After Fina left for Waterhorn.
The restaurant regained its usual peace.
Days spent waiting for customers who might come at any time,
leisurely tending the vegetable garden with Aris or studying cooking.
Sometimes I received letters from various acquaintances asking after me,
and sometimes I read the Early Bird newspaper to keep up with what was going on in the world.
In “Today’s Gourmet,” the fourth shop was introduced in this issue.
The shop introduced this time was, surprisingly, not some high-priced restaurant.
It was a restaurant in a rural farming village.
Apparently, they used only livestock and crops they raised themselves,
and served one home-cooked meal each day according to the ingredients available that day.
There was only one item on the menu: “Today’s Set Meal.”
Moshul’s review said that while it was modest, it made excellent use of the natural flavors of its raw ingredients.
For Moshul, famous for being so fastidious, to introduce a place like that.
Had he undergone some change of heart?
Or had he compromised because there were no restaurants that met his usual standards?
As for Aris, for the first few days she seemed lonely without Fina,
but after about a week, she returned to daily life as if nothing had happened.
“Manager, Fina’s doing well, right?”
“I’ll let you know when I hear from her, so you can write her a letter then. We can just tuck it in with the carrier pigeon anyway.”
“Really? Is that okay?!”
“Why wouldn’t it be? Next time Boris contacts us, send it along with the reply.”
“Yeeees! Great!”
It was midmorning, while we were thinning herbs in the vegetable garden
and chatting lightly with each other.
Ruuuuumble—
Suddenly, the ground shook.
It was a vibration I could feel through the soles of my feet.
Too brief to be an earthquake,
and too low in frequency to be an explosion.
I stopped what I was doing and looked north.
To the north of the restaurant stood a massive rocky mountain.
It was the highest peak in the area,
always there, and always silent.
But now, from the foothills of that rocky mountain, a cloud of pale dust was rising.
“Manager? Didn’t something just shake?”
Aris asked, standing upright in the garden as she looked north.
“Even you, as a ghost, can feel vibrations?”
“Of course I can! What do we do? Is it an earthquake?”
“Hmm… I don’t think so.”
I set down the hand trowel and stood up.
* * *
It was a twenty-minute walk to the foot of the rocky mountain.
The closer I got, the thicker the dust became.
And faintly, I could hear some sort of sound.
The sound of metal being struck.
The sound of stone breaking.
Ruuuuuuumble—
The ground beneath my feet vibrated again.
When I arrived at the foot of the rocky mountain,
an unexpected sight met my eyes.
A huge hole, far taller than a person, had been opened in the rocky mountain.
It had clearly been bored through only recently.
The dust around the hole had yet to settle,
and chunks of rock that had rolled down were scattered across the foothills.
Then, from within that hole, small figures came pouring out in a rush.
They were barely more than half the height of a human.
Their forearms were thick.
Their hands were large.
Each of them carried various finely crafted tools.
They were none other than dwarves.
“Uryaaaaaah-hahaha! Urrrrahiiit!”
The one at the very front stretched broadly the moment he stepped out of the hole.
He was on the shorter side even among the dwarves.
But his torso was thick as a log.
At the ends of his beard, which was braided into two thick plaits,
small metal rings were attached.
The dwarf was making strange noises as he stretched when he spotted me.
I looked at him as well.
Our eyes met.
For a moment, silence passed.
“Oh, a human! There are humans even out here?”
The dwarf smiled brightly.
“Did people live around here? According to the map, this place was definitely… Anyway, good to meet you!”
The dwarf spoke in a booming voice that contrasted with his small stature.
“I run a restaurant over that way… The ground suddenly shook, so I came to check.”
The dwarf made an expression of realization, then turned back and shouted.
“You hear that? There’s a restaurant over there!”
The dwarves behind him began to murmur.
“A restaurant?!”
“Whoa! Talk about perfect timing!”
“Huh? But wasn’t this supposed to be a place with no city?”
There were easily more than ten dwarves, all murmuring among themselves.
The dwarf with the twin-braided beard turned his gaze back to me.
“Sorry for startling you. I’m Ironfoot, the foreman of this crew. And you are?”
“My name is Klaus.”
“Klaus! A fine name. By the way, would your restaurant take in fellows like us?”
I briefly looked over the dwarves.
A little over ten of them.
They were all covered in dust,
and they had hungry looks on their faces.
Originally, I did not accept ordinary walk-in customers and operated by reservation only,
but there was something oddly unique about these dwarves.
They looked as though they had just finished some grueling labor, and it felt a bit much to turn them away.
I was also curious what sort of people they were, so I had no choice but to make a special exception and accept them as guests.
“Normally, this is a reservation-only restaurant… but since I happen to have no guests at the moment, you can come and eat.”
“Oooh!”
The dwarves burst into another loud murmur.
Ironfoot offered me his blackened, dirty hand for a handshake.
“Good! Then lead the way, friend!”
* * *
The dwarves who had come from the rocky mountain filled the restaurant.
There were twelve of them in total.
I had never seen so many dwarves at once before, so it was quite the spectacle.
For the first time, my restaurant felt cramped.
Dwarves were short, but broad sideways.
Even sitting shoulder to shoulder, they filled the hall completely.
Aris looked at the scene through the kitchen window, her eyes round.
“Manager?! Who are those people?!”
“Dwarves. They suddenly popped out of the rocky mountain to the north.”
“What? From the rocky mountain?!”
“I’ll explain later. For now, we need to make a lot of food.”
The dwarves were noisy the entire time they waited for their meal.
They laughed, talked, and some even gambled by tossing gold coins on the table.
Ironfoot, who had called himself the foreman, had the loudest voice among them.
“Hey, you crazy bastard! You came all the way here and you’re gambling? No wonder your wife ran off!”
“Did my wife run off because of gambling? She ran off because she fell for some other bastard!”
“Isn’t that basically the same as gambling with your wife as the stake and losing?”
“Damn it! You’ve got a point! Hey, foreman! Since we’re on the subject, place a bet. Odd or even!”
“Odd, like your balls, you bastard!”
Listening to their jokes in the kitchen as they crossed the expected line, I let out a small laugh.
They were a bit rough, but they did not seem like bad people.
* * *
I did not decide on a specific menu.
I judged by the ingredients I had on hand.
The dwarves had spent the entire morning boring a tunnel.
Through that unbelievably massive rocky mountain, from underground.
It must have been tremendous heavy labor.
They needed food worthy of that.
I took out beef and sliced it thickly.
I rubbed salt and various spices evenly over the surface.
I heated a pan until it was scorching hot.
I poured in oil and laid the meat down.
Sssssssss—!
The sound of the meat’s surface searing deliciously filled the air.
I stir-fried vegetables.
I added butter and seasoned them with salt.
In a large pot, I boiled a warm soup.
A broth made by simmering bones, with root vegetables added.
It would normally need time to be properly extracted,
but with magic, I shortened the time needed for the bones to infuse into the broth.
As a result, it became an extremely rich, fatty, and warm bone soup.
It was a simple soup, seasoned only with salt and pepper,
but because I used the largest pot in the restaurant, there was an absurd amount of it.
I thought quantity would be important for dwarves exhausted from physical labor.
Two large chunks of meat on each plate.
Two slices of bread and stir-fried vegetables.
A bowl of rich, steaming hot bone broth.
Together with Aris, I began serving.
The moment the plates touched the tables,
the dwarves, who had been as loud as if they had swallowed a furnace, all fell silent at once.
Ironfoot, the foreman, was the first to pick up the meat.
He took a large bite of the meat first.
“…Kuh! This is killer!”
The rest of the dwarves all began eating as well.
For a while, the only sound in the hall was that of ravenous eating.
* * *
Dwarves who had suddenly appeared from the northern rocky mountain.
Around the time their eating speed slowed a little,
Ironfoot the foreman beckoned to me.
“Hey! Proprietor! Sit here for a moment.”
I sat across from him.
Then Ironfoot stroked down his beard and asked.
“Come to think of it, how should we pay for the meal?”
“Considering the cost of the ingredients used, it will be two hundred twenty thousand lira.”
“Mm? There’s no fixed price?”
“At our restaurant, the menu changes according to the guest. Originally, we make whatever dish the guest desires, but I didn’t expect a group like this to arrive, so I used almost all the ingredients I had.”
Two hundred twenty thousand lira.
It was not a small amount for a meal.
But twelve dwarves had crowded in and devoured nearly sixty servings’ worth of ingredients.
Thinking of it that way, it was a reasonable enough price.
“Mm, we don’t use lira. Sorry, but can we pay with this?”
Ironfoot rummaged through a pouch under his arm,
then placed a bag of gold coins on the table.
When I took it and looked at the coins inside,
they were completely different gold coins from the currency we used.
They had a much higher purity of gold, and judging by the faint trace of mana I could feel, other rare metals seemed to be mixed in as well.
Coins like these seemed as though their value as precious metal and ore would be higher than their value as currency.
Were these dwarves using such extravagant coins as ordinary everyday money?
“Yes, I think this will be more than enough for payment.”
I said, accepting the pouch of dwarven gold coins Ironfoot handed me.
Without exchanging them, I could not use them directly as money,
but even if I melted them down and sold them, their value seemed likely to exceed the price of the meal.
In any case, at my restaurant, what mattered was paying sincerely for the food, no matter what form the payment took.
“Ah! Is that so? That’s a relief!”
Ironfoot lifted the bowl of soup in his thick, hairy hand and slurped it down.
“By the way, food from the surface really does feel fresh. The taste is something special. It’s on a different level from what we eat underground. Our meals are, well, mostly hard and salty and things like that.”
“Do you mostly live underground?”
“That’s right.”
In truth, I had seen dwarves a few times before in the past.
There were dwarves who lived among human society, together with elves and other races.
But those were an extremely small minority of dwarves,
and it was my first time seeing so many true dwarves who had come up from underground right before my eyes.
Since I did not like crowdedness, I made it a rule not to accept group guests,
but because I was curious about the circumstances of these suddenly appearing dwarves, I made an exception this time.
Ironfoot continued speaking with hearty laughter.
“There are no fresh ingredients underground, you see. Mushrooms and root vegetables, that sort of thing. We do have meat, but well…”
Ironfoot took another bite of meat before continuing.
“Anyway, this is what surface food is like. It’s been a long time since I had a proper meal! Thank you!”
“A long time? Have you come to the surface before?”
Ironfoot’s expression changed for a moment.
“I have. Well, it was a long time ago.”
I did not press any further into that.
“By the way, why did you suddenly break through the rocky mountain?”
“Ah, that? Nothing much. We found a new mistral vein, you see. If we make an exit toward the surface, it’ll be easier to bring the ore up, and we figured we might as well open up some new trade with the surface while we’re at it. Our city is fairly large too, so there are a surprising number of things we need.”
“There’s a city beneath that rocky mountain…?”
“We’re guardians of the earth, after all. There’s quite a large city deep underground. We came from a place called Amberholt. Can you believe there’s a great fortress-like city where tens of thousands live beneath this land?”
Ironfoot proudly stroked his beard upward.
“Well, nothing has been decided yet regarding trade with the surface. For now, we thought we’d open the passage first and think afterward. Thanks to that, we’ve gained a good neighbor like this, haven’t we?”
The “good neighbor” he mentioned seemed to refer to me.
“Neighbor…”
“Of course! Of course! I liked the meal, so it shouldn’t be a problem if I come again next time, right? Ah, of course, I don’t mean I’ll drag all these gluttonous vermin along every time. I have no intention of being a nuisance to your business.”
At Ironfoot’s words, a playful shout came from one table.
“Who’re you calling vermin?!”
I had been wondering what I would do if he brought dozens of dwarves every time,
so I was grateful that he drew the line first without me having to say anything.
I took Ironfoot’s thick hand, which he offered to me.
Because of his grip strength, it felt as though the bones in my hand were shriveling.
“By the way.”
Ironfoot lowered his voice and leaned forward.
His eyes were sparkling, as if there was something he wanted to say.
“Do you like alcohol, by any chance?”
“I enjoy it occasionally.”
“Occasionally?”
Ironfoot made a displeased face.
“What do you mean, occasionally? Alcohol is something you drink every day. Anyway.”
He straightened up again and smoothed his beard with both hands.
“Since I ate good food, I thought I’d tell you something good in return.”
Feeling as though an interesting story was about to come,
I began listening closely to his words.
* * *