By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 15 - Chapter 10.2

I had no expertise to answer that. If Glen’s story was accurate, it meant that the hammer was made of adamantite more pure than the commonly accepted maximum. This might cause more problems than I thought. 

“Do you want that, Glen?” I asked.

“Huh? Of course I do. But this is your gramps’s keepsake.”

“It’s yours, as long as you keep where you got it from a secret. Like I said, I’ll never use it. Not that I couldn’t try, but I could never use it to its full potential. That would be a waste.” I’m certain Tigral would have wanted his weapons to be put to good use by someone who knew what they were doing, especially if it really was such an excellent piece. Who would be a better candidate than Glen?

“Hm,” Glen grunted. “I get that it’s only trouble for you. Some jerk offs could try to scam you out of the thing. I’m not shy about taking gifts, so if you’re giving it to me, I’m taking it. Trading it for my silence is a little too good of a deal for me, though... All right!” Glen took out another hammer from his fanny pack—the one he must have broken before using the last one. “Take these hammers for starters.”

He’d explained that these hammers were made to order in the royal capital’s most expensive weapons shop, crafted with what was considered the purest adamantite alloy available. On top of that, the handles were embedded with magic items in an attempt to protect the weapon from Glen’s full strength. Turning the hammer into a magic weapon wasn’t an option, though, because adamantite was an insulator potent enough to keep magic out of the alloy. The magic item in the handle only coated the surface of the hammer with magical energy, but even that much required the use of expensive high-fantasy metals like mithril. Broken or not, these hammers were hunks of precious metals.

“You can get more than the sum of their parts are worth. Nobles pay out the nose for weapons I use up. It apparently makes enough that the guy at the weapons shop told me he’d pay me to trade in a broken hammer for a new one. You know what, I’ll sign my name on it too,” Glen said, revealing a part of celebrity and collector culture in this world. Off the wall he might have been, but Glen seemed to have earned either fame or infamy through this strength. “And... I can’t think of anything else. I’ll owe you one, how about that? I’ll help you out once when you need it—on the house.”

“A free quest, you mean?” I asked.

“That’s right. Normally, I don’t take a job I don’t like from anybody, unless the pay’s ridiculously good. You give me this hammer, and what you want me to do will be at the top of my list. Of course, I’m not counting the Undead hunt here. Put me in that room again tonight—that’s good enough for me. This isn’t your freebie. Oh, but don’t ask me to do anything I can’t, like use my brain.”

There wasn’t anything I needed his help for now, but a free voucher and priority pass for an S-ranker’s time was a pretty good deal. This IOU could really benefit me in the future. “Okay. That hammer is yours under those conditions,” I agreed. “There’s nothing I can request of you now, except for your silence about this place.”

“No problem. When you’re S-rank, there’ll be a few secrets you keep for your clients. What do you want me to say if they ask about it?” Glen asked. “There’ll be a few people with too much time on their hands who’d like to sniff out where my new weapon came from. My usual weapons shop will have the next hammer ready—knowing I’d broken mine already. If I don’t go and buy it, he’ll come and sell it to me. He’ll take note of my fancy new war hammer. I’m going to keep your secret the best I can, but I’m not a good liar.”

“I’m sure he will if one of his regulars comes back with a war hammer that tops his best work... You can tell him you found it in the Sea of Trees, or something,” I suggested. Many people had braved the forest in search of fame and fortune. It wasn’t uncommon for lost equipment to be found, and I technically found it in an abandoned house in a ruined village, so it wasn’t entirely a lie.

“Sure, I’ll say that if anyone asks,” Glen said.

“Thank you... Now that that’s settled, let’s have dinner. The hunt starts tomorrow.”

“Now you’re talking! Any meat left from yesterday?”

“Plenty,” I said. “Do you remember how big it was?”

I started making dinner. Pouches of instant soup just had to be put in boiling water, so I could focus on using the barrel I’d prepared after dinner last night and a pair of woks I’d made with alchemy.

“All right, let’s fry stuff!” Glen caught up when I started pouring generous amounts of oil into the woks. Like he guessed, I was going to fry some immortal snake tenders. The barrel contained snake meat that had been marinating in my experimental sauce made from various spices and white liquor lees. I’d let the barrel sit in a cool, dark place overnight to let the flavors soak in.

I warmed the oil in the wok until it began to boil, stirring it with long chopsticks. Then, I began frying an egg-and-flour-dusted snake tender, which soon turned golden brown in the crackling fryer.

I pulled it out when it looked right, and put the next tender in its place. After letting the first piece sit for a minute or two, I refried it in the second wok.

“Hey, that looks done,” Glen said, hungrily staring at the woks.

Ignoring him, I cut a lamon into wedges to squeeze over the fried snake tenders once they were done. In Japan, a popular debate at the bar was whether to squeeze lemons onto fried chicken or not. Personally, I liked both options. The more variety I had in seasoning my food the better. True to that spirit, I was adding another flavor. I poured the sauce I’d prepared the night before into a small dish, then added a clever chicken egg, vinegar, and onion. Once I topped it with spices, it became a tartar sauce that would pair great with the fried snake.

Once all the tenders were fried, I piled them high on a platter with a side of lamon wedges and tartar sauce. Just as I tried to pick a nugget off of the platter to make sure it tasted good, Glen’s big hand snatched it away as if he couldn’t wait another second. When I bit into my own, the freshly fried tender was hot enough to make me pant through my mouth, the savoriness exploding on my tongue. Combined with the perfect texture of the crunchy skin and juicy meat, this meal knocked my socks off!

“So good... Is this the same meat as yesterday? That was good, too, but I know that good meat is supposed to taste good. This stuff is great, and I don’t know why,” Glen said.

“Yesterday, I just grilled the slabs of meat I’d cut out. It was surprising to me that the simple steak tasted good on its own. For today’s dish I’ve used plenty of spices—and a technique that softened the meat,” I explained. And yet, the flavor of the immortal snake wasn’t lost in my array of spices. It was distinctive enough that I almost wanted to add even more spices...and I really wanted some rice to go with it. “Hot Water.” I generated some hot water with magic, and poured it into another instant food pouch containing freeze-dried, cooked rice. In Japan, this had been common as a type of ration even back in the olden days. The only difference was that the rice used to be dried naturally and was now dried with machines. This was a wonderfully convenient invention, letting me eat steaming rice after only a few minutes of rehydration.

Catching Glen’s glance, I took out extra pouches of the rice and cooked more tenders while I waited for the rice to be ready... And all the while Glen kept eating nonstop and started drinking the white liquor I traded to him yesterday. “It’s easy to heat up the soup,” I said. “Don’t wait for me.”

“Yeah, that much I can do. But I need more of these...tenders? Do you have more of this sauce too?!” Glen asked as his hand continuously moved food and drink to his mouth. Even though the snake tenders disappeared as quickly as they were plated, Glen was enjoying it so thoroughly that I felt flattered as the chef. No wonder those mukbang videos had been going viral. Is this how people who run those biggest food challenges in their restaurants feel? After watching Glen enjoy it so much, I wanted a drink myself.

“What pairs with tenders and rice...?” To start with, I took out a batch of pure alcohol I’d extracted from the failed white liquor batches that didn’t quite make the cut. I’d originally prepared this as a disinfectant, but unlike companies in Japan, I didn’t add any preservatives to avoid paying a liquor tax on rubbing alcohol—I could still consume the alcohol. “Freeze.” I chilled a glass with magic, then cast “Sparkling Water... It worked!” I exclaimed. I’d managed to create carbonated water from the combination of Water and Wind magic. With a pour of pure alcohol and a squeeze of lamon slice, I just had to stir the drink well, and I had myself a lemon sour, or I guess a lamon sour.

I sighed in satisfaction. This was reminding me a lot of a cheap bar I used to go to on obligatory outings with friends during my broke college student days...not that my life really changed after graduation. I need to be careful, I reminded myself. This was a deadly combination for an infinite loop of tenders, sour, rice, and repeat. Fried meat, rice, and booze—it was an unhealthy but cheap and delicious menu.

“What’s that combination? It looks awesome,” Glen commented.

“I thought you’d say so.” I gave Glen a serving of rice and a glass of lemon sour along with the additional tenders, and he was clearly hooked.

His hands and mouth were moving rapidly. When I finally couldn’t fry the tenders fast enough to meet his demand, he began eyeing the bottle of pure alcohol, saying, “I never liked booze that just burns your throat going down. But drinking it like this isn’t half bad.”

“You don’t drink cocktails? Use any chasers?” I asked.

“I got no qualms with it, but a lot of dwarves—my old man included—can’t stand mixing anything with liquor, so I never got into the habit of drinking cocktails. I like stronger stuff, but another reason I never got into it was because I never found a mixed drink I liked,” Glen said.

“To each their own, of course... Wait. Are you a dwarf?”

“Huh? Yeah. Dwarves can come in a range of heights, and maybe my condition made it so I grew taller than the average human. The more you eat, the more you grow, they say. Very few people could tell I was a dwarf off the bat.”

“Now that you mention it... Even though you’re huge, your proportions are dwarflike. The thickness of your arms, and your torso...” I said. If I took a picture of a dwarf and enlarged it on a photo editor, for example, I thought I’d end up with a photo of Glen. Was that offensive?

“You’re losing sight of what’s important, Ryoma. More meat! And rice! And booze! Take whatever monster loot I have with me,” Glen pressed.

“Fried snake and lamon sours, coming right up,” I said, mocking the tone of a waiter. If last night was a barbecue party, tonight was a bar party. Nostalgia hit me for real as I remembered my days working as a part-timer at a bar.