Chapter 110 - Until the Flavors Have Blended
"Phew... The people from the Kingdom of Claps finally returned.
Now, let's hear this week's noteworthy reports."
"Yes, Your Majesty Yuzha.
The construction work to extend the railway to the Hot Spring Dungeon, the No-Hunger Dungeon, and the castle town was expected to take at least ten years, even just to widen and prepare the roads.
However, it now looks as though the work will be completed at ten times the anticipated speed."
"Ten times?!"
"...Thanks to the effects of the Hot Spring Dungeon, we've seen an increase in workers capable of effortlessly removing rocks that would normally take several adults to lift together.
Furthermore, advances in metalworking have improved the quality of our tools, making our excavation capabilities vastly superior to what they were before."
"With the abundance of food from the No-Hunger Dungeon and the increase in income, more people are healthy enough to afford proper weapons and armor. Perhaps as a result, casualties have plummeted.
The number of people available for the workforce has also grown to nearly ten times what it was last year.
Furthermore, with the birth rate on the rise, we expect the population to grow at an extraordinary rate from here on out."
"Oh, that's a relief. We're going to be so busy that no amount of manpower will be enough. We're already far too busy as it is...
So? Is that everything? It is, isn't it? Yes, that's everything. I'm going to take a bath."
"...Naturally, there's still plenty more, Your Majesty."
"...What reports are left? Just give me all of them at once, in a nutshell. Skip the details."
"Very well. Setting the details aside, I'll cover only the relatively major new developments..."
"There's a possibility that we may soon be able to process rainbow ore."
"We may be able to reproduce the mirrors from the Hot Spring Dungeon using transparent glass and silver."
"The princesses of the Kingdom of Claps and some of its nobles appear to be seeking marriage partners among nobles of suitable standing in our kingdom, with the intention of relocating here."
"There's a report on improvements to the steam locomotive wheels. These developments may also lead to improvements in conventional horse-drawn carriages, waterwheels, and windmills."
"The prototype of a steam-powered ship has been successfully tested. Depending on the performance of the completed vessel, we may consider launching an expedition to the continent where the castaways from another continent originally came from."
"Tensions among the gourmet aristocrats over the Ultimate Curry and the Supreme Curry have grown serious. Everyone is now waiting for Commander Shield to deliver her final verdict... And one more thing—"
"AAAAAAAHHHH!! ENOUGH! THAT'S ENOUGH! I SAID ENOUGH!!!
Stop bundling together a mountain of reports that would be overwhelming even if I heard just one of them every few years!
I can't even make sense of half of this! What on earth does curry have to do with Commander Shield?!"
"Her ability to distinguish alcoholic beverages is simply too exceptional. It seems even the gourmet aristocrats have come to regard her with considerable respect... Yes."
"She can even tell whether a whiskey has been diluted with water from the Hot Spring Dungeon, the No-Hunger Dungeon, a mountain spring in the Kingdom of Sepans, or an ordinary well."
"...Is there really any difference between those waters?"
"All the water in the Hot Spring Dungeon is moderately soft, but the water in the No-hunger Dungeon apparently varies between hard and soft depending on the floor..."
"...I see."
"Even the alcohol producers in the Kingdom of Sepans are going to Commander Shield for advice on which floor's water is best suited for making their drinks."
"Her word is beginning to carry enough weight to influence the prestige and standing of the gourmet aristocrats... It would be a problem if the position of those serving under the royal family were to be undermined."
If the standing of the gourmet aristocrats employed by the royal family of Sepans—who could practically be said to determine the value of food itself—were to be shaken, and another noble family took over their role...
Trade arrangements, the prices of imported ingredients, the standing of the merchants who handled them, the replacement of royal palace chefs, and countless other matters would all have to be adjusted to suit the new nobles' preferences. Her Majesty the Queen would then have no choice but to respond to all those changes.
However, Her Majesty Yuzha was no longer in any state to think rationally about the costs and benefits of such a situation.
The only thought left in her head was: Aaaaaaagh, what a massive pain in the ass...
"Fine, fine, understood. Next.
So the princesses of Claps and some nobles want to marry someone here and settle in our kingdom? I'll allow it, provided their prospective spouses have had every trace of political ambition thoroughly removed.
Right, next.
And the rest is all that stuff related to that... scientist girl from Nausa, isn't it? Honestly, she just keeps churning out one outrageous invention after another...
I might as well leave everything to her. She'll produce results on her own... I don't want to think about the details anymore."
"You mean... handing Lady Auf the entire budget?"
"And giving her full authority over what to make and how much...?"
"...Sorry. I take it back."
Even Her Majesty Yuzha, who was growing increasingly careless about everything, knew better than to go through with a proposal that could bring the kingdom to its knees. If Auf were left entirely to her own devices, her thirst for knowledge would eventually send her completely off the rails.
That said, every invention produced by Auf and her team had the potential to become a project requiring the entire kingdom's resources. Trying to deal with each one properly would turn into an enormous undertaking, and the thought was giving her a headache.
For instance, when she once got too deeply involved in improving the lighthouse, the number of new trading ships did indeed increase. Then, after those ships were supplied with crops and alcohol from the dungeons, so many more vessels showed up a few months later that the harbor couldn't accommodate them all. No one could even figure out where they had all come from, and the result was utter chaos.
Even now, there was no sign of the chaos subsiding anytime soon.
"The prince... Is it about time he considered taking the throne?"
She could have sworn she once had a spirited son with such fierce ambition that he had been willing to push aside even his own mother and siblings to claim the throne.
Lately, however, her son seemed content to say things like, "Well, you see, I'm rather busy with matters concerning the territory I've been entrusted with..." and had gradually stopped involving himself in the affairs of the kingdom's central government.
The brothers, who should have been bitter political enemies at each other's throats over their claims to the throne, were now working hand in hand. Each was doing his utmost in his own domain to support their beloved mother, Her Majesty the Queen, from behind the scenes.
"What in the world are you doing? Hurry up and overthrow me already! Someone, anyone, take the throne! Please, I'm begging you!"
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"I'm glad to see the curry business is doing so well."
"...But, like, aren't there kinda fewer knights coming into the dungeon than you'd expect, Master~?"
"There are plenty of knights from other countries, though..."
That was right... The number of knights from the Kingdom of Sepans was unusually low.
I already knew why, since I could read the details from the information-gathering trap spring on the fifth floor.
Up on the surface, they were building new defensive fortresses and border checkpoints. Most of the available manpower had been mobilized to construct a massive road connecting the Hot Spring Dungeon and the No-Hunger Dungeon, as well as to lay the railway.
"Still, once they're done transporting the Training Enhancement Spring from the tenth floor and the Stamina Recovery Spring from the eighteenth, I think the knights will start coming in one group at a time to strengthen their forces. We just have to hang in there until then."
"Mmmm~. I wanna become a gigantic twenty-floor dungeon already~!"
Peta-chan said as she chopped up the curry ingredients.
"Hey, didn't Commander Shield say something about which floor's water should be used for making curry? Can you actually tell the difference between the different kinds of water, Master?"
"Who knows...? All I do is produce water identical to the spring water from that place known as a sacred site for sauna enthusiasts. And the spring water in your No-Hunger Dungeon, Peta-chan, is just a random assortment of the various mineral waters I've tried over the years..."
Over the course of my life, I'd tried all sorts of bottled waters with names like "Spring Water from Such-and-Such" and "Delicious Water from So-and-So."
Unfortunately, neither of us had a refined enough palate to distinguish between them. They were all delicious, smooth-drinking water.
The reason we were having this conversation was that Commander Shield was researching curry on the eighteenth floor.
Commander Shield had also spent plenty of time in the information-gathering trap bath on the fifth floor, so I knew the circumstances behind her curry-making experiments.
Apparently, she had now become one of the few people capable of weighing in on the bitterly divided opinions of the gourmet aristocrats of the Kingdom of Sepans.
From the Kingdom of Marponwear's perspective as well, permission had been granted for her culinary pursuits on the grounds that they could help establish strong ties with the nobles of Sepans.
The woman in question was muttering to herself as she worked. "My hobby is drinking, that's all. It's not as though I'm a chef or a gourmet..."
Even as she grumbled, the fact that she was paying attention to everything down to the quality of the water she used left no doubt that she was a perfectionist.
Now, as for why Peta-chan was making curry herself...
It was because she was copying Commander Shield's method exactly, following along with the footage.
Peta-chan could now effortlessly prepare every dish featured in Japanese home-cooking cookbooks, and I had nothing left to teach her.
So Peta-chan often imitated the cooking methods of knights and chefs who came into the No-Hunger Dungeon to prepare meals.
By now, she could make quite a wide variety of dishes commonly eaten in the Kingdom of Sepans.
Among them, she'd discovered that imitating Commander Shield's cooking produced exceptionally delicious results. Both Peta-chan and I could vouch for the quality of her food.
Though technically, this was probably Marponwear cuisine rather than Sepans cuisine, that made no difference to us. As long as it tasted good, that was all that mattered.
"Let's see... Curry powder and roux from this brand, this brand, and this brand... Mix them in these proportions... And simmer the ingredients in water from the fourth floor. Got it."
I used to do things like mix the roux from one brand with another because, hey, that combination tastes good...
But this was some incredibly complicated blend of curry roux that I'd never seen before.
Would this really turn out to be any good?
I tasted a spoonful of the curry. The flavors of all the different roux blends were jumbled together, giving it a somewhat sharp, unbalanced taste.
"From here... Huh, after letting it cool down a bit, you put it in an icebox and let it rest for a while?"
What?! She was employing the advanced culinary technique of leaving curry in the refrigerator overnight?!
Had they really developed such a technique in an era when refrigerators presumably didn't even exist? ...Maybe it was something they'd learned during the winter... Yeah.
The next day, Peta-chan and I tried the finished curry.
"Whoa... It's delicious! This is incredibly good! Amazing!"
"Yeah, it's delicious. That's the taste of curry that's been left to rest overnight."
In the Master Room, any leftover curry simply disappears, so I'd completely forgotten about the step of making it ahead of time and letting it rest overnight.
As expected of curry that's been left to rest overnight. The flavor really is on another level.
It was as though the flavors of all the different spices and ingredients had fully blended together in perfect harmony.
As for whether the roux blends had been combined in the right proportions? No idea.
All I could say on that front was that it tasted like curry made by mixing various store-bought roux products.
If we had palates as refined as Commander Shield's, we could probably appreciate the differences clearly. But at the end of the day, we were the sort of people who couldn't even tell different mineral waters apart.
Even we could clearly taste the difference once the flavors had melded together overnight. Overnight curry really was something else.
The Kingdom of Sepans seemed to be in quite a state of upheaval, with so many elements of modernization pouring in all at once.
But hey, given enough time, everything would settle in just like the flavors in this curry. In about ten years or so, it would surely all come together.
Probably.
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