Chapter 34: New Meat?
After Nathan had more or less explained the story, and Edward confirmed it, the others seemed to calm down somewhat. It took a little while, but the guards did end up sheathing their swords and Arianne stopped tugging on my sleeve.
It was a little awkward, but Nathan was able to hobble over with Edward. He simply sat him down at the nearest seat before taking a seat next to him soon after. Nathan let out a long sigh before setting down the pig carcass.
He promptly pointed at it.
"Hey, you can take this pig. It was bought with your money after all."
I gave a nod.
"Sure, but I recall you said there was something you wanted to publicize?"
Nathan blinked a few times before looking up.
"Ah, right! Since he's able to do the thing now, I wanted him to open up a place where he will drain the blood of animals for a fee. If it doesn't end up popular, then we can always just make it free."
He then pointed to Arianne.
"Hey you, if you ever hear about someone that needs to drain an animal, then tell them about it. I think I'll set it up a few blocks down from this place."
Arianne flinched but ended up nodding. My attention was focused on the carcass of the pig. I looked at one of the chefs.
"Could you prepare it right now?"
It seemed the chefs were hesitating as they looked at each other. Eventually, one of them spoke up.
"Um, Lord Bryson, I'm not sure if that animal will be suitable for eating."
My gaze shifted to the pig, getting a better look at it, and I could understand their concerns. Its skin had wrinkled considerably, while its body looked to be disproportionate to a regular pig, with certain parts of its body caved in somewhat. On top of that, it also looked unnaturally pale.
If I had to say, it definitely looked unsettling. Probably because it almost looked like a normal pig, but a little bit off.
However, at the end of the day, it was just a pig that had its blood drained. Unless Edward's magic somehow curses things, then there shouldn't have been any problem. With that in mind, I held my hand out toward Nathan.
"Hey, toss me that knife."
Nathan had no complaints and was about to do so, but then, a guard hurriedly spoke up.
"Um, sir, that is not safe."
I blinked a few times. Ah, right. You weren't supposed to just throw knives around if you were a normal person. I coughed into my sleeve before responding.
"Ah, yes please hand it over."
Nathan stopped himself from throwing and walked over to hand it to me while holding the blade.
I promptly took it and pointed it at Edward.
"Hey, get the blood off this thing. It's yours, isn't it?"
Edward was startled somewhat, seemingly not expecting me to talk to him. However, he didn't hesitate in reaching out his hand. The blood covering the knife, despite being dry, peeled off easily before floating over toward Edward.
Watching the dirty knife suddenly become quite clean was rather satisfying to look at.
It seemed that most people were also fascinated by it as well. As far as I knew, the fact that blood mages even existed wasn't known among people in the kingdom. That made their surprise rather reasonable, as this wasn't something known to be possible.
Regardless, I ignored them and stuck the knife into the pig carcass, to be more specific it was a part of the leg.
To my surprise, despite the wrinkled look making it appear dry, the meat itself was definitely not that. While the blood was gone, there was still a substantial amount of water content within.
Most people appeared to be confused as to what I was doing, but I was more interested in how the pig looked on the inside. Similar to the outside, the insides were paler than normal meat. It was still red but had a lighter color to it.
The fat in particular appeared to be glistening.
Also, I found it rather easy to cut. While I didn't know exactly how hard it was to cut into meat normally, I was still pretty confident it was softer. My guess was that while extracting the blood, the capillaries took a hit, which weakened the overall structure.
From there, I looked over at the chefs and called out to them.
"Hey, give me one of those pans."
The chefs looked rather panicked. One of them awkwardly waved their hands around with a nervous smile.
"Ah, Lord Bryson, if you insist on cooking with that meat, then we can handle it!"
I waved my hand casually.
"I just want to try, don't focus so much on that."
They hesitated for a moment, but they didn't take too long to listen, getting an arbitrary pan that wasn't used yet and handing it to me. I cast the water spell to wash the meat off a little bit before putting it into the pan.
With one hand holding onto the handle, my other went underneath the pan and cast the fire spell.
I coated the fire spell with my mana so that it wouldn't hurt me and then just waited.
Arianne looked at me questioningly.
"Y-You are using magic to cook?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Why not? It's also good practice."
Nathan rubbed his chin in interest and got closer to watch over the meat as well.
"I definitely wouldn't be able to cast spells to cook like this. I would sooner cause a disaster than anything else."
I let out a laugh. He was probably right, considering his overwhelming magical aptitude made it harder to cast weaker spells for more mundane things. It wasn't as though he would never be able to, but he first had to improve his control further.
At one point, one of the chefs approached me and cleared their throat.
"Um, would you like to have some salt and spices to go with it, sir?"
I thought about it for a little while, but shook my head.
"I want to see how it tastes without any of that stuff first."
The chef had opened his mouth, about to say something. However, he shut his mouth soon after before nodding to me.
"Alright, Lord Bryson."
After some time passed, the smell of the meat filled the air. It didn't smell particularly bad or spoiled in any way. Soon I felt that it was the right time to flip, so I deftly twisted the pan and shot it up, causing the piece of meat to fly into the air and flip back onto the pan.
Most of the chefs and servants looked at me with rather surprised expressions, while Arianne let out a small gasp as I did so.
"D-Do you cook regularly?"
I blinked a few times, unsure how to answer. After all, I doubt Bryson cooked at all, but back on Earth, it was something I was fairly familiar with.
"There was a time that I did it by myself, but not recently, no."
I refocused my attention on the cooked side of the meat. The color was a bit paler than what I was used to, making me think I hadn't finished cooking it. However, a closer look made me realize that it was done, just that it looked a bit different.
I continued on, slowly cooking away.
Nathan went back to eating and also helped Edward a little bit since he was still rather weak, which was somewhat of a given since he stabbed his own heart and all that. And after some time, I felt like it was more or less done.
I got another knife from some of the cutlery we had and cut a small piece of the steak off while in the pan and put it down onto my own plate. There was nothing wrong with the smell, but I had to admit it looked like a pale piece of meat.
Without much other thought, I used a fork to pick some up and take a bite out of it.
My immediate impression was that it was a bit bland but other than that it was pretty good. The meat was pretty tender making it easy to eat and had a fairly decent taste.
If there was salt or spices added to it, then it would probably taste even better.
It appeared by now that most people had their attention on me. I sliced up the meat into more different parts and held out the pan near Arianne.
"Do you want to try one?"
Arianne looked as though she was about to say no out of politeness, but ended up nodding in the end.
"Y-Yes please."
She took one and ate it with a bit of trepidation. Though, immediately after her face lit up with a surprised expression.
"This... tastes really good!"
I blinked a few times. Honestly, I felt like she was exaggerating, but at the same time, I couldn't judge her because she probably wasn't used to eating meat. While it did taste a bit better than the other meats, it wasn't exactly world-changing.
I handed some over to Nathan and Edward as well. Nathan seemed to hold a similar opinion to me, saying that it was not bad. As for Edward, he quite liked it. I was going to just finish it, but one of the chefs, which I think was the head chef, approached me.
There was one last piece of cooked meat, and he had stepped up before pointing at it.
"May I try that, Lord Bryson?"
It wasn't exactly a big deal, especially considering there was an entire rest of the pig left. So I just nodded.
"Sure."
He had used his own fork and tasted the meat, causing his eyes to fly open in surprise.
"This... This is revolutionary! My apologies for saying that it wasn't suitable before."
I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.
"Is it? I guess it does taste a bit better, but it's not a big deal."
The chef looked at me like he couldn't understand my attitude.
"Lord Bryson, even the smallest increase in taste causes the price of food to hike up several times over! That's why spices greatly outweigh the cost of the actual food itself. If it was known that there was a better form of meat, then it would be an incredibly huge business opportunity."
I looked over at Nathan, and he looked back at me too.
I don't really remember the game mentioning anything about how the food that tasted better was grossly marked up. Or at least, there were no main events that were directly related to that.
...Hm. I suppose if the opportunity just came to us, there was no reason not to take it.
The chef looked over at Nathan.
"Where did you buy that pig? Are you able to get more of them before other people find out?"
A smile formed on Nathan's face.
"They were just the pigs from the main farm, nothing special."
The chef looked rather disappointed.
"Ah... it appears that this pig is only a strange exception then."
Nathan narrowed his eyes slightly. He let out a laugh before pointing at Edward.
"It's not the pig, but rather his magic that made the pig like that, remember? If it wasn't for his magic, then the pig would've tasted like any other."
The chef's gaze snapped to Edward. It seemed one hundred thoughts flashed through his mind before he became set on what to do. He proceeded to flash him a smile before speaking cordially.
"Would you like to work with the Bryson name in producing luxury meat? I can guarantee that you will find yourself with the riches you've dreamed of."
Edward didn't look moved at all, almost like the chef hadn't said anything at all. It was rather apparent that, unlike most commoners, he didn't really care about his own wealth all that much. To him, it seemed as though it wasn't a big deal if there wasn't a meal on his plate the next day.
"I will work with Nathan. Since it looks like Nathan and Bryson work together, then I will work with him too."
A cocky smirk formed on Nathan's face.
"Heh. You heard him."
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