Rei stepped out of the warehouse and left the area with Set, who had been waiting in front of the Guild.
Though not as many as yesterday, a considerable number of people had still gathered around Set.
Even so, the fact that they didn't interfere when Rei approached was a help to him as well.
(Mirene not being here is... a mystery. No, maybe she simply isn't in Gilm right now? I saw Yohanna in Gilm yesterday, though.)
If Mirene were in Gilm, it would be strange for her not to come dote on Set in this situation.
Regardless, Mirene was absent—that much was fact. Rei felt it was somewhat lacking, but he decided not to dwell on it for now.
"Well then, what should I do with the rest of today?"
Most of the work Rei had been doing before taking his promotion exam had already been handled by other adventurers.
"Grrrrl."
At Rei's words, Set turned its gaze toward the nearby food stalls, restaurants, and bakeries.
Seeing Set like that, what it was hoping for was obvious without a second thought.
"I'm pretty sure you ate quite a bit in front of the Guild just now. ...Well, fine. Let's stop by a few places and buy some food."
Many of the stalls in Gilm featured different shops nearly every day.
Shops that operated stalls as their main business set up in the same spot every day, but there were also those who ran stalls as a hobby, and those who had recently tried to make a living from it but couldn't survive the competition and went under.
There were all sorts of people, and among them, the hobby-run stalls were particularly interesting in the sense that there was a big gap between hits and misses.
Since they did it as a hobby, they hardly thought about profit and sometimes sold their food at prices close to cost.
Of course, the hobby nature meant that while some possessed cooking skills to rival professionals, others were simply enthusiastic amateurs.
In that sense, it was perhaps akin to gambling.
But when you found a winner among those stalls, it felt like you'd struck gold.
"Grrr!"
As they walked down the street, Set suddenly spotted a stall and purred.
It must have sensed that the stall served delicious food.
Rei didn't doubt Set's senses and headed straight for it.
Since it was near noon, a sizable crowd had lined up.
That was likely proof of the food's popularity at this stall.
Rei and Set quietly joined the end of the queue.
A few people offered to give up their spots, but Rei couldn't bring himself to disrupt their wait in this heat—though thanks to the Dragon Robe, he didn't feel hot at all.
And so Rei waited quietly with Set, and as the line moved forward, a savory aroma drifted from the stall.
What they purchased was...
"Fish Sandwiches, huh. That's unusual."
When Rei thought of fish sandwiches, tuna sandwiches came to mind.
But of course, there was nothing like a tuna sandwich here.
Or perhaps a fish fillet sandwich—a fish burger made with fried white fish.
Fried food did exist to some extent, but cooking techniques in that area hadn't developed much.
For starters, since Gilm wasn't located by the sea, obtaining ocean fish wasn't easy.
Dried fish, however, was a different story.
And what this stall was selling was a sandwich made by grilling dried fish, deboning it, tossing it in sauce, and sandwiching it in bread.
(Come to think of it, in the Middle East... no, was it Turkey? I seem to recall a cooking manga mentioning something like a mackerel sandwich... If you think about it, bread and dried fish aren't necessarily a bad combination, are they?)
With that in mind, he bought about ten for the time being.
When he ate one together with Set...
"This is... delicious."
"Grr."
The bread was toasted, giving it a crispy texture, while the filling was soft and fluffy.
Inside the bread were an onion-like spicy vegetable, a tomato-like acidic vegetable, and the sauced dried fish.
The toppings were extremely simple, but each ingredient brought out the best in the others, and through their synergy, one bite led to another, and another, and another... until they kept reaching for more.
Before he knew it, the sandwiches that had been in Rei's hands were gone.
"Yeah, it really is delicious. It's not the kind of flavor that bowls you over on the first bite—it's the kind that grows on you."
In a cooking manga Rei had read back in Japan, there was a discussion about the difference between home cooking and fine dining—both were delicious, but fine dining delivered an intense punch of flavor on the first bite, while home cooking was the kind of taste that made you want to eat it every day.
There might be more to it than that, but at the very least, that was how Rei understood it.
"It's the kind of food that makes you want to eat it every day, but..."
"Ahaha, sorry. We set up in different locations every day, so I can't say where we'll be tomorrow. But I'd be happy if you bought from us again if you spot us."
Whether he'd overheard Rei's words or not, the stall owner chimed in.
Rei wasn't the only one disappointed by those words—the other customers likely felt the same.
Those eating near the stall, just like Rei, let out sounds of disappointment.
(In my case, I move all over the City of Gilm, so I might get another chance to buy these mackerel sandwiches... no, not mackerel—dried fish sandwiches?)
For someone with a specific job, the places they traveled to were generally fixed.
They might take a different route than usual, but their destinations were undoubtedly somewhat predetermined.
If so, the chances of encountering this stall again were... not zero, but not very high.
(In that case, maybe I should buy a few more.)
Rei made that call and got back in line... and purchased a substantial quantity of sandwiches.
After buying the sandwiches, Rei walked around the city.
That said, he wasn't wandering aimlessly—he had a destination in mind.
"Let's see, according to what Marina told me, it should be around here..."
"Grrr? Grr."
Walking slightly off the main street, Rei scanned his surroundings for his destination.
Then Set suddenly tugged at Rei's Dragon Robe with its beak and looked toward a shop a short distance away.
At first, Rei thought Set wanted to eat something again, but the shop it was looking at didn't seem to sell food.
Then, catching sight of the signboard, Rei realized it was the shop he'd been searching for.
The signboard read "Laurie Dissection Shop."
Yes—it was one of the shops specializing in monster dissection.
The reason Marina knew about this shop was likely because she was the Former Guild Master.
During her tenure as Guild Master, Marina had naturally dealt with dissection shops outside the Guild as well.
Even if for different reasons than now, there had been times when the Guild Staff Members couldn't keep up with the dissection workload.
For example, during Gamelion season, dissection shops often raised cries of joyful distress at how swamped they were—Marina had explained as much to Rei yesterday.
Why had Rei come here?
Naturally, since he'd come to a dissection shop, it was to have something dissected.
The Guild was currently swamped with work. While they could handle the A-Rank Monsters and the Crystal Dragon's corpse, they couldn't spare the effort to dissect the other monsters Rei had killed during his promotion exam.
In other words, those remaining monsters—the numerous creatures including the Orc Nagas, the bull monster killed just outside the Forest of Magic, and many more—were still stored in Rei's Misty Ring.
That was why he needed a dissection shop outside the Guild.
So he'd asked Marina if she knew a good place, and the shop she'd recommended was this one.
Gilm had no shortage of dissection shops, but among them were some that would steal materials, claim they'd never received a monster corpse they should have accepted, or hand over parts from a lower subspecies of a similar monster. Such things did happen.
But naturally, not all dissection shops were crooked—there were also reputable establishments.
Those shops charged higher fees than the rest, but their work was dependable.
And this Laurie Dissection Shop that Marina recommended was one staffed with skilled artisans who lived up to its prices, even if those prices were steep.
"...For all that, it's quite small."
Of course, compared to the surrounding buildings, the shop was about twice as large.
But that was only relative to ordinary shops. Bringing in something enormous—like the Giant Wolf Rei had killed—would be extremely difficult here.
Well, going inside would probably make that clear enough.
With that in mind, Rei told Set to wait nearby as usual and stepped into the shop.
"Welcome, are you an adventurer? We're a bit busy right now... wait, Rei!?"
As expected of someone who dealt with adventurers, the shop clerk apparently recognized Rei's face.
Even so, he clearly hadn't expected Rei to actually show up—his expression was one of pure surprise.
"I'd like to request a monster dissection."
The clerk had been stunned to see Rei, but the words seemed to snap him back to his senses.
At Rei's request, he hesitated for a moment... then spoke up.
"W-wait a moment! I'll be right back! I'll be right back, so take a look around the shop and wait, please!"
With that, the clerk left Rei behind and hurried toward the back of the shop.
(He was in quite a rush. Or rather, leaving me alone in here—how wise is that, honestly?)
Inside the shop, various items were displayed—rare monster materials that the Laurie Dissection Shop had presumably dissected in the past.
They were probably on display to showcase the shop's track record, but since those materials served as proof of that record, they were naturally valuable or rare items.
And yet Rei had been left alone among them, with the clerk nowhere in sight.
If Rei were an ill-tempered adventurer, he could easily pocket one or two of the displayed materials... no, with the Misty Ring, he could steal all of them.
Once stored in the Misty Ring, only Rei could do anything about them.
Even if the shop claimed they'd been stolen, only Rei could prove the items were inside the ring.
Considering all that, the clerk's actions could only be called careless.
Then again, maybe he felt safe doing so precisely because it was Rei.
Musing on this, Rei gazed at a horn mounted on the wall—it resembled a deer antler, but far more intricate in shape.
"There's no way! We work all day long and it's still not done!?"
Rei's ears caught what sounded like someone shouting from the back of the shop.
"But it's Rei who came! The one who passed the promotion exam and became an A-Rank Adventurer, according to the rumors!"
From the voice and the content, Rei guessed it was the clerk from earlier.
(The rumor that I passed the promotion exam has already spread, huh. ...Well, there were plenty of people who saw me return from the Forest of Magic without a scratch, so I suppose that's only natural? If so, holding the Festival as soon as possible might have been a wise decision.)
While Rei mulled over the voices drifting out, the argument in the back of the shop continued... or rather, the clerk who had been at the front kept trying to persuade someone.
"Come on, if Rei passed the promotion exam, there's a chance the monster to dissect is an A-Rank Monster. Even if not quite that, just being a monster from the Forest of Magic means a big profit for the shop."
"But the artisans are already exhausted, you know? Dissecting a monster from the Forest of Magic under those conditions... if the dissection fails, it'll tarnish the Laurie Dissection Shop's name."
"Our artisans will be fine. And you'll be there too. We can manage somehow. ...So look, at least let Laurie meet with Rei before deciding. All right?"
"...Jeez, fine. But depending on the monster, I'm turning it down, got it?"
For the time being, it seemed the matter had been settled somehow.