16-5 Finding A Favorite Food

I sampled sweets and dishes without holding back.

I did not eat a lot at once.

Fal had the sweet from earlier put into a bag for her and had been eating only that the whole time.

I thought the food itself was quite good.

This was something that would not be bad even for a Japanese person to eat.

It felt about like the buffet at a high-class hotel in Las Vegas.

Then I found something crab-like, and my eyes were instantly glued to it.

I immediately swiped some crab into my item box.

There were four plates of the same kind, so I copied one whole plate, plate and all, then put it back.

However, I still wanted a lot of different-looking ones after all, so I copied the ones from the other plates too.

While I was at it, I chose and copied the tasty-looking ones around there.

These would be souvenirs for the cooks.

I would deliver the keyword of new inspiration to the kitchen.

After all, this was a foreign country, so there were things with different flavors.

This was not a Japanese buffet or smorgasbord, so no one had told me, “Please refrain from taking food home.”

I had obtained something good.

This trip was a great success.

Maybe we would have a crab party when I got home.

Did this country do crab fishing?

I absolutely had to have them make crab-miso tofu.

Could the crab here be eaten as sashimi?

Maybe I should just conquer the Empire and take the whole nation, crab included.

No, maybe other countries had crabs too.

This fell under our second prince’s jurisdiction.

That was right.

I had completely forgotten, but this time, I had not made a reward agreement with His Highness Michael.

I would put him deeply in my debt and, if possible, have him get me actual crabs.

A crab fishing boat and an escort fleet were promptly added to my pending development list.

The golems that would operate them would need to be upgraded too.

Especially ones specialized for underwater activity.

By then, I was already surrounded by an imaginary horde of phantom crabs and had drifted off dreamily into fantasy, so I had not noticed at all that someone was speaking to me.

I had been immersed in my own world, completely unaware that the people around me were looking at me as if they were seeing something eerie.

Fal was used to seeing that sort of look on my face, so she paid it no mind and focused on eating her sweets.

After being poked by His Excellency the Raccoon Ambassador, I suddenly came back to myself, and a beautiful girl was standing in front of me.

She was the type of girl whose atmosphere resembled Jessica’s.

When I appraised her, she was Marina, sixteen years old.

It said she was the High Priestess of the Imperial Capital Bern Ross Grand Temple.

Hmm, did temples everywhere think in similar ways?

The higher-ups of temples were the polar opposite of clean poverty.

To squeeze money out of the masses, they enshrined beautiful girls like this as high priestesses.

Of course, their abilities were genuine.

If they had no ability, I just hoped they were not being made to attend the beds of the important people.

Even I did not have the time to know that much about every single thing in a foreign country, though.

What kind of entertainment industry sex tribute was this?

“Do you need something from me?”

I asked, pretending not to know.

But this girl was a high priestess of the Ross temple.

Of course, she had to be after Fal.

“U-um, is that person Sacred Elion-sama?”

“No? This is my child, Fal. I’m looking after her for her mother.”

I tried pretending not to know again.

Well, in terms of content, it was not particularly wrong.

The beautiful girl was treated curtly and looked half-ready to cry.

Lately, this sort of thing had become fun.

It might become addictive.

“Don’t cry! Here, I’ll give you this.”

Fal held out the thing she liked.

Marina thanked her through tears and ate it.

“Ah, it really is delicious.”

Yes.

This girl had a normal sense of taste.

This truly was delicious.

A sweetness that sank coolly into the tongue.

This was indeed a first-rate product.

Surely an actual Japanese confectioner had not been transported to another world, right?

If such a person really existed, I wanted to take them back with me even if I had to abduct them.

Even so, this girl was a high-ranking person like the high priestess of the imperial capital, and yet she had not been allowed to eat this?

This Empire really was terrible after all.

Any Japanese person should be able to understand the taste of this sweet made with wasanbon after one bite.

Fine sweets made with wasanbon were the sort of thing even Tokyo’s most famous observation tower sold as souvenirs.

When I got back, I would let the royal family eat some too.

As Takeshi’s descendants and Japanese bloodline, surely their sense of taste would be excellent.

They should understand this delicate flavor.

“Hey, who made this sweet?”

“I do not know. Perhaps you should ask the person in charge of this floor. More importantly, Sacred Eli—ah.”

I took Fal and quickly left the place.

After all, that girl would only start worshipping Fal again, making things troublesome.

In the middle of enemy territory like this, that was a little much.

I searched the map and looked for the person in charge here.

And I found him easily.

Since I approached him with an incredible smile on my face, that guy sensed a suspicious presence and hurriedly tried to run away, but that was impossible.

Using Fast magic and the tremendous speed of my magic armor in standby mode, I caught up to him in an instant, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, dragged him to the sweets from earlier, and interrogated him.

“Who made this sweet? Spit it out quietly.”

“T-that is…”

The person in charge hesitated.

But my heart was racing, and I absolutely did not loosen my pursuit.

“Hey. Do nobles of the kingdom not even know manners? Stop being rough.”

Some meddlesome pretty boy had shown up.

Unfortunately, I was no noble.

I was just an ordinary commoner who had only received an honorary noble rank, or rather, just a person from another world.

I ignored him, but for some reason, he kept clinging to me.

He was oddly persistent.

“What? It’s not like I’m going to catch and eat him. I just want to know who made it. My kid liked it very much, so I want other kinds too. What shop sells this?”

As I said that, I thrust the sweet in question toward him.

“N-no. This is the only kind.”

“Liar. I know what this is. This is a sweet unique to my country. There is absolutely no way this is the only kind. I want to eat that.”

Yes, I wanted to eat dry sweets.

No, various filled sweets would be good too.

Even though I almost never ate them in daily life, in another world like this, I missed Japanese sweets so much I could hardly stand it.

Especially those filled sweets with soft mochi on the outside.

Age-wise, I was already at an age where Japanese sweets suited me.

I had not disliked them to begin with, either.

“Talk!”

“Hey, are you listening?”

The pretty boy pressed me further in a stern voice.

“You’re noisy. I’m not listening.”

I firmly answered the buzzing May fly.

I had no time for that right now.

This was the critical moment that would decide whether I could eat delicious Japanese sweets in another world.

For an elderly Japanese person exiled to another world, how important did he think that was?

Every time I went to Las Vegas, by the second half of the trip, my stomach would already be saturated with Western food and reach its limit, leaving me unable to accept anything except Japanese food that was absurdly expensive over there.

How long did he think it had been since I came to this other world?

If I had not brought over various Japanese foods and had an ability that let me copy them, I would have long since gone insane or had my circulatory system collapse.

I wanted to eat it.

No matter what, I wanted to eat other kinds of Japanese sweets!

I put even more strength into my hand and tightened my grip around the person in charge’s neck.

“It would be better for you to talk while your head is still connected to your body.”

“I-I cannot say it. Please. Forgive me.”

The person in charge pleaded, almost on the verge of tears.

“No… It’s just Japanese sweets. Don’t be so stingy.”

What the heck?

In this country, were mere Japanese sweets some kind of state secret?

What a country I could not understand.

Then they should not have put them out at the party venue.

No, if that were the case, we could not have eaten them, so that would be a problem.

Fine then.

I would just search for them on my own.

I immediately searched for the craftsman who had made these sweets.

Hmm, they were not nearby.

Even though they had gone out of their way to serve such amazing sweets at a party like this, the craftsman was not here.

Something like this would be unthinkable in the Albatross Kingdom.

They would appear at the party like Eri and suddenly become the center of attention.

Something was strange.

“Hey, fine, just come over here for a moment. This is not a matter I can explain in a loud voice. I will explain it properly. Those sweets have some circumstances behind them.”

The pretty boy from earlier said that and beckoned to me.

Oh?

I decided to hear what he had to say.

Hopefully, it would become some kind of clue.