Translator: Reflet
Editor: Weasalopes
「I’m treating all of ye today! Drink up, drink up～！！」
「Yeah！！」
「Booze, booze！！」
「Bring it all over here！！」
Hiroshi and the others simply stared dumbfounded at the sight of the banquet started with the yell of one dwarf. They were not accustomed to this.
「Hey, lady.」
「Yes, what is it？」
「Is this town always so lively？」
「Well, not just this town. Any city with a pub that has a lot of dwarves is always this way.」
Turn to the right? Dwarves. Turn to left? Also dwarves. This attendant was one of the few humans in the area, answering Makoto’s questions with an awkward smile.
The current city Hiroshi and his group were in was a town by the name of Aragod Mine, fifty kilometers to the north from the northernmost country of the Midas Federation, Genoa, making it one of Forre’s border cities. With it being a mining town, the population demographics consisted of seventy percent dwarves (a bit skewed), but the mining towns at the base of spirit spire mountain were basically the same way.
「Well, I did hear of a huge cave-in incident today, but apparently there were no deaths or casualties, so I do get why people are so cheerful.」
「Hahaha……」
The attendant spoke as she lined up some food, while the Japanese party just let out dry laughter. After all, the whole reason Hiroshi’s group was here was because they had been involved in the rescue operation for the cave-in incident, demonstrating vigorous spirit in the process. In other words, they knew that there were not only no deaths, but no casualties, and since they were definitely the reason for that, the group couldn’t quite hold back their dried laughter.
「And look at them go. At this rate they’ll drink up the shop……」
「It’s all barreled liquor by this point……」
They had started out drinking from mugs for a toast, but by this point there was a barrel at every table despite the food not even being done yet. Not pitchers or even bottles, they were just at whole barrels now. And the dwarves weren’t shocked in the slightest by the quantity, simply opening the corks with glee and pouring the contents into their mugs all around.
These barrels were filled to the brim with quite a bit of weight to them. From how they poured the liquor into their mugs without spilling a drop, you could tell how accustomed they were to drinking on a daily basis.
「Y’know, the three of us kinda stick out, don’t we…」
「We sure do……」
「Hooray for being minors？」
「Yeah, probably……」
At present, the only ones in the shop not drinking were Hiroshi, Haruna, and Mio. Not just in this country, but in any country, Mio (naturally), Hiroshi and Haruna were strongly opposed to drinking liquor before they became twenty. Hiroshi and Haruna were generally responsible, only ingesting it on New Years or from food that used it, but they had never drank liquor under any illegal means. As for Mio, her body being weak, her parents were rather overprotective of her and there had not been a single trace of alcohol in the house before she was hospitalized. As a result, even if she did sometimes eat food that used liquor in it when going out, Mio had probably never even seen liquor before coming to this world.
So although the minor trio had an interest in the concept of getting drunk, they didn’t have much of an interest in liquor itself. They used liquor quite often in cooking, so they were accustomed to the taste, but it was precisely because they knew the taste that they weren’t especially eager to break the law just to drink it.
「Well, that’s probably it.」
「What is？」
「There’s just one thing that doesn’t seem right to me, based on what happened with the elves……」
「Ah～、I get what you’re trying to say. I feel a bit weird about that too.」
These dwarves’ heights ranged from 140-150 cm, with beer barrel body builds and brilliant bearded faces. No matter how you looked at it, these were your typical dwarves found in any fantasy world. At least if they were all men.
「Right? The elves were one thing, but the dwarves are super loyal to their image.」
「But they don’t have to be so loyal that both genders have bearded faces, do they?」
「I mean, don’t ask me, I dunno.」
Indeed, the dwarves in this world were your typical fantasy world dwarves, with splendid beards on both genders. You couldn’t tell which was which just by looking at them, and yet they sounded just like humans or elves in the way they talked, which felt very off. Some of the female voices were beautiful enough to compete with Haruna or Aearis despite the outward appearance, which created an odd clash between appearance and voice.
「Wait, but if dwarves are this way, why are the elves like that？」
「Mio, Mio. I don’t think ya can figure that out just by thinkin’ about it.」
「But these are dwarves. We could have had legal lolis or something……」
「Well, I think Makoto-san’ll hafta question that strange expectation of yers later on. But anyhow, when it’s this hard to tell ‘em apart, ma sensors’re gettin’ purty dull.」
Hiroshi muttered with an odd expression as he thought about this rather pressing issue. It wasn’t like it was problematic to not be able to distinguish between men and women, but this was Hiroshi we’re talking about, who couldn’t trust the majority of women in general. Even if they looked that way, there was always the possibility of them being maidens at heart, so Hiroshi couldn’t be blamed for cautioning himself.
「Well, while we’re here, let’s forget about the silly things and eat some Forre cuisine!」
「Exactly. If there’s any trouble, we’ll deal with it then.」
Tatsuya and Haruna figured it was time to wrap up the conversation, despite Hiroshi’s earnest predicament. Hearing the proposition, Hiroshi grimaced, nodded, and then started taking some food.
Forre’s cuisine resembled that of German cuisine, which consisted mainly of potato and sausage. Being that this world just didn’t really use vinegar as a whole, there was also no pickled food and therefore no pickles or sauerkraut, but in exchange there were stir-fried foods, and cabbage was found frequently in salads. Unlike Darl, the spices here didn’t contain anything other than pepper, but as a result, the taste of the ingredients was very clear. From the viewpoint of seasoning, the food here was more similar to Japan’s than Darl’s.
「This sausage is supa good.」
「And the cooked meat and vegetables are quite nice.」
「But the bread, as usual, is hard to the point where you can’t bite it through. It’s firm in a different way from American or German hard bread.」
The minor trio couldn’t do much besides eat, immediately beginning a critical evaluation of the food.
「Actually, when ya eat tasty sausages, don’tcha think about wantin to make hotdogs？」
「Ah～、true.」
「Actually, it kinda feels like they threw in a pinch o’seasoning ‘n tried to make these into hot dogs……」
Hiroshi said as he sneakily took out ketchup, curry powder, and mayonnaise out. This was probably the Kansai-style type with cabbage and curry powder. Some people weren’t keen on powdered mustard, so he was probably going to put it on afterward.
「Hiroshi-kun, I get how you feel, but how about we don’t do that in a restaurant?」
「Right. You need to get permission at least.」
No matter how you sliced it, bringing your own seasoning into restaurants and added it to the food was seriously bad manners.
「Ah～、sorry sorry. I almost succumbed to temptation there.」
Scolded by Haruna and Tatsuya, Hiroshi quickly put away the condiments while the attendant wasn’t looking. Mio was a little bummed out that Hiroshi was prevented from making new food there, reaching out for salt-grilled river fish.
「Still, even though it’s close to German cuisine, there isn’t really anything raw besides salad, is there……」
Haruna said that weird statement as she smacked her lips at the food in front of her. Everyone around her looked at her.
「There’s raw food in German cuisine？」
「Mhm. I think it’s called mett, and it’s basically specially processed pork that you eat raw.」
「Is that seriously okay……？」
「Well, there seems to be a trick to properly raising the meat to avoid food poisoning, so it’s probably similar to how people feel about eating yukhoe. I don’t know too much though, since I didn’t eat it while I was in Germany.」
The Japanese group wasn’t sure whether they were fully convinced of Haruna’s explanation. This was especially true for Hiroshi, who had met with a terrible fate with the ground beef/pork mince. Still, Japanese people ate properly processed horse meat and cow meat, so it was a little weird to criticize the food habits of other countries simply because it was pork, so they said nothing.
「Well anyhow, there isn’t a huge difference between Farlane and Forre in terms of specialization, so there might not be much in the way of new breakthroughs in cuisine.」
「Yup. Seems like there’re a lotta goods imported from Farlane.
Translator: Reflet
Editor: Weasalopes
Hiroshi nodded at what Haruna had said. There was currently some typical Forre food on the table, and most of it was the kind you’d see in Farlane, with only maybe German omelettes being the unique food. It was just a bit more tasty than that of Farlane’s variety, and it wasn’t like Forre was the only country with sausages.
In terms of meat, Forre’s food often consisted of insects or lizards, but that wasn’t all that different from Farlane either. The difference was at most 5-5 or 4-6 ratio.
Also, both Farlane and Forre cooked their meat by smoking it, but while Farlane smoked block meat right away, Forre mainly turned the meat into sausage before smoking it. This was probably due to the region being mountainous and ill-suited for agriculture and apparently dairy from the looks of it. Unlike China, where you ate just about anything with four legs (besides desks), Forre was a bit toned down, but they still had a policy of trying to eat as many living things as possible. With the reasoning that sausaging saved more parts of the animal than smoking blocked meat, the residents apparently had the custom of turning all meat into sausages.
Conversely, in Farlane, those parts that were difficult to eat were instead processed into fertilizer. As a result, there weren’t many variations in sausage cuisine, and the taste itself fell back one or two steps from that of Forre. In exchange, Farlane excelled at smoked block meat.
And as they were evaluating all of the dishes,
「Are ye kids drinking up？」
A dwarf with a fine complexion came over to Hiroshi’s table, mug in one hand. Upon further glance, the newest barrels on the other tables had all been emptied (the brands on them were different, hence why they were clearly new), some of them with at least three barrels (some of which had fallen over).
The attendants who retrieved the empty barrels and left the unfinished ones over at the tables only appeared to be slender and youthful ladies, but they clearly had quite a bit of arm strength.
As they made all of these fruitless observations, the group’s gaze moved to the dwarf in front of them. This man happened to be the top in the mining union as well as a top-class technician in mining.
「What’s the matter with ye? I treat ye to all this booze, and yet ye don’t drink a single drop.」
「Ah～、those three over there still aren’t eligible to drink in our home country, you see. It would just get bothersome if they returned addicted to alcohol at that age, so we’re ensuring they don’t drink anything.」
「Is that it? Ye need not worry yeselves over something small like that. Just don’t tell anyone and it’ll be all right, youngsters.」
The guildmaster attempted to make them drink liquor like some country drunkard. To the dwarves, not drinking liquor in a place that served liquor was a very reckless thing to do.
He was essentially the same as those drunkards at rural banquets.
「Hey, gramps.」
「What is it, lass？」
「There isn’t any liquor here to waste on kids who don’t even understand how great alcohol is. Rather than make them drink it, hand it all over to me.」
At this rate, sensing that the children might actually be forced to drink, Makoto interjected in the nick of time. Although this was quite honestly how she felt.
「Oho, I see, I see. Then I will no longer say such boorish things. Drink, drink up！！」
The dwarf said, pouring in waves of high concentration liquor into a gigantic mug. Makoto accepted it with a cheer.
『Let’s leave drunks to Makoto from now on.』
『Agreed.』
『Mako would probably never be defeated.』
『Actually, Makoto-san’s surprisingly used to this.』
『Even those knights were pretty much like this once it got into their system, other than Julius.』
Deciding they would push all the troublesome drunks on Makoto in the party chat, the other our continued eating their food enjoyably and at a leisurely pace. Makoto herself had intended this, so no one was about to complain.
Even after Hiroshi and the other three left the building, Makoto remained within, drinking all the liquor in the shop in addition to knocking out all the dwarves without breaking a sweat before taking her leave with complete composure, but that is just between us.
At this point, I should touch a bit more on where the group currently was, aka Forre. The stage for this chapter, the Forre kingdom, is also known by its other name, “The Kingdom of Iron”, one of the three great western kingdoms. It is positioned to the neighboring east of Farlane in the middle of Spirit Spire Mountain as well as between Midas Federation, Sharne River, and Arga River and to the north of Darl. As this alias implied, the country was a mining and manufacturing industry with plenty of mining resources buried underground.
As Forre had quite the number of mines in its nation, the majority of its cities built their livelihoods around excavating minerals. Due to that, about thirty percent of its inhabitants were dwarves, and in addition to the other races there, humans were more outnumbered than they were the majority, which was quite the rare case.
Perhaps because the towns were adjacent to mines, it was common for cities to have “cave” or “mine” in their names. The population of those cities was composed of a minimum of fourty percent dwarves, and for smaller towns, ninety percent or more dwarves, which was one of the reasons why the dwarf population was so high in these areas.
The reason why dwarves did not make up one hundred percent of the population in those towns was quite simple: they were incredibly bad with business, especially that of food and drink. It was obvious why they were bad at it: because dwarves cannot simply sit and watch people drinking/eating without wanting to join in. As a result, they drank more liquor than they sold and ate more food than what they gave to customers. Only a few dwarf-run shops were exceptions that could actually maintain their business.
Being a country well-versed in mining and in a relatively high region of latitude, Forre had not made much progress in agriculture. With an abundance of mines probably came a high stiffness in the quality of much of its water, which was so filled with minerals that it couldn’t be drunk directly, which limited the kinds of crops that could be grown there, hence why Forre didn’t have much in the way of farming. In fact, it was precisely because Forre had limitations on agriculture that it used so many dwarves as resources in order to make a variety of high-quality metal products, leading to its rise to importance in the world (in a different direction than Farlane).
From the restrictions on its territory, Forre’s greatest weakness was its high reliance on Farlane for food in addition to the fact that said food could only be transported through a few specific routes, which included the northern road or port (both of which were inaccessible in winter) or routes passing through Midas Federation and Darl in the south, and these restrictions were the sources of many worries for the leaders in Forre on a constant basis. Lorren, neighboring Forre to the east, did not have enough agricultural production to support Forre, and Mida Federation already had their hands filled, so their food resources were not in much of a very different situation from that of Forre.
Forre, with its mining strength and agricultural weakness, naturally had adopted an “elect few” military, with the highest skill in soldiers among the big three and equipment on par with that of Douga and Julius. Were the kingdoms to fight one another without any cheap tricks, 5% of the Forre troops could easily turn the tables in any battle with their prowess. Add in the superior armor and the sheer battle ability was made very clear. Then again, even with all that power, just by having Douga, Rayna, and Julius standing there, the Forre army would be half destroyed, but that was just one of those cruel facts of this world.
The country of humans and dwarves, the iron kingdom that was both strong and weak. That was Forre.
「Come to think of it, back at the cave-in from yesterday, we obtained a hefty amount of stones and whatnot, but was that okay？」
Breakfast the next day. Bread, soup, salad, and some sausage added in for an extra fee. Haruna had recalled something Hiroshi did that she could not ignore.
「Yeah, I got permission, mate.」
「Well okay then.」
Hiroshi answered as he dunked his bread in the soup, and Haruna tentatively nodded, seeming to understand that Hiroshi had gotten permission in some way. The stone in question that he had obtained was bedrock that had been blocking the entrance during the cave-in, now crushed into several stones.
「But that was a weird ‘ol incident with the cave-in, I’ll say.」
「Really？」
「Havin’ a slab o’rock, firmly reinforced to the tunnel entrance suddenly crumble? That’s purty irregular.」
Haruna and Mio exchanged glances at this uncomfortable topic. They had only just arrived in Forre and things were already strange. Tatsuya groaned in a low voice and Makoto sighed with a facepalm. Whenever the term “unnatural” came up, there was always one thing that immediately surfaced in their minds, but even though the city of Aragod Mine was on quite the large scale, it wasn’t an especially important mine. There was no reason to collapse it, or at least they couldn’t find any.
「Hiro, what’s your take？」
「I really can’t say, mate. I didn’t feel no miasma around, nor were there any traces of explosions or the like.」
Tatsuya just groaned even more at Hiroshi’s answer. An unnatural cave-in, with no traces of anyone tampering with the area, and occurring the very day they arrive. The warning signs were so obvious that the team didn’t know what to do next.
「Well, I do think that it woulda been difficult to collapse the tunnel with an explosion. Unless ya broke off that thick slab at the precise level that connected to the cave, ya can’t really do anything to make it budge.」
「Sooo？」
「The cave-in was prolly just a natural phenomenon.」
「……」
Everyone was just silent, trying to figure out why Hiroshi had seemed to essentially contradict himself. Or at least it seemed to contradict itself, but it wasn’t necessarily impossible to engineer a natural disaster with enough intentional buildup.
「……Sensei, is there something you’ve figured out？」
「Not figured out, exactly, but I do think we oughta examine the feng shui real quick.」
Translator: Reflet
Editor: Weasalopes
「You think there’s a relationship between the feng shui and the cave-in？」
「I can’t say for sure, but whenever the feng shui weakens or the current changes, I feel the ground weakening. I’ve thought this on numerous occasions. Not the plaza where the branching path begins, but the straight tunnel path and where the entrance’s firmly reinforced, ‘n then the bedrock that’s clearly wider than the tunnel crumbles and gets pulverized, causin’ this flashy cave-in. I’m thinkin’ it really might be best to suspect the feng shui.」
Hiroshi, knowledgeable in both engineering and excavation answered, Mio’s question with consideration, and everyone just fell silent again. If they were to accepted Hiroshi’s suggestion that the feng shui was at play here, there was a fair chance that another incident like this one would occur. After all, this was not an issue of excavation technique, so no one at the actual scene of the incident would have any way of preventing such a disaster.
「……So how exactly do we go about checking this out? Go to the temple as usual？」
「Yup, not really much else. With big feng shui comesa natural connection to most temples.」
Hiroshi said nothing to the contrary when Haruna asked him about their course of action. There was a high chance that the feng shui acting up was an indication of some sort of irregularity occurring in the temple. Still, the only countries whose temples’ locations were made available to outsiders were mainly Farlane and Darl, while Forre, whose feng shui was the largest, was a complete mystery to anyone outside the country, including the god it worshipped.
「I think the goddess worshipped in Forre went by the name Elza-sama, right？」
「That’s what I hear.」
「One of the five great gods, eh……」
Tatsuya and Makoto sighed simultaneously at how much of a sitting duck this goddess was.
「The moment we come here, we get a hint of trouble. I bet this country is in one heck of a conundrum……」
「You act like this is new, but have we ever really found a country over here or over there where the higher-ups aren’t struggling with something?」
Tatsuya lamented yet another difficult situation, and Haruna burst out with her own remark as she grimaced. Unable to retort to that blunt comment of hers, Tatsuya just decided to gulp down the rest of his soup rather than say anything more.
「But I’d be really glad if the government didn’t get wrapped up in all this. We seem to be wrapped up in all the nationwide nonsense all the time, after all…」
「Well, it ain’t like we gonna get involved in the center of the country EVERY time, so let’s just try ‘n avoid that flag this time around, yeah?」
「Yeah, it’d be real good if we could, y’know. But wait, Hiroshi. The whole reason the central figures lay their eyes on us was because you kept going too far！」
「Farlane was a coincidence, and I’m purty sure that people had their eyes on us right away in Darl’s case……」
Hiroshi attempted to excuse his way out of Makoto’s harsh criticism. In actuality, had they not gotten themselves noticed in Farlane, the world would have probably been in crisis, but in the case of Darl, although they were monitored from the start by the royal family, it was Hiroshi’s fault that the group was forced to get involved in the events there, so he had no room to retort.
「Well, anyhow, returning to the first topic……」
「The first topic？」
「What’s that stone you mentioned obtaining？」
「Oh, that. It’s got a lotta mineral content, but it’s mainly iron ore. I was thinkin’ of usin’ it fer Haruna and the others in forgin’ ‘n smeltin’ practice. When I considered the amount o’potions that could be released or the amount o’work ‘n difficulty of dealin’ with the crushed bedrock when I removed it, I didn’t have no problem with takin’ it all.」
Hiroshi announced some of the things he had planned from the start when Haruna inquired. The reason they had come all the way here to this mining town was to train Haruna, Mio, and the craftsmen in Farlane in the ways of smelting and to gather the resources needed for that. And, if this were also a possibility, he wanted them all to dig up their own iron ore for Haruna’s practice, but what with the cave-in incident and all the noise that had followed it, he hadn’t been able to get to it.
「Practice is fine and all, but where and how will we do this？」
「I do happen to have a portable smeltin’ furnace ‘n forge set with me, so we can do it anywhere, mate.」
「Portable smelting furnace? The heck is that……」
「Just as the name suggests. Thanks to Igreos-sama, I was able to make a furnace with ample heat fer its size, and I made it just for times like these.」
「But is that really safe……」
Tatsuya couldn’t hide his discomfort (?) at these new, rather questionable items. Incidentally, this portable smelting furnace was foldable and able to fit into one’s pocket when fully compressed, but when fully outstretched, it was twenty percent larger than your average furnace. Due to its size, the amount you could smelt at once was limited, but the output quality actually outstripped your average furnace, with many a revision on it.
Furthermore, it was pointless to question this foldable, compressible morphing machine that clearly ignored the laws of conservation of mass. It was also pointless to question why Hiroshi couldn’t have just put a normal-sized furnace into a capsule to carry around to save time.
「Well, in any case.」
Hiroshi conveyed the current plans that were set in stone as he cleared up everyone’s finished eating implements, a habit he had picked up recently.
「No point stayin’ in this town too long, so let’s skedaddle today.」
「Agreed.」
「How ‘bout we practice refinement ‘n forging when we take a break on the road?」
「During our break, eh……」
Haruna murmured with a faraway look at Hiroshi’s outrageous suggestion. Although she didn’t come close to comparing with Makoto or Mio, Haruna felt she had gathered a wider amount of power than the average Class 7 adventurer. While Hiroshi had already attained an unbelievable amount of muscle mass from helping out in the family business back in their world, Haruna looked like she had hardly any muscle mass whatsoever. This seemed to be due mainly to her attribute points not falling even if she slacked, which was why she had nearly no change in her appearance (Mio was an exception because of her growth period) other than regeneration. She honestly didn’t want to have a massive build in the first place, so it was best not to question anything in this regard.
In Tatsuya’s case, it was truly strange that his nails, hair, beard, etc grew like normal, yet stuffing himself and drinking liquor didn’t fatten him up, but as that was no inconvenience to him, Tatsuya accepted it without over analyzing things. Tatsuya’s next birthday would be his twenty-seventh, so any form of aging also had yet to be seen. But of course Tatsuya had no inclination of staying that long, or else he would probably break at some point.
「Well, we know what our plans are, so how about we get going to the capital?」
「Yup.」
There was no point in quarreling any further. Leave too late and they risked getting caught by the dwarves again, so Tatsuya announced their departure.
「Thanks for the food. Bill, please.」
「Yes sir. That will be With five sausages added that will be twenty domas.」
「Kay.」
Paying the aforementioned amount (which was about twenty tirols in Farlane currency), the group got straight to leaving the inn. After this, there would be a bit of a disturbance with Haruna making weapons and tools every break and no one helping her in the slightest, but that will begin later on.
And so the curtains on the stage of the group’s adventure in Forre opened with many ups and downs from the very first day.
Translator: Reflet
Editor: Weasalopes
「I’m treating all of ye today! Drink up, drink up～！！」
「Yeah！！」
「Booze, booze！！」
「Bring it all over here！！」
Hiroshi and the others simply stared dumbfounded at the sight of the banquet started with the yell of one dwarf. They were not accustomed to this.
「Hey, lady.」
「Yes, what is it？」
「Is this town always so lively？」
「Well, not just this town. Any city with a pub that has a lot of dwarves is always this way.」
Turn to the right? Dwarves. Turn to left? Also dwarves. This attendant was one of the few humans in the area, answering Makoto’s questions with an awkward smile.
The current city Hiroshi and his group were in was a town by the name of Aragod Mine, fifty kilometers to the north from the northernmost country of the Midas Federation, Genoa, making it one of Forre’s border cities. With it being a mining town, the population demographics consisted of seventy percent dwarves (a bit skewed), but the mining towns at the base of spirit spire mountain were basically the same way.
「Well, I did hear of a huge cave-in incident today, but apparently there were no deaths or casualties, so I do get why people are so cheerful.」
「Hahaha……」
The attendant spoke as she lined up some food, while the Japanese party just let out dry laughter. After all, the whole reason Hiroshi’s group was here was because they had been involved in the rescue operation for the cave-in incident, demonstrating vigorous spirit in the process. In other words, they knew that there were not only no deaths, but no casualties, and since they were definitely the reason for that, the group couldn’t quite hold back their dried laughter.
「And look at them go. At this rate they’ll drink up the shop……」
「It’s all barreled liquor by this point……」
They had started out drinking from mugs for a toast, but by this point there was a barrel at every table despite the food not even being done yet. Not pitchers or even bottles, they were just at whole barrels now. And the dwarves weren’t shocked in the slightest by the quantity, simply opening the corks with glee and pouring the contents into their mugs all around.
These barrels were filled to the brim with quite a bit of weight to them. From how they poured the liquor into their mugs without spilling a drop, you could tell how accustomed they were to drinking on a daily basis.
「Y’know, the three of us kinda stick out, don’t we…」
「We sure do……」
「Hooray for being minors？」
「Yeah, probably……」
At present, the only ones in the shop not drinking were Hiroshi, Haruna, and Mio. Not just in this country, but in any country, Mio (naturally), Hiroshi and Haruna were strongly opposed to drinking liquor before they became twenty. Hiroshi and Haruna were generally responsible, only ingesting it on New Years or from food that used it, but they had never drank liquor under any illegal means. As for Mio, her body being weak, her parents were rather overprotective of her and there had not been a single trace of alcohol in the house before she was hospitalized. As a result, even if she did sometimes eat food that used liquor in it when going out, Mio had probably never even seen liquor before coming to this world.
So although the minor trio had an interest in the concept of getting drunk, they didn’t have much of an interest in liquor itself. They used liquor quite often in cooking, so they were accustomed to the taste, but it was precisely because they knew the taste that they weren’t especially eager to break the law just to drink it.
「Well, that’s probably it.」
「What is？」
「There’s just one thing that doesn’t seem right to me, based on what happened with the elves……」
「Ah～、I get what you’re trying to say. I feel a bit weird about that too.」
These dwarves’ heights ranged from 140-150 cm, with beer barrel body builds and brilliant bearded faces. No matter how you looked at it, these were your typical dwarves found in any fantasy world. At least if they were all men.
「Right? The elves were one thing, but the dwarves are super loyal to their image.」
「But they don’t have to be so loyal that both genders have bearded faces, do they?」
「I mean, don’t ask me, I dunno.」
Indeed, the dwarves in this world were your typical fantasy world dwarves, with splendid beards on both genders. You couldn’t tell which was which just by looking at them, and yet they sounded just like humans or elves in the way they talked, which felt very off. Some of the female voices were beautiful enough to compete with Haruna or Aearis despite the outward appearance, which created an odd clash between appearance and voice.
「Wait, but if dwarves are this way, why are the elves like that？」
「Mio, Mio. I don’t think ya can figure that out just by thinkin’ about it.」
「But these are dwarves. We could have had legal lolis or something……」
「Well, I think Makoto-san’ll hafta question that strange expectation of yers later on. But anyhow, when it’s this hard to tell ‘em apart, ma sensors’re gettin’ purty dull.」
Hiroshi muttered with an odd expression as he thought about this rather pressing issue. It wasn’t like it was problematic to not be able to distinguish between men and women, but this was Hiroshi we’re talking about, who couldn’t trust the majority of women in general. Even if they looked that way, there was always the possibility of them being maidens at heart, so Hiroshi couldn’t be blamed for cautioning himself.
「Well, while we’re here, let’s forget about the silly things and eat some Forre cuisine!」
「Exactly. If there’s any trouble, we’ll deal with it then.」
Tatsuya and Haruna figured it was time to wrap up the conversation, despite Hiroshi’s earnest predicament. Hearing the proposition, Hiroshi grimaced, nodded, and then started taking some food.
Forre’s cuisine resembled that of German cuisine, which consisted mainly of potato and sausage. Being that this world just didn’t really use vinegar as a whole, there was also no pickled food and therefore no pickles or sauerkraut, but in exchange there were stir-fried foods, and cabbage was found frequently in salads. Unlike Darl, the spices here didn’t contain anything other than pepper, but as a result, the taste of the ingredients was very clear. From the viewpoint of seasoning, the food here was more similar to Japan’s than Darl’s.
「This sausage is supa good.」
「And the cooked meat and vegetables are quite nice.」
「But the bread, as usual, is hard to the point where you can’t bite it through. It’s firm in a different way from American or German hard bread.」
The minor trio couldn’t do much besides eat, immediately beginning a critical evaluation of the food.
「Actually, when ya eat tasty sausages, don’tcha think about wantin to make hotdogs？」
「Ah～、true.」
「Actually, it kinda feels like they threw in a pinch o’seasoning ‘n tried to make these into hot dogs……」
Hiroshi said as he sneakily took out ketchup, curry powder, and mayonnaise out. This was probably the Kansai-style type with cabbage and curry powder. Some people weren’t keen on powdered mustard, so he was probably going to put it on afterward.
「Hiroshi-kun, I get how you feel, but how about we don’t do that in a restaurant?」
「Right. You need to get permission at least.」
No matter how you sliced it, bringing your own seasoning into restaurants and added it to the food was seriously bad manners.
「Ah～、sorry sorry. I almost succumbed to temptation there.」
Scolded by Haruna and Tatsuya, Hiroshi quickly put away the condiments while the attendant wasn’t looking. Mio was a little bummed out that Hiroshi was prevented from making new food there, reaching out for salt-grilled river fish.
「Still, even though it’s close to German cuisine, there isn’t really anything raw besides salad, is there……」
Haruna said that weird statement as she smacked her lips at the food in front of her. Everyone around her looked at her.
「There’s raw food in German cuisine？」
「Mhm. I think it’s called mett, and it’s basically specially processed pork that you eat raw.」
「Is that seriously okay……？」
「Well, there seems to be a trick to properly raising the meat to avoid food poisoning, so it’s probably similar to how people feel about eating yukhoe. I don’t know too much though, since I didn’t eat it while I was in Germany.」
The Japanese group wasn’t sure whether they were fully convinced of Haruna’s explanation. This was especially true for Hiroshi, who had met with a terrible fate with the ground beef/pork mince. Still, Japanese people ate properly processed horse meat and cow meat, so it was a little weird to criticize the food habits of other countries simply because it was pork, so they said nothing.
「Well anyhow, there isn’t a huge difference between Farlane and Forre in terms of specialization, so there might not be much in the way of new breakthroughs in cuisine.」
「Yup. Seems like there’re a lotta goods imported from Farlane.
Translator: Reflet
Editor: Weasalopes
Hiroshi nodded at what Haruna had said. There was currently some typical Forre food on the table, and most of it was the kind you’d see in Farlane, with only maybe German omelettes being the unique food. It was just a bit more tasty than that of Farlane’s variety, and it wasn’t like Forre was the only country with sausages.
In terms of meat, Forre’s food often consisted of insects or lizards, but that wasn’t all that different from Farlane either. The difference was at most 5-5 or 4-6 ratio.
Also, both Farlane and Forre cooked their meat by smoking it, but while Farlane smoked block meat right away, Forre mainly turned the meat into sausage before smoking it. This was probably due to the region being mountainous and ill-suited for agriculture and apparently dairy from the looks of it. Unlike China, where you ate just about anything with four legs (besides desks), Forre was a bit toned down, but they still had a policy of trying to eat as many living things as possible. With the reasoning that sausaging saved more parts of the animal than smoking blocked meat, the residents apparently had the custom of turning all meat into sausages.
Conversely, in Farlane, those parts that were difficult to eat were instead processed into fertilizer. As a result, there weren’t many variations in sausage cuisine, and the taste itself fell back one or two steps from that of Forre. In exchange, Farlane excelled at smoked block meat.
And as they were evaluating all of the dishes,
「Are ye kids drinking up？」
A dwarf with a fine complexion came over to Hiroshi’s table, mug in one hand. Upon further glance, the newest barrels on the other tables had all been emptied (the brands on them were different, hence why they were clearly new), some of them with at least three barrels (some of which had fallen over).
The attendants who retrieved the empty barrels and left the unfinished ones over at the tables only appeared to be slender and youthful ladies, but they clearly had quite a bit of arm strength.
As they made all of these fruitless observations, the group’s gaze moved to the dwarf in front of them. This man happened to be the top in the mining union as well as a top-class technician in mining.
「What’s the matter with ye? I treat ye to all this booze, and yet ye don’t drink a single drop.」
「Ah～、those three over there still aren’t eligible to drink in our home country, you see. It would just get bothersome if they returned addicted to alcohol at that age, so we’re ensuring they don’t drink anything.」
「Is that it? Ye need not worry yeselves over something small like that. Just don’t tell anyone and it’ll be all right, youngsters.」
The guildmaster attempted to make them drink liquor like some country drunkard. To the dwarves, not drinking liquor in a place that served liquor was a very reckless thing to do.
He was essentially the same as those drunkards at rural banquets.
「Hey, gramps.」
「What is it, lass？」
「There isn’t any liquor here to waste on kids who don’t even understand how great alcohol is. Rather than make them drink it, hand it all over to me.」
At this rate, sensing that the children might actually be forced to drink, Makoto interjected in the nick of time. Although this was quite honestly how she felt.
「Oho, I see, I see. Then I will no longer say such boorish things. Drink, drink up！！」
The dwarf said, pouring in waves of high concentration liquor into a gigantic mug. Makoto accepted it with a cheer.
『Let’s leave drunks to Makoto from now on.』
『Agreed.』
『Mako would probably never be defeated.』
『Actually, Makoto-san’s surprisingly used to this.』
『Even those knights were pretty much like this once it got into their system, other than Julius.』
Deciding they would push all the troublesome drunks on Makoto in the party chat, the other our continued eating their food enjoyably and at a leisurely pace. Makoto herself had intended this, so no one was about to complain.
Even after Hiroshi and the other three left the building, Makoto remained within, drinking all the liquor in the shop in addition to knocking out all the dwarves without breaking a sweat before taking her leave with complete composure, but that is just between us.
At this point, I should touch a bit more on where the group currently was, aka Forre. The stage for this chapter, the Forre kingdom, is also known by its other name, “The Kingdom of Iron”, one of the three great western kingdoms. It is positioned to the neighboring east of Farlane in the middle of Spirit Spire Mountain as well as between Midas Federation, Sharne River, and Arga River and to the north of Darl. As this alias implied, the country was a mining and manufacturing industry with plenty of mining resources buried underground.
As Forre had quite the number of mines in its nation, the majority of its cities built their livelihoods around excavating minerals. Due to that, about thirty percent of its inhabitants were dwarves, and in addition to the other races there, humans were more outnumbered than they were the majority, which was quite the rare case.
Perhaps because the towns were adjacent to mines, it was common for cities to have “cave” or “mine” in their names. The population of those cities was composed of a minimum of fourty percent dwarves, and for smaller towns, ninety percent or more dwarves, which was one of the reasons why the dwarf population was so high in these areas.
The reason why dwarves did not make up one hundred percent of the population in those towns was quite simple: they were incredibly bad with business, especially that of food and drink. It was obvious why they were bad at it: because dwarves cannot simply sit and watch people drinking/eating without wanting to join in. As a result, they drank more liquor than they sold and ate more food than what they gave to customers. Only a few dwarf-run shops were exceptions that could actually maintain their business.
Being a country well-versed in mining and in a relatively high region of latitude, Forre had not made much progress in agriculture. With an abundance of mines probably came a high stiffness in the quality of much of its water, which was so filled with minerals that it couldn’t be drunk directly, which limited the kinds of crops that could be grown there, hence why Forre didn’t have much in the way of farming. In fact, it was precisely because Forre had limitations on agriculture that it used so many dwarves as resources in order to make a variety of high-quality metal products, leading to its rise to importance in the world (in a different direction than Farlane).
From the restrictions on its territory, Forre’s greatest weakness was its high reliance on Farlane for food in addition to the fact that said food could only be transported through a few specific routes, which included the northern road or port (both of which were inaccessible in winter) or routes passing through Midas Federation and Darl in the south, and these restrictions were the sources of many worries for the leaders in Forre on a constant basis. Lorren, neighboring Forre to the east, did not have enough agricultural production to support Forre, and Mida Federation already had their hands filled, so their food resources were not in much of a very different situation from that of Forre.
Forre, with its mining strength and agricultural weakness, naturally had adopted an “elect few” military, with the highest skill in soldiers among the big three and equipment on par with that of Douga and Julius. Were the kingdoms to fight one another without any cheap tricks, 5% of the Forre troops could easily turn the tables in any battle with their prowess. Add in the superior armor and the sheer battle ability was made very clear. Then again, even with all that power, just by having Douga, Rayna, and Julius standing there, the Forre army would be half destroyed, but that was just one of those cruel facts of this world.
The country of humans and dwarves, the iron kingdom that was both strong and weak. That was Forre.
「Come to think of it, back at the cave-in from yesterday, we obtained a hefty amount of stones and whatnot, but was that okay？」
Breakfast the next day. Bread, soup, salad, and some sausage added in for an extra fee. Haruna had recalled something Hiroshi did that she could not ignore.
「Yeah, I got permission, mate.」
「Well okay then.」
Hiroshi answered as he dunked his bread in the soup, and Haruna tentatively nodded, seeming to understand that Hiroshi had gotten permission in some way. The stone in question that he had obtained was bedrock that had been blocking the entrance during the cave-in, now crushed into several stones.
「But that was a weird ‘ol incident with the cave-in, I’ll say.」
「Really？」
「Havin’ a slab o’rock, firmly reinforced to the tunnel entrance suddenly crumble? That’s purty irregular.」
Haruna and Mio exchanged glances at this uncomfortable topic. They had only just arrived in Forre and things were already strange. Tatsuya groaned in a low voice and Makoto sighed with a facepalm. Whenever the term “unnatural” came up, there was always one thing that immediately surfaced in their minds, but even though the city of Aragod Mine was on quite the large scale, it wasn’t an especially important mine. There was no reason to collapse it, or at least they couldn’t find any.
「Hiro, what’s your take？」
「I really can’t say, mate. I didn’t feel no miasma around, nor were there any traces of explosions or the like.」
Tatsuya just groaned even more at Hiroshi’s answer. An unnatural cave-in, with no traces of anyone tampering with the area, and occurring the very day they arrive. The warning signs were so obvious that the team didn’t know what to do next.
「Well, I do think that it woulda been difficult to collapse the tunnel with an explosion. Unless ya broke off that thick slab at the precise level that connected to the cave, ya can’t really do anything to make it budge.」
「Sooo？」
「The cave-in was prolly just a natural phenomenon.」
「……」
Everyone was just silent, trying to figure out why Hiroshi had seemed to essentially contradict himself. Or at least it seemed to contradict itself, but it wasn’t necessarily impossible to engineer a natural disaster with enough intentional buildup.
「……Sensei, is there something you’ve figured out？」
「Not figured out, exactly, but I do think we oughta examine the feng shui real quick.」
Translator: Reflet
Editor: Weasalopes
「You think there’s a relationship between the feng shui and the cave-in？」
「I can’t say for sure, but whenever the feng shui weakens or the current changes, I feel the ground weakening. I’ve thought this on numerous occasions. Not the plaza where the branching path begins, but the straight tunnel path and where the entrance’s firmly reinforced, ‘n then the bedrock that’s clearly wider than the tunnel crumbles and gets pulverized, causin’ this flashy cave-in. I’m thinkin’ it really might be best to suspect the feng shui.」
Hiroshi, knowledgeable in both engineering and excavation answered, Mio’s question with consideration, and everyone just fell silent again. If they were to accepted Hiroshi’s suggestion that the feng shui was at play here, there was a fair chance that another incident like this one would occur. After all, this was not an issue of excavation technique, so no one at the actual scene of the incident would have any way of preventing such a disaster.
「……So how exactly do we go about checking this out? Go to the temple as usual？」
「Yup, not really much else. With big feng shui comesa natural connection to most temples.」
Hiroshi said nothing to the contrary when Haruna asked him about their course of action. There was a high chance that the feng shui acting up was an indication of some sort of irregularity occurring in the temple. Still, the only countries whose temples’ locations were made available to outsiders were mainly Farlane and Darl, while Forre, whose feng shui was the largest, was a complete mystery to anyone outside the country, including the god it worshipped.
「I think the goddess worshipped in Forre went by the name Elza-sama, right？」
「That’s what I hear.」
「One of the five great gods, eh……」
Tatsuya and Makoto sighed simultaneously at how much of a sitting duck this goddess was.
「The moment we come here, we get a hint of trouble. I bet this country is in one heck of a conundrum……」
「You act like this is new, but have we ever really found a country over here or over there where the higher-ups aren’t struggling with something?」
Tatsuya lamented yet another difficult situation, and Haruna burst out with her own remark as she grimaced. Unable to retort to that blunt comment of hers, Tatsuya just decided to gulp down the rest of his soup rather than say anything more.
「But I’d be really glad if the government didn’t get wrapped up in all this. We seem to be wrapped up in all the nationwide nonsense all the time, after all…」
「Well, it ain’t like we gonna get involved in the center of the country EVERY time, so let’s just try ‘n avoid that flag this time around, yeah?」
「Yeah, it’d be real good if we could, y’know. But wait, Hiroshi. The whole reason the central figures lay their eyes on us was because you kept going too far！」
「Farlane was a coincidence, and I’m purty sure that people had their eyes on us right away in Darl’s case……」
Hiroshi attempted to excuse his way out of Makoto’s harsh criticism. In actuality, had they not gotten themselves noticed in Farlane, the world would have probably been in crisis, but in the case of Darl, although they were monitored from the start by the royal family, it was Hiroshi’s fault that the group was forced to get involved in the events there, so he had no room to retort.
「Well, anyhow, returning to the first topic……」
「The first topic？」
「What’s that stone you mentioned obtaining？」
「Oh, that. It’s got a lotta mineral content, but it’s mainly iron ore. I was thinkin’ of usin’ it fer Haruna and the others in forgin’ ‘n smeltin’ practice. When I considered the amount o’potions that could be released or the amount o’work ‘n difficulty of dealin’ with the crushed bedrock when I removed it, I didn’t have no problem with takin’ it all.」
Hiroshi announced some of the things he had planned from the start when Haruna inquired. The reason they had come all the way here to this mining town was to train Haruna, Mio, and the craftsmen in Farlane in the ways of smelting and to gather the resources needed for that. And, if this were also a possibility, he wanted them all to dig up their own iron ore for Haruna’s practice, but what with the cave-in incident and all the noise that had followed it, he hadn’t been able to get to it.
「Practice is fine and all, but where and how will we do this？」
「I do happen to have a portable smeltin’ furnace ‘n forge set with me, so we can do it anywhere, mate.」
「Portable smelting furnace? The heck is that……」
「Just as the name suggests. Thanks to Igreos-sama, I was able to make a furnace with ample heat fer its size, and I made it just for times like these.」
「But is that really safe……」
Tatsuya couldn’t hide his discomfort (?) at these new, rather questionable items. Incidentally, this portable smelting furnace was foldable and able to fit into one’s pocket when fully compressed, but when fully outstretched, it was twenty percent larger than your average furnace. Due to its size, the amount you could smelt at once was limited, but the output quality actually outstripped your average furnace, with many a revision on it.
Furthermore, it was pointless to question this foldable, compressible morphing machine that clearly ignored the laws of conservation of mass. It was also pointless to question why Hiroshi couldn’t have just put a normal-sized furnace into a capsule to carry around to save time.
「Well, in any case.」
Hiroshi conveyed the current plans that were set in stone as he cleared up everyone’s finished eating implements, a habit he had picked up recently.
「No point stayin’ in this town too long, so let’s skedaddle today.」
「Agreed.」
「How ‘bout we practice refinement ‘n forging when we take a break on the road?」
「During our break, eh……」
Haruna murmured with a faraway look at Hiroshi’s outrageous suggestion. Although she didn’t come close to comparing with Makoto or Mio, Haruna felt she had gathered a wider amount of power than the average Class 7 adventurer. While Hiroshi had already attained an unbelievable amount of muscle mass from helping out in the family business back in their world, Haruna looked like she had hardly any muscle mass whatsoever. This seemed to be due mainly to her attribute points not falling even if she slacked, which was why she had nearly no change in her appearance (Mio was an exception because of her growth period) other than regeneration. She honestly didn’t want to have a massive build in the first place, so it was best not to question anything in this regard.
In Tatsuya’s case, it was truly strange that his nails, hair, beard, etc grew like normal, yet stuffing himself and drinking liquor didn’t fatten him up, but as that was no inconvenience to him, Tatsuya accepted it without over analyzing things. Tatsuya’s next birthday would be his twenty-seventh, so any form of aging also had yet to be seen. But of course Tatsuya had no inclination of staying that long, or else he would probably break at some point.
「Well, we know what our plans are, so how about we get going to the capital?」
「Yup.」
There was no point in quarreling any further. Leave too late and they risked getting caught by the dwarves again, so Tatsuya announced their departure.
「Thanks for the food. Bill, please.」
「Yes sir. That will be With five sausages added that will be twenty domas.」
「Kay.」
Paying the aforementioned amount (which was about twenty tirols in Farlane currency), the group got straight to leaving the inn. After this, there would be a bit of a disturbance with Haruna making weapons and tools every break and no one helping her in the slightest, but that will begin later on.
And so the curtains on the stage of the group’s adventure in Forre opened with many ups and downs from the very first day.
