The Hellish(?) Cooking of Noble Ladies [Part 2]
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On the other side, the people at the extracurricular lesson campsite were almost done with the preparation for dinner without the slightest idea about the Lord of Skyte and his hunters’ worry.
The maids preparing the meal, the guards guarding the surroundings, the students, the king, and the prince were all stealing glances at the Stuarts’ tent every now and then.
—…huge.
The Stuart family purposefully chose the spot closest to the forest, the one place everyone avoided, to set up their tent. Everyone was shocked by its size, which didn’t look like a tent for camping, but that wasn’t even the strangest thing. What made them curious the most was how it took the Stuarts less than an hour to pitch a tent of that size.
Everyone couldn’t take their eyes off the tent’s design that could be assembled so easily just with thin poles and a cloth and had one part connected to the carriage. They couldn’t help but think of the same thing. Can the tent be raised with just those poles alone? No, they will break, won’t they? There’s no way they can bear the weight of that big cloth.
The surrounding people were looking at the Stuarts worriedly at first, but as the assembling process progressed, their expressions turned to that of surprise.
The two men with a spear and a bow, who everyone initially thought to be the Stuarts’ guards, only stood still blankly while Count Stuart and his son, George, were the ones setting up the tent, which made no sense.
Then, Dr. Arban Stuart, known as the Kingdom’s brain and even extolled as the Kingdom’s pride, was drawing water diligently.
Everyone again thought, ‘Isn’t it weird?’ for the nth time that day.
Furthermore, Countess Stuart and her daughter were cooking (a weird thing for everyone there, no matter how they thought of it) something in a pot in front of the tent. And a pungent smell everyone had never smelled before was drifting throughout the whole campsite from that pot.
“Fufufu, when Joshua brought me all kinds of powder with evil-warding effects from foreign countries because he couldn’t participate in the extracurricular lesson, I thought I didn’t need such superstitious things. But it turns out…”
Emma laughed while stirring the pot. She didn’t realize that in the surrounding people’s eyes, she looked like a witch making a terrible potion because of the smell.
“…Will the Stuarts’ dinner come out alright?”
“Young ladies normally never cook… What is up with that smell? Seems like she has concocted something we have never smelled before, you know?”
“H-Hey, shouldn’t somebody stop her? She stir-fried that monster earlier with vegetables and simmered them together in that pot. Did you see that?”
“Ah, hold up! Emma-sama is sampling that unidentified liquid X!? Her body is frail already as it is… In the worst-case scenario, she will die from eating that, y’know?!”
There was no custom of eating curry in the Kingdom. No one knew about curry.
“Who would have thought that the evil-warding powders were turmeric, cumin, coriander, red pepper, oregano, paprika, and black pepper… all these different kinds of spices.”
Next to Emma, who was in charge of curry, Melsa was grilling marinated roc meat.
“Pardon, Melsa-sama. Thank you, that really helped me.”
Francesca thanked Melsa timidly.
“Mother told me to bring these with me because they are good for my health, but I’m at a loss because it doesn’t seem like I will be able to finish them.”
One of the lands House Delacour owned had a thriving dairy industry and would send its dairy products to Delacour Mansion every single month, so the family had a hard time finishing them all alone.
“You have also helped me here, Lady Francesca. I didn’t expect we could hunt such a big game as roc… I will use these as seasoning.”
*sizzle sizzle* Melsa unconsciously broke into a smile because of the appetizing smell.
“O-Oi. That Countess Stuart… Did she just put the evil-warding powders on the monster meat? Or did I see it wrong?”
“She didn’t just put it… She rubbed a lot on it and even marinated the meat with it, you know?”
“And even Lady Francesca too… She gave that to be used as a seasoning. People basically only eat that plain… Someone, please stop them! Stop the catastrophic cooking of these noble ladies! Why don’t they bring a maid?! At least one maid!”
All the commotion in the surroundings was pointed toward the Stuart family, but the people themselves didn’t notice it because each of them was so absorbed in the task at hand, pitching the tent and cooking.
While the surroundings watched on with trepidation, the hellish cooking of noble ladies was completed, and the noble ladies’ hellish dinner began.
