Transition to Another World, Land Mines Included. 036

Transition to Another World, Land Mines Included.

ACT 2: UNION
036: Preparing Fowl

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When we rejoined Haruka and the girls, the two boars were already cleanly dissected into the different parts of meat, hide, and tusks. The innards had also been buried, with signs of a hole nearby. The girls were starting up a fire, which meant that it was time for lunch.

“Welcome back. Looks like you guys were successful.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

I laid out the single Kuuras we’d caught, as well as some kindle we’d picked up along the way back. Tohya did the same with his six Cotas and bundle of kindle.

“I was going to grill some boar, but I guess it was a good idea to wait.”

“Haha! Didn’t we tell you that we’ll bring back some good meat?”

There was no need to tell them that we’d almost caught nothing, right?

“You can see how much each of us managed to catch.”

“Hey!! That’s because we were working together! I was the one who located all the prey, remember?”

I’d made Tohya promise to keep it a secret, but he’d exposed it anyway, so I had to save some face. I mean, I did locate all the fowl using my Enemy Awareness, so couldn’t he give me a little more credit?

“Well, but Tohya was the one who killed the birds, right?”

“Yeah, I guess it can’t be helped.”

Yep. It was only because my kill rate with magic was still too low.

“Doesn’t matter. Anyway, since we now have more food, do you want to try some dissecting, Natsuki?”

“Oh, alright. I’ll try.”

“How about you, Yuki?”

“Sorry, I’ve already copied the Disassembly Skill, so spare me for today…”

“Oh, can you already use the Skill?”

“Yeah, somehow.”

With a slightly grossed out expression, Yuki then explained how Haruka had taught her the steps to dissect the two boars, which unlocked the Skill for her. She’d started out fumbling through the process, but her actions suddenly become much smoother, signaling that the Skill had been unlocked.

“It’s convenient how you can learn Skills so easily. Nao still hasn’t gained the Disassembly Skill yet.”

“Well, it’s about time. Anyway, since Yuki can learn Skills so quickly, shouldn’t we all take time to teach her everything we can?” I asked.

“Yes, please! I wanna be more useful!”

“Sounds good. We’ll all work on teaching our Skills to each other. Unlike Yuki, we may not end up gaining the Skills ourselves, but it’ll be useful to have the knowledge.”

Knowledge-based Skills aside, it might also be useful to learn physical Skills like Evasion, which could keep us safe. We might even learn the Skill officially with enough training.

“That’s for later. Now, let’s prepare these birds! They’re much more trouble than the boars, though.”

“I know. Alright… I’ll work on one Cotas with Yuki so I can teach her. Nao and Tohya, you guys can take two each. For the Kuuras… Can you handle that, Natsuki?”

Everyone nodded at Haruka’s suggestion.

“Alright, we’ll need to soak these in hot water first… Tohya, you have our pot, right?”

“Yep, right here.”

We’d bought this pot to make our dried rations. Whenever we headed out, we’d put in at the bottom of our backpack, then fill the inside up with items, so it didn’t take up too much space. Now, Tohya retrieved the pot from his backpack, and Haruka filled it with hot water using her magic.

While she couldn’t create boiling water just yet, the water was still hot enough for our purpose now. We dumped all the fowl into the pot and waited.

“Hey, Haruka. That was magic, right? What type was it?” Yuki asked.

“Well, it’s based on the Water Magic spell, Water Jet, though it doesn’t seem like it. I’m sure you know that magic in this world is quite flexible.”

“But flexibility comes at the price of increased MP, right? How about that spell?”

“This one is still OK. Though it takes effort to make water at high temperatures, I tried to release it slowly instead of in a jet stream to save on MP.”

It seemed that the laws of energy conservation applied to magic and MP as well.

For example, casting the spell Light at 10lux for ten minutes would use up the same MP as casting it at 100lux for one minute.

As for Water Jet, the speed of the jet stream created would depend on the MP used, and creating a smaller amount of water could also conserve MP.

Of course, it did not work in every situation.

For example, casting Light at 60,000lux for 0.1 seconds would be impossible, as it would require an instant massive amount of MP. Similarly, casting it at 0.1lux for 1,000 minutes would somehow lower the effectiveness of the spell too.

In conclusion, since no experiments had been done to quantify magic, we users could only rely on our common sense when casting spells.

“OK, I think they’re ready?”

We each grabbed a bird from the pot and started plucking off the feathers. Boiling the birds had made the process much easier, and I was glad we’d decided to bring the pot along. Otherwise, the fowl would be too soft, and we’d have a harder time pulling out the feathers.

“Let’s remove the innards next. Be careful not to cut them open.”

Just like with dissecting boars, it’d be trouble if we accidentally sliced the innards or guts of the animal open. A lot of trouble. Through our practice sessions, we’d learned just what kind of gunk was lodged inside the intestines…

And while we could rely on Haruka’s Purification to clean the meat up again, the sight of it was still enough to make us sell the meat instead of keeping it for our own consumption.

Were we being dishonest? Nope! I mean, we did clean it up with Purification. It was just the principle of it all. Besides, ignorance is bliss.

“We can eat some of these, so let’s remove the heart and liver and put them to one side.”

Boar innards couldn’t be kept for long, and it also smelled bad even with thorough washing, so we usually just tossed it out. However, fowl innards were delicious when stuck on skewers, salted, and grilled, so we usually kept the heart and liver to eat.

“Oh, you guys can throw the unwanted parts into this hole,” Yuki said as she used her Earth Magic to create a small hole in the ground.

“Thanks!”

We dumped the remaining innards into the hole, while Yuki gathered all the plucked feathers and tossed them in as well.

“Next, we’ll cut off the feet and burn off any remaining tiny feathers on the skin. Then, I’ll wash the birds with Purification.”

“…I’m done.”

Having done this many times, Tohya and I had moved on to our second bird. Natsuki looked like she’d just finished hers too, despite being just a beginner.

“Well done. Can you do the Kuuras too?”

“Of course.”

With a nod, Natsuki started plucking the feathers from the Kuuras. There was no sign of disgust in her expression.

Haruka, Tohya, and I had experienced dissecting a boar as our first project, so dissecting birds was a relatively easy task for us. I guess for Natsuki, preparing fowl was similar to preparing a big fish?

“I’ll start cooking in the meantime. I’ll need your help, Yuki. First, please copy my Cooking Skill. It’s at Level 1.”

“Ooh, I’m glad to help with cooking!! Oh, is Cooking an actual Skill? But I can already cook. Natsuki’s great at cooking too.”

“That may be true in our previous world, but you don’t have the official Skill now, right? It’s really different…”

By the way, Natsuki wasn’t just ‘great’ at cooking. We didn’t have many chances to taste it, but the few times we did were enough to prove that her skill exceeded even Haruka’s. It wasn’t a stretch to say that she cooked like a pro.

“What do you mean, Haruka?”

“Well…”

“Well?”

“The results are so drastic. For example, I can do a simple cooking step like sprinkling salt on meat, but the result tastes so amazing, like I’d seasoned it with high-quality salted plum. It’s just like magic.”

Now that we had magic in this world, it was much easier to understand what Haruka meant. Since she had experience with cooking in the previous world, it was easy for her to tell the difference possessing the Skill made.

“Seriously? That sounds so cool!”

“I’m really interested too… But I don’t think I can get the Skill, can I?” Natsuki asked.

“I think chefs in this world do learn the Skill, so maybe you can get it through some practice?”

“Oh? In that case, I’ll work on cooking in my spare time!” Natsuki said with determination, fists clenched.

It was rare to see her so fired up. I guess she must really love cooking.

“You can do that once we get back. Anyway, let’s make some grilled chicken skewers, Yuki.”

“Yeah!”

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