Chapter 112 (1/2)

Volume 2

Chapter 113

When I got back to the inn all the food I had put out for my three contracted monsters had been vacuumed up, the plates left clean and sparkling . Everyone was sleeping soundly in the stables . Notably, Dora-chan was lying on his back because his belly was bulging . It seemed like the snacks I had left for them had been to his taste .

I decided to get on with preparing dinner without waking them up as it would be easier working without an audience staring over my shoulder all the time . Right then, I had promised Dora-chan we’d be eating delicious food tonight . It didn’t take me long to decide on what to cook . I had thinly sliced a lot of Wyvern ​​meat before I left Carerina in preparation for making sukiyaki at a later date . Now seemed like a good time, it would be tasty and luxurious so Dora-chan wouldn’t complain (probably) .

First of all I had to shop at the Net Super . I bought three sukiyaki cooking pots along with three small stoves since I’d need them later . Veggies? Well, Chinese cabbage of course, leeks and enoki mushrooms and maybe some edible chrysanthemums? Yep, I decided . After that first order I added shirataki noodles, baked tofu and eggs . The sukiyaki sauce I bought ready-made, it tastes good and it saves me a lot of time .

First I prepared the raw ingredients . The leeks were cut diagonally 1 cm wide and the cabbage chopped roughly into easy-to-eat pieces . The chrysanthemums were cut about 5 cm long, the tofu similarly cut into chunks easily picked up with chopsticks . I broke up the enoki mushrooms after trimming the roots so they would fit into the sukiyaki pots . Once everything was ready I started the cooking process .

I heated up the big frying pan and added the Wyvern meat, letting its thick fat ooze out and provide the cooking oil I would have otherwise added to fry leaner meat . The green onions were next, sizzling away as I kept a careful eye on the Wyvern meat . I wanted it to cook through but not brown, just enough for it to change colour as I added a little sukiyaki sauce to the pan from the bottle . When the meat changed colour I took it out and put it to one side before adding more meat . Lots more meat . My two, no three gluttons were going to demand lots of meat, I was sure .

Advertisement

Once the spring onions were thoroughly cooked I turned down the heat a bit and added the other ingredients I had ready, shirataki noodles, grilled tofu, enoki mushrooms, Chinese cabbage and spring chrysanthemum and let them cook until they were ready to eat . Doing a real sukiyaki hotpot wasn’t an option when my contracted monsters couldn’t dip items in and out of boiling water using chopsticks . Instead I’d use the small stoves I’d just bought from the Net Super to keep the dishes hot for them and finish the cooking .

To make up for the lack of extra liquid I added raw eggs to each dish along with a generous dash of sukiyaki sauce . It was something I sometimes did for myself at home . For Fer and Sui I put two eggs each into their dishes . Dora-chan is a lot smaller than those two but I remembered the way he had gobbled up gyoza the night before so I put two eggs in his serving as well . I mixed the eggs into the mixture of Wyvern meat and lots of veggies, letting them cook slowly on a low heat and leaving them runny .

Time to wake the Three Gluttons, I decided as I turned but they already were lined up behind me in anticipation . Of course . Both Fer and Dora-chan were drooling . Of course . And was that sweat gleaming on Sui’s skin or was it drool too? I decided not to think about it too much . Fer was a Bad Example to cute little Sui sometimes .

“Right, here you are . ” I took the dishes off the stoves and put them in front on the three hungry monsters . They dived in, unable to wait .

“This meat is tasty,” Dora-chan said around a big mouthful .

“Umu, this sauce goes well with the meat . And there’s egg too?” Fer tilted his head, considering the taste in the manner of an intrigued gastronome . “Hommm, the way it’s blended in, quite delicious . ”

“Yeah yeah,” Sui chimed in, “It’s very delicious when meat and egg, sweet and salty come together-” It seemed sukiyaki was considered best if eaten it with raw eggs . As I watched them eat, especially Dora-chan I had a sudden horrible thought . Ah . . . Aren’t Wyverns a subspecies of Dragon? I hadn’t really considered that before, after all they looked more like a Pteranodon . Was it OK for Dora-chan to be eating a relative?

Advertisement

“Ummm Dora-chan,” I interrupted the Pixie Dragon who raised its head, “That meat, it’s Wyvern meat . Is it, is it okay for you to be eating it? I thought, you know, Wyverns were related to Dragons? Isn’t it a bit, uh, like cannibalism?”

As I stumbled along trying to ask my question, Dora-chan burst out laughing .

“No member of the different species of Dragons will accept Wyverns are anything like them . ” Dora-chan explained, a smirk on his gravy-stained muzzle . “All Dragons as a whole are really smart, like me . ” He took a quick look into his mostly-empty bowl . “Stupid creatures like Wyverns can’t be called Dragons no matter how tasty they are . ” He shrugged . “Anyway as far as we’re concerned it would only be cannibalism if I ate another Pixie Dragon . This is a harsh world where only the fittest survive . If I had to I would eat anything except members of my own family . ” Dora-chan dived back into the bowl, eager to finish off his helping of Wyvern sukiyaki .

Dora-chan turned out to be unexpectedly savage despite his diminutively cute appearance, boldly stating he’d eat anything except his family, I mused as Fer chimed in .

“It is as Dora just said . In this world the weak are food for the strong . That’s just how it is . ” Fer said, nodding in agreement with Dora-chan’s cold-blooded assessment of how this world worked . It sounded quite brutal but I accepted it . Thanks to Fer who reigned at the top of this world’s food pyramid we got to eat the finest and tastiest monster meat, after all .

“Don’t think about it too hard, eat some of this yourself . It’s really good . ” Dora-chan added . Well, of course it’s good, Dora-chan, I made it after all, I thought to myself smugly . I started to dish out my own portion and-