Chapter 359: The Night Before the Dungeon Meat Festival
It was finally the day before the Dungeon Meat Festival.
After learning about the coming festival from Maynard and Enzo, I inquired about it at the Merchant’s Guild. It turned out that even though my Merchant Rank was only at Iron Level, I could apply for booth space for just 3 silver coins.
For those without a card, they could still participate by filling in an application form [8], plus the 3 silver coin application fee, of course.
Anyway, I had nothing to do after the application. [9] There were still nine days to the Festival and I really don’t need nine whole days to prepare for that one day of sales. [10] That’s right, although we are allowed to put up our stalls for three days, I planned to only sell my goods for one day.
[6] My main purpose for setting up a stall was to have a little fun and experience the festival-like atmosphere as a booth owner. So, there was no reason for me to compete for the Top 5 places and deprive opportunities for people who are desperate to stand out and improve their lives.
Anyway, after registering for the festival, there was really nothing for me to do aside from dungeon diving again. [9] I coaxed Fer, Sui and Dora-chan to come out and enjoy prowling through the stalls last night and this morning. [8] However, the lure of a dungeon was too strong and all three kept pestering me about it.
Not that I really minded since I could get plenty of good meat. [8] By plenty, I mean a ridiculous amount. [2] It got to the point that I was seriously considering not picking up the meat Drops anymore, but prudence prevailed and I ended up collecting every single Drop. It would be a massive waste of good ingredients otherwise.
Now, they are a massive presence in my [Item Box].
[10] Especially since we did a complete wipeout of the lower floors three times over.
Still, I managed to sell quite a lot of higher ranked Dungeon Pork and Beef to [5] Giannino-san. [8] Thanks to the upcoming Meat Festival, demand for high-ranking Dungeon Pork and Beef had more than doubled due to the increase in tourist traffic.
Even so, the amount of meat in my [Item Box] [5] was so much that I don’t have to worry about running out of meat even with these big eaters around.
For now at least.
[10] Which was why, after three consecutive days of dungeon diving, I refused to go anymore.
I took a day off to take things easy and looked through the market once more before deciding on my product. [9] This time, I bought food from speciality restaurants that feature high-ranking dungeon meat to treat my familiars. It was damn expensive but it’s not like I can’t afford it.
[10] Finally, after looking through all the stalls and shops, I decided to go with [10] a hotdog stall!
To make things extra challenging for myself, I planned to use local ingredients and seasonings as much as possible. However, I would only be selling one type of hotdog, which is a simple hotdog with ketchup, well, a type of tomato-like sauce anyway.
From my investigation, while there were stalls that sold meat stuffed in casings as ‘sausage’ I haven’t seen any meat-in-bread product. Since it would be a novelty, I believe my stall will do well.
More importantly, it would be delicious.
[10] Thus, five days before the actual day of the Festival, Maynard and Enzo came over bright and early to help me with my prep work. It was decided that they would help me five days before the festival so that they could have more time to prepare for their own stall.
Nice, I’m going to need people to help me. I had already made sausages many times now, but it would be nice to have people helping me. [8] I don’t have an issue mincing up large quantities of higher-ranked species meat with Sui’s Mithril Mincer.
[11]
“Woah! This is made from Mithril!!”
“S Rankers sure make a lot of money…”
“Ahem, anyway, we need to mince up this meat. Sui will help me mix the seasoning in. Look here, for this much meat, mix in this amount of salt, pepper, herbs…”
“What are you going to make, Master?”
“Fufufu, I’m going to make sausages.”
“What!!!!”
“Hm? What is it?”
“W-we’re going to process intestines again?” the two boys whined.
Why would they… oh!
“Ah, ahem, no, no, there’s no need. I have some processed sausage casings,” all bought from [Net Super]. “So there’s no need for that. All we need to do after mincing and flavouring the meat is to stuff them.”
“Ugh, that’s kind of a pain too…”
“Oh? You’ve made sausages before?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, it was really tiring. A lot of chopping, cleaning and scraping, however…”
“…stuffing the meat has to be the most difficult.”
“Ahh, to do that, I have this! And this! And This!” I took out my secret weapons: The Meat Nozzle, The Sausage Stuffer, as well as the Collagen Casings!
“Woah…”
“All these to stuff sausage?”
After getting over their surprise, we all got to work stuffing large amounts of sausages. I must admit, having all these modern sausage stuffing equipment makes stuffing sausage really easy…
[11]
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[9] While the boys were stuffing sausages, I got my sauce ready. [10] I bought myself half a sack of local tomatoes which I quickly peeled and chopped into pieces. I also chopped up a lot of garlic and onions.
[10] To make the tomato sauce, first, sauté the onions until translucent. Then, add the garlic and fry until aromatic before adding the chopped tomatoes and simmer until the liquid has reduced before crumbling in some consommé cubes. When the consistency looks right, I adjusted the flavour with salt and pepper.
A simple but versatile tomato sauce.
[10] For the bread, [9] I bought the softest oval-ish bread I could find from the local bakery. It was still a little hard but workable. I grilled up a few sausages and cut them into slices and made something closer to a sausage sandwich with tomato sauce than a true hotdog. Well, it’s kind of impossible to make a proper hotdog without proper hotdog buns.
[9] Should I just buy them from [Net Super]?
“Woah! These are good, Master!”
“Yeah!”
Well, at least the boys liked them.
“I’ve never seen meat served in bread like this!”
“It’s really good! We won’t lose to you!”
[9] The boys were eating and praising the sausage sandwiches but… their cheeks were covered in sauce and Maynard has a slice of sausage stuck on his shirt. Hmm, I have to think this through…
[9] “Is something wrong, Master?”
[10]
“I’m thinking about the bread. It’s not the right shape.”
“Hmm? The shape?”
“Not only the shape but the texture too, it’s a bit difficult to eat bread with meat neatly…”
[9] “Huh? Well, I don’t know about the texture but one of the sisters in the orphanage is really good at baking bread.”
“At least we always have bread thanks to the Lord for letting us have the surplus wheat.”
“Oh?” [9] I blinked. A sister at the orphanage? Could it be… an image of a cute and caring sister wearing one of those sweet Christian church veils suddenly appeared in my mind.
“Yeah, she can make round bread, long bread, bread in spiral shapes…”
[9] “Ahem, ahem, I wonder if she could make the bread I want…” I can give her a sample of the koppe-pan bread that I’m looking for. Even if it’s not the real thing, having something close to it would be good. As for the texture, I could provide them with instant yeast…
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[8] “Welcome to our orphanage, benefactor!”
[8] “Welcome, welcome!”
[10]
The director and the two sisters in charge of the orphanage greeted me. The director was a kindly looking uncle and the two sisters behind him looked older than him…
“Ahem, uh, no, no, I received a lot of help from them too. Ahahaha…”
“Apologies, but we’re a little busy. Is there anything…”
“Oh, yes, I heard from Maynard and Enzo that one of the orphanage sisters is very good at baking.”
“Oh my, what an exaggeration!” one of the sisters exclaimed.
“I was hoping to put in an order for some speciality bread,” I might as well try to achieve what I set out to do and order some hotdog buns from the orphanage.
“Apologies, but we are very busy…”
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“I’m prepared to pay 5 iron coins per bread, for 500 bread.” I continued, “I’ll even pay an advanced deposit.”
“… …”
“Ahem, ah, what kind of bread are you looking for?” the director’s voice trembled a little. The price for a loaf of bread in the size I am looking for is 2 iron coins each. I’m paying more than twice the market price.
“Well… something like this,” I showed them the standard elongated koppe-pan meant for hotdogs.
“Oh my, the texture is unusually soft. As for the shape…”
[10]
[9] After some discussion, I handed a large jar of the instant yeast I had bought off [Net Super] along with some basic instructions on how to use it.
Finally, I handed over 2 gold and 5 silver coins on the spot.
[10] “I only need the bread on the morning of the Meat Festival day,” I said. “So, please take your time to experiment. You may keep the rest of the yeast and experiment a few times making bread for the children first.”
The director bowed gratefully to me, “May the blessings of the Earth Goddess Kishar be with you.”
I guess it would be gauche to tell him that I already have a Blessing (small) from that particular goddess?
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On the evening before the Dungeon Meat Festival, I decided to have a good meal and go to bed early so that I would be at full strength for the festival day.
It’s decided, let’s have the nutritious and delicious Offal Hotpot tonight.
[9] I had paid the orphans to clean the rest of the offal I had collected from the dungeon, well, most of them, there was a lot and I don’t want to overwork those kids.
Anyway, this meant I have loads of clean and ready to eat offal in my [Item Box]. So, let’s eat them!
That night, I have eight clay pots simmering [5].
The hotpot ingredients include cabbage, beansprouts, garlic chives, and the very important beef large intestines.
I added lots of garlic but limited the number of chilli peppers since Sui was sensitive to spicy food. [5]
For the soup base, I chose to go with a reputable brand that boasted authentic Hakata flavours in soy sauce and miso. [1] Soon, the smell of bonito stock, kelp stock and miso filled the air.
“Woah, these look good…”
“Oi, is it done yet?”
““Still not yet?””
““Sui has to wait? Sui is hungry…”” [5]
“Almost,” I said, as I checked the pots with a critical eye. Finally, I extinguished the fire under the pots and served.
[8] By serve, I mean each of my familiars gets two hotpots each.
“This one has a soy sauce base while the other one is a miso base. Be careful, it’s still bubbling hot. [5]”
Fer and Dora-chan used their Wind Magic to cool down their hotpots while Sui had already oozed over her own hotpot to absorb the food.
““Delicious~~””
““Unfair!””
“Guu…”
The air suddenly felt even colder.
[8] “Hey, don’t be in such a hurry,” I scolded. “Eat slowly.”
I was already putting more hotpots onto the stove. There was no way this was enough for my familiars. [5] [8] Anyway, even if I happened to miscalculate, I can just put the extras away in my [Item Box].
[8] While the hotpots were slowly cooking away, I settled down to eat some too. Unlike my uncivilized familiars, I ladled food from the soy sauce base pot into a bowl and nibbled on a piece of cabbage.
[8] “As expected of a famous brand. The flavour is excellent.” I quickly emptied my bowl and reached for more of the intestine. Woah, the flavour has seeped nicely into the meat~ [5]
Once my bowl was empty, I filled it with ingredients from the miso base hotpot. [5]
“Hm, hm, the miso flavour is really rich and gave the ingredients a different feel. More hearty somehow while the soy sauce one has a more refined feel to it.”
Now for the piece de resistance. [5]
Pshhh—
Gulp, gulp…
“Puhahh! That was excellent!”
I enjoyed my hotpot and cold beer until calls for seconds arrived.
As expected, it took several ‘seconds’ before my familiars were close to being full. [1] [8] Time for the starch rescue.
I collected the leftover soup from each portion of ‘seconds’ into one pot and plopped some egg noodles into the soy sauce based soup. [5]
While my familiars sucked up the noodles, I debated whether to put udon into the miso soup or rice…
Aahhhh, let’s go with rice!
A delicious and luxurious rice soup topped with a generous amount of beaten eggs and spring onions~~ [5]
Dinner was a wonderful experience.
[Gumihou: Guu, I want to eat hotpot too…]
[1] Structural Change: Combine 2 paragraphs
[2] Structural Change: Combine 3 paragraphs
[3] Structural Change: Combine paragraph & dialogue
[4] Structural Change: Change passive sentence to dialogue
[5] Delete Repetitive or Pointless Information
[6] Additional Information for Aesthetic Purpose
[7] Add Dialogue Tag
[8] Creative Licence Taken – Some minor adjustments. To make the sentences less ‘yeah, like, stuff happened’.
[9] Extra stuff Mukouda might have done (not included by the author) to fill in the 9 days before the Festival.
Also, added an instant yeast scene. I can’t believe that he just okayed the bread on shape alone. Bad idea, not good. You didn’t even ask what kind of yeast they use.
[10] Stuff Mukouda did (that was included by the author) but was logistically all over the place
How all over the place you ask?
Well:
Maynard & Enzo help him do prep work > went dungeon diving > decide to make hotdogs > mentioned M & E helping him made sausage > Make tomato sauce > Served M& E hotdog > mentioned the bread is bought in town bakery > M & E mentioned the orphanage makes bread too > asked orphanage to make bread in hotdog bun shape > bread will come tomorrow (final event’s timeline established as a day before Festival)
… aside from the fact that
hard bread + sausage = smushed meat and squirting tomato sauce when you bite into bread…
Gumi had to reread everything twice before even understanding what was happening. Like dude, logistics. It was mentioned in the last chapter that ‘the Festival will be in 10 days’
Gumi re-arranged the events according to a countdown to d-day.
[11] Mukouda had already made sausages many times, but there was not much information aside from ‘Mukouda made sausage’
Mention tools and materials needed to stuff sausages.
Considering the amount of work needed to process the intestines (small), just let Mukouda cheat with [Net Super] collagen casings.
However, it is possible to stuff sausage without all those fancy equipment. This guy just used a Chinese soup spoon.