The rice is ready.
That’s right. At long last, we have RICE.
For reference, the field currently grows bean sprouts, carrots, wheat, rice, and some fruit varieties.
Current division of labor: the palm-top rabbits fetch meat, and I tend the fields while serving as Sonya and Maria’s nightly opponent.
Maria’s long adventuring career means she can handle cooking, laundry, anything — tremendously useful.
—Sonya, for the record, does nothing.
Call it queenly temperament… well, the palm-top rabbits do all her work anyway, so it’s fine.
And since the palm-top rabbits brought in a boar today—
“Tonight is KATSU CURRY!”
I declared it to the whole cabin.
The offering box holds tens of thousands of yen now.
An order of curry roux won’t even dent my current balance.
“What is a katsu curry~?”
“For that matter, what is… curry?”
Ah, right — only the palm-top rabbits have had curry. These two know neither katsu nor curry.
“To my knowledge, the most beloved dish in the entire world.”
I’ve never once heard of someone who hates curry.
Search hard enough and someone probably exists, but — needless to say, I love the stuff too.
And right then, a knock-knock at the door.
“Ho. Now here’s a rare gathering of faces.”
—A loli-baba walked in.
Yes. A loli-baba. An ancient crone in a little girl’s body.
Blond twin-tails, crimson eyes, a purple mantle.
Appearance: twelve years old, give or take… and unmistakably a loli-baba.
Punk fashion… no, not quite.
Dressed like a middle or high schooler deep in a visual-kei phase: shredded denim short-shorts and a tank top.
Plus a jangling constellation of crosses and skulls and maximally-chuuni accessories.
And over all of it, one extremely loud mantle.
“Ohh, it has been an age, Maria. I hear thou met with misfortune in the demon capital.”
Maria dropped to one knee on the spot and bowed her head.
“It has been far too long — Lady Cornelia.”
I leaned in and whispered to Maria.
“Who exactly is this loli-baba?”
”…One of the Twelve Pillars — the twelve Demon Lords. In human form she looks an adorable young girl, but that is, in truth, a dark evil dragon. An eccentric who settled on the human-realm border… refusing all involvement in the demon realm’s power struggles, living in seclusion with her retainers.”
A Demon Lord…?
Whoa… seriously, the fantasy hit parade around here never takes a day off.
“So why is said Demon Lord HERE?”
The moment I whispered it, the loli-baba Demon Lord — Cornelia — jerked her chin up at me.
“Oi, thou there. How didst thou tame yon succubus and the queen of the palm-top rabbits?”
“‘Tame’ nothing — these two moved in on their own.”
Hmm… Cornelia cupped her chin and tilted her head.
“Maria I can fathom — but the palm-top rabbits would resist even MY earnest overtures. No matter. Now, thou? Ready that hoe of thine a moment.”
Come to think of it, Marcus at the Adventurers’ Guild had me do the exact same thing.
As instructed, I leveled the hoe at Demon Lord Cornelia.
Cornelia’s eyes widened slightly. Then she smiled, wry.
“I see the way of it. And a MAN, no less… Small wonder these strength-swayed races have attached themselves to him.”
“I don’t really follow, but why would a Demon Lord come to a little homestead like ours?”
Cornelia’s glare snapped onto me.
An enormous pressure settled over everything.
Maria let slip a small shriek — “Hii!”
Then the fur on Sonya’s ears stood on end, and her perpetual smile collapsed into dead seriousness.
I couldn’t feel much myself, but — is this a skill? Some kind of intimidation aura?
“The overhunting of magic beasts. Unaffiliated monsters, not my subordinates — but I’ll not have them culled so freely all the same. And what’s more, I hear someone has built a home in my own front garden without so much as a greeting. I dispatched an Evil Cyclops, and it was slaughtered for the trouble — so I have come personally, as a stroll, to administer the purge.”
“Powder keg” is the phrase, I believe.
A crackling tension wrapped the room, thick enough to touch.
Maria appeared to have lost the will to fight entirely, her face pale.
Sonya… had visible fighting spirit in her eyes. She’s clearly willing — one go-sign from me and she pounces.
And then Cornelia smiled — a bottomless, freezing smile that could fairly be called gruesome.
Oi oi. At this rate we’re having an actual war in my dining room.
“Hey, Demon Lord? So — you came here to pick a fight, is that it?”
“What say YOU?”
“Me? No, I’ve got no plans to fight anybody.”
“Then…” Cornelia shook her head side to side.
“For my part, quarreling with thee is… poor strategy. The matter is hereby — tabled.”
”…Tabled?”
“They call me Demon Lord for good reason; I am quick enough to brawl. So I COULD fight thee. But I see no cause to shoulder needless risk. That is all.”
“Meaning what?”
”…Meaning: if words will settle this, words suffice.”
At that, Maria raised her face, openly stunned.
“Lady Cornelia… AVOIDED a battle?”
“What’s it mean, Maria?”
“When you readied your hoe just now… she recognized it. Equal power. A fight neither side walks away from whole. Such an acknowledgment… does not happen. Ever.”
I don’t fully understand it, but the Farm Tool Handling skill is apparently genuinely terrifying.
Guys — this is a REGULAR HOE.
Cornelia’s mouth curled up into a smirk.
“Though — I don’t mind having that fight, if thou likest? True strength has a way of revealing itself only in the doing.”
Tension shot through the room a second time.
Oi oi. She really is a brawler down to the bone.
—And right at that moment, the smell of the curry I’d set on the fire came drifting through the room.