After having lunch, we busied ourselves with getting the interior of the base in order. It was more or less ready after making a makeshift fireplace and clearing some stones away in order to create a sleeping area.
We also collected some firewood. There was a lot of driftwood scattered around the riverbank, so it was a relatively easy task.
Next would be securing food.
I"ll have Cleria take a rest. Should I take off her armor? I gestured my intentions and she agreed. I pointed towards the sleeping area and she obediently laid down in response. It was great that she was being so cooperative.
I took up my weapons and the bag used for food collection. I went out of the base and pushed the log back in.
(Well then, what do I need to gather?)
[Meat, liver, Poto tubers and vegetables.]
So liver is categorized differently from meat huh?
Finding some veggies was up to luck. I just kneaded some plants as usual.
I can always catch some fish later, so I decided to go into the woods for now. Because the trees and gra.s.ses weren"t so dense, I navigated it quite easily.
I started kneading the unfamiliar plant life. Looks like it"s mostly a bust.
I managed to find a few Potos sometimes, so I gathered them up. Oh, there"s some familiar salad-use leafy vegetables over there. These were quite rare, so I took quite a few.
[Suitable as food.]
Oh, it"s been a while! I found another type of vegetable growing next to the salad vegetables.
[It contains a lot of calcium. Please collect as much as possible.]
Gotcha. It was a little bitter when eaten fresh. But it would taste better if you fry it.
Alright. Now for some meat and fish.
I resumed walking around the forest while kneading away.
[2 o"clock direction. Something is on top of the tree.]
Something really was there. When I zoomed in, I found a huge bird perched on top of a tree 50 meters out. It kinda resembles a black colored chicken. It was large enough to look out of place on top of a tree branch.
Thinking I had to get this thing, I proceeded to pick up some stones suitable for throwing from the riverbank nearby.
I slowly approached it until about 30 meters and threw a stone at it with full force. Alright!
I managed to hit it dead on. It fell down immediately. I caught it right away and cut off its neck to drain the blood out of it. I got a [Suitable as food.] response when I touched its blood, so I managed to successfully procure some meat with this.
But this guy sure is big. About 1 meter long maybe. I took it way and brought it back to the riverbank with me. I need to catch some fish on the river afterwards to clear today"s quota.
I even managed to find a new edible plant while I was on the way back to the base.
[Suitable as food.]
It looked like your typical weed. I tried the leaves and found that they tasted bland. When I pulled it out, I found a bulb-like root.
This is!? I tried pinching it, and smelled a familiar aroma. This thing smelled just like garlic! I just found a rare treasure.
They were bunched up in a cl.u.s.ter of five stalks, so I collected them all at once.
This was a really nice find. It was great because we only had a few seasonings with us.
I was able to return back after an hour.
I didn"t want Cleria to feel worried, so I returned to the base as soon as I could. She appeared a bit lonely at first but greeted me back happily when she saw me. Nah, she might have cheered up after getting a look at the giant chicken I managed to bring back with me for dinner.
Guess I"ll prepare the bird first before the fish. I proceeded with trying out removing its feathers. There wasn"t any particular area with fine feathers, so I was able to quickly dress it.
When I opened up its stomach, I found a large-sized and strangely white-colored liver. Wait, isn"t this the fabled ‘white liver"?
(Can this be eaten raw?)
[Possible.]
Great. This is nice. It"s my first time to try eating raw liver. Well, even if there are parasites on it, I have nanoms inside me so it"s fine.
I actually wanted to grill the thigh meat along with the bones. But they were just too large, so I, unfortunately, had to de-bone them.
Let"s have the right half of the bird for dinner. I cut the chicken wings and drummettes into portions small enough to consume easily.
It"s a waste, but I had to pa.s.s on the breast meat and tenderloin. There were other parts that couldn"t be eaten as well. I cut them into a suitable size to serve as fish bait.
I cut the liver into thin strips and set it aside on the saucepan for the time being.
I"ll work on the fish next. I set up a sieve made of stones on the river water just like yesterday and divided it into two sections. The one near the riverbank would be used to drain the liver pieces of blood. The one opposite would be used to bait some fish. I placed the breast, tenderloin and innard pieces on it.
Next, I moved a bit further away in order to set up an ambush. I moved about 15 meters away and hunkered down. Cleria also decided to squeeze beside me for some reason. Well, it"s fine, I guess.
After a few minutes, I heard some splashing sounds. Yeah! They"re here. I carefully inched near the makeshift sieve and saw something splashing around energetically inside it. After confirming its figure, I threw my knife at it. Direct hit! With this, I"ve finally managed to clear today"s quota.
The fish we caught was as big as yesterday. I immediately removed its scales and chopped it into three portions. It also appeared nice and fatty.
Oh right. I have to collect the liver I immersed in the river water earlier.
I washed all the other ingredients and brought all of them back to the base in order to start cooking. It"s already evening by the time we got back. Cleria has also started a fire just like yesterday. She was really a sensible young lady.
Today"s menu was white liver sashimi and stir-fried chicken wings and drummettes with Potos, veggies, and garlic. The main courses are salt grilled salmon and chicken thigh meat seasoned with herbs.
Let"s make them immediately. First, I peeled off the skin from the mock-garlic cloves I managed to get earlier and chopped them as finely as possible. I actually wanted to grate them, but there was no tool for that available, so I settled with mincing them.
I placed the white liver pieces on the plate and put some minced garlic on top of them. When I gestured for Cleria to eat up, she remained s.p.a.ced out, so I had to show her how to eat it properly.
I used a fork to wrapped the liver slice around the minced garlic and dipped them on the salt I placed on the side of the plate earlier. This stuff"s delish! There"s practically no gamey smell present. The umami flavor unique to white liver spreads around my mouth. It paired beautifully with the intense aroma and slightly spicy taste of raw garlic.
Cleria was a bit taken aback after seeing me, but she eventually copied my earlier actions and tried eating a slice. The moment the slice entered her mouth, her eyes widened in surprise. Afterward, she ate up with incredible momentum once again. Hey, I can"t lose to her. Both of us finished them all in a flash.
Next is the garlic stir-fried chicken wings and drummettes with Poto and wild veggies. Chicken wings and drummettes aren"t usually used for stir-fried dishes, but I guess it"s fine.
First, I heated up the chicken skin I placed aside earlier on the frying pan. They started oozing with oil right away. I took out the fried skins from the pan when they became nice and crispy. Cleria seemed to want to try eating them as is, so I put a few pinches of salt on the plate once again and placed some fried skins on it afterward.
Next, I fried the garlic I cut into chips a little away from the fire in order to slowly let their aroma seep into the oil.
When the color of the chips turned dark brown, I removed them from the pan right away and set them aside. I fried the Poto tubers next. After sufficiently heating them up, I put in the meat next.
I cooked the wild vegetables last because I wanted to preserve their crisp texture. I put the garlic chips back in; finally completing the dish.
Yup, it"s delicious. The flavor of the garlic-infused chicken oil has seeped well inside the Potos, making it really tasty. The unique texture of the chicken meat was also good. The vegetables were really suited for stir-frying as well. It was a really great dish.
When I grilled the salmon with salt, a notice from Nanom requested to have Cleria eat as much of the skin as possible. Aww man. The skin"s my favorite part. Well, it"s for Cleria"s sake, so I had no choice but to do as requested. Man, it"s delicious as usual.
Last would be the grilled chicken thigh meat. It was cut into bite-sized pieces in advance and rubbed with salt, pepper and plenty of herbs. I grilled them until the skin attained a crispy texture. Afterward, I grilled the other parts until they were sufficiently cooked and placed the pieces on top of a plate.
I then wrapped it with the wide leaves of the salad vegetables and ate them by hand. Cleria was again surprised by my actions but imitated me once more.
It was, of course, delicious as heck. The chicken skin was nice and crispy, the meat overflowed with umami flavor and rich juices with each bite and the fresh vegetables wrapping them up created an exquisite harmony. Excellent.
Cleria looks quite satisfied as well. I reserved the other half of the bird meat and the remaining fish meat for tomorrow"s breakfast and lunch.
After we finished our meal, it"s about time to learn the language. For the time being, I had Nanom update the language database with the knowledge we"ve collected thus far.
Kuh! A large amount of data was uploaded inside my head all at once, so I got a.s.saulted by a feeling of dizziness.
The update was handled directly by Nanom, and involved brain and memory manipulation, much like the senior officer"s education process. Knowledge is converted in a form that can be directly transferred to a person"s brain and can be immediately used the same way as knowledge obtained naturally through personal experience.
One might think it was tempting to transfer as much knowledge as possible, but the human brain is not designed to store a vast amount of information. If one attempted to, there was a great risk of the person"s consciousness collapsing.
Only knowledge corresponding to the ones a person can gain with effort through learning can be uploaded; such as language, imperial military ranks, and recipes. The total amount of information that can be updated was also limited. It was not possible to upload info greater than the amount a person can handle in his or her entire lifetime.
I gestured to Cleria in order to make her continue teaching me about their language. After a few exchanges, it seems she finally understood my intentions. She talked to me in a deliberately slow and clear cadence in order to better facilitate my learning.
As expected, I don"t get anything she said at all. I"ll just have Nanom upload it all later.
The language learning session with Cleria lasted late into the night; illuminated by the bonfire.
We"ve been going through the same routine for about four days now. Every morning, I asked Nanom to prepare a detailed objective list based on the nutritional intake needed by Cleria for the day.
I finished fulfilling these objectives at about 2 to 3 P.M. every day, went back to base, cooked dishes, had dinner and proceeded with language learning.
It kinda felt like a parent bird leaving the nest to find food for the chicks or something.
It looks like Nanom wanted to check the current state of Cleria"s foot today, and had requested a check-up. I conveyed my intention to check her foot to Cleria. She nodded pensively while sporting a look of conviction.
I removed the prosthetic and unwrapped the bandages. The cross-section still looked like a stump, but the previously thin skin membrane has now thickened to a normal degree. The biggest difference was that a part of the leg has already been regenerated successfully. It previously went down to just until the mid-portion of the shin but has now stretched to just above the ankle. About ten centimeters have been restored.
Cleria was visibly surprised when she saw the state of her foot. She seemed to want to say something but stopped midway a couple of times, with her delicate lips opening and closing intermittently. It was quite an amusing reaction. She kept touching her partially restored foot in disbelief. Oh yeah, I did forget to explain to her about the whole regeneration thing. Oh well. She"ll get it once her foot gets entirely restored anyway.
The current prosthetic can no longer be used. If her ankle gets regenerated, she would no longer be able to remove her leg from the prosthetic"s opening.
I gestured to let her know that I was going to remake the prosthetic, and Cleria nodded absentmindedly. She kept her gaze locked on her now restored shin. Is she okay?
I managed to finish remodeling the prosthetic during the morning because the materials have already been gathered and were readily available. The suspension was simply fixed to the foot using four belt straps. It was still possible to adjust its height a little. However, you could not walk long distances with it anymore since it wasn"t as stable as before.
When I equipped it to Cleria and had her try it out, it seems she would not have any trouble walking for the most part. Right then. Let"s start fulfilling today"s tasks. It was a bit late in the day, but I already have a grasp of the location of different vegetables and prey, so I"ll manage somehow.
Then, about two days later, I tried to go out in the morning, only to be stopped by Cleria. She seems to want to tell me about something. I was worried that the remade prosthetic was uncomfortable for her, but it turned out not to be the case.
It was actually about her foot. Now, the bandages were unnecessary. When I checked it out, it seems to have regenerated up to a little below the ankle.
She sat down with a thoughtful expression and pointed towards her foot, starting from where it was first cut off from to its current length. She seemed to want to confirm if I was truly restoring her foot. When I nodded in the affirmative, she freezes up.
Let"s give her some extra details then.
(Please display the estimated regenerated portion for each day in red.)
The estimated points were immediately displayed by Nanom and highlighted in red. I raised my fingers one at a time and counted off, pointing out how much of her foot would be restored per day to Cleria. At the current rate, her foot should be completely restored within eight days.
Afterward, tears began to fall from Cleria"s eyes and she ended up crying a lot. She was wailing unreservedly. Aw geez. Come to think of it, if your cut off foot suddenly began growing back all of a sudden without any prior explanation why, of course, you"d be anxious. I went and did something bad.
I gently stroked her head in order to calm her down. Cleria was surprised by it and stopped crying. I explained through gestures that I"ll fix up her arm as well, but it would take more time if she doesn"t eat properly. She nodded happily.
The amount of food Cleria ate that day was astonishing.
I was lying down inside the base.
Lord Corinth was currently out searching for food. It has been three days since we"ve come to this place.
“Is it really okay to leave things as they are?” I couldn"t help but think. That"s because all I did was sleep around all day while Lord Corinth struggles to find food to eat.
All of the meals Lord Corinth cooks are amazing delicacies, and I have no complaints about them whatsoever. Is my foot getting better. I had no idea because it didn"t feel painful at all.
Today"s meal was also excellent.
The next morning, Lord Corinth asked me to show him my foot. It finally came! What if it"s gotten worse? I wanted it to be otherwise if possible.
I was astonished the moment I saw my foot. Was my leg actually recovering and growing in length!? I was sure it was cut off from the middle of the shin! But now it has grown up until the area above the ankle.
How can this possibly be!? A foot can"t just regrow itself like this. Has my head somehow turned strange?
I wanted to ask Lord Corinth to confirm. What if I really was going crazy? What if I was only imagining things and my leg was still cut off from the middle of the shin? I anxiously touched it. I could properly feel it with my hand.
But if I truly turned crazy, then was this sense of touch also an imagined one?
After that, Lord Corinth offered to remake my prosthetic. Why would he need to remake it? It did feel like it would be better for it to be remade, but I didn"t pay this much attention. My head was preoccupied with a lot of other things.
I spent the next couple of days constantly mulling over it.
I heard that people who lost their limbs would sometimes experience a mental shock. Was I like that as well?
It has grown again after these past days. There was an ankle that wasn"t present until now. Ah, I can"t stand it any longer. I had to confirm things with Lord Corinth.
If I truly went crazy, then I"ll ask for help on how to cure it.
The next morning, I finally asked Lord Corinth before he went out for another hunt. I told him through gestures that my leg was growing back. See, it had already grown back this much.
Lord Corinth simply nodded in confirmation.
I couldn"t understand. Legs don"t just grow back like this…
He then raised the fingers of one of his hands and counted off while pointing to my foot with another – starting from the tip up to points where there was nothing presently.
Was he telling me how much my foot would grow back per day?
Aah! Yes, this must be the case! Lord Corinth knew from the start! He must have healed me with an unknown method I am unable to understand!
He stopped counting with his fingers after reaching the number eight. My foot would be restored in eight days! Just eight days! How utterly incredible!
I did not go crazy! Thank goodness!
I started crying before I noticed it. This is so great! I"m so happy!
Lord Corinth suddenly stroked my head just like how my dear brother did. I was so surprised!
Afterward, Lord Corinth explained with gestures that he would heal my arm next after my foot recovers. He indicated the number of days and how much it would grow back, just like with my foot. It would heal in eight days as well if I kept eating as I did.
However, the recovery would slow down if I didn"t eat as much.
I"ll eat a lot of Lord Corinth"s tasty dishes. I can finish whatever amount if that"s all it takes to restore my limbs.
I shall eat away with my entire heart and soul!
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