"What are you doing here, Poncho?" I asked.
"Oh, that's right! Listen to this, sire!" Poncho trudged over with his abdominous
body.
"Whoa, you're getting too close!" I exclaimed. "...What's this, so suddenly?"
"At last, at long last, it's complete! That 'sauce' you have been requesting!" The
usually shy and reserved Poncho was incredibly excited, thrusting a bottle filled
with a black liquid out toward me.
The sauce I'd requested?
...Ah!
"You don't mean that's finally ready, do you?!"
"Please taste it for yourself, yes."
"Sure!" I dripped a few drops of the black liquid onto the back of my hand, then
licked them up.
It had a vegetable or fruit flavor and a spice-like fragrance. There was no doubt,
this was what we'd called sauce in Japanese. However, unlike ordinary
Worcestershire sauce, it had a strong sweetness and sourness, along with a depth of
flavor.
This was definitely the sort of sauce that went with yakisoba, a sauce for flourbased dishes.
"The taste of sauce... is a boy's flavor," I remarked, quoting a certain gourmet
manga.
"What kind of nonsense are you talking now?" Liscia said with a roll of her eyes,
snapping me back to my sense.
"It's just, the sauce we have been experimenting with is finally complete, so I was
filled with emotion."
"I-Is it that big of a deal?" Liscia asked.
"Of course! Because, with this, I can make yakisoba, okonomiyaki, monjayaki,
takoyaki, and sobameshi. It's good on fried dishes on its own, too."
"I barely know what any of the dishes you just named are..." Liscia murmured.
"I'll make them for you sometime soon. I mean, even if there are leftovers, I'm
sure Aisha will make them disappear for us."
But, still... at last, we had perfected this sauce for flour-based dishes.
It had been a long process. There had already been a sauce similar to
Worcestershire sauce in this world, but it hadn't been the sort of thick sauce that
would work well with yakisoba. I had thought I could create one somehow, and I'd
been working on it through a process of trial and error, but with no real knowledge
of sauces, it had proven to be beyond me. That was why I had ended up creating
those spaghetti buns before yakisoba buns. I had half given up on the development,
but it looked like Poncho had continued it for me.
"I'm impressed you were able to recreate it," I told him. "You'd never tasted it
yourself before, right?"
"I had Your Majesty's words, 'It's thicker than ordinary Worcestershire sauce,
sweet, and I think it felt a little sour,' the knowledge that there was a noodle dish,
'yakisoba,' which you would pour the sauce over and mix, and the memory of the
pasta dish you call Spaghetti Neapolitan, which gave me the hint I needed."
"The spaghetti did?" I asked.
"Yes, it did, yes. That spaghetti uses the tomato sauce called ketchup that I
developed with you, right, sire? I knew that ketchup went well with noodle dishes,
so I thought something similar to ketchup might have been used with this noodle
dish called yakisoba, yes."
"Ahh!" I cried.
I saw now! This sweet and tangy flavor came from fruits and vegetables! In other
words, this sauce for flour-based dished was made by adding tomato sauce and
other ingredients to a thick Worcestershire sauce, then? Poncho had an incredible
sense of taste to be able to figure that out on his own.
"Then, in order to give the Worcestershire and tomato sauce mixture a greater
depth of flavor, I tried adding the soy sauce and mirin produced here at the Kikkoro
Distillery. Um... How do you think I did?" he asked hesitantly.
I put my hands on Poncho's shoulders. "Poncho... you did well."
"Sire! You are too kind, yes!"
"Now, can this sauce be mass produced?" I asked.
"It seems the Kikkoro Distillery will take on the job for us."
That was wonderful. Now I could write another page in the culinary history of
the kingdom. When Poncho and I started excitedly talking about the topic of sauces,
the other members of the group... particularly the women, Liscia, Hilde, and Carla...
looked on, rolling their eyes.
"Souma's not a big eater, but sometime, he can be pretty picky about the
strangest details," Liscia said. "I wonder why that is?"
"That's just what men are like, Princess," said Hilde. "They pour needless passion
into things women don't understand, and they think nothing of the trouble they go
to doing it. They're such bizarre creatures."
"You speak like you have personal experience with this," said Carla. "Do you
know someone like that, Madam Hilde?"
"Don't ask about things you shouldn't, dragonewt girl," Hilde snapped. "I'll stitch
your mouth shut, you know?"
"Y-Yes, ma'am! I won't ask you anything, yes!" Carla hurriedly saluted, seemingly
having been infected with some of Poncho's speaking style as she did.
And, well, I was excited by the unexpected result, but it was about time to
accomplish my real objective here. I parted with Poncho and then, in the director's
office of the Kikkoro Distillery, I met with the elder of the mystic wolves who was
also the director of this place.
We sat across from him in the same arrangement as when we'd visited Ginger.
The elder's white hair, white eyebrows, and white beard were all long and thick,
reminding me of a Maltese. Except that inside all that hair, there was an old man.
The elder bowed his head deeply while still remaining seated. "We, the mystic
wolves, are endlessly grateful to Your Majesty for your protection, the construction
of this Kikkoro Distillery, and all of your other support. I thank you on behalf of my
people."
"It's fine," I said. "Little Tomoe's done a lot for us, too. Besides, it was fortunate
that people like you who knew how to grow rice and produce soy sauce, miso, mirin,
sake, and more came along. I get to eat tasty food, and I can feed it to other people,
too."
"You are very kind to say that," said the elder. "Now, sire, what manner of
business have you come here on today?"
"Yeah... I was thinking it was about time we resolved the issue outside."
"By 'outside,' you mean... the refugee camp?"
I silently nodded.
When I'd been summoned to this world, this country had been facing a large
number of problems. The food crisis, corrupt nobles acting against the state,
neighboring countries plotting to invade, how to deal with the Demon Lord, its
relationship with the Empire— the list had gone on.
However, I felt like the vast majority of those problems had been resolved now.
We had gotten through the food crisis somehow, and the domestic situation was
looking good. Our foreign enemies had been swept away, and when it came to the
Demon Lord, we had formed a secret alliance with the Empire to handle that matter
together. I had worked through all those problems one by one, and the last one left
was this refugee camp issue.
Outside the castle walls that surrounded Parnam, there was a village of refugees
that had drifted here from the north after the appearance of the Demon Lord's
Domain.
I called it a village, but it was really just a group of tents and hovels concentrated
in one place. Of the many races that made up the refugees, I had been able to lift up
the mystic wolves in the name of putting their special talents to use, but they only
made up a small percentage of the overall refugee population. Even now, many
refugees still lived in that refugee camp.
Technically, even when things had gotten chaotic, basic food relief had been
provided to them the whole time, but they couldn't stay like this much longer. There
were issues of hygiene, and if I supported them for too long, it was bound to create
friction with the people of this country.
If possible, I wanted the rest of them to choose to live as people of this country,
just like the mystic wolves had, but... it seemed that would be difficult. Their wish
was to return to their homelands. If they accepted citizenship in this country, that
would be the same as giving up on returning to their homeland.
To these people who wished for the threat of the Demon Lord's Domain to
someday be swept away, allowing them to return to their homelands, it was simply
not something they could accept. I had sent my vassals to the refugee camp a
number of times to negotiate, but they had always been rebuffed.
"We want to return to our homeland," they said. Or, "Let us remain here until that
time comes."
I understood how they felt when they said these things, so I couldn't be too firm
with them. However, there was no time left now.
"The chill of winter will only grow more harsh from here," I said. "If they stay in
crude tents and hovels, the weakest among them, the children and the elderly, will
be the first to freeze to death. Before that happens, I want to go there personally and
press them to make a decision."
"Sire..." said the elder.
"In order to do that, I'd like you to send a messenger to the refugee camp for me
first. Have the messenger tell them I'm coming. It's unlikely that chaos will break out
that way."
"I understand." The elder rose from his seat and then knelt on the floor, bowing
his head deeply to me. "We mystic wolves have already been saved by Your
Majesty's hand. If it is possible... we ask of you to save the rest of our fellows, as
well."
"Yeah... I plan to do everything I can to," I said as the elder ground his forehead
against the floor and beseeched me.
"How about you more clearly say, 'Leave it to me'?" Liscia said, but that seemed
like it would be taking the task on lightly.
"I'll try to persuade them, but... the one who'll make the final decision isn't me," I
explained. "They are the ones who should decide their own futures. Once I receive
that decision, that will decide how I'm going to deal with them. Even if that means
forcing them to see the harshness of reality."
"Souma..." Liscia had a worried look on her face, but there was no avoiding this.
Hopefully... they would look to their reality, not an ideal, when they made their
decision.
Heading outside the castle walls that surrounded Parnam, the refugee camp was
in a field about a hundred meters away. The tents and hovels were scattered around
haphazardly, and there were crude vegetable fields in some areas. This was where
the roughly eight hundred refugees were living.
There were various races here. Humans, elves, beastmen, and dwarves, too. That
was just how many countries had been laid waste by the Demon Lord's Domain and
how many peoples had been forced to flee.
They had set up camp here, and had been living a nearly primitive lifestyle,
sharing the resources and supplies the kingdom provided to them, then hunting and
gathering to make up for what they didn't have.
Normally, hunting and foraging required permission from the country, but the
former king, Albert, had left them to their own devices. I had continued that
approach after assuming the throne myself. I'd had a mountain of problems to deal
with other than the refugees, so my only choice had been to give them a bare
minimum of support while leaving them alone.
I couldn't, by any means, call what they had proper living conditions, but they
were at least receiving some support, which was better than nothing.