"There were quite a lot of them. They were easy to find, so it wasn't much trouble," Nielson said boastfully.
Seeds had fallen to the ground. Rei gathered them along with Seto and Nielson—seeds that gave off a sweet chocolate scent.
The shell that had contained them... the fruit itself had been larger than Nielson. But since the fruit had burst and scattered its seeds in all directions, the seeds inside were certainly fairly large, though none were bigger than Nielson herself.
Even so, finding them wasn't particularly difficult. After all, for some reason Nielson couldn't pick up the scent, but Rei and Seto could both smell the sweet chocolate fragrance coming from the fruit.
Normally, chocolate was made by adding sugar and various other seasonings to cacao beans to produce what Rei knew—the chocolate from his memories. At the cacao bean stage, it didn't have a particularly sweet scent, and above all, it didn't smell like the chocolate Rei knew. At the cacao bean stage, it was said to have a fragrant, bitter aroma. And yet, the seeds from the burst fruit gave off the smell of chocolate.
For Rei—and for Seto, whose sense of smell was even sharper than Rei's—finding them was no trouble at all.
That said, the question is how to cook these seeds.
There was no doubt that the seeds smelled like chocolate. But that didn't mean he could just eat them as-is, or whether they needed to be prepared some other way. Unfortunately, Rei didn't really know much about that.
As if reading his thoughts, Nielson spoke up. "So, Rei. What are we doing with the seeds we collected?"
"I haven't decided exactly what to do with them yet. You might not be able to tell, Nielson, but those seeds give off a pretty sweet smell. Figuring that, I think if we do something with them, they'll probably taste good."
"A sweet smell... Hmm, I really couldn't tell." Nielson murmured, looking as though she was recalling the moment they'd found the seeds. It was neither a lie nor a deflection; she genuinely seemed unable to detect the chocolate scent coming from them.
"Even if you can't tell when they're just seeds, you might be able to once they're cooked. ...That said, I actually have no idea how to cook these seeds, though."
"Hey, that's pointless then. I helped collect those seeds too, so when we eat them, you have to let me eat them with you. Okay?"
Nielson couldn't smell the chocolate herself, but hearing Rei's explanation, she was clearly quite excited. She looked truly envious from the bottom of her heart—as if she wanted to eat them right this very moment.
But even told that, Rei didn't know what to do.
"Expecting me to cook is your first mistake. I think it'd be best to ask someone who's good at this kind of thing."
Saying that, the person Rei naturally thought of was Marina.
Marina's house, where Rei also currently lived. The cooking there was fundamentally done by Marina. Or rather, it was more accurate to say that among everyone currently living at Marina's house, Marina was the only one who could cook properly.
Elena could brew tea reasonably well, but cooking was another story. Ara had taught Elena how to brew tea, but she wasn't particularly good at cooking either. Vihera and Byune could manage rough, adventurer-style cooking at best. Rei, too, could only manage simple, rough meals. Seto... couldn't cook at all. Well, he did have Fire Breath, so he could probably manage something like roasting, but.
As a result, Marina was the only one who could properly make delicious food.
Besides, Marina is a Dark Elf and has lived much longer than us. Thinking about it that way, she might know something about these seeds.
Whether being a Dark Elf meant she knew a lot about plant seeds was a separate matter, but it was also a fact that Marina was the only one Rei could rely on right now.
"Should I just grind them into powder, maybe?"
"Huh? If we grind them into powder, we can eat them?"
Rei had muttered that half-jokingly, but Nielson reacted immediately. For Nielson, if they were edible, she probably wanted to try them. But Rei shook his head at her.
"I don't know if we can eat them. This is just a thought that popped into my head. Besides, say we grind them into powder... then what? Do we lick the powder? Or dissolve it in hot water and drink it? ...Oh, come to think of it, there was something called hot chocolate, wasn't there? I've never had it, though."
"Wait, tell me more about that."
"No, I told you I've never had it. For now, let's leave it at that. But hmm. Once the Smog Panther business is done, I'll try to see if I can make it work. With cacao beans too, I think I vaguely recall hearing something about them being ground into powder or something."
"Hey, it doesn't have to be after the Smog Panther thing. Tonight would be fine, wouldn't it? We're going to camp in the forest anyway."
Perhaps because Rei was giving her information in bits and pieces, Nielson seemed even more interested in chocolate. Rei thought she didn't need to be that interested in it, but he didn't realize that this was, in a way, his own doing.
"Listen, the chocolate smell is quite sweet. If something like that drifted through the forest at night, what do you think would happen? It'd be one thing if only monsters came, but if we're unlucky, a massive swarm of insects could gather."
"Ugh."
Nielson let out a cry unbecoming of a fairy. However, for a fairy like Nielson, insects were probably a troublesome presence.
I can't say they don't slightly resemble insects, though...
Seeing Nielson's displeased expression at the mention of insects, Rei thought that, but as if reading his mind, Nielson turned a sharp glare toward him.
"Rei, did you just think something strange...? Did you think of something that would put me in a really bad mood?"
"Huh? No, nothing like that."
Rei told her as if it were nothing. However, even seeing Rei's attitude, Nielson kept her suspicious gaze fixed on him. Even so, after watching Rei for a while, Nielson eventually said nothing more.
"Hmm. Well, fine. I'll let it slide for now. More importantly, once the Smog Panther business is done, you're going to let me eat those seeds."
"Once we're out of the forest. Well, even outside the forest, insects might come depending on the situation."
At Rei's words, Nielson showed a displeased expression. Even for a curious fairy, her disgust for insects this strong was probably a fairy trait. Or perhaps Nielson was especially averse to them.
"Alright then, it's settled. Let's go. I wonder where the Smog Panther is. ...Hey, this is just a thought, but do you think it's possible the Smog Panther might show up lured by the scent of those seeds?"
"No, that's... I wonder. I can't say it's impossible."
The Smog Panther that existed in this forest. And the chocolate-scented seeds that grew wild in this forest. If asked whether there was a causal relationship between the two, Rei could agree to some extent. That said, he didn't think it would happen that immediately. If there were such an obvious characteristic, it wouldn't be strange if the Chief had told him about it when they spoke. But the Chief had said nothing of the sort.
It's possible the Chief simply didn't know... but honestly, I wonder about that. I don't think that's the case, though.
That said, the Chief didn't know everything. There were surely things that even the Chief didn't know. If so, showing the Chief these seeds later might be interesting, Rei thought, but he shifted his focus. In the current situation, he judged that it would be better to think about something other than the chocolate-scented seeds.
"Anyway, for now, defeating the Smog Panther is the top priority. Depending on the situation, we might be able to find other monsters too."
"Is that so? Well, I suppose that might be true. But the Smog Panther is the top priority. Don't forget that."
At Nielson's instruction, Rei nodded in understanding. Seto, too, looking at Rei's demeanor, purred as if to say he understood.
Thus, the group composed themselves and began advancing through the forest once more.
About thirty minutes after they started moving through the forest, Rei spotted the figure of a boar in a gap between the trees, straight ahead. It was by no means a monster with two heads or a horn growing from its nose; it was an ordinary boar.
"A boar... so that's what a boar looks like."
Nielson landed on Rei's right shoulder as he murmured, looking at the creature—completely different in appearance from a two-headed rhino.
"Ah, there really is a boar. What do we do, hunt it? If we're hunting it, I can wait here."
Normally, a boar wasn't something that could be taken down so easily. Even for hunters active in Elgin, there were cases where it became a life-or-death situation, so it wasn't uncommon. Rei, too, when he was in Japan, had seen on the TV news several times about someone who'd had their fingers bitten off by a boar. If even the boars inhabiting Japan were that ferocious, then naturally the boars in Elgin had ferocious temperaments as well. Being impaled through the torso by tusks and having one's internal organs damaged, resulting in death, was not an unusual story for an inexperienced hunter.
Even so, a boar was something that an adventurer with a certain level of strength could easily defeat. After all, no matter how ferocious a boar was, it was ultimately a wild animal. Unlike monsters, it wouldn't use Skills or magic. For that reason, to those who fought such monsters—especially to adventurers who had been active in Gilm for a long time—it was easy prey. In fact, among adventurers, there were many who, when short on money, would imitate hunters by hunting boars and selling them to make ends meet.
Not to mention, Rei was an alias-holding A-Rank Adventurer, and Seto was with him. If he wanted to, bringing down the boar in his line of sight wouldn't be difficult, but...
"No, I'll pass."
At Nielson's words, Rei shook his head. To someone who wasn't an adventurer, a boar was an existence worth risking danger to challenge. Its meat, hide, tusks, and in some cases even its bones had uses. But Rei's Misty Ring held a massive amount of monster meat. Considering that, there was no need to go out of his way to hunt a boar. There was no doubt that boar meat was delicious, but monster meat often surpassed the taste of boar meat. There were exceptions like Goblin meat, though.
In any case, since he had a large quantity of meat tastier than boar meat, there was no need to kill a boar here. If the boar had attacked Rei, it might have been a different story. And so the fortunate boar departed from the spot without seeming to notice Rei and his group's presence at all.
"Hmm. Knowing you, Rei, I was sure you'd kill the boar in an instant."
"What exactly do you think I am? ...Ah, you don't have to answer that. I've got a pretty good idea."
Nielson was about to say something with a beaming smile in response to Rei's words, but before her mouth could open, he cut her off. Nielson showed displeasure at having her words interrupted, but before she could open her mouth again, Rei pointed to a fruit in a slightly distant location.
"Do you know anything about that fruit? It clearly looks poisonous."
"Huh?"
To silence Nielson, he just needed to direct her curiosity elsewhere. The fruit that Rei pointed to, understanding this, had red, purple, and yellow spotted patterns on it, just as he said it looked poisonous. At the very least, Rei had no desire to eat something like that.
"Umm, I'm not really sure. I'm seeing it for the first time too. But... yeah, I think it's definitely poisonous. What should we do? Take it with us? It might be useful for something, you know?"
"Listen, we don't know whether it's poisonous or not. And if it is, we have no idea what kind of poison it is. There's no way I'd deliberately try to use something like that."
At Rei's exasperated words, Nielson showed a disappointed expression.