Chapter One Hundred and Fourty-Seven: Dungeon Cooking 2
“It already smells really good.”
Gunther, who was closest to Karen, said this. He was particularly staring intently at Karen’s hands, probably watching to make sure she didn’t add anything strange. Karen willingly accepted this wariness. The next closest was Sepl, then Julius. When she had sent a messenger asking for spices to be brought, she was surprised when Julius came pulling a cart. Even after that, he continued staying at this spot while helping like Karen’s assistant. While feeling somewhat awkward, she gratefully relied on Julius’s help.
“Waaah! This smell is making me hungry!”
“Is there anything else I can help with?”
“Um, let’s see…”
Karen considered the offer from the female adventurer in red armor, who had already chopped up plenty of chunks of kocco meat, without pausing her work. Karen grilled the kocco meat, threw massive amounts of spices along with the onions, garlic, and grated ginger everyone had chopped and gathered, then stirred with a large wooden ladle appropriate for the pot size. As she sautéed everything in treant oil, the aroma rose and more and more adventurers kept approaching. The sun was slanting, so it was probably around evening. Inside the dungeon, she couldn’t hear the temple bells, so she didn’t know the exact time. She wanted to complete dinner before the sun completely set. So Karen honestly asked for help.
“Could you put lots of oil in that pot and heat it up? I’m going to deep-fry vegetables and mushrooms.”
“Deep-frying, huh. Sounds delicious.”
Karen grinned at the chuckling female adventurer and threw in large amounts of cut tomatoes, sugar, and butter, stirring them together. It was a spice soup curry made with materials found in the dungeon, created on the fly in a make-it-or-break-it style.
Karen had confidence she could turn it into a potion even with this improvised approach, but it seemed like magical power would be more important than she’d thought. As her rank went up, Karen’s magical power had also risen to C-rank. But with the large quantity of soup curry and the adventurers’ magical power transferring to the ingredients from helping, there wasn’t much leeway. Julius peered at Karen’s face as sweat beaded on her forehead.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. I have magical power recovery potions.”
Back in her alchemy workshop, as she stood next to Harald, who was struggling because he could no longer make potions he once could, what Yuluyana had drilled into Karen before she entered the dungeon was how to make magical power recovery potions. The ingredient was magic mushrooms—parasitic fungi that latched onto magical plants and drained their magical power. If humans were parasitized by these and fell into a serious condition, they would see hallucinations while having their magical power drained. That said, magic mushrooms wouldn’t grow on your body unless you went days without washing, and even if they did grow, they’d fall off immediately if brushed away.
Depending on how they were processed, they could apparently become dangerous drugs that caused hallucinations, so alchemists were forbidden from handling them until reaching D-rank or above. Karen had already reached the point where she could brew small magical power recovery potions on her own.
After drinking a potion from her pouch to restore her magical power, Karen turned back to the pot. She returned the grilled kocco meat to the pot and added water to simmer it.
While simmering, Karen looked at the adventurers.
“Everyone, who wants some soup curry?!”
“We do! We do!”
“It really looks delicious!”
“Don’t let it be one of those things that only smells good!”
Karen grinned at the enthusiastic adventurers, recharged her motivation, and headed to the other pot. She deep-fried the cut vegetables one after another. The freshly harvested vegetables full of moisture made the oil splatter wildly, but it was safe if she defended with magical power.
“Heh, miss, you’re good at magical power control. Isn’t that on par with a mage?”
At the young mage’s words, Karen said sharply:
“I dabbled a little in magical theory at commoners’ school, but couldn’t understand it at all!”
“Yeah, well, that’s the difficulty of being a mage.”
She deep-fried vegetables one after another in the hot treant oil. To serve the crispy, freshly fried vegetables while they were hot, Karen tasted the simmered soup and adjusted the flavor by adding black pepper and salt.
“Hmm, this looks good.”
When the taste was nearly complete, she took out the final ingredient. Medicinal herbs. They had been ground into powder in a mortar. This was a measure to avoid ruining the soup curry’s deliciousness, even if what Karen was about to attempt failed. Soup curry with fibrous grass remaining wasn’t what Karen wanted.
Medicinal herbs were different from culinary herbs. Also different from spices. The most famous and common basic magical plant in this world.
Karen recalled the first time she had put medicinal herbs in curry. While she didn’t remember precisely, she had felt that the medicinal herbs made it more delicious. She thought the medicinal herbs suited the curry.
They suited it so much—yes, she had even thought that the medicinal herbs had adapted to the curry. That had been a joke within Karen that she hadn’t even voiced. But perhaps she had been judged to have correctly identified the truth that medicinal herbs could transform into something other than healing potions.
Yes, probably the medicinal herbs she had put in the curry that time had transformed. Into something necessary for the curry to become a panacea. While wishing for it to transform into that something and infusing it with magical power, Karen sprinkled the medicinal herb powder into the curry. The next moment, her magical power consumption became drastically intense, and Karen’s heartbeat became loud and fast. Strength suddenly drained from her body—because her magical power had drained out. Julius was faster than anyone else to support Karen as she nearly collapsed.
“Karen.”
Would he tell her to stop right now? Karen tensed for a moment.
“I’m supporting you, so see it through what you want to do to the end.”
“…! Yes!”
Karen looked up at Julius, broke into a smile, and nodded, then let her magical power be offered to the curry pot as it was drawn out. She had only been trying to recreate the spice curry she’d made at the Ehlertt family’s estate before, so she never imagined it would demand this much magical power.
Had she known it would drain her reserves this severely, she should have tried with a smaller amount of curry—yet regret came too late, and she had no intention of stopping now.
Karen completely gave up on standing with her trembling legs and entrusted herself to Julius. While sweating profusely, she wore a beaming smile, and her eyes sparkled. With something this interesting about to happen, there was no way she could do something as wasteful as interrupting it.
The medicinal herb powder she’d put in the curry began transforming while emitting a rainbow-colored radiance. Unlike before, she could visibly see that this transformation was affecting the curry. Faintly, she could see particles of light dancing.
“This is…!”
Gunther, who had been peering into the pot the whole time, gasped. Karen cut off the flow of magical power. Her heart pounded loudly, and her head ached. To help Karen, who was breathing roughly and could barely stand, Julius took her appraisal mirror from her pouch and held it in front of Karen’s eyes.
Supported by Julius and peering into the appraisal mirror he held up, Karen smiled while drenched in sweat.
Kocco Soup Curry
Panacea (Medium)
“Kocco soup curry panacea potion, complete!”
“P… Panacea?!”
Because Sepl shouted loudly, the adventurers rushed over, competing with each other, and began appraising the soup curry.
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