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“Wow!”

Lucella couldn’t help but exclaim when she entered the room.

While the group was staying in the royal capital, the lodging they chose was an apartment-type room close to the city center.

The room was so spacious you could even hold a practice match with swords, and it was polished like a jewel with not a hint of dust or scratches. It was also moderately filled with what looked like luxurious furniture.

You could go out straight to the balcony through the wide window, offering you a view of the royal capital’s townscape where buildings were packed together inside a wall as if floating in the river.

But the thing that captured Lucella’s attention the most was something that was hard to find in normal inns—the kitchen space.

“Amazing. I never knew there were inns that had kitchens with a magic stove…”

In the room was a stove that emitted fire without a need for firewood by just flipping the switch.

Most cities had magic power supply networks. They prepared Mana Mines by restrictively releasing the Regalia’s control on the natural world, then drew magic power from it and used it for daily life.

That said, inns normally used magic-powered lamps at most. Something like a fire-emitting cooking stove cost a lot, so you would rarely find it outside of grand mansions.

“We wouldn’t mind staying at a budget inn, but appearances matter when we’re in the capital,” Tim explained. “However, if we opt for luxurious accommodations, the staff becomes overly attentive, and it’s too sparkly for me to calm down. So, we prefer places like this to avoid all the glitz and glamor.”

Wein nodded in agreement. “Indeed, even this inn comes with a hefty price tag.”

Setting their luggage down, Tim and Wein proceeded to remove their armor with practiced ease.

Apparently, even this armored man didn’t keep wearing his armor in his daily life.

“I brought the ingredients for dinner… but can you cook, Lucella? I never asked.”

Viola only removed her tool belt and the rest of her appearance remained witch-like.

She put down a large paper bag on the kitchen table and took out more things from the storage bag. All of it was ingredients.

“I can! You can’t go on without knowing how to cook when it comes to outdoor activities.”
“Too naive. That’s not quite correct. When it comes to outdoor cooking, it’s normally things that simply restore stamina and can be cooked with few tools. That’s simple survival cooking, and it’s only falsely similar to actual cooking,” Viola said as she shook her finger and glinted her glasses.

“I assume Miss Kafal has no experience either.”
“I have… never tried cooking.”
“Figured as much,” nodded Viola in understanding.

For dragons, cooking was just an indulgence at best.

They sometimes employed demons as servants and made them cook, but that wouldn’t be enough to account for their giant bodies no matter how you looked at it.

Unlike humans who needed to know how to cook to survive, it was something outside of the daily life of dragons who just devoured their prey wildly.

Perhaps they did sprinkle some seasonings on their prey sometimes.

“In that case, this Viola will have to hold a cooking class for you now.”
“Could it be that you’re actually good at cooking?”

It might be a bit rude, but Lucella imagined her as someone who wouldn’t even dress properly and be reading books while subsisting on biscuits and such.

“So it’s unexpected, huh? When I was a kid, I never touched cooking, but one day, I resolved myself to learn everything that you need for living and put in the effort.”
“Her cooking’s actually something else. Even we trained under her.”
“I keep saying you don’t need to help me with it.”
“But I’ll feel bad if I don’t.”

Tim sighed for some reason.

“Let’s go with Setulev’s specialty, fish dumplings. Lucella, can you prepare the fish?”

Viola took out raw fish wrapped in waterproof paper from the storage bag in succession.

Living things couldn’t be put into the storage bag, so the fish should have been dead, but they looked so fresh it felt like they would start swimming if you put them into the water.

The black eyes of the fish seemed to be screaming ‘try to eat me if you dare’ at Lucella.

“I-I can do the whole roast.”
“Ahaha… Then since it’s a good opportunity, how about learning a bit? Miss Kafal, please chop these root vegetables into thick slices like this.”

She gave a simple task to Kafal who had no experience.

She took out a cutting board and demonstrated by chopping a root vegetable that could be eaten along with its skin into bite-sized slices, and then handed over the knife to her.

Kafal stared at the cooking knife for some time, and then stabbed it into the vegetable.

“Hah!”

And brought it down.

The blade split the vegetable into two and slammed into the board under it, but it still failed to endure Kafal’s excess power and snapped at the base.

Kafal swung the handle of the knife all the way down to her waist, but the blade was propelled away by the recoil and fell on the floor with a loud sound.

“…Holy–!”
“I-I Apologize!”

The broken blade almost stabbed Tim, barely dodging it by sticking to the wall.

“…It broke…”
“A kitchen knife isn’t something that cuts by putting power into it, but rather by pulling on it. I should’ve mentioned that beforehand…”
“Y-You’ve had such power in that body…”
“Can… adjust.”

Viola passed her another knife and this time Kafal started chopping it carefully.

“Lucella, you handle this.”

She put an impressive-looking fish before Lucella.

“When you want to remove the head, insert the knife from behind the gills… Yes, that’s it, you’re doing great. This time we’ll only be using the flesh, so let’s remove the entrails.”

Following her instructions, Lucella inserted the knife… but it didn’t go quite as smoothly, and the fish’s body and skin twisted and got dragged along by the knife, but she still managed to filet three slices of it.

Viola put the bony parts into the pot and tossed the rest of its body in a big bowl.

“Now we’re going to mince this.”
“Mom should be able to handle that much, right?”
“Will do it.”

Lucella was a little worried whether Kafal would break the bowl, but she seemed to have properly reflected on her previous mistake. She properly held back and ground and stirred the fish meat with the pestle, turning it into minced fish.

Adding seasonings and binding agents and kneading it into appropriately-sized lumps, it turned into a dumpling. Then another dumpling, and another dumpling.

The fish dumplings lined up one after another.

Lucella remembered having played making mud balls during childhood.

“Let’s make a soup out of half. As for the other half, let’s change the flavors a bit and grill them.”

Meanwhile, the vegetables were boiling in the soup made with fish stock.

They threw half of the dumplings into the soup while lining up the rest in a frying pan.

“Will grill!”
“Oh, we have an open fire now.”
“So that body could spit fire too…”

They ended up using Kafal’s breath to grill them instead of the stove.

It was incomparable to the breath of her real body, but the flames filled with dragon aura would add nourishment to the cuisine… probably.

Before long, the room was filled with a hunger-stimulating smell.

“Okay, done! I have to say, cooking is like torture in a way. You have to stare at the food while you’re hungry, after all.”
“You have a point.”

Men who couldn’t fit in the kitchen went and lined up the food at the table along with baguettes to at least be of some help.

Meanwhile, Lucella’s side soaked the bowl and the frying pan in water to prepare it for cleaning.

“Lucella. Remember… the first time?”
“The first time?”
“You ate…the meat… when I grilled it.”
“Ah…yeah, yeah I do!”

Speaking of cooking, Kafal didn’t do much cooking and whenever she brought meat, she just grilled it and gave it to Lucella, but initially she only learned to do that by pure coincidence.

“What are you two talking about?”
“Listen to this! When Mom first picked me up, she tried to feed me raw meat!”

Viola’s glasses glinted curiously, and Lucella recounted the events of that day’s ‘meal’.

“I ate it because I was on the brink of death, but I ended up vomiting it.”
“I… didn’t know… about humans… back then.”
“Yeah, that sounds… disastrous.”
“Even I can’t stand raw meat…”

Everyone smiled wryly.

It was just a funny story at this point. Lucella intentionally made it sound like a funny story.

Though she was about to tragically die then, she was still saved in the end, so she didn’t want Kafal to feel down about it.

The dishes on the table were steaming.

It was also thanks to Kafal that she would get to eat them today.

Author’s Note:

In the world of SaiDora (the abbreviation of the title), the natural world is rich with magical power, to the point that humans have to control it to make the environment habitable, but in exchange, magic power as a resource/fuel is available extremely cheaply. There are equipment costs and taxes, but the magical energy itself is almost free.

By the way, magic items and spells that store objects are not completely incapable of holding living creatures. They can hold creatures on the level of ants.

However, the interior of the storage which is turned into a subspace is similar to a vacuum (or vacuum-packed), and most living things that are placed inside die.

It is moderately useful for storing raw materials, but attention must be paid to the growth of anaerobic bacteria.

As an option, there are also storage items that can stop time for the contents placed inside (but they are expensive) and are suitable for storing raw materials. These are power techniques that can only be done because the storage destination is in a subspace.