“Uuugh, ueeek...”
“Good grief... Are you all right? Here, drink some water.”
“Th-thanks... Hic.”
Gulp—gulp—
“Puhah! Ugh...”
“I told you you should’ve drunk in moderation.”
“Sorry...”
It was afternoon, the sun already past its zenith and sinking lower.
I was cleaning up after Ailenna, who had drunk herself into a stupor since morning and collapsed.
Up until she was eating the tart while making strange noises, I’d thought, Well, Iseria was like that too, so maybe this is just the average elf.
But once she started eating it with wine, she completely lost the plot.
Her eyes changed, and she began downing wine in one shot after another like it was soju.
People tended to think of wine as a weak drink, but that was completely wrong.
Well, of course it was weak compared to distilled liquor like vodka or whiskey.
But among fermented alcohols, wine was actually fairly high in alcohol content.
Normally it ranged from 12 to 15 percent, and fortified wine could go all the way up to 22 percent.
Korean diluted soju, cheap and high in alcohol content, was 16 or 21 percent.
So Koreans, who commonly drank that kind of alcohol, might think of wine as weak.
However, there was one blind spot here.
The difference in glass size.
Even filled to the brim, a soju glass barely held 60 ml, while the standard serving for a wine glass was 150 ml.
If you drank comfortably at home and filled it full, you could pour in up to 300 ml at once.
Drinking a 15 percent alcohol, only one degree lower than soju, in servings about three times larger, and downing them one after another?
‘It’d be stranger not to get drunk.’
People who were bad with alcohol, called lightweights and so on.
Even if you weren’t one of those people, you had no choice but to get drunk.
“Lady Ailenna. Can you hold your liquor?”
“No... I’m weak.”
“Ugh, you absolute lightweight. And yet you somehow managed to make wine?”
“Tasting... is only a little at a time... Ugh!”
Ailenna, who woke up after roughly five hours, was suffering from a hangover.
Fermented alcohol tended to give worse hangovers than distilled alcohol, and since someone who couldn’t even drink had drunk like that, it made sense she’d be in bad shape.
No, but still. If she knew she was weak to alcohol, why had she drunk like that?
Having unintentionally wasted the entire morning, and now spending the afternoon like this too, was a bit frustrating.
I asked Ailenna.
“You knew you were weak to alcohol, so why did you drink so recklessly...?”
“Sorry. Jinwoo, the tart you made was just too delicious...”
Great Jinwoo! Is it you again!
Once again, without fail, it was the aftermath of my cooking.
Still, with this dish, I could understand Ailenna’s heavy drinking a little.
Before she emptied the whole bottle of wine, there was the portion she had poured for me first.
When I ate it together with the peach tart, it perfectly satisfied the disappointment I’d felt last time with the pairing.
The tart’s three kicks.
The refreshing lemon custard cream, the fragrant herb extract, and the sweet honey had been incredibly exquisite.
Especially that honey.
In order not to be overshadowed by Ailenna’s wine,
I thought it needed a viscous sweetness that would bind the tart together.
The honey had more than fulfilled that role.
For Ailenna, who had been making wine for a long time, pairing it with fruit had been the best option.
To her, this peach tart probably didn’t simply mean “a snack that goes well with wine.”
It was the satisfaction of a flavor she had never been able to fulfill until now.
It was a new horizon of taste beyond her narrow world.
And it was the moment she vividly felt the potential of her wine, “Eseriel.”
I looked at Ailenna, lying on the sofa with only a thin blanket draped over her.
Her stomach must have hurt quite a bit, because her face was deeply scrunched up and she retched intermittently.
When you were sick from alcohol, all you could do was replenish fluids and lie quietly to rest.
What I could do for her was...
‘Hmm, honey water and... tomato soup?’
Most people had probably experienced the power of honey water when suffering from a severe hangover.
But tomato soup? Huh?
It might seem like a completely random menu all of a sudden,
but in Europe, tomato soup was a common hangover food.
It had the same position as hangover soup in our country. If someone looked ghastly and was slurping down hangover soup first thing in the morning,
you’d think, ‘That guy definitely drank last night,’ wouldn’t you?
Europe was the same.
There was even a saying that someone who gulped down tomato soup from morning had been dead drunk the day before.
“If you can sleep, just sleep. If you can’t, at least keep your eyes closed.”
“Yeah, sorry... Are you going now?”
“Yes, well... I’ll be going soon.”
“Okay. Ugh... sob!”
“What? Why are you crying all of a sudden?”
I urged Ailenna to get some sleep.
She seemed to answer halfheartedly, then suddenly started sniffling and shedding tears.
Ah, I was a little weak when it came to emotional situations like this.
Sniff—
Sniffle—
After crying for a while, Ailenna seemed to calm down a little and opened her mouth.
“Sniff, sorry. I’m just... so pathetic. Sob.”
“Why? Nothing much happened.”
“But... I’m still an elf. An elf who’s lived far longer than you, Jinwoo... but I know less than you, and I can’t even control my drinking, so I’m being nursed...”
“Mhm, that is true.”
“Huuueek! But even so, you made me a tart... and praised my house. Thank youuu...”
By the end, Ailenna couldn’t even speak properly.
Usually, she carried herself with a strong aura, and since she was tall, she had a very intimidating presence.
But now that she was sick, the rebound seemed to hit that much harder.
Her language ability had gone slightly mushy, like an eight-year-old child suffering from a high fever.
A gap-moe event with a strong-willed elf big sister? This was a little...
‘This doesn’t feel good.’
She must have lived a long life as an elf, so how lonely must she have been to show this side of herself to me, a human?
Nuarudel, where gastronomy had been destroyed.
Ailenna, who had been making high-quality wine all alone here—her loneliness hit me deeply.
“Phew...”
“Huh, she fell asleep again all of a sudden.”
I’d been thinking silently for a moment, and Ailenna must have worn herself out, because she had fallen into a light sleep.
This was actually more convenient.
‘I should hurry and make it before I leave.’
It wasn’t like I was going to stay here until evening,
and I had to go back to the mansion and train the apprentice elves too.
I entered the kitchen of Ailenna’s house.
As expected of an elf who at least knew taste, the necessary cooking tools and basic ingredients were prepared.
Over about thirty minutes, I quickly made tomato soup and honey water,
then left a note so she would know as soon as she woke up.
[Eat this when you wake up.]
‘This should be enough, right?’
I glanced at the clock in the corner of the room, and the time was roughly 4 p.m...
Even if I didn’t hurry back, I could make it in time for dinner.
I carefully, carefully left the house so Ailenna wouldn’t wake up.
Somehow... it felt like the day had flown by in an instant.
Without taking any detours, I returned straight to the mansion.
And... that night.
On the outskirts of Nuarudel, at the Liliendra family winery.
‘Kyaaaah!!! Die, die!! Ailenna, you idiot!!!’
The fact that the self-mocking screams of a female elf writhing in shame could be heard...
was something Kang Jinwoo had no way of knowing.
***
Two days after Arthur and Kailan realized Kang Jinwoo had gone missing.
Amid the confusion of the murmuring crowd, the 1st Platoon of the Silbaerin Knights left the city.
Their destination was the place where Kang Jinwoo’s restaurant was located: Calian Forest.
If Kailan had his way, the very day they realized he had gone missing,
he would have launched a search operation immediately.
But there had been work piled up that had to be handled first.
And... they also needed to leave a grace period of about a day to confirm whether Kang Jinwoo was truly missing or not.
Judging by the scene, something had clearly happened, but still, just in case.
And as a result of a day’s investigation, they became certain it was a disappearance.
They questioned people in the village closest to Calian Forest, and thoroughly searched the area around his restaurant.
Yet not only Kang Jinwoo, but even the tiny elf who accompanied him, Iseria, could not be found.
Kailan ultimately judged that Kang Jinwoo had been kidnapped, or was under a comparable threat to his person.
Now that he had dealt with every urgent matter, he launched the “Kang Jinwoo Search Operation” together with the members of the 1st Platoon.
The faces of all the troops were coldly stiff, with a solemnity incomparable even to the monster wave.
Every single one of them was fully equipped, and Arthur, who had recently even completed his administrative registration as a Sword Expert, was there.
And Kailan, the greatest fighting force of the Silbaerin Duchy, had joined in with weapon in hand.
It was proof of just how much influence the honorary supply officer Kang Jinwoo had had on the Silbaerin Knights.
They conducted their investigation with a much wider search radius than the brief investigation last time.
Their base was Kang Jinwoo’s restaurant, [Picky Eating].
Of course, they did not use the inside of the building, and only set up tents in the yard.
“I will report. Within a 10-kilometer radius centered on the honorary supply officer’s restaurant, we were unable to find anything.”
“Ahem... Is that so? I’m not doubting you, but you searched thoroughly, yes?”
“Yes! We checked as if combing for rats, in proportion to the grace the supply officer showed us! However...”
“I understand. You’ve worked hard. Tell the troops to rest.”
“Yes, sir!”
Luke, the leader of the 1st Squad of the 1st Platoon, who had reported the search results, left the tent.
After waiting until Luke was completely far away, Kailan let out a deep sigh.
“Phew... This won’t be easy.”
“I truly don’t know what has happened all of a sudden... I only hope Sir Jinwoo is safe.”
“Indeed.”
Arthur, commander of the 1st Platoon and the command officer of the search operation alongside Kailan, looked at the map on the field table.
The Calian Mountain Range stretched long to the east.
If it were only long, that would have been somewhat better, but the Calian Mountain Range was unusually thick as well.
Calian Forest was still imperial territory, so magical beasts were regularly subjugated and patrols conducted.
But beyond that was outside the Empire’s domain.
The imperial border lay roughly 10 kilometers away from Calian Forest.
Once one reached that boundary, the form of the forest changed abruptly.
It was already a dark forest, packed densely with overgrown trees,
but once you crossed the boundary, a whitish mist began to settle in.
Not only the mist, but the forest’s ecosystem itself grew larger and more hostile.
It was a warning from the elven country of Nuarudel, telling others not to come any closer.
To be precise, it was a protective system exerted by the World Tree to protect the elves.
Arthur and Kailan had no way of not knowing that fact.
That was why their worries only deepened all the more.
“The elf who used to accompany Sir Jinwoo, Iseria, disappeared together with him, did she not? This is...”
“Yes. Since we couldn’t find any trace in the city or the villages at all, it’s reasonable to conclude they went in the opposite direction, toward Nuarudel.”
It was one of the options they had wanted to avoid as much as possible, and yet, unfortunately, it seemed to be the correct answer.
However, Kailan had inwardly suspected as much.
Two days ago, when he had gone with Arthur to eat banquet noodles and realized Kang Jinwoo had disappeared.
Kailan had swept through Kang Jinwoo’s entire house with his own mana.
Like ripples spreading across the surface of a calm lake, the waves of mana flowed steadily.
Then, at that moment, there had been a point where the waves were disturbed, as if blocked by a protruding rock.
That place was none other than the innermost room on the second floor of the restaurant.
If the elf named Iseria had also been given a room, then excluding Kang Jinwoo’s room, there was only one room left.
On the bedding in that corner room, there were traces that resisted Kailan’s mana.
According to what he had heard before from his daughter, Isilla, Kang Jinwoo did not run lodging.
Immediately after the wave ended, he had been busy and could not visit often, but he had gone once.
At that time, there had been no one like a lodger at Kang Jinwoo’s restaurant.
Kang Jinwoo, who had suddenly disappeared, and someone who began lodging there not long before he disappeared.
And even the elf who had accompanied him, Iseria.
It did not seem possible for the young elf Iseria to have kidnapped Kang Jinwoo alone.
Thus, the conclusion.
“The ones who kidnapped Kang Jinwoo were likely the elf named Iseria and other elves.”
“Yes. It seems so. A human cannot remain safe in elven territory, and aside from faint bloodstains on the floor, there were no other signs of a struggle... so she may have been an accomplice.”
“This has become troublesome.”
Still, they could not give up.
Kang Jinwoo, the black-haired Easterner who had suddenly appeared in Silbaerin.
The fact that Arthur had advanced in realm after eating the food he made was a secret known only to a few.
Kailan himself had also felt a slight increase in strength.
On top of that, he had reformed all the meal menus of the knights.
He had even turned that dreadful combat ration, hardtack, into something with an excellent taste.
According to Callius, who had returned from his trade journey not long ago,
the higher-class version of that hardtack, “Barren Snowflakes,” was also gaining great popularity in the capital.
He had now become someone this city could not do without.
And...
‘Banquet noodles. I can’t lose them.’
He was the only man capable of making Duke Kailan’s number one pick, banquet noodles.
“Tomorrow, as soon as dawn breaks, we will assemble the elites and depart.”
“Pardon? Depart where, sir?”
“Where else?”
Duke Kailan smiled broadly.
The moment Arthur saw that smile, a chilling cold ran down his spine.
“They kidnapped our chef, so naturally, they must pay the price. Those elf bastards.”
Kailan.
The man called the coldest wall of the Empire.
At Kailan’s words, which were almost a declaration, Arthur recalled his old epithet.
The name everyone in the Empire feared, and which rumor said had even stood against a Sword Master.
‘Kailan Silbaerin, the Mad Spear of the Bitter Cold...’
Silbaerin and Nuarudel.
The thread-thin peace that had long endured between the two began to break as the clouds of war gathered.