After confirming his newly acquired Penetrate skill, Rei filleted the fish and set it to grill.
When it came to dismantling monsters... or rather, back when he was in Japan, he would sometimes catch fish in rivers—either by rod or by spear—and cook them himself.
Usually, he'd just skewer them on the spot, sprinkle on some salt he'd brought from home, grill them over an open fire, and eat them with rice balls. But on days when the catch was good, he'd bring them home.
Since he'd helped his mother with the preparation back then, he at least knew how to fillet a fish.
Of course, that was strictly amateur-level work. Compared to a professional cook or a fishmonger's clerk, his skills didn't even come close.
Still, he could at least make something edible, which was why Set was now waiting for the fish to finish grilling.
"Gururururu, gurururu, gurururu."
Is it ready yet? Is it ready yet? Set purred happily, tail wagging with anticipation.
"I don't really think it's worth getting that excited over... Well, if you're happy, I'm not complaining."
With that, Rei kept his eyes on the campfire while scanning their surroundings.
Set was presumably keeping watch too, but seeing him sitting there waiting for the fish made Rei wonder if he was actually paying attention to their surroundings.
In reality, there was no doubt that Set was staying alert even while they waited—but Rei couldn't help worrying all the same.
"Set, once we finish eating, we'll go search for monsters. If we really wanted to find some, we could just head back to where we fought the Crystal Dragon, but... yeah, that's not happening."
At that location, now far behind them, monsters were undoubtedly locked in fierce combat.
Blood and scraps of flesh that Rei and Set had been unable to recover during their battle with the Crystal Dragon were almost certainly still scattered across the ground.
Which meant numerous monsters would have gathered to claim them, and some were surely attacking others to seize the Crystal Dragon's blood and flesh for themselves.
On top of that, other monsters that caught wind of such a large gathering might come not for the dragon's remains, but to prey on the ones already fighting.
Rei had no desire to charge into a massive free-for-all—a battle royale like that.
Especially since this was the Forest of Magic. The monsters drawn to that place could all be assumed to be high-rank.
Low-rank monsters wouldn't dare approach a gathering of high-rank ones.
By the time the fish was done, Rei and Set ate together.
"This is... close to Hokke. Good amount of fat, too. But Hokke from a river fish? Well, once you remember it's a monster, overthinking it is probably pointless. Then again, the fact that the flesh is nice and fatty without any dripping off is weird enough on its own."
After all, this fish had been flying through the air.
Not gliding with its fins like a flying fish, but actually flying with wings that grew from its body.
Those wings looked like they could serve as some kind of material, so Rei had stowed them in his Misty Ring. If they turned out to be useless as material, he figured he could grill them up something like chicken wings.
Back in Japan, Hokke had been one of Rei's favorite fish.
Once they'd finished the tasty meal, Rei and Set decided they'd rested enough and resumed their exploration of the Forest of Magic.
Rather than pushing deeper, they opted to casually look around their current area.
They were by a river, after all—there might be different monsters here than in other places, or so Rei reasoned.
The existence of an unknown monster like a winged fish certainly supported that theory.
"If possible, I'd like to take down a few more of these fish. Purely for the ingredients, I mean."
The taste had exceeded his expectations, prompting Rei to say as much.
Set purred in agreement.
That was just how delicious the winged fish had been.
They'd simply grilled it on skewers this time, but with meat that good, just how delicious would it be with some real effort put into it?
(Oh, but I think I read somewhere that with premium wagyu, simple salt and pepper tastes better than elaborate preparation. Does that mean this fish is also better eaten simply like this?)
Entertaining these idle thoughts, Rei finished his meal and got ready to move out.
"Isn't it hard to walk?"
"Guru!"
Rei and Set had started making their way upstream, with Rei naturally riding on Set's back.
He'd asked because the riverbank was littered with small stones, fallen trees, and overgrown vegetation—it looked like rough terrain.
Scattered among them were bones, though whether from monsters or animals was impossible to tell.
Since Rei was riding on Set's back, the terrain wasn't an issue for him. But Set was actually walking on the ground, so it was only natural to wonder if it was tough going.
What's more, Set's body was over three meters long, making him decidedly ill-suited for navigating through a forest.
"Once this Promotion Exam is over, I'll try some Crystal Dragon—"
—meat.
Rei started to say it, but then a question surfaced: could the Crystal Dragon even be eaten?
As the name suggested, its body was made of crystal.
Its entire form was essentially armor, which made whether any part of it was edible highly questionable.
"Well, since it's a living creature, I'd assume it's edible, but..."
Rei trailed off, still leaning toward the opinion that eating the Crystal Dragon was a dubious prospect at best.
That said, the Crystal Dragon was an S-Rank monster. Even if it couldn't be eaten, there was no way any part of it would go to waste as material.
(Thinking about it now, using Deep Flame might have been a mistake.)
It shared the same skill as Set's, but the Crystal Breath was overwhelmingly more powerful—there was no comparison.
Sealing it before it could be fired with Deep Flame had been the quickest and most certain option. That much was true.
As a result, the flames generated by Deep Flame inside the dragon's body had prevented it from moving freely, and that was what had allowed Rei to win.
Whether the same outcome would have occurred without using Deep Flame to seal its movements was anyone's guess.
At the very least, even if they had won, they would have struggled far more.
In that sense, Rei was confident that using Deep Flame had been the right call.
...If anything, the fact that it could still fight that hard while being burned from the inside out was a testament to its status as an S-Rank monster.
However, that also meant most of its internal organs had likely been charred, making their value as materials questionable.
(It's an S-Rank monster, so I'll just have to hope it felt the pain but the organs themselves weren't actually burned. Either way, not just for the Crystal Dragon but for any A-Rank or above monster, I should leave the dismantling to the professionals.)
For low-rank monsters—or rather, for something around B-Rank—Rei could manage a reasonable job.
But when it came to A-Rank or S-Rank monsters, his crude dismantling skills ran a high risk of ruining the materials.
In that case, he could just pay to have a professional handle it.
Fortunately, the Guild offered that kind of service, and their staff generally wouldn't try to pocket any materials for themselves.
That was generally speaking, of course—there were always people in the world who succumbed to temptation.
Given the rarity of the monsters Rei would be bringing in, that possibility felt all the more real.
But naturally, for the dismantling of such rare monsters, the Guild wouldn't just leave it to the dismantlers—they'd assign someone to keep watch.
...However, considering how busy the Gilm Guild was right now, securing that much manpower would be tough.
Which meant the actual dismantling would probably have to wait until winter, when the Guild's workload settled down.
The Gigant Turtle dismantling would keep them busy in winter too, but it still wouldn't be as hectic as the Expansion Construction running from spring through autumn.
"Gururururu."
"Oh, here they come. Alright, what kind of monster is next?"
Hearing Set growl in alert as he walked along the riverbank, Rei snapped back to the present.
He readied himself for an attack from the river at any moment—but the enemy didn't come from the water. It came from the rocks on the bank.
More precisely, it was a monster camouflaged as a rock.
In appearance, it resembled a hermit crab.
The key difference from an ordinary hermit crab, however, was that its body was housed not in a shell, but in a rock.
Of course, it only looked like a rock—it could well have been a shell of that particular shape.
The rocks ranged from about fifty centimeters for the smaller ones to as much as two meters for the largest individuals.
The bodies emerging from these rocks weren't all that different from the hermit crabs Rei had seen during trips to the sea in Japan.
Not entirely the same, of course—they had four clawed arms instead of two, sharp fangs in their mouths, and horns on their heads.
And above all, the hermit crabs Rei knew of were quite small. These, as their rock-like shells made obvious, included many enormous individuals.
Taking this in, Rei dismounted from Set's back and studied the creatures carefully.
There were more than twenty hermit crabs in total.
That was just what he could see now, meaning there could easily be more still hidden, camouflaged among the rocks.
"No matter how you slice it, that's way too many. Looks like we've stumbled into their territory."
"Guru..."
Set purred apologetically, but Rei shook his head as if to say not to worry about it.
"If you hadn't noticed them, we'd have been ambushed by all these hermit crabs at once. Detecting them before that happens deserves praise, not a scolding. Besides... hermit crabs this big should be pretty satisfying to eat."
With the small hermit crabs Rei knew of, there wouldn't be enough meat to bother with.
But at this size, it was a different story.
(Was it king crab or snow crab...? Anyway, I remember seeing on TV back in Japan that some of the crabs prized as delicacies are actually relatives of hermit crabs. If that's the case, these things might be edible if they're this huge.)
Rei didn't know this, but in certain parts of Japan, hermit crabs were indeed eaten.
The ones consumed as food weren't the small variety Rei was familiar with, but rather quite large hermit crabs.
In fact, hermit crabs every bit as large as the ones now facing Rei and Set were eaten as a matter of course.
Naturally, such giant hermit crabs didn't live in shallow waters—they inhabited depths of nearly fifty meters.
"Crabs, huh. Personally, I'm more of a shrimp man."
Between crab and shrimp, Rei preferred shrimp. He murmured this while watching the hermit crabs slowly close in.
It wasn't that he disliked crab. He just liked shrimp more.
And not shrimp served raw as sashimi, like sweet shrimp, but varieties like black tiger prawns—fried, boiled, or grilled.
That firm, snappy texture was exactly what Rei loved.
"Gururururu."
At Rei's words, Set seemed to shift his perception of the creatures before them from enemies to ingredients.
He purred happily, eyeing the herd of hermit crabs.
...Subjected to the combined gazes of that one man and one beast, several of the hermit crabs involuntarily retreated—perhaps sensing that the prey they had intended to ambush now looked at them as food instead.