Chapter 49
“We’re back to the first day…?”
“……”
A feast of black, purple, and blue.
It looked like she had improved and tried some kind of arrangement, but all I could sense was an ominous air.
No way.
Would she really betray all the trust we had built up until now?
“Thank you for the meal.”
Karen began tasting it without a care in the world, but Isti and I couldn’t bring ourselves to reach for our utensils so readily.
“You didn’t drain enough water from the vegetables.”
“This meat seems a little undercooked.”
Hmm…
Let’s try it first.
Seeing me put the food in my mouth, Isti followed suit.
……It was a devastating taste.
I shot to my feet and headed for the kitchen.
“Bella!”
“Yeees~?”
Bella was resting in her chair as arrogantly as ever.
“…Did you taste what you made?”
“No? Was it bad?”
“…Bella. Kneel and raise your arms. Now.”
“Eek!?”
Bella dropped to her knees as though a powerful gravity had seized her, then raised her arms into the classic punishment pose.
“W-Was it really that bad?”
“Are you asking because you don’t know? If you were playing around with food, I’ll kill you.”
But looking at Bella’s face, it didn’t seem as though she had deliberately made it taste bad.
She looked genuinely shocked, as though something completely unexpected had happened.
“What did you do while cooking?”
“I was getting bored doing everything the same way. I wanted to add a little variety, but……”
Good grief.
The fact that it hadn’t been done out of malice made me feel even more miserable.
“I was looking forward to lunch….”
“That’s so mean! I ran out of recipes I’d learned, and you kept asking me to make food anyway. I was just trying to show some consideration so you wouldn’t get tired of it….”
Ugh.
Bella’s words, spilling out in a burst of emotion, scraped at what little conscience I had left.
“All right. I’m sorry. Lower your arms.”
“……As long as you understand!”
Huh?
In the corner beside where Bella had been sitting, I spotted an empty snack bag.
“Freeze.”
“Ghk!?”
Bella’s face turned pale.
“Did you taste it?”
“Of course! ……I didn’t.”
“You got lazy and put in less effort, didn’t you?”
“……Yes.”
Looking more closely, I also saw a half-read manga near where Bella had been sitting.
Where did she even get something like that?
Good grief. I had even been considering making her a professional chef. What a disappointment.
What good were her competitive spirit and dexterous hands? That willful goddess nature of hers was still alive and well.
“I guess I’ll have to leave the professional cooking to someone else.
Don’t disappoint me at dinner, all right?”
Bella nodded repeatedly.
“And you need to be punished separately for slacking off just now, don’t you?”
Bella’s shoulders trembled.
“W-What is it?”
She was trying so hard to hide her delighted expression.
……Wait. This girl enjoyed being punished. Wouldn’t this have the opposite effect?
Maybe, deep down, she wanted to be punished, which was why she was doing a halfhearted job.
“This won’t do. You look like you’d enjoy being punished.”
“I look like I’d enjoy it?!”
“……Manage your expression before you say that.”
You’re already half-delighted.
“Heh.”
I had just thought of something fun.
“All right. It’s partly my fault for not mentioning a reward for doing such hard work.
If you make up for disappointing me at lunch by making a good dinner, I’ll punish you with suffocating sex that’ll make you feel like you’re going to stop breathing.”
“Suffocating… sex… that’ll make me feel like I’m going to stop breathing….”
Bella gulped down her drool.
“Do you want that?”
“I do! Wait and see. I’ll start preparing right now! Look forward to dinner!”
“Y-Yeah.”
Bella burned with motivation as though she had become an entirely different person.
I just hoped it wouldn’t backfire.
When I returned to the table, Karen was nearly finished with her food.
“What did Leira say?”
“She asked me to let her make it up at dinner. …I guess things went wrong because she was trying something new.”
“……It can’t be helped.”
Apparently convinced by the explanation, Isti began putting small amounts of food into her mouth.
Let’s cover up the fact that she had been too lazy to put any care into the finishing touches. If I said that, even Isti would probably fly into a rage.
The personnel needed for Eight-Colored Shell Castle.
First of all, we needed a chef who was good at cooking… No, we needed someone who could reliably prepare delicious meals on a regular basis.
But could we find someone who fit the bill perfectly?
Cooking involved handling fire, knives, and other dangerous things, as well as requiring physical stamina, so as far as I knew, there were far more male professional chefs.
It was rather amusing that the goddess of fire couldn’t cook.
No, judging by how quickly she learned, it was actually difficult to definitively say that she couldn’t.
After finishing our meal, we went to the training hall and continued practicing Space Leap.
Karen and I devoted the entire day to increasing our proficiency with Space Leap.
Karen’s goal was to be able to leap twice, like me, but she ultimately failed to catch up.
It was an obvious result, if an obvious result could be called one.
Not that I was bragging, but my skill proficiency increased faster than other people’s.
That was because of the Blessing of Beleira, my slave and former goddess, who had taken charge of the kitchen.
Since I thought of it, I opened my status window.
Name: Dekal
Lv: 129
Status
［HP］ 6877/6877
［MP］ 8871/8871
Attributes
Strength 556 Magic 787 Stamina 551 Agility 501
Blessing of Beleira《True》
「A blessing that grants the authority to dominate fire among the elemental attributes. Only one who truly understands the goddess can receive this blessing.」
(Immunity to fire damage, increased power of fire magic, increased proficiency for all skills.)
Goddess’s Apostle
「Communicates in all languages and can decipher all scripts. It is proof of being chosen by a god and of possessing the right to cross between worlds.」
(Increased skill acquisition rate, increased experience gain, fivefold increase to attribute scaling.)
Wind Spirit (+1)
「Called the freest of spirits, it changes the flow of the atmosphere and makes the wind obey it.」
Skills
Fireball (★☆) - Intermediate fire magic with powerful force. Burns the enemy.
Fire Enchant (★★★) - Magic that grants objects of all kinds the fire attribute.
Search (★★☆) - A skill that discovers and analyzes traces through careful examination and observation.
Space Leap (★) - An elf’s unique skill. A top-class movement technique that can only be used after forming sufficient rapport with a wind spirit.
Just as I had expected, the proficiency of the Space Leap skill I had only recently learned was already at one star.
Learning how to sense spirits probably had little to do with skill proficiency, but from this point on, there was no avoiding a difference in growth between Karen and me.
“Shall we go have dinner now?”
“Yes!”
“……”
Isti said nothing.
“It’ll be fine this time. I gave her a stern talking-to.”
“I hope so….”
Isti still seemed unable to shake off the shock of lunch.
I had barely eaten anything at lunch either, so I was extremely hungry.
“Isti, you can’t skip meals! It’s bad for your health!”
When Karen spoke sternly, Isti finally managed to take a step forward.
This wasn’t some kind of gamble, so why did we have to worry about the table every time we ate?
But when we arrived, I realized that my concerns had been unfounded.
The food already prepared on the table was top-class in both aroma and appearance.
“Wow!”
Bella was waiting for us, her hair neatly tied back. I didn’t know when she had changed into a chef’s uniform.
“I’ve been waiting. I just brought everything out, so dig in before it gets cold.”
“Thank you for the meal!”
As Karen began eating heartily, I was spurred on and took a bite as well.
And I was so shocked that I nearly dropped my utensils.
“Are you sure this was made by the same person?”
“……It’s delicious.”
Even Isti admitted that it was delicious.
The seasoning was perfect, and the meat was cooked to absolute perfection. She had gone from a level where I could only be grateful if she managed to grill something properly to using spices to add fragrance, as though she had suddenly become an entirely different person.
“Let’s see, the noodles….”
The noodle dish was excellent as well.
They weren’t overcooked or undercooked, but exactly right. The sauce clung well to the noodles, making for an outstanding flavor.
“This actually makes me angry. If you could do this, what was that at lunch?”
Bella flinched and her shoulders trembled.
“Th-That! I told you I didn’t do it on purpose. It was nothing more than trial and error with the flavors….”
Since she had ultimately succeeded in improving the quality, I had no choice but to accept that it really had been trial and error.
She had failed a few times, but during the special training period, Bella had prepared excellent meals for three people—no, four.
“That was delicious. Bella.”
“Me too.”
“Me as well!”
“Since Master said he’d scold me, I ended up working even harder♥”
“……”
Karen and Isti’s gazes sank heavily into me.
“Yes. It was definitely good enough to deserve punishment.”
“Hehehe.”
Bella clenched her fists tightly, delighted.
If you replaced the word “punishment” with “reward,” it would be a perfectly natural conversation, but there was something pleasantly off about it.
“Master. What kind of punishment are you going to give me?”
“Let’s go to the bedroom. Ah, we’ve been using the guest rooms every time. Is there a room where the lord of the castle stays?”
“Of course there is. At the end of the right corridor on the third floor of Eight-Colored Shell Castle, there’s a room with the best view. It’s spacious, and the bed is large too.”
“Good. Let’s all go together.”
Bella tilted her head and asked again.
“All together?”
Then, as if she had suddenly realized something, she smiled.
“Ahh♥ So they’re the ones receiving rewards from Master?”
“……”
“……”
Isti and Karen neither denied it nor said anything. They simply sat there, fidgeting with their fingers.
“Master. You should give the girls some time to prepare. They’ll want to make themselves look pretty, won’t they?”
“Ahh. That’s a good point, slave.”
“Heheh. Of course it is.”
“Everyone, get ready and come to the room Bella mentioned. I’ll be waiting.”
I stood up first and went to the lord’s room that Bella had mentioned.
I remembered the first time I had gone to a guest room in the Eight-Color Shell Castle, after staying at the Water and Grass Inn in the other world.
A clean room, a soft, comfortable bed. I felt as though I was living in greater luxury than I had back in the modern world. The Eight-Color Shell Castle felt like a hotel where I could stay without worrying about keeping things tidy.
When I entered the lord’s room, I was even more astonished.
A bedroom for someone important. I had never seen or experienced anything like it firsthand.
I had stayed in a suite before, but… this place looked like a room suited for someone who had accomplished great deeds.
The room made it very clear how Belleira viewed her own authority as a goddess.
The decorations and furniture were predominantly dark shades of red. There was an elegant, luxurious bed, as well as antique-looking chairs and a table.
The view at a glance seemed to show a space wider than the room itself. One entire wall had been opened up to provide a view of the outside.
When I approached and touched it with my hand, I found that it was not a floor-to-ceiling window, but some kind of invisible barrier.
Until I touched it myself, the outside looked so vivid that it was hard to believe there was anything between us.
A sky filled with countless stars and a bright moon. A dense forest stretching all the way to the horizon, and a mountain range curved like the back of a giant.
When I turned around, I saw the taxidermied head of a bear mounted on the wall.
Had Belleira thought that a stuffed wild beast would suit her image and enhance her dignity?
“Can I come in?”
It was Karen’s voice.
Karen came dressed lightly, her pale shoulders exposed. Her skin and red hair looked so moist that I could almost feel the dampness simply by looking at her, as though she had just washed.
“Come in.”
I let Karen into the room.
She flinched when she saw the mounted bear’s head, but soon became dazed, apparently captivated by the view.
“The scenery’s beautiful. Here.”
“I think so too.”
“……”
“Why are you standing so stiffly? Sit down and wait comfortably.”
“I’ll stand until the other two arrive.”
“You’re nervous.”
All I was doing was what I usually did.
But I decided not to say something so tasteless. I knew how to show that much consideration, at least.
Although I was far more often shameless enough not to.
This time, someone politely knocked on the door.
“Come in, Isti.”
Isti opened the door and entered.
Nothing suited Isti better than the word elegant. Snow-white platinum hair, delicate eyelashes, finely sculpted features…
Isti had once worn an expressionless face more often than a smile, but now, whenever she saw me, she began with a smile in her eyes.
An elf in love.
“Darling.”
“Hmm? You came dressed as usual?”
Isti had come wearing a white minidress.
“I thought you’d come in your school uniform.”
“That’s for special events…”
Come to think of it, I also thought it was more effective when I could devote my full attention to Isti.
If Isti had come wearing her school uniform, she would have stood out tremendously all by herself, too.
“I’m coming in.”
Bella spoke briefly, as though merely informing us, and flung the door open.
“What is this? Master’s appraisal session? You’re all standing in a row.”
“It’s not that. It just happened that way.”
Bella stood confidently beside Isti. She wore a slit dress that barely served to cover her buttocks, and whether because she was confident in her figure or not,
she stood as proudly as a model, as always. Her provocative expression was utterly self-assured, as if she had no doubt whatsoever in her own allure. This was the Belleira I knew so well.
Seeing the three of them standing there, I wore a satisfied smile.
Somehow, I had ended up gathering all three of them together, and it felt so good.
Three impossibly beautiful women in an impossible space. Even in the modern world, enjoying such luxury was possible only for a very select few—people with wealth and prestige.
In order, they were my fuckhole, my lover, and my slave.
My journey through the other world was not yet long enough to call it an extensive one, but the results had been extraordinarily good. I felt like praising myself.
“What should we do?”
Karen spoke.
“There’s only one of you, Oppa, but there are three of us.”
“You don’t even know something like that? When Master embraces the one he likes, the other two support Master’s mood! Right, Master?”
“Where did you even learn something like that?”
“It’s basic knowledge.”
Karen pressed her reddened cheeks with her hands and spoke.
“Won’t Oppa have a hard time? With three of us…”
There were times when I had to do it even if it was hard, and this was exactly such a time.
“Bella. Lie down.”
“M-me first?”
Bella fumbled about, apparently not expecting to be chosen first.
“A punishment who crawled here the slowest despite being the one getting punished.”