39 — Lu Bu Was A No-Go

“So this was what food at a castle was like. It tasted better than I’d imagined.”

“I didn’t know what food in other castles was like, but in this castle it was like this.”

Right now, I was having brunch in the castle’s dining hall together with Bangagonga.

Part of me thought it was weird for the Overlord to eat normally in the dining hall… but this was the only place I could get a meal, and my kids didn’t seem to care, so I went ahead and enjoyed the dining hall too.

By the way, I was eating a pork cutlet rice bowl, and Bangagonga was eating a hamburger steak set meal.

Probably… probably, but I didn’t think meals in other castles were like this. Well, there was a chance hamburger steak showed up as the main meat in a full course.

“What kind of dish is Fels eating?”

“This was meat coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried, then simmered with beaten egg, and placed on top of cooked rice.”

“Oh. So that yellow thing was meat. But even though you’re a king, you sure knew a lot about cooking, Fels.”

“No, that was a super rough description, okay? If you made it exactly the way I said, it’d probably taste bad. If you’re going to make it, you should properly check the recipe with our cook.”

Bangagonga looked happy after hearing my suggestion.

“Was that fine? Teaching us a dish you ate in a castle.”

“It was fine. Good food should be widely known. And many cooks would evolve it into their own dishes based on the recipe, and someday it would return to me. That was a wonderful thing.”

“Was that how it worked?”

“That was how it worked. You should dispatch someone among the goblins who was good at cooking over here. If they learned various recipes and spread them among the goblins, new dishes might be born. Next time, treat me to those.”

“Understood. Someday, we’ll treat you to our cuisine after we’ve honed our craft. Well, I won’t be the one doing the work, though.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

At my words, Bangagonga wore a vicious grin and tossed the broccoli garnish into his mouth.

“By the way, the seeds you gave me that I started cultivating the other day were growing at a crazy pace.”

“Yeah, I heard that. The vegetable you just ate… broccoli, I think I’d given you that too.”

“Oh. This has a nice bite to it. Still, even though we don’t even know how to grow vegetables like these and are just giving them water for now, watching them grow more and more was kind of terrifying.”

“I wasn’t knowledgeable about farming, so I couldn’t say much, but was it really that amazing?”

“Yeah. We originally lived in the forest, and our fields were small, but even so, raising food took a lot of effort. It wasn’t rare for us to fail to harvest anything. But from what you and your people said, those vegetables could all be harvested in a month, right? From now on, we probably won’t lack vegetables anymore.”

“We’ll need to keep observing how it goes. By the way, there are seeds that can yield meat too.”

“Meat… from a field? What do you mean?”

“Yeah. There are things called barometz seeds. If you plant them, a tree that bears sheep grows.”

“…What do you mean? Sheep… it bears sheep?”

“Were sheep inside the fruit, maybe? Anyway, there are seeds like that. I haven’t planted them yet, though.”

It was a little scary, so I hadn’t given them to the usual village or to the goblins… What did it mean to “bear” sheep? It wasn’t “being born,” it was “bearing.” Bear!

I was sure it would feel gross…

“Fels… sheep are animals, not plants.”

Bangagonga said it with a look he couldn’t quite describe. Yeah, I couldn’t read his expression, but he was definitely making a “What are you saying?” face.

Or maybe it was a worried face.

“…There are plants like that. I’m fully aware I’m saying something bizarre.”

Actually, should I not have said it? If I planted it and no sheep bore, they’d think I was some fairy-tale Overlord.

No, if I said nothing and made them grow it and sheep really bore, that would be worse. I could be called a devil and it’d still make sense.

“I don’t know if it will really bear. I want to look into it… but can I plant it in the fields you’re cultivating?”

“…Y-yeah. If you want that, I won’t refuse… I won’t, but… is that okay? That thing?”

“It’ll be fine. There’s a chance it won’t grow, but it definitely isn’t harmful.”

…Supposedly.

At least in Sword and Legions, it just got delivered as local specialties like wool, hides, and meat… Maybe counting sheep would help you sleep better… though it might also give you insomnia from how creepy it was.

If breeding… cultivation? went well, then in this world, “meat from fields” wouldn’t be soybeans—it would be barometz.

…Honestly, I didn’t want to go inspect a barometz field… Maybe I should avoid planting barometz in the castle town… No, just for experiments, just experiments. I’d have Bangagonga do it, and for a full-scale barometz field, I’d have them do it somewhere far away.

That was good. Let’s do that. The Overlord’s word was absolute, after all.

“Being with you makes me realize just how narrow my world was.”

“That can’t be helped. You people lived hidden from the humanfolk. Trying to broaden your world would be a hundred harms and not a single benefit.”

Well, I didn’t think barometz had anything to do with the world being broad… though maybe it existed in this world too.

“That’s true… but I thought, when I saw the sun rising beyond the grasslands, that the world was this vast and magnificent. And then I realized. We who hid away had truly let so many things slip through our fingers.”

“Bangagonga. I’ve been thinking I want to walk forward not only with the goblins, but with many fairy-folk… no, with many other races too. Differences in ways of thinking born from differences in race might create friction. But it’s the same as the cooking talk earlier. When more bearers, more ways of thinking come together, new inspiration and new discoveries are born. As king, I want to build that foundation.”

“…Isn’t your thinking running too far ahead? Conflict between races isn’t something shallow enough to fix in ten or twenty years, you know?”

Yeah… I thought so too. Still, I also thought racism was the product of indoctrination. Every country did some kind of hate control over its people, more or less. In this world, the expulsion of other races felt state-led… no, as far as the humanfolk went, it felt like multiple nations were joining hands to lead it. Then erasing it could also be led by nations… though it would take an insane amount of time.

“It will take time, but it’s better than doing nothing. Like I said before, I won’t lump together people I can talk with under the single frame of ‘race.’”

“I understand well enough that those words are coming from your heart, but…”

“I’m going to put you to work too, you know? You’re the only fairy-folk I know. I’ll work you so hard you’ll think you’d have been better off dead back then.”

“When you say it, it doesn’t sound like a joke…”

“Heh… because it isn’t a joke. Once we finish pacifying this area, after that… be prepared.”

“Tch… I should’ve gone home the moment that weird sheep talk ended.”

Bangagonga, who had already finished his meal, wore a sour face.

“Whether you listen here or not… your future won’t change.”

When I said that, Bangagonga let out a big sigh, picked up his dishes, and stood.

By the way, our castle dining hall was self-service, so returning your dishes was your job. Of course, even the Overlord returned his own dishes and placed his own orders.

“Until then, I’ll work quietly with your people in the castle town. My people are grateful to you… especially for the Frenzy incident. We can’t thank you enough. That’s why working for your purpose is exactly what we want.”

Seeing Bangagonga’s vicious expression one last time as he went to return the dishes to the return shelf, I swallowed the last bite of my pork cutlet rice bowl.

Thanks for the meal. It was very delicious.

Still, barometz aside, I couldn’t get other meat ingredients… In Sword and Legions there were villages that delivered local specialties like beef or pork… but other meat was basically something you took from dungeons.

Well, just for eating, the meat from the general store you could buy with mana stones was already more than delicious… but dragon steak sounded insanely tempting.

Technically, there was a huge stockpile in the warehouse… but being stingy by nature, I couldn’t burn through items when I had no prospect of replenishing them.

Still… at least once… should I try it on some kind of anniversary? Hm, but if it was ridiculously tasty, it’d be painful thinking about my stock… and if it was ridiculously bad, my anniversary mood would crash… That was a tough one.

Come to think of it, I wondered if the Ground Dragon Karmos talked about was edible. It wasn’t the same as the dragon meat in Sword and Legions, but… when we hunted it, maybe trying it would be an option. Before it rotted.

While I was thinking about future meals like that, Lynferia entered the dining hall and approached me with a serious expression.

…Looks like something happened. After wiping my mouth with the paper napkin on the table, I turned to face Lynferia as she came closer.

“Fels-sama. About the territorial capital Kiriku and the others went to—the enemy has taken a stance of total resistance. Also, they won’t listen at all to Karmos’s words, even though he was sent as an envoy.”

“Hm. Didn’t the advance investigation say their forces were fewer than three hundred?”

From the information the diplomat had gathered and what I’d heard from Karmos, the enemy troops left were only about enough guards to keep public order in the city, and the outlook was that no battle would occur.

But since it was the territorial capital, it was expected there would be some pushback from the upper ranks, so I’d asked Karmos to settle things smoothly…

“According to the report, they’ve closed the gates, put soldiers up on the city walls, and are preparing to hold out.”

“Hold out? Wasn’t the territorial capital not a fortress city, and the walls were only there as a precaution against monsters?”

“Yes. The wall height is about three meters. And the gates aren’t for war—they seem to function only to inspect people entering and leaving the city.”

“With that setup, holding out is impossible, by normal reasoning. They don’t even have three hundred soldiers, right? How many gates are there?”

“Six.”

That was full of holes!

If they distributed troops evenly across six gates, that was fewer than fifty per gate, right? Meanwhile, we had three thousand. No matter how hard they tried, the gates would be breached in an instant.

Well, unless there were fifty Lu Bus… No, Lu Bu wouldn’t work—he’d charge out of the gate and die. Who was good at holding out again… Cao Ren? Whatever, that didn’t matter.

“Anyway, if they’re holding out, that assumes reinforcements. The royal capital should still be assembling an army, but do you see any sign of reinforcements coming from elsewhere?”

“According to Karmos on site, because the royal capital has issued a call-up, the other territories don’t have the surplus to send reinforcements. We dispatched diplomats around just in case, but they reported there are no armies approaching.”

That made even less sense… Were they waiting for our supplies to run out? No, no—since we’ve already taken a nearby city, they’d think our supply lines were fine. Not that we really needed supply lines.

And even if they waited for supplies to run out, I couldn’t imagine the territorial capital’s defenses were so ironclad that they could withstand three thousand for days on end…

“Did the presence called a ‘hero’ that Karmos mentioned arrive in the territorial capital?”

Karmos said there was currently no one in the Lumoria Kingdom that you could call a hero… but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a wandering hero. The chance of someone showing up saying, “I shall lend you my blade for justice!” wasn’t exactly zero.

“The diplomat we’ve embedded in the territorial capital has reported that no such powerful individual has been confirmed.”

I really didn’t get it…

No overwhelmingly powerful person. No reinforcements. Not a city suited for defense. A massive gap in troop strength… I couldn’t read their aim at all. Was it just pride? Dragging their city and citizens into it…? Any ruler who forced that through out of sheer pride would be begging for a coup.

And since Karmos, the lord, wasn’t there… was the one commanding the acting lord? If I remembered right, it was Karmos’s son-in-law. It was unexpected that Karmos would fail at negotiations—he seemed like the type who’d handle that smoothly.

Even so, an enemy holding out was a pain… It was hard to hold back.

In field battles, we could fight while trying not to kill as much as possible… but in a siege where we had to break the gates, the enemy would be in a desperate frenzy, and it should be hard to hold back.

Honestly, I absolutely didn’t want urban warfare in a city I planned to govern. It wouldn’t just leave bad blood.

Should I go there…? No, but since I left it to Kiriku, it’d be bad for me to butt in.

What should I do… For now, should I just contact them?

Yeah… I wanted information from the site, so I should contact Kiriku. That much should be within an acceptable range… probably…? If your boss contacted you at this timing… you wouldn’t like it, right?

The Overlord never ran out of worries.