NOVEL NEXT Chapter 413
“Ugh.”
“…”
Thump—
A heavy sound echoed softly.
“Your Highness, this is roughly the agenda you must review and handle before lunch.”
“…Viktor.”
Godwin glanced at the mountain of documents – a towering pile that was about two-thirds the height of the one Viktor had just placed related to Alicia – and turned back to Viktor, looking for an explanation.
“Do you think this is acceptable? Really? I don’t recall the stack being this mountainous until yesterday!”
“Well, of course.”
With a casual clap of his hands, Viktor spoke calmly while spreading his fingers.
“Requests from adventurers, status on village recovery, funds, necessary amounts for weekly wages, calculations on workers’ wages, merchants seeking audience to get business permits, and so on.”
With each item mentioned, a finger would fold down until by the end all five fingers were clenched into a fist.
“All transactions related to this ultimately fall under the purview of Your Highness, tasked with the Grand Duke’s mission of village reconstruction.”
“…Even so, there’s an unreasonably high amount today that just doesn’t add up.”
“Ha, that’s due to Your Highness’s status.”
Adventurers gain contributions every time they take on a request. The riskier or more important the request, the greater the gain.
Yet here we are with requests from the Felwinter Family.
There are even some requests commissioned directly by the Grand Prince himself, and there are a lot of them.
Felwinter Family requests come with bountiful rewards. Not to mention that contributions from a direct line of the Duke, especially the heir apparent, won’t be little evaluated by the Adventurer Guild.
At this point, even veteran adventurers keen on just the contribution itself step up, putting the reward aside.
Winter isn’t a season for resting, you say? Just swap it out with activities for the coming spring.
“No, I’m sure about other things. The bureaucrats handling funds and documents have received lavish support.”
“If it weren’t for them, you’d likely have even more documents to handle.”
Viktor subtly stepped aside, showing Godwin officials and guild employees scattered around, some sitting calculating and others attending to various tasks.
“Ultimately, the person who reviews and approves all these documents last is the one at the top.”
“So that would be me, then. Damn!”
“Correct.”
Godwin seemed momentarily taken aback, lost for words.
In that moment, Viktor received a new pile of documents handed over by an official, placing it beside the first stack, causing another faint thump.
“…Couldn’t we just eat breakfast before all this?”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.”
Viktor briefly closed his eyes and then opened them as if to lighten the mood.
“I’ll personally bring in breakfast. The kitchen is still preparing, so you can handle this in the meantime.”
“…Yeah. This must be the weight of a man of possessions.”
Godwin finally sensed a fragment of the burden that came with his title as Duke of Iceland. That weight was made of paper crafted from leather, bark, and cotton.
Fortunately, the documents were relatively straightforward compared to their quantity and weight.
After reading through them all, he could either reject them with a reason or slap his stamp of approval down hard, or call someone in for more detailed reports.
As the stack of documents noticeably shrank, Viktor returned, now holding a plate piled high with sandwiches.
“Here, you can eat while you work through those.”
“…Really?”
While he said that, Godwin silently grabbed a document with his hand that wasn’t holding the sandwich.
“I was hoping you would take a break while eating.”
As Godwin imagined a future of becoming nothing more than a mechanical document-signer, the moment the sandwich entered his mouth, the once dull look in his eyes began to shine.
“Mmm… Oh… mayonnaise…”
A sandwich grilled with generous butter. As he tore through the crispy surface, the rich and savory aroma of the decadent mayonnaise mixed with the flaked salmon, complemented by the fresh and crispy texture of the butter lettuce.
Indeed, people live to eat.
For a moment, engrossed in the sandwich, Godwin quickly devoured one side, then reached for another sandwich.
“Oh, this isn’t salmon; it’s egg. And this salty flavor… bacon bits? The tangy hint is from chopped pickles.”
“I’m glad to see your vitality return.”
“Well… moping won’t change reality.”
Most importantly, there is mayonnaise.
With that, Godwin demolishes salmon mayo, egg mayo, and BLT sandwiches alongside the documents.
As the high calories replenished his body, Godwin’s mind grew clear enough to recall the orders he had given earlier.
“Speaking of which, how did the local specialties fare?”
“I have both good news and bad news. Which would you like first?”
“Let’s go with the good news.”
“Unlike the two other villages, at least here in Borderedge, there are certainly local specialties.”
Feeling relieved at hearing good news, Godwin was about to take a bite of his sandwich, but his hand suddenly froze.
Borderedge is a coastal village.
They say they used to engage in fishing before the calamity hit the territories.
They even have mudflats.
He placed the sandwich back on the plate and sighed deeply.
“And what is the bad news?”
“Fish, clams, and Neptune’s head hair.”
Godwin’s hands, dusted with breadcrumbs, slapped his forehead.
“Of all things, it’s those.”
“Well, demand is low… so in essence, it doesn’t hold much significance for the village’s food supply. Moreover, hair is a common magical material found along any coastline, practically like weeds.”
“Huff… Right. Ishikobaharten must have been lucky.”
It’s rare for a village’s problem to turn into its specialty after going there to solve it.
All of it was thanks to Cook Karem’s grace.
Godwin took a moment to reflect on his gratitude for Karem’s efforts.
‘But this time, I won’t be able to rely on such tricks.’
Alfred had told Godwin he needed to accomplish this task with his own strength.
“Alright, let’s not be greedy; let’s shift our focus to solving the preceding problems step by step. Having a specialty would be convenient, but we can normalize even without it.”
“Understood. So hurry up and finish that last piece and get to work.”
“Damn. I was using hesitation as an excuse to take a little break.”
*
*
*
Originally, I planned to gather some seafood from the muddy areas.
That can wait for later.
I’m not fond of clams or octopus enough to dirty the clothes I’m wearing with mud, and I have no rubber boots anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
If necessary, there were plenty of clams everywhere, lying around on the rock coast exposed by the ebb tide.
“Ah, wait a minute. I should’ve brought a basket.”
Thinking such things for later, Karem stepped forward, each step crushing the thick crispy ice beneath him.
As he approached, his conviction grew alongside doubts.
‘But can seaweed truly grow in such a cold place?’
He briefly thought about it but dismissed the concerns.
The world is different, and the varieties might differ as well; it might even be something similar to seaweed, like Fire Witch Finger.
The large and small rocks, frozen as if struck by the cold winter wind, looked like lush skirts dusted with frost or streamers of water frozen in ice, resembling growing icicles.
Karem, despite the frost coating, pinched a handful of the strangely familiar yet foreign things.
Thud—
The ice crumbled, feeling like roots being uprooted.
Lightly shaking off the frost, Karem saw the material unraveling like threads from his grip.
“At first glance, it appears to be seaweed…”
Karem quickly mouthed the resistance spell against cold and dipped what he presumed to be seaweed into the icy sea water pooled in a depression, breaking through the thin layer of ice.
As it submerged, its color shifted from a dark green to light green, quickly unraveling like wet threads or hair.
“It’s definitely not seaweed.”
The look of the algae visible beyond the ripples on the surface was clearly different from what he remembered seeing in videos.
As he pulled what had bloated in water out, it shrank back and shifted to a dark green hue.
“…Just in case.”
Sploosh— Thud—
Karem withdrew his hands from the puddle and shook off the water.
Not wanting any trace of poison, he performed a slight purification spell.
Swish— Splash.
He didn’t hesitate to toss the presumed water plant into his mouth.
If someone had seen him, they would have murmured whether he was eating weeds.
Thanks to Karem’s surrendering of exclusive rights to the recipe, the usefulness of kelp was rediscovered, and perceptions of the ocean’s weeds received a fresh look. However, entrenched prejudices couldn’t be helped.
In his past life, Karem had no such prejudices.
He came from a place that marveled at, “Wow, they’re eating ocean weeds for the earth!” or “They’re consuming carbon emitted by dozens of vehicles.”
Even thinking of the ocean being polluted would lead them to think they could farm it on land – people deeply sincere about seaweed.
They would dry, boil, fry, season, and eat it raw with dipping sauce to their hearts’ content.
Twelve years hadn’t erased those instincts ingrained in his soul.
The flavor that lingered in his memory was unmistakable.
Swish—
“…The flavor is like seaweed?”
Is it truly like Fire Witch Finger?
Karem tilted his head.
Thinking there might be separate effects, he tried eating it raw again, but found no trace of the effects of something like Fire Witch Finger, nor did he sense any toxicity. None at all.
Without the processing, it did have a bit of an off flavor.
Yet, the taste and texture felt similar enough to seaweed.
No, even stronger.
The moment he put it in his mouth, the aroma cut through any fishy smell.
It was so thin that it could almost be mistaken for a thin membrane.
The typical slippery texture of rehydrated seaweed was there.
Though he ate it raw, there were no toxins, and whether it was a difference in species or not, it was undoubtedly tastier and more aromatic than the seaweed he had eaten in his past life.
“…Hmm.”
Suddenly, Karem’s eyes caught sight of a fragment of a decayed skeleton that unmistakably belonged to an Undead.
His gaze darted across the surrounding rocks, almost plastered with the seaweed, before glancing back at the bones repeatedly.
“Well, it’s just bones, so I suppose it doesn’t matter?”
“Cook brother, what doesn’t matter?”
Suddenly a voice came from below his waist, pulling his gaze downward.
There stood three children, roughly the same age as Alicia, staring curiously.
These were the same kids he fed sweet and sour fish yesterday.
“Cook brother, did you just eat something?”
“Cook brother, you just ate some hair.”
“Hair? Isn’t that seaweed? Why is brother eating seaweed?”
The heads of the three children tilted in unison, as if to question what he was doing.
“Is this really hair?”
“Um… some kind of hair, I guess… that’s how the villagers all called it.”
“It tastes just like seaweed.”
“Seaweed? Cook brother! Is it good?”
Fueled by the belief that if the cook who made the sweet and sour fish they had yesterday was eating it, it must be delicious.
Karem silently offered the handful of icy “hair” to the children, encouraging them to try by washing it off in the pooled seawater.
“Eww— it’s slimy.”
“Ugh… it’s just salty.”
“Tastes bad. The smell’s weird too.”
The reviews were harsh.
“Well, it’s probably too much for their little palates.”
Though there’s a cultural spread of eating algae, it’s mainly used for broth, and it visibly differed from kelp.
Especially when presented before proper processing, the raw seaweed washed in seawater would be unappetizing.
Karem suddenly spotted adventurers heading toward the mudflats.
They were carrying buckets, likely having taken on a gathering request.
“Ah, wait a minute. Hmm…”
Karem glanced down at the kids.
“Hey, kids. Want to earn some pocket money?”
“?”
While he would have liked to throw out gold coins, that would’ve been a little too much for the kids, so he settled for silver coins.
“If you work hard as I say, not only will you get silver coins but also something tasty.”
“Really?”
Of course, giving them silver coins felt extravagant.
However, Karem had no children’s coins on hand.
But that “hair” of some kind? Unique name indeed.