The Cream Stew Of Beginnings - Part Two

It was the Sengoku period. An era of warring states.

Here on the Sabrayu Continent, lords with territories large and small all bragged that they were the supreme ruler of the land, spending their days endlessly waging war.

On the battlefield, magic and arrows flew through the air while spears and swords clashed. Life and death bled into one another, turning the land into a chaotic crucible of ambition, hope, and greed.

Because it was such an era, the mercenary business was booming.

And I, Gungrave, held my own ambitions, establishing a mercenary band alongside four of my childhood friends. Our goal was to become masters of a castle and a nation of our own. Even for orphans like us, we wanted to build a peaceful land where we could live without fear.

That was the kind of peaceful country I aimed for. No starvation, no poverty. We would save the people from the trashy lords who did nothing but exploit them.

However, five years had already passed since we founded the mercenary band. The band remained small.

My childhood friends had real talent for battle and magic, and I had confidence in my own swordplay and cunning. Yet no matter how many battles we won or how much money we earned, expanding the band was a slow and difficult struggle.

Men, horses, and weapons consumed vast amounts of money on their own. With my capabilities alone, keeping our total numbers around fifty might have been my limit.

Then one day, I met that guy.

Looking back, it was undoubtedly a fateful encounter.

That day, we were participating in a battle at the Rynebell Hills, hired by the lord of the north.

It was a battle that promised to drag on for quite some time, making it ideal for earning coin. The northern lord had deep pockets, and there was plenty to strip from the enemy lord as well.

However, the soldiers were growing weary from the prolonged fighting.

It had already been two months. We had earned as much as we could, and while we wanted to wrap things up, we had likely let it drag on too long. We were on the verge of sinking into a mire.

It was my blunder for misjudging our exit.

The twenty-man knight unit I led was exhausted, and the other units were surely in the same state.

We needed something to rouse the men and boost morale.

“Captain!”

“What is it? So noisy.”

While I was skipping mealtime to plan our next offensive over the tactical map, one of my childhood friends burst into the tent.

It was Teg, who led our archer unit. He was a frivolous guy, but his marksmanship was infallible, and the archers under his command were elite.

“I caught a suspicious guy, so I came to let you know.”

“A suspicious guy? A spy?”

“Ah… well, he doesn’t really seem like a spy…”

“Huh?”

Not a spy, but a suspicious guy?

Since his explanation was getting us nowhere, I followed him outside to see the guy for myself.

…I see. He definitely looks suspicious.

Just a tunic and trousers. That was all he had on.

Yet both the tunic and trousers were of a design I had never seen before, with tailoring and material I couldn’t even identify. But they were undeniably high quality.

And the guy himself was odd.

His face was flat and unremarkable. His hair was short and a rare shade of black.

He wasn’t tall, and his frame was slender.

Too scrawny for a villager, too weak for a soldier, and lacking the refinement of a lord’s son.

I had observed countless people to sharpen my judgment and knowledge, yet I couldn’t categorize this guy at all.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

I questioned him without dropping my guard. It would be trouble if he suddenly tried something, after all.

“HAHAHAHAHA”

For some reason, he burst out laughing.

“What are you laughing at!”

When I snapped, he immediately shrank back. What was up with this guy?

“Umm, my name is Shuri. Where are we?”

“I am the one asking questions. Do not speak out of turn.”

Trying to take the upper hand with me was useless. I wasn’t about to let that happen.

Still, who was this guy? Why was he in a place like this?

Right in the middle of a battlefield, how had someone who clearly couldn’t fight managed to wander in?

“You said Shuri, right? Who do you serve? Which village are you from?”

“The Japanese countryside.”

“Nihon… Never heard of it.”

Even among the veteran soldiers who had roamed battlefields far and wide, I had never heard that name.

In all the five years since starting this mercenary band, I had never known such a territory to exist.

“Excuse me, I just got lost and ended up here, so I don’t even know where this place is.”

“Shut up.”

He was constantly disrupting my train of thought.

Elusive and impossible to pin down. You rarely met anyone so troublesome.

“By the way, I’m hungry.”

“Shut up, so are we.”

For a second, I wondered if this guy was actually someone important. Who demands food in a situation like this?

Then again, no one in our mercenary band could cook a proper meal.

We could feed ourselves, but we lacked a cook who could prepare anything fit for others. Because of that, salt and potato soup was a common sight.

So we were hungry. We couldn’t help but be hungry.

Once we reached a town, wanting to stuff our faces with good food was a sentiment we all shared.

“Captain, what should we do with him?”

“Doesn’t look like he has anything worth stripping.”

“Keeping him like this feels like a waste of time too.”

“However, we cannot just leave him be. We should execute him quickly and prepare for battle.”

My childhood friends voiced their thoughts.

Indeed, we probably couldn’t strip anything valuable from him, so killing him quickly was the pragmatic choice.

We had no idea where information might leak. It was best to eliminate potential threats.

“Excuse me, if I may?”

“What is it?”

“Since I’m hungry, could you let me cook something?”

“…Are you a cook?”

“I can cook just about anything. If you’re going to kill me, at least let me cook a meal for us first.”

Proposing a deal under these circumstances?

Granted, our food situation was terrible. Having a real cook would change everything.

“Interesting.”

Grinning, I spoke up.

“Then prove it. Make us a good meal. Depending on how it tastes, I might spare your life.”

“Captain?! Are you out of your mind?!”

“It’s right before battle. Raising morale with a bit of entertainment isn’t a bad idea.

If it tastes terrible, we can just kill him then.“

If he could make good food, we could share it among the men to build up their strength.

If it tasted awful, we could let the men kill him to vent their frustration.

Either way, it was a solid way to raise morale.

I had his ropes untied and lent him cooking tools.

“Those are your ingredients.”

The boy who called himself Shuri inspected the supplied materials carefully.

This was all we had available. I didn’t expect him to pull off a proper meal with just this.

“Is there anything else?”

“No. Even this is a luxury for us. Usually it’s just salt and potato soup.”

That was a lie. Since our band lacked a logistics expert, we only secured enough food to keep us moving.

A better-equipped force would have had venison or other game.

“Then shall we make a seafood cream stew? Shrimp would be ideal, but since we don’t have any, let’s make use of the fish scraps instead.”

Shrimp? Fish scraps? Seafood?

What could this guy possibly make with such meager ingredients?

While I was wondering, he had already gotten to work.

He handled the fish with practiced ease. I see, so he intended to make a soup with the meat, potatoes, green onions, and salt.

We usually ate fish roasted over a fire. It usually ended up burnt to a crisp, tasting so bad that nobody wanted to touch it.

However, Shuri separated the heads and meat, cleaned out the entrails neatly, seared the heads and meat, and tossed them into a pot of boiling water. Then he peeled the potatoes and added them too.

The heads? What did he plan to do with those?

“Can you even… eat that?”

Behind me, one of the men muttered.

Indeed, eating the head of a fish was not a habit any of us had.

As he worked, the water came to a boil and turned slightly milky.

…What was this?

“…I think I’ll pass.”

Another mutter. Even I felt like backing away.

However, the moment I saw him add the milk, butter, and flour—which he had seared in a separate pot—into the main stew, I nearly passed out.

“Ugh.”

Teg looked ready to gag. The whitish broth had turned stark white.

…Maybe it really would be better to kill this guy right here.

“Lastly, green onions as a topping.”

Whether aware of my murderous intent or not, Shuri ladled out the soup and topped it with chopped green onions.

“Here you go.”

We were supposed to… eat this?

The more I looked at it, the whiter it seemed. The head wasn’t in the bowl, but it was a completely white soup containing potatoes, fish meat, and green onions.

Still… this was…

“This is… the soup is white.”

“Because it’s cream stew.”

I had no idea what that response meant.

“If it tastes bad, I’ll kill you.”

Giving him a stern warning, I scooped up some soup with a spoon.

It looked bizarre, but I’ll be honest.

The aroma was incredible.

It gave off a mouthwatering scent, radiating an irresistible invitation to take a bite.

Overcome by the smell, I put it into my mouth.

It was astoundingly delicious.

The flavor of the fish blended perfectly with the milk and butter. The light, clean taste of the fish meat was wrapped in the rich, smooth warmth of the milk and fat.

It tasted savory and rich, yet the salt he had added without me noticing brought the whole flavor together sharply.

“Umm?”

“Captain, what’s wrong?”

“…Delicious.”

That was truly the only word I could manage. Calling it bad was out of the question. I had never eaten a meal this good on a battlefield.

“Hey, give me more of this.”

“Sure thing, I made plenty, so help yourself to your heart’s content.”

What? Plenty?

“Plenty? With only that small amount of ingredients?”

“If you get creative with the water, fish scraps, and milk, you can make a large batch even with few solid ingredients.

You’re all heading into battle soon, right? Eating until you’re mostly full with something delicious will give you the energy you need.“

So that was it.

Through his cooking, this guy was demonstrating his value to ensure his own survival.

On the battlefield, you could never have too much food. Of course, letting supply lines stretch too far was dangerous, but as long as the food was good, soldiers could fight longer. They would endure cold and heat far better.

Meals were that critical of a factor in warfare. In siege battles, stockpiled provisions decided victory or defeat. In total war, soldiers who ate their fill of good food gained incredible momentum.

And he had the knowledge and skill to produce a massive quantity of incredible food from such limited ingredients.

Could his earlier glances and chatter have been his way of probing our supply situation and finding a chance to pitch himself…?!

“…I see. You calculated all of that?”

I couldn’t afford to let a cook this skilled go. Above all, the food was delicious. If I could eat meals like this, hiring him was a no-brainer.

“Do you have anywhere to go?”

“No. I don’t even know how to get back.”

Looking at Shuri’s troubled face, I made him an offer.

“If you have nowhere to go, join our unit.”

“Eh?”

“As our cook. Your duty will be to make delicious food. Until you can return home, cook for us here.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I say it’s fine, so it’s fine.”

“Umm, well then, I’m in your care.”

And so, we added the mysterious boy Shuri to our ranks.

Afterward, the unit leaders, the men, and I all savored Shuri’s cooking before marching bravely onto the battlefield.

As if our past struggles had been a lie, the front line shifted dramatically in our favor, and we wrapped up the war in just a single week.

This is the story of the warriors who would later be known as the ‘Heroic Mercenary Band’ and carve their names into history.

The first Emperor of the unified empire who brought peace to the continent, Gungrave Denju Aplada, wrote in his memoirs:

’Until then, I believed that strength alone brought prosperity. But that was not so.

One must understand the reason and background behind that strength. Why was one strong, and why did one strive to become strong?

Most soldiers fight to hold beautiful women and claim gold. Yet soldiers will not move on those alone.

In the end, it is delicious food that sustains the soldiers, supports the people, and shapes the nation.

The joy of surviving another day, and the gratitude of welcoming tomorrow. Starting the morning with a good meal, and ending the night with a good meal. Is that not the true definition of happiness?

He was the one who taught me that.’

Emperor Gungrave always kept a single cook by his side.

A benefactor he met in his youth, who ran across battlefields by his side and prepared delicious meals for him.

This is the story of the cook who supported heroes. The man who appeared out of nowhere, transformed the world’s cuisine, and ushered in a new era of cooking.

The story of Azuma Shuri.