Prau, the mage from the North.
And Topliya, the last dish her master had made before death.
Having accepted the order on the condition that I would receive Prau’s cooperation in finding the target flavor, I decided to properly figure out what exactly this dish called Topliya was.
Prau would be staying in a village near the restaurant to wait.
Though it was called a nearby village, it was still a full day’s carriage ride from here.
In any case, whenever a taste test for the Topliya was needed, I would send a courier bird; Prau had promised to come to the restaurant without fail, taste the Topliya, and give feedback.
“Hmm… It won’t be easy to get down there as is.”
I was looking inside the warehouse next to the restaurant, which was piled high with all sorts of junk.
Beneath the warehouse was an underground room that had been built as a precaution when constructing this restaurant.
It was where I stored the numerous items I had obtained during my adventurer days, along with cooking-related books.
Truthfully, I had thought about throwing away most of the items since they were useless now that I was retiring, but…
It felt like a waste to sell or throw them away, so I had built a large basement and stuffed everything inside.
“Uh… Are you looking for something?”
Aris approached me as I stared into the warehouse and asked.
“You’re just in time. Clean up the warehouse.”
“Huh? Here?”
“Yeah, it’s because things were just shoved in haphazardly. If you organize them properly, you’ll see a door on the floor.”
The inside of the warehouse was truly a sight, as if a bomb had gone off.
Discarded furniture, trash, unidentified artifacts, weapons, armor, and more were all mixed together.
The warehouse was fairly large too, so it looked like organizing it would take quite a while.
“You mean… me, alone…?”
“First, take everything out of the warehouse. Then stack them from the very back like you’re playing Tetris, and it should work out somehow.”
“Te… Tetris? What’s that?”
“Uh… Anyway, just think of it like putting together a puzzle.”
I pushed the dejected and bewildered Aris toward the warehouse.
“Boss~! You’re a mage, boss. Can’t you quickly sort it out with magic, swish! Swish!”
“I don’t know magic like that. I’ll help bit by bit too, so hurry up and work! We don’t have time!”
“Uuugh…….”
Aris moved while fidgeting, openly showing her reluctance.
But it was true that I couldn’t use magic to organize things.
I was certainly an outstanding mage who had reached the ranks of archmages.
But all mages had a specific field they excelled in.
In this world, “magic” was realized in reality through the “conceptualization” of mana.
Conceptualization of mana, in simple terms, was the ability to materialize one’s imagination by infusing it with mana.
That was why it was difficult for mages to use magic in fields they were unfamiliar with or had little interest in.
Just as the fields suitable to one’s aptitude and interests differed from person to person,
magic also couldn’t be conceptualized if it was far from one’s field, making it either impossible to realize or terribly inefficient.
In my case, if I thought of magic that could be used for cooking, conceptualization was incredibly easy.
The reason elemental magic had become my main magic was that elemental magic was the most broadly useful magic for cooking.
But magic for organizing a warehouse?
Even in my previous life, I had no interest whatsoever in housecleaning or organizing.
Of course, I usually cleaned the shop or put away kitchen utensils after using them right away, but
somehow, this felt different from that.
“Uuugh-! Uuugh-!”
“What is this box again? Did I ever put something like this in the warehouse?”
“Hey-! Boss! It’s heavy!”
“You’re a ghost. You won’t die even if you get crushed, so it’s fine.”
“Auuu-!”
Aris dragged a chest of drawers roughly her own size and came outside the warehouse.
I also slowly cleared away the piled junk,
helping clean the warehouse until the door leading to the basement appeared.
“Hmm… I guess I really should have thrown some things away.”
Several hours had passed since we started cleaning the warehouse.
The warehouse, which had been an utter disaster zone, was now completely empty,
and outside the warehouse, the items we had taken out were piled up like a mountain.
“Good, you stack them up neatly from the inside again. I’m going down to the basement for a moment.”
“If you’re going to make me do this kind of work, shouldn’t you at least give me a snack or something?”
“I’ll serve you as much dinner as you want later.”
Though she complained like that about how hard it was, a ghost was a ghost after all.
Even after working continuously for several hours, there was no sign of her body tiring.
An ordinary person would collapse after this much physical labor,
but though Aris complained with words that it was hard, her body moved without any problem.
“Anyway, I’ll be down for a bit.”
“Uuu… Okaaay…….”
I opened the door on the warehouse floor and went down.
It was the first time I had gone down to the basement since I first built this restaurant building.
“Puhuk! Kehk! Kehk!”
When I stepped down into the basement rather hard, dust rose up and made me cough.
But it had to be somewhere in here.
The book on famous regional dishes…….
“Light.”
The inside was too dark, so I illuminated the interior with magic.
In a corner of the musty-smelling basement,
I found what I was looking for inside a bookshelf propped roughly against the wall.
“Found it. ‘30 Selected Famous Regional Dishes: Northern Continent Edition’”
If Topliya was a common home-cooked meal as Prau had said, it was sure to be recorded here.
I flipped through the pages while standing, looking for Topliya.
And when I had turned about halfway through the book.
“Good thing I didn’t throw it away after all.”
There it was.
The recipe for Topliya, a traditional Northern home-cooked meal.
The book introduced how to make Topliya along with a colored illustration.
At a glance, it seemed like a meat stew eaten in cold regions.
Among the dishes I knew, it had many similarities to borscht, a Russian dish.
“Tomatoes and Northern breed beef… Aroma from Elmont and Tallis leaves… Hmm, hmm…….”
As long as the ingredients were gathered, it was a pot dish that wasn’t difficult to make.
There were a few spice names I was hearing for the first time, but I should be able to get them at a large market.
Good, now shall I make the basic Topliya with this, have Prau taste it, and get some feedback?
As I packed up the recipe book and tried to go back up to the warehouse above ground…….
“……Huh?”
Clunk, clunk.
The door in the ceiling wouldn’t open even when I pushed.
It wasn’t locked, but I felt like something heavy was pressing down on it.
No way…….
“Hey! Aris! Hey! What did you put on top of the door! Hey! Can you hear me!”
When I banged on the ceiling door and shouted,
after a moment, Aris’s flustered voice came through.
“Ah! Ah… I was organizing the warehouse like you told me to! Ah! Aaaah!”
“But what are you doing blocking the door! Are you trying to lock me in the basement to die!”
“I-I’m sorry!”
After a short while, I heard Aris hurriedly moving something with grunts,
and only after waiting several minutes was I able to come out of the basement.
* * *
A lump of ice glittered prettily in her neatly cupped palms.
“Master…….”
In a room at an inn, Prau gazed at the ice containing chunks of Topliya meat.
The restaurant she had found this time felt definitely different from those up until now.
She had visited all the famous restaurants in each region
and asked the chefs to perfectly reproduce her master’s Topliya.
Because the chunks of meat in the ice had been flash-frozen by magic,
if melted properly, she would be able to taste the dearly missed meat inside that Topliya exactly as it had been.
But once it was thawed, freezing it again could not restore it to its previous state.
The reason Prau had told the chefs to put their lives on the line was
that she was afraid they might half-heartedly accept the order just for the money and cause her to lose these precious chunks of Topliya meat.
But that chef named Claus said he didn’t need this right now.
To reproduce the perfect Topliya of her master that Prau wanted,
he said that advice relying on Prau’s memory was more important than the meat sealed within this ice.
It had been a long journey.
During her travels, not once had Prau forgotten the taste of her master’s Topliya.
Her master was the one who had taken her in, an orphan, as a newborn and raised her to become a mage; she was her foster mother.
But truthfully, Prau did not have very good memories of such a master.
Her master had been a figure of fear called the “Ice Witch” in the Northern Continent.
People would not even approach the tower where the Ice Witch lived,
and because of that, Prau had lived trapped in the tower without a single friend since she was young.
The Ice Witch was a powerful mage, but her personality was cold and eccentric.
From around the time Prau learned to speak and had just started walking, she was constantly scolded by her master.
—Prau! I told you to memorize this spellbook by today!
—What are you doing! Prau! You stupid girl!
—You can’t even do such a simple magic properly? You!
The master never laid a hand on Prau, but
she berated her daily to a degree that would be considered harsh for a child.
After she had grown a bit, she had even thought about running away from the tower, but
she didn’t dare because she had no confidence she would be safe if she ran away.
They had been days of desperately struggling, crying sorrowfully every day to somehow be scolded less.
But no matter how much her magical skills grew,
no matter what she did or how hard she tried, Prau could not receive praise from her master.
The only comfort during those days had been her master’s Topliya.
It had not been particularly delicious.
But it was a taste that remained intensely in her memory.
Prau had always waited for her master’s Topliya that was served once a week at dinner.
Because at least while eating it, her master wouldn’t berate or scold her.
“…….”
Having gazed at the lump of ice for a long while, Prau put it back inside her travel bag.
And the moment she tried to lie down on the bed,
a pigeon came through the window carrying a note in its beak.
It was none other than a messenger bird sent from the fine dining restaurant Slow.
[Come the day after tomorrow to taste the first Topliya.]
It seemed the first Topliya was already prepared.
Prau wrote a reply on the back of the note and sent the pigeon back.
And feeling her heart pound, she lay down on the bed.
* * *