How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 1

“That can’t be. I’ve never heard of a gelin corpse before.”

“Oh, that’s right. Now that you mention it, it is strange,” Liscia agreed, seeming to have noticed something.

I, on the other hand, didn’t get it. “Liscia, could you just tell me what’s up already?”

“What’s with that tone…? Gelins are weak. They have a thin membrane, and if you cut them just a little, gush, out flows all their bodily fluids. It’s the same if you splatter them with a club. All you have left is a bluish-green puddle.”

“Is that how it is?”

Aisha nodded, as well. “Yes. That’s why such a neatly preserved corpse seems impossible.”

I see… Aisha as a warrior and Liscia as a soldier have experience fighting gelins, so they noticed something was odd here.

“So, what did you have to do to get the slime like this?” I asked.

“Well, you see, there’s a slight trick to it. This is a technique I learned from a tribe that lives far to the west, in the Empire. They use a thin pole-like object to strike the nucleus without breaking the membrane. If you do that, the gelin will maintain its shape in death. In that area, they called it ‘ike-jime for gelins.’”

Ike-jime? Come on, this isn’t like draining blood from fish… But, still, that makes sense now. It looks like I wasn’t wrong to think of them like single-celled organisms.

“The fluids of a gelin gradually lose liquidity and harden once the core is destroyed,” Poncho added.

“Like rigor mortis, I guess,” I said.

“Yes. If you leave it longer, the fluids will evaporate and it will turn into a dry husk, but around two hours after death, while it has hardened somewhat but the flesh is still supple, it is possible to cook it. That would be the state this one is in, yes.”

Hmm… I get that you can cook it, but isn’t that a separate issue from whether you can eat it? As I was thinking that, Poncho took out a knife and began making a vertical cut in the gelin.

“When the gelin is in this state, you can insert the knife vertically and cut it into pieces without the body collapsing. The fibers of the gelin’s body run vertically, so doing it this way gives it the best texture, yes.”

Poncho skillfully cut the gelin into long thin strips, like making ika somen. It was turning into noodles with an udon-like thickness. Poncho took those and put them into a pot of boiling water.

“Now, if we boil them in a pot of water with a little salt, the flesh will firm up more.”

Now it was seriously starting to turn into something like soba or udon. As they were boiling, that vibrant bluish-green color had darkened, starting to look something like green tea soba, too. Then Poncho added things like dried mushrooms and kelp to the pot with the boiling gelin.

Is he boiling those to get broth out of them?

Lastly, after adding more salt to adjust the flavor, he served them to each of us in a bowl of soup.

“Here you go. This is Gelin Udon.”

“He’s even calling it udon!” I exclaimed.

“I–Is something the matter, sire?” Poncho asked.

“Oh, no, nothing.”

I heard this country’s language as Japanese. “Udon” was probably some other word that had gotten translated into that. How confusing. Though, well, setting that aside, what was laid out in front of us looked exactly like Kansai-style green udon in a clear broth.

Red Fox and Green Gelin, is it? I thought. Yeah… Now’s not the time to escape reality by remembering old commercial jingles for instant udon. Huh? Wait, I seriously have to eat this?

When I looked around, everyone was looking at me as if to say, “Go ahead, go ahead.”

I haven’t put up my hand and said “Okay, I’ll eat it,” yet, you know!

…Well, I guess I’ve been making Liscia eat things she’s not used to. It wouldn’t be fair for me to be the only one who runs away! Time to dig in!

Slurp…

“?!”

“W-Well, how is it, Souma?” Liscia asked with a worried look.

“…This is surprisingly good,” I responded.

Yeah. I wonder what it is. This is completely different from what I imagined.