house”
“Ice house……?”
“Why don’t we do that in Polka? We fill the storehouse with a lot of snow and then pack the food with it to make it last longer”
“……I wonder if they do”
I don’t really understand because my Polka life is short. Summer itself is short, and I don’t really have a problem with food spoiling in the summer. Most vegetables and fruits will come back to life if they are soaked in the water of the miraculous spring. However, when I was asked about it, I remember hearing that aristocrats were making something like that around the royal capital as well……I don’t think so.
“Will it last long?”
“I’m not an expert on such facilities, so I don’t know much about them……but I do know that there was such a facility at the royal palace of Kalwin”
“Hmm……let’s give it a try”
“Are you going to build a storehouse……?”
“No, if you just want to store food for a few days, one warehouse in one of the forts should be enough. I can ask……to make enough ice for a warehouse full of snow, right?”
“Yes. It’s easy”
reliable.
So, we moved our stuff and set up a makeshift ice house? We were going to try to make a makeshift ice house in the warehouse of the half-moon fort. I just wanted something other than Rabines-related work……but it was true that this kind of daring experiment was a little exciting and by evening, my frayed state of mind had returned to normal.
——————————————
“H, Hilda-sensei will be cooking tonight’s meal☆”
“No, Hilda-san, you should rest. You can’t use only one eye, can you?”
“But everyone says they can’t cook. Anze-chan says it’s a man’s dish and Aurora-chan says she’s not sure what to do if she doesn’t have the recipe exactly the way it’s supposed to be”
Hilda just put a bandage over one eye and tried to cook as if nothing had happened.
“At least please leave the kitchen knife to Anzeros and Aurora! You’ll definitely cut your hand with one eye!”
“Oh, I can do a phimosis surgery even if I close my eyes, so why do you say something bad to me?”
“Please don’t try to juggle during a surgery”
I’m dying just imagining being wielded a blade on my dick with the eyes closed.
“Ah, umm, we can do it if it’s just peeling potatoes, so I’ll help you with that much”
Naris raised her hand, followed by Tetes and Luna.
“I’ll have Maia fetch the water……I’m good with the heat, too”
“I will do the preparations with Aurora if you give me instructions”
“Eh, I’d love to impress Andy-kun with Hilda-sensei’s cooking, but then I wouldn’t have anything to do”
『Maybe next time!』
Everyone joined hands to stop Hilda. Almeida and Neia, by the way, have gone to patrol Rabines´ dungeon and the patients’ quarters, respectively, so they are not slacking off. So all hands were on deck to prepare dinner.
“I, It’s surprisingly difficult to peel potatoes. Or rather, Naris-chan is good at it”
“I’m forced to do this everywhere”
“……You’re talking about your experience as an adventurer, right?”
“If you live for a hundred years, you can’t just do adventures, right……uhuhuhu, I ran out of money at the tavern and peeled potatoes, peeled potatoes because a bag of gold coins was stolen from a stagecoach, peeled potatoes as a servant girl for a family in the area because I didn’t have a regular job and even when I joined the Renfangas army, I’s still a lowly peeler. My first job was peeling potatoes……”
“I, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m sorry”
“Andy-sama, I got you some water”
“One more round trip”
“Yeah”
“……Maia-san carrying water on her shoulder is unsuitable in many ways……”
“That being said, most of the guys in here are in a position where they won’t have to cook for themselves for the rest of their lives if left alone”
“If you’re Anze-chan, there’s nothing better than cooking, no matter what your social status is. Isn’t it futile to get good at just skimming other people’s finished products without knowing how to prepare the ingredients☆”
“In Trot, they say that a noble woman should not do laundry”
“Noble, huh? It’s a troublesome concept”
“Dark elves don’t place much importance on rank, do they?”
“It is not that there is no such a thing. If anything, more emphasis is placed on material things such as money and achievements than on birth, so there may be people who don’t fit in with that kind of concept”
“Ah, Neia, firewood! Grab some firewood from that pile over there!”
“Y, Yes!”
Under a sky whose zenith beautifully reflected the change from blue to orange, we prepared for the day’s activities. It’s a bit of a cripple, but it’s kind of fun, like being a recruit. The crossbowmen have all become quite handy, but when the unit was young and we had to go away for a while, everyone, including me, was a bit clumsy and we would prepare meals like this, cheerfully and sometimes frantically fussing about.
——————————————-
After the meal was over, it was nighttime. I went back to the fort and went to the bathing area again and found a naked Hilda looking into her own eyes with a hand mirror.
“Ah, stay……”
“Kyaa”
Hilda-sam screamed, a little out of 「Character」 and turned her back.
“……Hilda-san?”
“W, Wait a little……I’m sorry, I was so surprised. Hey, did you look for me because you wanted to secretly have sex?”
Hilda was in a hurry to make fun of me with her back turned to me.
“……Hilda”
“……Y, You know, that……”
I mumbled quietly.
“I, I’d be happy if you approached me after properly wrapping the bandages. I just looked at my affected area and to be honest……if you look at it in a normal, non-doctor’s sense, you’ll be surprised”
“E, Emm……”
“If you don’t understand it properly, you can’t treat it, right? So I was just looking at this……and if you can get a boner watching this, Andy-kun, you might be in trouble”
“…………”
It’s a little painful to be so cheerful about it. The fact that she is mending means that she was quite shocked. The wound that has been cut out of her own eye. No matter how much it can be healed, how horrible it is to look at it seriously. Hilda cannot rely on others right now. She has no choice but to examine herself. Once again, the strength of this woman to face that fear, loathing and shock alone is a bit painful.
“……I know you probably won’t get an erection looking at the wound”
I gently move closer and hug Hilda’s back.
“I’m not sure if you’ll let me sleep with you or at least cuddle with you. I don’t want to leave my female slave in a state of anxiety because she’s injured”
“……Haa. Shall I say something like that?”
“I’m going to say it. ……No, I think it’s the other way around. I can’t sleep because I’m worried about sleeping away from Hilda and thinking she’s in pain somewhere I don’t know about”
“You don’t have to feel responsible for anything. It happened in a place that has nothing to do with you, Andy-kun”
“I don’t feel responsible, I just want to be needed in a situation like this. As a man’s pride”
“……Huhuu. I’ve become a good spoiled pampered woman”
Hilda smiled and rubbed my wrapped arms lovingly.
“Then, since it can’t be helped, let’s sleep together tonight, shall we?”
“By all means”
“But if I bandage you up, you won’t have to worry about me slipping out, so I might make tonight more of a 『Can’t sleep』 night than a sleep with me night☆”
“That’s what I want”
“Huhuu. I’m so happy for you. ……I love you, Andy-kun☆”