We walked around the city of Dolan. I was getting stares because of Hati and Razsegath, but people were a lot calmer than I expected. Just as one would expect of a dungeon city, there're a lot of adventurers, and even though tamers were rare, sometimes one would be seen bringing along some familiars, so the people of this city were probably used to it.
"Still though, there's a lot of people around. Just what you'd expect out of one of the five largest cities in the country."
I continued walking along the street while looking around at the stores that were lined up. The local flavor of the stores in this dungeon city were of course, mostly dominated by weapons and armor shops.
If asked if I had any interest, I would say, 'a little,' but as I was right now, I had no use for any of it. I had strong allies in the form of my familiars.
While walking and looking around at the stores and thinking deeply about various subjects, something caught my eye. The store itself was apparently a store that handled magic tools. As if it was drawing me in, I got closer to the store.
What caught my eye was a [State-of-the-Art Magic Stove] that was carefully, even reverentially, placed to decorate the storefront. It had four stovetops lined up horizontally, and a fairly large oven in the bottom.
As for its shape, it was more of a rectangle than a square thanks to the horizontal stovetops. On its longest side, it measured slightly shorter than 2 meters, and was about 80cm wide. It was a little big, but that size was used for the oven in the bottom.
"Welcome. You have a nice eye, to be attracted to that state-of-the-art magic stove." While I was looking at the stove, I was approached by what seemed to be the shopkeeper.
"Excuse me, how powerful is the heat on this?" It probably used magic stones since it was a magic tool, but if the power on it was weak there would be no point.
"Just as you can see, this state-of-the-art magic stove does not use any old magic pebble, but a carefully selected one that allows it to have enough firepower for all your needs," he said, pointing towards the center of the stove. There, a magic circle was drawn, and in the center was a black magic stone around 2cm in diameter. According to the shopkeeper, this magic circle was one of fire, and the magic stone in the middle provided the power to light the fire.
'I see, so that's what magic tools are like.'
"On top of that, you can freely adjust the strength of the fire from low to high. Also, since it uses a magic stone of this size, even if you use it every day, the stone will hold for 10 years before needing to be replaced."
'I can keep using this as-is for 10 years? Wow.'
"I'll light the stove for you; take a look." Saying so, the shopkeeper pressed a button on the front of the stove and lit the fire.
"Press here, and add in a little magic power only when starting the flame. Once the flame is lit, you can use this knob here to adjust the power. Even the use of it is simple."
It looked like turning the knob (which was to the side of the button) to the left lowered the heat, and turning to the right made it stronger. Just as the shopkeeper said, it was easy to use, and its power was more than enough.
"Each stove has its own control, so you can cook several things at once."
'Right? The portable stoves I've been using up until now have been... fine, but their power leaves a little to be desired,' I had been thinking recently. It looked like this magic stove would solve all my problems.
"Also, the bottom of this stove is an oven, and the controls for lighting it and adjusting its heat are here. They work the same way as the ones for the stoves. Oh, and there's a timer here, you won't have to worry about burning anything, either." The shopkeeper pointed to the right of the oven door that was on the front of the stove.
'I see. So, there's a timer, too. It's basically the same as a regular oven.'
"With an oven this big, you can even roast a whole cockatrice. Not only that, you could even make soup on the stoves above, while the oven below bakes bread or something."
'Whole roasted cockatrice, huh? ...Cockatrices are about 1.5 meters in length, so this should be able to do it. Roasted chicken... how nice... fresh bread, too... sounds so good... since I have my skill, I can get flour and dry yeast easily, so handmade bread might be a good idea, actually. At any rate, having this looks like it will increase the range of dishes I can make by a lot. I might... want this...'
"Looks good. So, how much is it?" That was the most important point. It was probably expensive though, since it used magic stones.
"860 gold."
"...Huh?"
"860 gold."
'Don't say that with a smile on your face, please... 860 gold, huh? Yep, that sure is expensive. But... I want it. Hrmmm, what should I do...?'
[Hey, are you not done yet?]
[He's right! It's boring out here. I'm hungry, too.]
Hati and Razsegath, who were waiting disinterestedly, finally ran out of patience and started complaining over telepathy. By the way, Groot was asleep in my bag, as always.
[Sorry, I was just wondering whether to buy this.]
[Hm? What would you even do with such a large thing? It would only be in the way.]
[It wouldn't. This is a magic stove, and it's for cooking. But it's really expensive, so I wasn't sure if I should get it.]
[You say that, but you have been cooking just fine up until now, have you not?]
[That's true, but with this I'd be able to make a larger variety of dishes. There's an oven in the bottom, so I'd be able to make things I wouldn't have been able to do before. But it's a whole 860 gold, you know? So I'm a little hesitant.]
It wasn't like I didn't have the money, but 860 gold was a lot. It was more than double the already expensive bathtub I bought.
[Alright then, buy it.]
'What?'
[You will be able to make new delicious food, yes?]
[W-Well, yeah...]
[Then there is no problem. You have money, do you not? Just buy it.]
'I mean, yeah I technically do have the money... Hati sure doesn't waver, does he? Saying that I should buy it anyway if he can eat good food...'
[What's going on? You can make good food if you have that? Then of course it's better if you buy it.]
'Even Razsegath, huh? Hmmm... then should I just get it? I do actually want it... Yeah okay, let's buy it.'
"Excuse me, I'll buy it."
"Huh? Really?"
'Could you please not be so surprised after pushing it so hard? Well, he probably didn't think I had that much money just from looking at me, I guess.'
"Yes, I will. 860 gold, right?" I produced 3 bags packed with gold coins. Each bag had 300 gold in them. After taking out 40 gold from one of them, the total became 860 gold. "This should make 860 gold; please confirm the amount."
The shocked shopkeeper came to at the sound of my voice and started counting the money.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. It certainly is 860 gold. Where would you like me to deliver the stove?"
"Ahh, you don't have to worry about that. I have an Item Box, so I'll be able to fit it, if only barely."
'Really though I can fit that and more...'
"Ohh, I see. This town has a lot of people, so it's not like Item Boxes are especially rare, but I see that yours is fairly large."
'Hehh so big cities really do have more people with Item Boxes in them. But still, this size is pretty large, huh? The only large-ish things I've had to deal with so far were monsters, and those I'd only take out in front of guildmasters, and the like, so I didn't have to worry about this before, but I should probably be more careful who I store and take out large objects in front of.'
I stored the [State-of-the-Art Magic Stove] in my Item Box and left the store. The shopkeep saw me off with a, "Thank you very much!" and a huge grinning face.
After that, we had a look around at the food district. The vegetables on sale were all familiar to me; only their names were a little bit different. Cabbage was cabbagg, carrots were carrotes, and onions were oneions, and the like. The vegetables on sale here were less fresh that what I would get from my skill, but it was all cheaper, so I bought a lot. I bought cabbages and carrots, onions, and they also had potatoes, so I got those too. They even had something that looked like a mini onion, so I bought that as well. Each one of those was 1 silver for a 1 meter wide bag full of them.
I bought some black bread as well. Black bread is hard, but it has its own crunchiness and texture, so it wasn't exactly bad.
After that, I kept looking around at the stores lined up on the street, but Hati and Razsegath were getting bored, and started complaining, "I'm hungry," so I decided to go back to the inn.
'Time to try out this [State-of-the-Art Magic Stove] now.'
I was thinking of borrowing the inn's courtyard to use the new stove and cook, but all three of my familiars were complaining of hunger, so I had to tide them over with pre-made karaage and pork cutlet first. It was my fault that I got absorbed in shopping and forgot the time, after all. 'Oh well.'
While everyone was eating, I was going to try using the oven to make something. Since I couldn't take too long, I decided on a vegetable and meat oven bake, which only needed me to cut the ingredients and cook them.
'I'll need... cooking paper, right? Oh, and also olive oil and herb salt from the Online Supermarket. After that, it's the vegetables, right? Anything would be fine for this, but when I made it before, I used potatoes, carrots, onions, shimeji and eringi mushrooms, and paprika for color, if I remember right. If I'm going to try and emulate that and make the same thing, I'll need the mushrooms and some paprika, as well. Right, that should be good.'
◇◇◇
First is the meat; I go with rockbird this time. Cut the meat into large bite-sized pieces, poke holes in the meat with a fork and season with salt and pepper.
Next, cut the vegetables. For hard vegetables like potatoes and carrots, peel off their skin, and cut into discs so that they are cooked more easily. For the onions (this time I'm using the mini onions that I just bought), peel the skin and leave it whole. Take the base off of the shimeji mushrooms, and render into appropriately-sized pieces. As for the eringi mushrooms, just rip them into nicely-sized pieces with your hands.
Spread a cooking sheet on the sheet pan in the oven, and fill the pan with a nicely formed arrangement of the meat and vegetables. Then, spread some olive oil around the whole thing, and make it rain herb salt.
After all that's done, bake it in the preheated oven.
◇◇◇
I had no idea how this oven would act, so I kept watch on it as it baked, and took out the pan to check the food once the surface showed signs of being burned.
"Ohh, it's baking nicely. The heat's gone through both the meat and the vegetables. Yeah, it's done."
After serving the finished vegetable and meat oven bake onto some dishes, I placed them in front of Hati, Groot, and Razsegath.
"So you used what you just bought, right? Oh, so this has vegetables in it..."
'Hati, stop complaining just because something has vegetables in it.'
[It smells nice, though.] Razsegath was sniffing the food, his nose twitching with anticipation.
'It's because I used herb salt.'
[This isn't just salty it's just as good as it smells!] Groot already started eating.
The herb salt went over pretty well with them.
'Now then, Razsegath should be fine with just this, but Hati and Groot will probably ask for more, so I'm gonna have to make more. But the sheet pan is large, so it might be enough after just this next serving. They've already eaten some karaage and pork cutlet, after all.'
I baked another pan full of the vegetable and meat medley. This time, I added some cheese on top of the finished product. It looked really good, with the cheese being melted into a gooey state by the residual heat. I secured a little of the pan for myself; Hati and Groot put down the rest of the bake and were satisfied.
[That was good!]
"Indeed, it was quite fine."
'All that was just fine? Well, whatever, he did eat all of the vegetables.'
"There's still time until it becomes dark, so I'll be making food for the dungeon for a while."
It looked like everyone else was going to take a nap. 'So they're just gonna sleep after eating their fill? I'm jealous.'
'Now then, time to make food for the dungeon. The stuff I had stored from before got eaten up just now, after all. First up is rice.'
The pot I had right now was on the large side, but it wasn't enough. I bought more of the same size until I had ten pots. I also bought more rice than I would be cooking, so I would be able to use them later in the dungeon without having to use my skill.
After washing the rice, I started to prepare the fried foods while the rice was soaking in water. Both Hati and Groot were quite fond of the fried stuff, and from the way Razsegath was eating it earlier, he liked it too. So I would need to at least make some karaage and some other fried food to store.
I used all that was left of four kinds of meat red serpent, black serpent, rockbird, and giant dodo marinating them in a soy sauce-and-salt-based tare marinade. While I was using three of the four stoves for steaming rice, the last one I left to fry foods. This time, I was even going to fry up the Hamburg steak cutlets that I had left without frying in storage.
I diligently steamed rice and fried foods.
"Whew, with this we should be fine on rice and fried stuff." I heaved a sigh after storing it all in my Item Box.
"Now then, let's make some simple beef bowls." I was going to make the bowls using bloody horn-bull meat, and I also thought to try wyvern meat in the bowl as well this time. It was a little bit of a waste to me, but I had a lot of it.
Before I started, I got a new pot. I'd been using the biggest one I could with the portable stoves, but now I had this huge magic stove, so I bought an even bigger pot. Of course, they wouldn't be selling those huge cylindrical pots they used in eateries, but I managed to get one half that size. Even so, it was quite a lot bigger, so it was good for me. For now, I got two of them, and I was planning to buy more depending on what I would make tomorrow as well.
I stuffed the pot full with the bloody horn-bull and wyvern meat to make the bowls. I tried to make the wyvern meat a little less strong in flavor, since wyvern meat was good enough that it would be plenty delicious after just grilling it quickly.
After that, I started on a roast giant deer for dinner. I still had quite a lot of giant deer left, after all. After preparing several chunks of giant deer meat, I slathered each chunk thoroughly with liberal amounts of olive oil and seasoned it with herb salt. Then, I spread a cooking sheet on the sheet pan and roasted them in the preheated oven. Since the oven was so large, I managed to fit a lot in at once.
Once the surface of the meat was well browned, I took the meat out and wrapped it in aluminum foil to let the residual heat continue cooking it. Then, once the meat cooled, I sliced it thin, added some sauce on top, and it was finished. The residual heat did its job: not only was the inside still pink, but it was well roasted anyway.
When I tried a little, it was soft and amazingly delicious enough so that it didn't even need the sauce. But I still prepared some anyway, just in case. (Although it was just a simple mix of ponzu and onion flavored steak sauce.)
By the time I'd finished the roast giant deer, the day had gone completely dark.
"It's do-..." I didn't even have to call them, they were all already waiting behind me.
"Ohhh! This is amazing!" said Hati, his cheeks stuffed full with the thinly sliced roast giant deer.
'Heheh, it really was a good idea to buy this stove.'
[This sauce is really nice with its acidity.]
'That's ponzu, Razsegath.'
[This meat is soft and delicious!]
'That's because I didn't over roast it and let its own heat cook itself.' I was pretty happy at Groot's evaluation, as it had pretty sharp tastes.
Hati and Groot each had several more servings, but since I'd managed to make so much at once, I didn't have to roast anything extra. It was really nice.
I really made a good decision getting this stove.