BXBX NOVEL Chapter 259
Chapter 259
「Rei! Soup for 500 people in 3 pots is ready!」
「The baked bread is starting to cool, please store it away! If you don’t store the bread quickly, there won’t be any space to place the next lot of bread, so please hurry up!」
「The Fang Boar and stir fried vegetables are ready! Because it won’t taste as good when it cools down, please store the pot away as soon as possible!」
「I’ve brought a barrel of liquor, where should I put it! If you don’t pick them up soon, the entrance is going to be blocked up!」
Normally, this would be the guild’s training ground. But today, there was a plethora of chefs, bakers and merchants carrying goods to be delivered.
In the end, it was decided to follow Rei’s recommendation and prepare fresh food for the military. Because of that, preparations started immediately the next day.
After all, if food was stored in the Misty Ring, time wouldn’t flow for it. In other words, there was no problem even if the food was prepared now, despite the fact that details regarding the soldiers Gilm would send hadn’t been decided yet.
「These are the soup pots.」
Unusually, Rei was running around the training ground with sweat on his forehead. He stored freshly cooked food into the Misty Ring one after another.
Yes, everything including the pots and pans.
Then, right after Rei stored them away, new cookware would be brought out and the next dish prepared.
「Keo, 3 pots of soup have been stored.」
「Yes, yes, got it.」
At Rei’s call, Keo, who was following behind him, answered as he wrote onto a piece of paper with a pen.
If you only considered efficiency, there was no need for the city’s chefs to gather at the guild’s training grounds. However, in this case, they had to check who delivered what and how much was brought over, such as the amount of cooked food, baked bread or barrels of liquor. As a result, Keo followed Rei around at the same time as chefs gathered in the training grounds under the blue sky to cook food and bake bread.
Of course, normally there weren’t any cooking facilities at the training grounds. However, as the lord of the city, Daska made a quick request to Marina, the guild master.
After that, the blacksmiths in the city literally stayed up all night to create a large amount of cookware, which was then used to cook food before being stored into the Misty Ring by Rei. It had been a few hours since they started this busy job. After doing it for a while, they began to get used to it, but being busy was still being busy. Rei had been running around the training ground with Keo, who was in charge of supplies.
「Next is the bread. Is it fine if it’s cooled!?」
「Yes, it’s fine. The next lot of bread will be baked soon, so please hurry.」
「I understand. Keo.」
Rei turned to look at Keo, but Keo had already written down the amount of bread on his piece of paper.
Finally, quickly checking the amount of bread, he turned to look at Rei.
「Rei-kun, 180 loaves of bread, confirmed.」
Keo had the special ability to instantly count the number of items in a group just by looking at them. That was the main reason why Keo was in charge of supplies.
When there were too many items though, Keo’s brain wouldn’t be able to handle it and he would start getting headaches. Nodding at Keo, who had instantly counted the number of loaves, Rei touched the wooden tray and stored it into the Misty Ring.
Then, as if it had been waiting for that moment, another large wooden tray was prepared and freshly baked bread taken out from multiple ovens and lined up to cool.
「Hey, Rei! Please hurry to me!」
「I understand, wait a moment!」
Called over by the chef in charge of stir fry, Rei headed over with Keo to the area where many kitchens were lined up and flames were roaring and flaring everywhere.
Rather than a pan, which was what stir fry was usually cooked in, there was a huge pot. Inside, there were various monster meats that were stir fried with plenty of vegetables. There were also other stir fried meats like pork and chicken.
The busiest part of the training ground, which had now become a big kitchen, was the stir fry area where Rei and Keo where.
After all, stewed foods and soups took a long time to cook. Bread didn’t take as long, but they still needed time. On the other hand, the stir fry area used magic items made from Flame Crystal and food was cooked with the equivalent heat of a magic attack. In addition, because the food didn’t need to be served on plates from the pots, dishes were made one after the other.
「Come on, hurry up. The next stir fry will be done soon.」
「I know. ……By the way, what’s next?」
「It’s the fried udon with sauce I made with reference to the fried udon you brought back from Abuero. I guarantee the taste.」
Dishot smiled as he wiped the sweat on his forehead with a nearby cloth.
The fried udon with demi glace sauce that Rei had brought back. Impressed by its taste, Dishot worked hard to match its taste with what he used in his eatery, and the other day, the first fried udon with sauce in Gilm was finally completed.
「Heh. That’s great. I’ll taste a bit of it……」
Those words came out of Rei’s mouth because he knew how good Dishot’s cooking skill was, but as if waiting for that, Keo’s hand stretched out to Rei’s shoulder.
「Rei-kun, this food is for military rations. There will be a problem if you eat it now.」
「……Even just a little?」
「If it’s the chef sampling it, that’s fine. But as expected, if you want eat some in front of me, since I’m in charge of supplies……」
His words were mild, but he still held pride in his work. He looked at Rei quietly.
Seeing his gaze, Rei sighed as he spoke.
「Okay.」
After his reply, Rei obediently stored the cooked dish into the Misty Ring.
Then, as he looked around, a person near the entrance to the training grounds called out.
「I’m sorry! Could you take away the liquor as soon as possible? I can’t get through here with all the barrels!」
「Ah, yes, yes. I’ll be right over, so please wait a moment. ……Rei-kun, let’s go. It won’t be good if the entrance ends up being blocked by barrels.」
「That’s right. In the first place, if the entrance is blocked, extra ingredients won’t be able to get in.」
Just as they were talking about that and were heading to the person who had called out to them.
「Hey, move everything away from here! I can’t get inside! Hey, move out of the way!」
「Ah, please wait a moment. The people from the supply team are coming to pick it up now. It’s liquor that’s in the barrels, so don’t handle them too roughly!」
Apparently they were one step behind and a dispute had already begun near the entrance to the training grounds.
「Yes, yes, yes, wait a moment. We’ll pick them up right away so don’t fight!」
Keo, who was in charge of supplies, stood between the two people as he spoke.
Of course, there was no way that a single person could carry a barrel of liquor. There were almost 30 people in total, all bringing carts with a large number barrels loaded on them.
In fact, liquor was considered as one of the most important commodities in this war. In order to maintain morale, a single cup of liquor would be given to each person to celebrate after winning a battle or a skirmish, or at times when the soldiers were greatly disadvantaged in order to maintain morale and prevent deserters. In addition, the high alcohol content could also be used for disinfecting when treating injuries.
However, troops departing from Gilm would be unlikely to run out of medicine or potions due to the benefit of Rei’s item box.
「Rei-kun, just store the barrels! If it stays as it is, nobody else will be able to get inside.」
「Leave it to me.」
Rei nodded at Keo’s shout from the entrance to the training ground as he headed over.
「Is this all of it?」
「Yes. But please don’t store the cart because it’s ours.」
「No problem.」
Rei nodded at the representative who had brought the barrels and touched them one after another as he stored them into the Misty Ring.
「Wow, that’s amazing……it’s the first time I’ve seen an item box.」
「Hm? Is that so? Rei is pretty famous in this city.」
「No, no matter how famous he is, it’s usually because of Set right? He usually doesn’t use his item box that much.」
「Not really. Rei often buys large amounts of food at stalls and stores it into his item box. At the very least, I’ve seen it many times.」
While listening to the conversations of the muscular men who had brought the carts here, Rei moved from right to left as he stored the barrels of liquor one after the other.
Then, seeing the empty carts that were parked near the entrance to the training ground, Keo called out to the other group.
「Sorry for making you wait. Some people are running out of ingredients, so please carry more in!」
「Righto, leave it to us. No matter the Bestir Empire, if our troops eat food made from the ingredients we bring, we’ll kill them all in no time. Hey, everyone!」
『Yeah!』
Those who were following behind shouted together at the man’s words.
「Ahahaha. We’ll do our best, so please work with us.」
「Hey, hey! The bread is baked! Please store them into the item box!」
As soon as they had stored all the barrels away, the persons leading the bakers called out to Rei and Keo again.
「Yes, I’ll be right there. Rei-kun!」
「I understand!」
As expected, being this busy tired him out mentally and physically. Rei gave a small sigh before walking again.
「……I’m really tired……」
「Guru~?」
Rei muttered to himself as he walked down the dark road at night.
Are you okay? Set seemed to ask him. He looked straight at Rei as he gave a cry.
While Rei and Keo were desperately storing food items into the Misty Ring, maybe because he was too big and would take up too much space or because his hair and feathers might get into the food, Set had lay down over at the guild’s tamed monster area and spent his time playing with children, adventurers and other residents of the city.
Then, after the sun set, the chefs who had been cooking all day said that there was nothing more they could do, so that had been the end of today.
……Of course that hadn’t happened. The chefs had all been given their rewards before splitting up from the guild.
On that note, it was clear that even though carriages weren’t required to carry the supplies, because the food being prepared was proper food, the fee for each dish also rose higher. Paying for all this was only possible because Gilm was extremely wealthy from it export of high ranking monster materials and medicinal herbs that could only be found in this region to the rest of the Mireana Kingdom. The cost of food would have been too high for other nobles, but Daska was sure that his decision was right.
Anyhow, Rei and Keo’s work wasn’t over just because the chefs had left.
After a 10 minute break from storing food supplies, the two of them, along with Set, had gone to various shops around the city to buy items such as potions, weapons, armour, medical items used for treatment, fodder for military horses and large containers of water.
Unlike the case with cooking, those items didn’t lose their taste after getting cold, so considering the effort required to gather them all to the same place, it was faster for Rei to go to each one after another.
However, also different compared to the food, it wasn’t possible to store all the items in one day, so it would take them several days to go around collecting everything.
Still, Daska knew that it would be risky to have Rei carry all the supplies. Rei was only in charge of half the supplies outside of food.
「That’s right. However, this busyness will soon be over. If my calculations are right, it shouldn’t take 10 days, including today, so do your best.」
Keo, who was walking behind Rei and Set, said that to him.
「……By the way, why are you following us? Don’t you have to go back to the knights?」
Rei asked as he looked at the empty handed Keo.
The reason why Keo was empty handed was because the large stack of paper he had used to write down stored supplies was currently in the Misty Ring.
If he was going to work with Rei anyway, he might as well use Rei’s item box instead of hold the heavy stack of papers himself. Rei tolerated it since he didn’t have to carry the heavy stack of paper himself either.
Although Keo had a knightly figure, it was limited to the sheathed sword that hung from his waist.
「No, because I’ll be workin with Rei-kun for a while from today, I should also wake up from the same inn as you. Since my boss told me to do that, I have to follow as a subordinate, right?」
「Gururu~?」
Set tilted his head as he turned to look at Keo.
For Set, it wasn’t too bad to have someone nearby who was friendly with him without being scared. Keo would also give him some food every now and then.
「……Do what you want.」
Looking at Set, and the accompanying Keo, Rei gave a wry smile.
Like that, Rei and Keo worked together for the next 10 days, continuing to collect and store supplies into the Misty Ring.
……And then, the day finally came to depart for the battlefield.