Legend

Chapter 178

「Good morning.」

It was the day after they had returned to Gilm after hunting Gamelions. At 9am as agreed on, Rei greeted Enedra with smile.

「Ah, good morning.」

Rei looked around the inside of the eatery as greeted her but as the morning peak had already passed, there were almost no customers.

There were just a few adventurers who had maybe done an overnight request and were now eating breakfast lazily.

「Is Hasta around?」

「That kid is preparing to dismantle the Gamelions in a building a bit further away……oh, speaking of him, here he is.」

「Rei-san, good morning!」

With a happy smile, Hasta entered the eatery as he greeted Rei energetically.

「Good morning.」

While greeting Hasta back as he had with Enedra, Rei looked towards the kitchen.

「So, I don’t think I can see your father?」

「……」

At Rei’s words, Hasta and Enedra looked at each other with a small laugh.

「That guy, he was probably very anxious about the ingredient you called udon noodles. When he got up in the morning, he immediately started to try to make it after finishing his preparations.……」

Pang~, pang~!

The sound of striking something can could be heard from the kitchen.

「Go take a look. Seriously.」

「……Is that the sound of flinging dough?」

「Yes. He is trying to improve the elasticity of the dough to make the udon Rei-san said.」

「No, I don’t remember telling him about beating the dough though.」

At the very least, in the way Rei had explained how to make udon yesterday, there was no process that included striking the dough. To get the elasticity right, he seemed to have put the dough inside a bag and was stamping it with his feet……

「Well, I guess he’s been experimenting in various ways.」

「That’s true. Anyhow, the failed udon became our breakfast.」

Hasta remembered his breakfast with a wry smile.

For today’s breakfast, Hasta’s family had boiled a soup from all the failures at making udon. It was something close to a sujebi.

「Still, the taste wasn’t that bad was it?」

「It’s my father’s soup, so it’s not that bad. Arka ate it quite happily.」

While Rei listened to the conversation between mother and son, he noticed that Arka, Hasta’s younger sister who had rushed straight for Set when she had saw him yesterday, wasn’t around.

「Where is Arka?」

Maybe that was a bit of an unexpected question. Enedra had a blank look for a moment before she turned to Hasta.

「Hasta, where is Arka? If I remember correctly, she went to the dismantling hut together with you?」

「Arka found Set at the stables……」

「I can guess what happened.」

When Hasta awkwardly mumbled that, Rei understood what had happened. She was probably clinging onto Set like she had done yesterday. Anyhow, Set was like a mascot in the city of Gilm and children accounted for a significant proportion of people that liked him. As a result, it was no wonder that she would be happy seeing Set come to her house.

「……Well then, do you want me to take out the Gamelions? I can leave the dismantling to you as you said yesterday right?」

「Ah, yes. We have to get Rei-san to take a look at the udon noodles.」

「I understand. Well then, I’ll see you later. The process of making udon will probably continue with him.」

Enedra said that as Rei and Hasta left the Satisfied Stomach.

Naturally, when the two of them got to the stables, they saw what they were expecting. Arka was hugging Set as she enjoyed his silky fur.

「Ah……Set. For now, Hasta and I have to go dismantle the Gamlions, what do you want to do?」

「Gururu~……」

At Rei’s words, Set looked towards Arka, who was hugging him, somewhat hesistantly.

Looking at Arka, she clung to Set even harder, refusing to let go.

If Set wasn’t a Griffon, he might have suffocated from her hug.

「Guru~」

Realising that she wouldn’t leave, Set gave a quiet cry and rubbed his face against Arka.

「Ah, I did it. Hey, onii-chan, Set-chan is staying with me! That’s great!」

「I see. Thank you should thank Rei again.」

「Yes. Thank you, Rei-san!」

Arka skillfully bowed her head with a smile while still holding onto Set’s neck.

「Don’t worry about it. It’s because Set wanted to stay with you. I can’t force Set to stay with you.」

「……Pardon me.」

Rei shook his head slightly with a wry smile at Hasta, who had lowered his head, before prompting him.

「So where is the dismantling hut? Since you have to carry the meat to the Satisfied Stomach, it shouldn’t be too far right?」

「Ah, yes. That’s right. It’s only a few minutes walk from here.」

「A few minutes?」

Since that was the case, Rei looked around, but all he could see were small stalls and back street residences.

「You can’t see it from here. It’s over there.」

Hasta led Rei in the direction while saying so.

Towards the back of the Satisfied Stomach.

(……I see. Well, as expected, even if it’s a monster, there’s no reason to dismantle it somewhere out in the open.)

Coming to a realisation, they continued walking for a few minutes. The building was short distance away from the back of the satisfied stomach.

Although Hasta called it a dismantling hut, it couldn’t really be called a hut with its size. If anything, it would be more correct to call it a small warehouse. Of course, it should be said that it wasn’t a fantastic building. Rather, it was in quite poor condition. From its appearance you could see that it was made using recycled materials and various other items.

「Ahahaha. My father built this from the ground up. That is, using materials left over from the construction of the Satisfied Stomach and other places that were demolished. ……But as a result, the amount of debt has increased.」

「I see.」

Rei nodded in understanding.

He could understand why Hasta had placed such a high importance on the Gamelion meat.

Of course, Hasta loved his family. However, he also felt some sort of guilt that the place had been built with his parent’s debt. He wanted to return the debt as soon as possible to clear his feelings.

「……Well then, let’s start the dismantling. The entrance is over here, please follow me.」

Following Hasta, Rei entered the dismantling hut. The huge front door was to allow monsters to be brought in for dismantling. However, since the Gamelions this time were inside Rei’s Misty Ring, it wasn’t necessary to use it.

「So this is the dismantling hut.」

Rei muttered as his looked around the inside.

There was no stylish wooden floor, it was just a plain compacted dirt floor with a considerably large stand at one side. On the stand were hundreds of knives including huge knives the size of ones arm. Rei nodded, thinking that the meat would probably be cut up on the table after being roughly separated into large pieces. Near the stand was a cart that was probably used to carry the cut up meat.

「What, I’m a bit embarrassed comparing myself to an amazing person like you Rei.」

「Is that so? I envy you for having a workshop like this.」

At that moment, Rei thought back to heading out to a forest near Gilm to strip materials and meat from all the monsters he had accumulated along with Eternal Power. When doing work outside, it was obvious that they would have to watch out for monsters with the smell of blood. There were also time restriction and they had to head back into the city before night time when all the monsters became more active. Even if it was a somewhat poor looking building, it was a good thing that Hasta had a secure place where he could dismantle monsters inside the city.

(……That’s right. I have money, is there somewhere in Gilm that I can buy unused land to build something like this? ……No, in the first place, I don’t have that many opportunities to kill that many monsters. It would be nice to have a place to test skills learnt from magic stones, but there aren’t any areas of land that big. Well, it would be convenient if there was one but those aren’t places I would like to use openly. In that case, maybe it would be best to borrow this place?)

Thinking to himself, Rei asked Hasta.

「Hasta, if i remember correctly, you promised to help me dismantle monsters 10 times for helping you with this?」

「Yes? This was sudden, anything wrong? I certainly did promise you that.」

「In that case, I don’t need help with dismantling monsters. Instead, could you lend this place to me sometimes?」

「Eh? Here?」

「Ah. It’s valuable to be able to strip materials inside the city. How about it?」

Hasta thought about Rei’s proposal for several seconds.

For Hasta, he didn’t think that stripping off materials was a lot of work even before seeing Rei’s fighting strength. But only after seeing Rei’s skill, who was still a D rank adventurer, did he actually realise that Rei was someone outside the norm.

Hearing at the guild bar that Rei had carried a large amount of materials to the guild before after completing and several subjugation requests, he thought that Rei might have been accumulating the materials. Although he had thought that, after seeing Rei’s fighting strength, he realised that Rei might possibly have collected that many in a single request.

In actuality, because of Rei’s Misty Ring, a lot of adventurers thought the same thing as Hasta. But because Rei was also considered someone who should not be provoked, the misunderstanding couldn’t be easily resolved.

As for Hasta, who had his misunderstanding cleared up, Rei’s proposal wasn’t that bad so he tentatively agreed.

「That is, there are times when we have to dismantle the meat for the dishes we serve at the eatery, so if it’s other times……」

Rei nodded without hesitation at Hasta’s answer.

Rei didn’t need to use this place that frequently. He only planned to use it when he had hunted so many monsters that he could strip all the materials by himself.

「Well, that’s done. Then I’ll take out the Gamelions. ……Do you want me to take out the ordinary one or the rare species first? Or do you want me to take out both?」

「Mm, there might not be enough space to work with both, so please pass me the ordinary one. I’ll leave the rare species for later.」

「I understand.」

Nodding at Hasta, Rei moved to a spot marked with blood and took out a Gamelion from the Misty Ring.

The head that Rei had cut off, the tail that Hasta had cut off and the torso, which was the biggest part.

「Thank you very much. I will begin the dismantling right away. Rei-san, please head to the eatery and help my father with the udon noodles. After all, if it goes well, it’s a dish that could revive our eatery.」

「……It’s not that exaggerated. Well, I’ll do that then. I’ll leave this here to you.」

「Yes! Once I finish processing this Gamelion, I’ll return to the eatery right away.」

Hasta watched Rei as he left the dismantling hut before turning his eyes to the carcass of the Gamelion, picking up a knife for dismantling from the stand and piercing the Gamelion’s fur.

While alive, its fur had strong defensive properties against blades, but the effect disappears as soon as it dies. However, though the defense provided by the fur when someone passed magic power into it wasn’t as good as when the Gamelion was alive, it was still a material in high demand as it possessed high anti-blade defense. Gamelion fur was especially rare since it would only appear on the market around this period of time. Because of that, the fur could sell for quite an amount.

「! However, this is difficult to work with considering its size……isn’t it!」

Cutting open it’s belly, he first took out its internal organs and threw them into a bucket. Next, with a lot of effort, Hasta skinned it while carefully avoiding scarring the fur.

Maybe you could say this is where his skill shined. Compared with Rei, he was much more used to this. It hadn’t been long since he had started to hunt monsters by himself as an adventurer, but he had assisted with dismantling monsters at his home since he was small. It was not strange that he was used to it.

He finished skinning the fur off the the 3m large Gamelion in under 10 minutes. It could be said that all that was left was just a lump of meat.

First of all, he removed the magic stone from its heart before cutting the meat and bone.