"Then... here's to celebrating another safe day... cheers!"
"Cheers!"
At Zai's words, everyone raised their cups and joined in the toast.
...Though the only alcohol they were allowed to drink at dinner was that single cup in front of them.
After sweating through the day, drinking water, and getting back to work, those who had been suffering from hangovers that morning had already fully recovered by dinnertime.
Even so, Zai couldn't let them drink enough to risk a repeat of last night. The thought of enemies attacking while they were hungover—just like today—was enough to convince him that letting them drink freely was out of the question.
Still, remembering how good last night's alcohol had tasted, plenty of them were itching for another drink.
On top of that, they had spent the entire day endlessly digging holes, hauling dirt, and sifting through the wreckage of tents.
The excavation work was especially grueling, since they didn't even know whether there was actually anything beneath this settlement... and if there was, they had no idea how deep it might be buried.
In fact, Rei recalled reading a book back in Japan that described making someone dig holes in the ground for no reason, fill them back in, then dig them up again... as a form of torture.
The Centaurs were digging based on the possibility that something might lie beneath this settlement, and they had a clear purpose for doing so... but that didn't change the fact that it was mentally exhausting work.
If a single cup of alcohol could ease that mental fatigue, even if only a little... Rei figured it wasn't unreasonable to offer them a drink.
"Are you sure about this?" Vihera asked.
"It's just one cup each, so it won't be like this morning. The Centaurs know firsthand how miserable it is to work with a hangover. More importantly, they learned exactly how dire things would be if Dragonias attacked while they were hungover."
"They definitely learned that. But don't you think even one cup of alcohol will make them forget that painful lesson right away?"
Vihera's words carried considerable weight. She had worked as an adventurer after fleeing the Bestia Empire, so it wouldn't be surprising if she'd had her own alcohol-related troubles.
...That said, whether that logic applied here was another matter entirely.
"A few of them might make a fuss and demand more. But if there's no more alcohol to give, there's nothing they can do about it."
All the remaining alcohol—aside from what had been used for tonight's toast—was already stored in Rei's Misty Ring. No matter how much they wanted more, it meant nothing if the alcohol simply wasn't there.
...Though there was a real, if extremely slim, possibility that searching the settlement might turn up alcohol somewhere.
(Actually, if there was any alcohol, it wouldn't be surprising if the Dragonias had already drunk it.)
Given what the Dragonias had done to this settlement, the chances that any alcohol—like the food—had already been consumed were extremely high.
Rei couldn't help thinking he'd kind of like to see what a drunk Dragonias looked like.
"Rei, here." Vihera handed him a plate of food.
It was a dish prepared by the Centaurs who prided themselves on their cooking. Naturally, most of the ingredients had come from Rei's Misty Ring... but a small amount of other ingredients had been used as well.
"Ingredients from the grove, huh? They said these were commonly eaten in this settlement, so I don't think there's any problem."
He accepted the plate and scooped up a spoonful of stew—mutton simmered with vegetables and herbs—and brought it to his mouth.
The seasoning was slightly distinctive, but having eaten it several times before, he had no trouble eating it. It was genuinely tasty, too.
What had slightly worried Rei, though, was the fact that the ingredients in this stew and the other dishes—herbs, nuts, wild vegetables—had all been foraged from the grove surrounding the settlement.
That this grove was no ordinary grove was obvious from the Dragonias corpses that had decomposed overnight. Given that, it was unclear what kind of effects the grove itself might have.
If he were being cautious, he should use only ingredients from his Misty Ring. Thanks to the time-stopping effect, those ingredients stayed perfectly fresh indefinitely.
But not everything the Centaurs ate came from the Misty Ring. Some ingredients hadn't been provided because they were rare or out of stock. More importantly, with no telling when they'd find the headquarters, they needed to conserve their food supply as much as possible.
For those reasons—and after hearing that the settlement's survivors had regularly foraged and eaten from the grove—Rei had decided to allow the use of foraged ingredients in their cooking.
...As a result, today's dishes had a slightly different flavor from usual, but they were undeniably delicious.
"That's true. Look, everyone's enjoying it," Vihera said.
"Some of them are complaining, though."
The ones Rei mentioned weren't unhappy with the food—their frustration was solely about being limited to one cup of alcohol.
Rei shot an exasperated look at the grumbling Centaurs, wondering if they'd already forgotten this morning's hangover.
As if sensing his gaze, the complaining Centaurs looked up. The moment they realized they'd made eye contact with Rei, they visibly panicked. They clearly hadn't expected him to overhear their complaints.
Hurriedly grabbing their cups, they scurried away, ducking out of Rei's line of sight.
"My, my." Vihera watched them go with amusement.
...Her gaze, however, also carried a clear intent: she was planning to put them through a thorough mock battle during tomorrow's training.
Whether he picked up on that from Vihera's demeanor or not, Rei cast a pitying glance toward the Centaurs who had disappeared into the crowd.
"So, Rei. What's the plan for tomorrow? Are you going to search for the headquarters with Set again, like today?"
"Yeah, that's the plan. There's the matter with the mottled Dragonias, too—there might be a headquarters somewhere near that area. Though I didn't see anything that looked like one."
He'd been riding Set, scanning the ground from the sky. If there was a Dragonias headquarters down there, finding it shouldn't have been difficult. But near the area where they'd fought the mottled Dragonias, he hadn't spotted anything suspicious.
"In that case, it's possible there's a larger base rather than the headquarters," Vihera suggested.
Rei nodded. Having already assaulted multiple outposts today alone, the possibility of another base nearby couldn't be dismissed—if anything, it was highly likely.
And Rei also harbored the hope that such a base wouldn't be an ordinary one, but rather a key installation connected to the headquarters.
(Well, I doubt things will go that smoothly. But if they do, it'll make things easier for us.)
Naturally, Rei wanted to find the Dragonias headquarters as quickly as possible. But if even searching from the sky wasn't going to yield quick results, it was only realistic to expect that finding it would take more time.
That said, in his experience, there were times when you'd find what you were looking for almost effortlessly. The question was when that moment would come.
"Hey, Rei. You don't happen to know any magic that cures hangovers, do you?"
Dolfina walked over, cup in hand, and for a moment Rei had no idea what he was talking about. Once the words registered, he shot Dolfina an exasperated look.
"Come on. I already explained my magic to you, didn't I? How do you get from that to asking me to do something about your hangover?"
Even as he said it, judging from Dolfina's demeanor, he didn't seem to be entirely serious—so Rei's reply was half-joking, too.
Rei's magic attribute was fire. Using any other type of magic required an almost unthinkable amount of magical power—so much that an ordinary mage would struggle just to activate it.
Considering that, it might be possible to create a spell to cure hangovers if he really put his mind to it.
(Burn whatever's causing the hangover? No, but I don't even know what that "whatever" is. Would it be enough to just imagine burning the alcohol? But if I burned the alcohol that way, I'd be burning the inside of the person's body...)
He thought about it for a few seconds, but his conclusion was that it would be difficult. It might become possible with more serious research, but Rei currently had no intention of pursuing anything like that.
"That's a shame. If you made a hangover-curing spell, we could drink every day," Dolfina said.
"First of all, don't drink so much that you're still feeling it the next day. Besides, shouldn't you make that spell yourself, Dolfina?"
Rei knew he was a mage specialized in fire, while Dolfina possessed multiple attributes. Given that, Rei figured that if anyone was suited to creating a hangover cure, it was Dolfina, not him.
But Dolfina shook his head. "The way we develop magic is different. If I tried to create a spell to cure hangovers, I'd have to work out all the fine details one by one. But you, Rei—as long as you can imagine it, the magic activates, right?"
Rei nodded honestly. Dolfina was a theorist; Rei was an intuitive type. Both used magic, but the gap between them when it actually came to casting was significant.
"Even so, that's a spell where I don't even know if it would work. And if it failed, your insides would be burned and you'd die."
That explanation was apparently more than Dolfina had bargained for. A sound like "urgh" slipped from his mouth. He must have imagined his own insides being incinerated by Rei's magic.
On top of that, this wouldn't be a spell used in combat, but magic meant to cure a hangover. Being burned to death from the inside out by a healing spell was a far cry from being set ablaze by an enemy's attack.
In situations like this, someone like Dolfina—who built magic through theory—could explain which part of the formula had gone wrong and then adjust and fix the flawed portion.
But for Rei, who used magic through intuition, once he recognized something as working a certain way, correcting it wasn't impossible... but it was undeniably extremely difficult.
Precisely because he used magic intuitively, Rei could instantly construct anything he could imagine into a spell. But for that same reason, Rei's magic was strictly Rei's magic alone.
"For now, just give up on the hangover cure. I'm not planning to serve any more alcohol today, either."
Rei's tone was final, and Dolfina gave up and wandered off.
"Oh, that's a shame. A hangover-curing spell would be incredibly convenient," Vihera said—half in jest, which meant half-serious.
Unlike Rei, Vihera wasn't a lightweight. She could hold her drink reasonably well. If anything, she was strong enough to be called a heavy drinker—though she rarely drank much when eating with Rei.
"You don't need a spell like that, do you?"
"True. But not just in Gilm—if word got out that a bar had this spell, they'd make an absolute fortune."
"Nah, it's not like I'm hurting for money. People would be grateful, sure."
In reality, there was no shortage of people who drank too much at a bar, woke up with a hangover, and then recklessly headed out on a request in that condition. Some even cancelled requests entirely, depending on how bad they felt.
For people like that, a spell that could cure a hangover would be something they'd desperately want... but Rei had no obligation to humor them.