Published at 17th of April 2019 11:15 am

Chapter 260: Side chapter - Rimuru’s Elegant Escape Play - 11

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The second day was horrible.

Moving as a group was just not ideal. It was a day of realizing this.

As predicted, the people who went out fishing came back with miserable results.

And of course, we too were unable to accomplish much.

As we weren’t allowed to stray too far from the eyes of the instructors, the area we could go to look for herbs and seeds was very limited.

And these were areas that the other students had already searched on the first day, so it was no surprise that nothing good had come up.

If we were allowed to, I would have wanted to go to the west.

It was a desert area, so the variety of plants over there would have also been quite different.

That made me think that there would be plants suited for cooking spices…

In any case, what we were able to get was a little collection of seeds, edible grass and a clump of rock salt.

Had we gone near the shore, we might have been able to get some water to make sea salt, but of course, we could not do that. I would have been able to manage it alone, but the exploration team had only advanced one-quarter of the way through the island in a day. And so getting salt from the sea was not a very realistic idea.

Had I not realized that the rock was crystalized salt, then we would have had to eat our food without any salt at all…

…No, that is a lie.

The rock salt alone was something that I had secretly prepared.

I didn’t think you could make anything without salt, and so it was necessary for me to prepare this thing at least.

In fact, there was a salt lake to the west, but as we had gone to the same place as yesterday, I could not go over there.

And so with no other choice, I had crystallized the salt in the ground when no one was looking. And then I stuck it onto the rocks so no one would think it was strange.

And then I pretended to be ignorant of it so that Mondo could discover it.

“Thi-this! It is a clump of salt!!”

Mondo was overjoyed when he told me. His happiness was incomparable to my own terrible acting skills, and he was overflowing with happiness at this discovery.

It didn’t result in any points, but no one became suspicious about it.

They were all unsurprised, thinking that picking up some rock salt was hardly enough to get you some points.

And so that was how I was able to prepare some salt.

I returned to the base and started making dinner.

Lunch was either rations or whatever you could find in your environment. And so we had searched for seeds and wild berries…but, it was not enough.

For George and Mondo, it was about the amount, but for me, it was more about quality. It was dry and not sweet. To be honest, they were just bad.

And so I had had higher hopes for dinner, but we had not been successful.

Sadly, I licked the salt and sipped the disgusting grass soup.

It seemed like Magnus and a few other students were sticking to their rations.

I understood why.

Overall, it was such a tragic dinner that I wanted to cry.

At the same time, the smell of the fancy dinner that Julius and the others were eating wafted in the air. And it lit a fire of rage within me.

To be frank, this was a challenge.

I don’t remember ever being this pissed off in the past few years.

This delicious smell was making us feel even more miserable.

“We will have to try harder to prepare a good meal tomorrow.”

“Yeah. I’m too hungry now. I’ll do better tomorrow!”

“Ye-yes. Me too.”

Perhaps there was something intimidating about the way I had said it because George seemed a little taken aback as he nodded.

Mondo was so hungry that he just nodded without really thinking.

The two girls were also in agreement, and with that resolve, we split up for the night.

◇◇◇

And then it was the 3rd day.

I had good luck from the morning of that day.

The pit that I had made on the first day had trapped a pig-like monster.

…No, that’s a lie.

I had worked secretly during the night to find it through ‘Magic Perception,’ and then catch it with ‘Sticky Steel String,’ and then I led it towards the trap.

Today we would eat some good food! It was this hope that forced me to loosen the magic restraints I had put on myself.

Caution? What is that? Does it taste good?

They say that there are many city people who long to live in the countryside or live off of their own produce in the forest. However, most of them soon realize how inconvenient it is once they try it.

I was much the same.

My body is hurting because of my muscles and I’m forced to eat horrible food. Not only is there no entertainment, but there isn’t even a place to take a bath… It had only been two days, but I was already feeling my limits.

And on this third day, I had decided that I would no longer try to bear any of it.

“I’m going to stay here today and prepare this guy to be butchered.”

I declared to my teammates. There was a 200 kg boar-like monster in front of me.

Thankfully, I already had 30 points, so there was no need to worry about getting more.

“You don’t need us to help you?”

George asked. I answered,

“Leave the cooking to me. But it would help if you could gather some logs for firewood.”

Upon hearing this, George readily agreed.

He decided to gather wood during the morning and then go out gathering in the afternoon in order to rack up some points.

He had likely sensed that I was serious, and thought it better to not get in my way.

Now it was just me and one other person left.

It was Marsha.

She already had enough points, and so I had asked for her help.

“I…as you know, am not very good at cooking…”

She seemed worried, but it was no problem.

What I was going to ask Marsha was not cooking, but a new type of magic experiment.

I thought that her talent for magic was genuine, and so I wanted to use this opportunity to perform an experiment that I had thought of.

Besides, if I needed any help, there was also an instructor who was healing from an injury that I could ask.

“Alright, I’ll be back once at midday.”

“Leave the firewood to me!”

“See you later!”

So saying, the three of them set out.

Now, it was time to start preparing the food.

As I had caught the monster alive, the meat would be very fresh.

I asked the combat supervisor, who had recovered from an injury, to remove the blood and process the meat.

There was something awe-inspiring about watching it happen.

If I wanted to-well, I could perform it in auto-mode with Ciel’s help, but I didn’t want to draw any attention.

I just want to make it very clear, it had nothing to do with my sore muscle.

You could say that the instructor’s efforts were a huge help.

On the first day, we had done a fish barbecue, but today we would have meat skewers.

I added some wild vegetables that looked highly nutritious along with the meat as I skewered them.

Then I sprinkled some of the prepared salt over them and finished it off with some ground up grass on top.

Now I just had to cook them.

To be honest, it looked quite delicious already.

After all, I had used ‘Appraisal’ to find out the right amount of salt and adjust the flavor with the herbs.

This meant that under the circumstances, it was in the best possible state.

However, I was not finished yet.

The main dish would be the soup I was making now, through boiling the bones.

“How is it?”

I asked Marsha.

And then-

“I can’t believe it… How…there is no magic depletion, so how is it possible to control magic with such accuracy for a long period of time!?”

She replied with much excitement.

It seems to have worked. I gloated inwardly.

I actually wanted to test it myself, but that was just not possible. My identity needed to stay hidden, and it wouldn’t make sense for me to teach new types of magic when I wasn’t even a student.

And so.

I had Old William become my assistant.

Well, I asked him to be sort of an instructor.

Last night, I had secretly talk with William, saying that I would have Marsha stay as a helper. That was when William would naturally start to talk to her and eventually instruct her. That was the plan.

And it was going well.

As for the rest…

◇◇◇

After I finished preparing the bones to be boiled in the large pot, I started talking to Marsha.

That was the signal to start.

“Marsha, I’m sorry. But could you adjust the flames with magic?”

I asked her in the most natural way.

And since Marsha accepted it as planned, the adjusting of the flames while the bones were boiling became her job.

But it wasn’t the easiest job.

While Marsha had a lot of magical power and was good at controlling mana, you needed to be able to concentrate well in order to do it.

As I watched from the side, William saw his opportunity and approached her.

He called to Marsha, who was having trouble, and gave her some advice while also trying to change the subject.

“Ah, that reminds me, Marsha. I have this magic item passed on to me by a friend…perhaps you will be able to use it. Do you want to give it a try?”

While helping her, he casually referred to this thing as if just remembering it. Then he pulled out what appeared to be seven playing cards from his pocket.

The material that they were made of was pure ‘Demon Steel.’

“Master, what is this…”

“This is…”

William explained it to her just as I had explained it to him last night.

He glanced at me several times to make sure he was getting it right, but it seemed like Marsha didn’t notice it.

He was mostly right anyway, and so I gave him the okay signal.

With renewed confidence, William returned to his explanation.

What I had given him last night was a new type of magical device that I had devised.

There were eight media cards that formed the basis.

These represented the eight great attributes of the power of spirits that made this world.

Light and shadow, time, and earth, water, fire, wind, and sky.

What Marsha had received, was seven of those eight.

Time alone could not be used by people, and so I had excluded it.

The light could purify, nurture and regenerate.

The shadow could conceal, was psychological, and could destroy.

The earth had the power to pull, break and condense.

The water could solidify, stop and be released.

The fire burned, accelerated and exploded.

The wind was in waves, had an impact and vibrated.

The sky was space, existence, and information.

Like that, the media cards had primitive words that represented the different natures carved into them.

And so all you needed to do was allow magic to flow into the card and will it, and it would be possible to create that effect.

As the media card itself controlled the magic, the effect would not be interrupted even if the person using them became distracted.

What was important was your imagination when activating the magic.

You did not even need to chant.

Nothing would happen if you will a shadow effect while using the light card. And while you did need to make the right choices and follow the procedures, that was just a matter of becoming familiar.

I decided to call this new form of magic-Anagram Magic.

Currently, it only had the most basic letters carved in, but I intended to eventually make it more complex and layered.

For instance, I could combine earth-type(condense) and fire-type(explosion) and create ‘Gravity Collapse.’

Though, there were still some problems left, like the learning curve, the concentration that is necessary to set parameters and the fact that the required energy was enormous.

Of course, this was an extreme scenario.

However, it was easier and more efficient than element magic, and it was easy to understand that it was a form of magic that allowed anyone to control the rules of the world.

I’m sure that it is obvious, but I had no intention of allowing it to circulate outside.

This was merely an experiment to see how much use a normal student without a lot of knowledge could get out of it.

Basically, I wanted to test the ease of use.

[[As I thought, that was your intent all along.]]

For some reason, Ciel sounded a little smug.

By the way, there should be no doubt that it was me who thought of this Anagram Magic.

However-It was, of course, Ciel, who developed it.

And so she had predicted that I would try and test it somewhere, and she had predicted from the first day that I would ask Marsha.

Of course, I know! She seemed to want to say.

However, it was only by chance that I thought to conduct this experiment.

It was necessary to adjust the fire while cooking. And when I was wondering how I could do this, I thought of Marsha.

Usually, I could have easily controlled it with magic, but I couldn’t do it since I was supposed to be an average person. And so I could not adjust the fire myself.

Still, there was no way that I was going to give up on a delicious meal… And then I thought of it. Marsha’s talent.

In other words, I passed on this magic to Marsha in order for her to cook the food.

I thought that it would be bad to ask an instructor to do such a menial task. That was all it was.

-Yes, it was all for a delicious dinner!

Why do I care so much about food?

Well, think about it for a moment.

Among the three things that are considered to be the great needs of humans, sleep, carnal desire, and appetite for food, the only one that I have left is food.

Is it any wonder that I am so desperate?

I didn’t acquire “Beelzebuth’ for nothing.

◇◇◇

-Well, in any case, the experiment was a success.

Marsha used the fire and water cards to control the heat perfectly, just like I had requested.

“Master William. These magic cards are amazing!”

“Hmm…indeed they are…”

Marsha said with excitement, but old William did not seem to share her enthusiasm.

He had been exposed to a form of magic that surpassed his understanding, and he was having too much trouble breathing to show excitement.

I felt a little sorry for him.

He was looking to me for help, and so I thought I might go and help him.

However, the food was more important now.

I pushed thoughts of William aside and started to do the finishing touches.

I removed the bones, boiled the meat and vegetables, and added the seasoning.

This was also accomplished under the perfect management of Appraisal, and so it was adjusted to be the most delicious it could possibly be under the circumstances.

I traded places with Marsha and got to work.

During this time, Marsha joined the teachers as they skewered the meat and lined them up.

The firewood that George and the others had gathered in the morning were placed in the portable stove, and a grill was placed on top…preparations were going smoothly.

As for me.

The boiled meat was soft and the mysterious wild vegetables had a smell that usually would not have been possible.

And so this stew, which to be honest, was an original that completed ignored the recipe, was complete.

I cautiously tasted it.

It was excellent, and would not be inferior to any dish made by Shuna.

“It’s perfect.”

I said with overwhelming emotion.

I felt as if I had not eaten for an unfathomably long time, but it had only been three days.

However, it had been very painful for me.

I never would have expected my identity to be in danger of being exposed over not being able to eat, but thankfully, things turned out fine.

I would not make the same mistake the next time.

In any case, I just wanted to bask in the perfection that was this stew.

Marsha looked like she wanted to taste it too, and so I gave her a spoonful.

“It’s delicious!! This is much better than the stew at school and at home!!”

It was a good thing to be able to share your joy with others.

Marsha and I were able to forget time itself as we rejoiced in what we had accomplished.

At the same time, it seemed like the other teachers who had helped also wanted to taste it. But that meant nothing to us, as we had lost ourselves in the moment.

And so we did not notice them and were ultimately the only two who got to taste it.

Eventually, it was evening.

George and the rest of the gathering team had returned, and we had more than enough firewood.

And once preparations were complete, a magic circle flashed, and the exploration team also returned.

And then, at last, it was the beginning of the long awaited dinner.

A loud cheer rang around us.

Some were even crying loudly with emotion.

Several students walked up to me and offered words of gratitude.

I think there might have been a few teachers as well, but I didn’t think about it.

Magnus even said, ‘Hey Satoru, come and be my wife!’ while getting up, and so I said, ‘I’ll punch you’ and took away his stew.

It was a waste to allow such idiots to eat it.

After that, I heard words of apology in a pained voice, but I ignored them.

The stew that had been confiscated from Magnus was gladly eaten by Mondo.

Also-

“…This is good.”

Even Julius had come to eat the stew as well.

“Hmph, you should be thankful.”

I said pompously.

Yet in spite of my attitude, Julius just left silently and did not complain.

I thought that it was an even scarier reaction.

And so, the night of the third day ended in a very satisfactory manner.

-However, the incident happened right after that.

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