During our breakfast meeting with the royal family, I explained to them what I had in mind when the princess told me that she wanted to become an adventurer and travel to different countries.
Basically, my plan was to take her back with us to End Town where I could teach her magic everyday while still helping the residents there. Then, after we both turned 15, we could enroll as adventurers and travel for some time before she went to the academy. Realistically, it was a pretty good plan. She would learn much more magic in an environment where I'm constantly using it to help others than just teaching her spells in the castle's backyard.
The year adventuring could come in really handy too. I mean, there were kids that attended the academy solely because they wanted to go adventuring some day. Enrolling at 15, which was the youngest someone could be for an adventurer, could allow her to get some experience first hand. I thought of it sort of like an internship.
However, when I told the royal family about my plan, they seemed extremely surprised. A reaction that I definitely didn't expect.
"I love it!" interjected the Princess with a loud yell.
Both of her parents exchanged glances, then smiled. "Ha ha! Who would have thought? She actually said yes!" said the king as he laughed in between words.
The queen was covering her mouth as she snickered to herself. "Then, Melina… I guess you have two busy years ahead of you."
In the end, they all agreed with my plan of sending the princess to End Town to learn magic. Honestly, I didn't think they would agree that easily, in fact, I expected them to say "no" and use that as an excuse to go back home. However, now that it was actually happening, I was starting to feel more motivated.
"We'll have to make preparations, gather all the stuff that you are going to need, call a knight's order… Hmm, maybe we could hire a group of adventurers too…" muttered the king as he began planning the whole ordeal by himself.
"Ah, actually… I was thinking something else…" I interrupted his train of thought, but I had a good reason.
Ever since we started traveling, I was taking into account how far apart each of the towns and cities were from each other. I truly didn't want to travel for an entire month again, so my plan was to teleport to the cities and cut down the length of the trip from almost thirty days to three, or even one day if I used my MP potions to recover.
Basically, I would teleport from the capital to Glorya, then to Speranza, and finally back to End Town. The good thing was that I was able to take with me a good amount of people and stuff, and even if I couldn't take them all, we still had Vespera who could also teleport.
Actually, Vespera could have probably been able to teleport from the capital straight to End Town since she had so much more MP than any of us. The only reason why she didn't do it was because she just wanted to hang out with me.
I also gave the king and queen one of my "Delivery Tablets" so they could send the princess letters any time they wanted.
Now that we were putting my plan in action, it was time to decide who would be joining us. At least for the first year that we were going to spend at End Town.
For starters, Jackson, obviously was coming with us, Princess Melina, both commander Thomas and sub-commander Harvey, Gina, and her superior, another battle-maid called Carli.
We would be the group traveling via teleportation. However, the king still wanted to send the entire Knight's 4th Order to End Town and have them stationed there. I told him it wasn't necessary, but the king insisted, saying that if any other emergency arose in End Town, then the knights shall take responsibility for the town that they had disrespected before.
The first thing that came to my mind when he said that, was the fact that I had to build barracks for the knight's to stay and train at. ("Well… it will take almost a month for them to get there, so I have plenty of time to build a nice headquarters for the knights…") I thought.
The Knight's 4th Order was the smallest of the orders, in terms of members. The entire group only had 30 knights in total. While we got to meet 12 of them, including their commander and sub-commander, there were still about half of them that had never been to End Town before.
The preparations began, and the plan was put into motion. We still had a few more days to spend at the capital while we waited for everyone to gather their belongings, so I used that time to visit the drugstore that was selling my potions. Gina was the one that guided me there, obviously.
Of course, I ended up making the same deal with them as I did with the other towns, and gave the owner one of my "Delivery Tablets" so we could easily trade.
Gina had become our personal maid by the order of the king, but her role looked more like a tour guide than a battle-maid. Either way, it seemed like she was having a good time when hanging out with our group, so I didn't feel too guilty about having her work with us.
The next morning, as I was getting ready to go sightseeing, the princess joined us and decided to tag along. Gina took us to a street that was filled with merchants selling fresh produce, when I spotted a man selling white meat that was very similar to poultry.
("C-could that be? Chicken?") I wondered as I stared at the stall that had the pieces of raw meat hanging, slowly approaching it.
"Sir, what type of meat is this?" I asked as I pointed at one of the filets on the cutting board. I could tell that the meat looked like chicken, but it was definitely not it. The animal where this meat came from had to be at least ten times the size of a chicken.
"Hey young man! You have a good eye for quality meat, eh!?" said the man opening his arms as a greeting. "This here is cockatrice meat, the best quality white meat you can get in the world!"
"Cockatrice?" I wondered out loud with a raised eyebrow.
"Cockatrices are monsters that have the body of a dragon but their head looks like a rooster. They are very strong too! I've heard that they need to send a party of at least mithril ranked adventurers to take one down…" said the princess as she glanced at the different cuts of meat.
"Ah, Princess! It's good to see you. Are you here for the usual?" said the butcher behind the stall counter.
"No, Dino. Thank you, but I'm just showing my friends around town today." said the princess.
"The usual? Do you come here a lot, Princess?" I asked with genuine curiosity.
The princess nodded, but before she could respond, Dino interjected for her.
"The Princess comes to the market at least once every week! She even taught me a good recipe for cooking cockatrices and all my other customers loved it! She called it 'cockatrice al galio'... pretty clever, huh?"
"Galio" was the word that the people in this world used for "garlic". Apparently, it wasn't used in many dishes in the country since people weren't sure how to take advantage of the strong garlic flavor. Dino kept telling us the story of how the princess had just arrived one day and taught him how to make a sauce using garlic that paired well with the cockatrice.
("So, she made an aioli sauce? That's impressive… Oh, I could make garlic bread with that!") I thought as I was almost visibly salivating.
"Anyways!" I said loudly before slapping my cheeks firmly. "I'll take that, and this, and two of those…" I said while pointing at all the different cuts of cockatrice I wanted to try.
After Dino bagged all of our meat, I asked the princess if I could borrow the castle's kitchen when we got back.
"Yeah, of course you can use it. Although, there is a price…" said the princess with a somewhat evil smile.
"W-what is that?" I asked a bit nervously.
"You gotta let me try whatever you cook, obviously!" she exclaimed as she turned around, her gaze meeting with mine.
("That smile… So familiar…") I thought before nodding and returning the smile. "Sounds like a good deal to me."
We ended up going back to the castle shortly after since lunch time was approaching and I made my way to the kitchen. I thought I could have some peaceful alone time while I cooked, but both of my familiars, all of the cooks, the maids Carli and Gina, and the princess, were all staring at me from one side of the kitchen. They even brought the youngest princess, Alexandra, to try some.
("Man… This does not feel peaceful at all!") I thought as I started preparing the food while I felt the gaze of everyone else in the back of my neck.
The dish I was going to make was fried chicken with fries.
I sliced the cockatrice steaks into strips and began dredging them with flour, then dipping them in egg, then rolling them around breadcrumbs before placing them on the hot olive oil.
For the fries I simply cut some potatoes as wedges, then fried them in another pot.
Needless to say, the dish was a huge hit with everyone who tried it. I taught the cooks how to make it too, since the princesses seemed to enjoy it so much that they wanted to cook it for the king and queen as well.
For a moment, I noticed that Princess Melina had a puzzled look on her face while eating.
"What's wrong? Is it bad?" I asked, thinking that maybe she didn't enjoy it that much.
"It's just… I almost feel like I've eaten this before…" she said before shaking her head. "Ah, never mind! But no, it's not bad at all… I love it!"
("What did she mean by that…?")