Chapter 288: Please let me join!

Even refrigerated, the passage of time would still make things less fresh.

This seemed especially the case for shark meat. According to what I’ve heard, shark meat smelled more and more of ammonia the less fresh it got. As such, I wanted us to eat all of it up as soon as possible.

To that end, we were once again holding a food festival.

We would have lines of stalls that offered the dishes that each chef had created out of the shark meat. Moreover, the villagers would be able to enjoy those dishes free of charge.

This time, there would be no limits. People would be able to eat as much as they wanted.

And even though all the dishes were going to use shark meat, I believed that there would actually be a lot of variety for the villagers to choose from thanks to the chefs adding in their own twists.

Because none of the villagers has eaten any food made of shark meat—or special seafood for that matter—before, we expected all of the over 2,000 villagers to participate in this event. But considering that the shark was about 20 meters long, even if that many people participated, there was just no way for our supply of shark meat to run out anytime soon.

…or so I thought.

“There’s almost nothing left after just a day…”

Within a day of bringing it to the village, the shark was spotlessly cleaned off. All that was left of it were its bones and scales.

“Chief! Please catch more of that fish for us!”

Coch-san pleaded so.

His stall consistently had the longest line during the festival.

“That might be hard to do.”

“Wh!? How so!?”

“We were just lucky to find one. I don’t think anything there’s many of that thing in the sea, so catching another one is pretty much impossible, I’m sorry to say.”

“N, no…”

Coch-san must have really thought that the giant shark was an excellent ingredient because he looked shocked and even went down on his knees when I answered like that.

“T-then, at least please take me when you next swim in the sea! I’ll go find the next best thing!”

Can that still be called ‘swimming in the sea’ though?

“That’s fine, but remember that everybody else will be swimming near the coast, so you’ll be alone. Well, I’ll lend you a body double, at least.”

Sure enough, on our next swimming trip, Coch-san joined us and searched for that giant shark monster. He didn’t find another one. However, he found one close enough to it.

Since then, our hunters have been bringing back those monsters to the village from time to time.

“This is absolutely poaching…but oh well, it’s not like the locals are going to catch those monsters anytime soon.”

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“Now that I’ve been to the great sea, I want to go to a desert next!”

“This seems out of the blue, Selen. What happened?”

She apparently had so much fun in her first trip abroad that she wanted to go to other places real soon.

And one of the next candidates seemed to be a place with a desert.

There was actually a vast desert called the Rubul desert southeast of our kingdom. People say that there were a lot of small nations within that desert.

“But how do people live in a place where there’s nothing but sand?”

“Dotting a desert are these spots of fertile and green land called oasis. That’s where people live.”

The knowledgeable Philia-san informed us so.

It would seem she has travelled to a desert before.

“Traveling in the desert is quite harsh, you know. During the day, it’s sweltering. And at night, you’ll be freezing. Just walking through the sand is bound to eat at your stamina. The absence of any landmarks is not only liable to get you lost but also to drive you mad. It’s also hard to find food and water. And if all that wasn’t enough, there are also ferocious monsters living in the desert.”

“Ohh, that sounds rough.”

Still not fully getting what kind of place a desert was, Selen nodded thoughtlessly.

Well, we’d be flying aboard the park, so we didn’t have much to worry about anyway. The heat and cold could be handled by building houses that had good air conditioning. We didn’t have to worry about food and water too because we could just bring enough of it.

The map feature of my Gift would also prevent us from taking a wrong turn.

And so, in the end, we decided to go on a trip to the desert.

Our group consisted mostly of the same ones who went to the sea the other day.

However…

“Please let me join! We might discover some new ingredient!”

As though he was obsessed with finding new ingredients, Coch-san wanted to participate no matter what.

“Won’t people be unhappy if you close shop for the day? They had to make a reservation several months in advance or maybe even more just to dine there, right…?”