Oden.
It was a dish made by simmering various ingredients in a large pot with dashi. To put it bluntly, you just boiled things, but that was exactly why the flavor changed so much depending on the broth and the ingredients. It was a dish with a surprising amount of depth.
Leaving the fine details aside, oden was simply delicious in the winter.
The ingredients I prepared included daikon, potatoes, boiled eggs, tsukune—minced fish rolled into balls—and mock beef sinew, which consisted of tendon-like bits on skewers. I also tried to recreate chikuwa, but managing the hole was too difficult, so they ended up as flat slabs. Basically, they were just kamaboko at that point.
That was the extent of my work, but the High Ogre maids had been experimenting, adding their own ingredients to the mix: carrots, tomatoes, shiitake mushrooms, cabbage, chicken, squid, and octopus.
Every bit of it was delicious, though I’d kept the octopus on the low side since some people aren't fond of it. Wait... had the octopus already disappeared from the pot?
"Village Head, what are you talking about?" one of the High Ogre maids asked as she refilled the pot in front of me. "If they live in this village, they eat octopus as a matter of course."
I thanked her. I also sent a pointed look at Tia, telling her she needed to exercise some self-restraint after eating that much. It was no use trying to play it off, either; I had an informant. Reginleiv, sitting right next to her, held up seven fingers to signal exactly how many pieces Tia had polished off.
I stopped Yoko before she could grab a piece of chicken that wasn't cooked through yet. "Lu, could you turn up the heat a bit?"
It was a lively dinner. While I was enjoying my post-meal tea, the Demon King shuffled in, looking thoroughly dejected. Apparently, the plan to connect the Demon Kingdom Royal Capital and Shashato City with short-distance teleportation gates was in jeopardy.
The Demon King had, for his part, done the necessary groundwork within the kingdom. Beezel and Gratz of the Four Heavenly Kings were actively in favor, while Randan and Hou were at least passively supportive. The process of securing locations for the gates in the intermediate villages and towns was also proceeding smoothly.
The wrench in the gears came from the civil officials in the capital.
He’d laid the groundwork with them too, of course, so he went to ask why they were suddenly calling for a halt. It turned out there was a fundamental flaw in the plan.
Teleportation gates allow for travel in both directions. The ones Lu made were no different; they supported simultaneous bidirectional use and were about three meters wide. The original assumption was that as long as we established a "keep left" or "keep right" rule, movement would be fine.
That was certainly true for people traveling on foot, but it wasn't just people moving. We expected horse-drawn carriages and wagons—in fact, they would be the primary users. It was impossible for two carriages to pass each other inside a three-meter gate. The officials had even conducted experiments using wooden frames and curtains as mock teleportation gates with the army's help, so there was no doubt about it.
Even the gate connecting the Village of the Great Tree and Village Five sees wagons, but passing each other is out of the question. Whenever we move a wagon, we send someone ahead to check for safety first. The officials argued that if they had to do that for every single carriage that arrived, it would lead to massive traffic jams.
The Demon King tried to argue that a little congestion was a small price to pay for improved convenience, but they countered that the project would be effectively meaningless if it didn't allow for smooth transit.
The officials hadn't just pointed out problems; they had a solution ready: restricting the direction of travel based on the time of day. For example, travel from Shashato City toward the capital in the morning, and from the capital toward Shashato from the afternoon until night.
It sounded like a decent compromise to me, but there was another group of dissenters: the merchants. Specifically, the Dalfon Company. Since they were the only ones who had been brought into the loop so far, and while they were all for the gates, they were vehemently against time restrictions. They demanded the ability to come and go freely at any hour.
Looking at the document containing that request, I couldn't help but notice Tiselle's signature on it. I knew she’d been consulting with the Demon King about something before he came to see me.
Incidentally, the idea of switching directions every hour was a non-starter because clocks aren't common. The few that do exist have to be manually calibrated to the sunrise every morning, making them poorly suited for precision. It would be impossible to keep the clocks on both sides of the gate perfectly synced.
So, the Demon King came up with a new, simpler solution: fix the direction of each gate and connect the two locations with a pair of them. That would certainly prevent carriages from bumping into each other and keep traffic flowing. The only catch was that we'd need twice as many short-distance teleportation gates.
The Demon King had already checked with Lu to see if she could produce more.
"I can do it as long as I have the materials," was her answer.
Apparently, the materials required were incredibly rare, but the Demon King pledged the full resources of the kingdom to gather them. That cleared the way to increase the order, even if it meant paying Lu a staggering sum in manufacturing fees.
I thought the problem would have been solved then, but it didn't explain why the Demon King was standing before me looking so miserable. It turned out that because the number of gates had doubled, so had the required budget. In other words, he wanted me to increase my investment.
I didn't mind, but Yoko was already standing behind me with a pleasant smile.
"I'd like to build new inns and dining halls in the towns along the route," she interjected.
My conversation with the Demon King ended there, and Yoko’s negotiations began. I had to tell her not to overdo it; we didn't need to seize control of every settlement along the way.
She also mentioned wanting to start papermaking in those towns. I asked if that wouldn't hurt the existing paper industry, but she claimed Village Five was the only place around here making plant-based paper. Everything else was parchment.
Historically, parchment usually loses out to plant-based paper once the production volume and price are right, but I suppose it’ll be fine as long as we don't start mechanizing the process.