How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 1

“The taste of your homeland…”

“Brother, they have large locust tsukudani in your homeland, too?”

When I looked over, Tomoe was crunching away at the large locust tsukudani and clearly enjoying them. Come to think of it, when everyone else had been recoiling in shock, this kid had been the only one who was unsurprised.

“Could it be, this dish is…” I said.

“Yes. I ate it a lot back in the mystic wolf village.”

“Then do the mystic wolves make soy sauce?!”

“Soy sauce… do you mean hishio water, maybe?”

“Hishio water?”

“Hishio water is a sauce that the mystic wolves are fond of using, yes,” Poncho jumped in to explain. “Originally, the mystic wolves would coat soybeans in salt and allow them to ferment, creating a sauce called ‘bean hishio.’ When they take the clear liquid that is created in that process and let it ferment, that produces hishio water. Both are sauces with a unique flavor not found in this country, yes.”

“I see.”

After that explanation, I was certain of it. I had read in a book somewhere that soy sauce was born from the process of making miso. So, basically, bean hishio was miso and hishio water was soy sauce. (The reason I didn’t hear those words as miso and soy sauce may have been because they were similar to, but distinctly different from, modern soy sauce.) Maybe the mystic wolves had eating habits similar to the Japanese… Wait, hold on. This flavor permeating through the locust is…

“Hey, Tomoe. Alcohol is used in making these, too, right?”

“Ah, yes. It’s an alcohol made from the seeds of a plant.”

“What kind of seeds?”

“Let’s see… It’s a plant that grows in marshy areas, it has ears that look like the end of a broom, and on them, there are lots of little seeds like with wheat.”

No doubt about it! Those are rice plants! My hope for the future!

For the transition from cash crops to food crops, I had wanted to grow rice, because I had heard that paddy fields didn’t degrade the fertility of the soil, unlike wheat in dry fields, but because the all-important rice plants didn’t exist in this country, that plan had ground to a halt.

Now I see. It grows further north, huh? I’d very much like to bring some here and try cultivating it. Still, these mystic wolves… Between the soy sauce, miso, and now rice, their race has a lot of the things I’ve been wanting.

I paused.

“Okay, that settles it! I’ll give the mystic wolves among the refugees a district in Parnam.”

“Whaaaa?!” Tomoe exclaimed.

I wanted them to produce this bean hishio and hishio water there. We had plenty of soybeans, since we had planted them as part of the soil restoration process.

“Hold on, Souma, are you serious?!” Liscia seemed confused and flustered, but I was as serious as serious gets.

“With soy sauce and miso… I mean, hishio water and bean hishio, I can recreate most of the dishes from the country I came from. It sounds like there’s rice here, too. Don’t you want to try the tasty foods of another world?”

“Th-That’s…”

“Yes! I really want to try them!” Aisha raised her hand with gusto.

“Ha ha… while they may not feel as strongly as Aisha, I’m sure our people would like to try them. If I publish the recipes, they’ll either gather the ingredients and make them themselves, or go to a restaurant that serves them, I’m sure. Either way, it will cause a lot of movement in the economy.”

Huge market liquidity would bring prosperity to this country. That, I firmly believed. That was why I said this to the people watching:

“My search for the gifted is still ongoing. If people have a gift, I will use them even if they are refugees. This race has superior food production techniques, so I have no reason not to accept them. Oh, I know… For the next five years, I will grant the mystic wolves a monopoly on bean hishio and hishio water. We will clamp down on illicit production by any other parties. However, five years from now, I will lift the monopoly on bean hishio and hishio water to create a free market, so I recommend the mystic wolves create a firm economic base for themselves in that time. That is all.”

◇　◇　◇

After this pronouncement, a mystic wolf quarter was built in the capital Parnam, and bean hishio and hishio water were produced there with assistance from the country.

In this world, there had been many cases where refugees had been given a district of their own and it had turned into a slum. That was because the refugees faced economic limitations (lack of jobs, being used for cheap labor, and more) and struggled with poverty.