Chapter 3 – Story 85: Sweet Bean Jelly
<– Previous Chapter | ToC | Glossary | Next Chapter –>
“Marco, how is the unit doing?”
The place Souma was currently visiting during his inspection tour together with Shyemul was the temporary field kitchen where people in white robes were darting around between the pots placed on hearths and tables. When Souma called out to him, Marco was just stirring a remarkably big pot while sweating.
He stopped his hands and turned around.
“Oh, Lord Soma. We’re doing very well over here. Everyone has been praising our food for being absolutely delicious after all.” Then he asked a person nearby, “Bring that.”
After a short while the subordinate brought back the same, yellowish-brown, block-shaped food that Adomius ate earlier. Marco handed it to Souma, introducing it as the newest piece of work.
Without any hesitation whatsoever, Souma sunk his teeth into the block.
“Oh, yeah. It’s sweet and tasty bean jelly indeed.”
Adding sugar and honey to beans, which had been turned into a paste beforehand, the mass was boiled skillfully and then solidified with vegetable gelatin, resulting in sweet bean jelly.
However, because Souma hadn’t discovered adzuki beans in the world over here, he had to substitute them with another sweet bean. For this reason, the color was a faint yellowish-brown. Yet, it wasn’t wrong to call this sweet bean jelly, nonetheless.
“It’s quite close to the bean jelly I know.”
Souma believed this to be a raving review, but Marco commented with a snort, “Close means it’s still not there, huh?”, and encouraged himself to further improve the bean jelly. As usual, he knew no limits whenever it came to food-related matters.
As he wryly smiled at Marco’s response, stabbing looks focused on Souma. Once he looked around him, the people were warning him with their eyes to not say anything unnecessary as they busily went about their work around Marco. Souma had no choice but to apologize for this in silence.
They were members of Marco’s newly formed unit. In the first place, Marco was Souma’s personal cook. However, because Souma insisted on eating the same as the common soldiers during war time, Marco didn’t have anything to do. Currently he was inside the encampment that was trying to take Luoma because he had been leading a certain unit.
It was a special unit consisting of experts on provisions among the supply corps which had been transporting provisions and materials to the front. Their unit had been dubbed as Fleet Supply Unit. 1
Everyone belonging to that unit was a cook. But, they didn’t cook food like the provision balls which were consumed commonly by the soldiers. Their field of work was indulgent food like pastry.
The mission given to this unit was the recognition of the soldiers’ services.
Even if this might be an era where battle was regarded as commendable, the battlefield, where you’d kill people and might get killed yourself, forced the soldiers to constantly remain in a state of heightened tension and alert. Anyone staying for an extended period in such a place would naturally accumulate stress and sooner or later reach their limit.
Hence, it was necessary to regularly allow the soldiers to relax their tense nerves and release their accumulated stress to avoid them breaking down. Accordingly Souma had come up with the idea to produce tasty sweets to provide to the soldiers at the front.
The fleet supply unit was the one tasked with this.
At first, Marco’s unit was met with a lot of skepticism, even by Garam, the Great Clan Chief of the zoan. And Zurgu opined that it might be better to give meat and booze to the warriors.
But, Marco’s fleet supply unit received excessive praise by many soldiers, including zoan warriors. Every day, long lines of soldiers wanting some sweets were forming in front of Marco’s unit, and often it developed into fierce arguments. At some point, when the soldiers started to use the sweets as substitutes for coins, genuine quarrels broke out between the men, forcing Souma to release an official proclamation, informing everyone that the units with the biggest achievements on the day before would receive sweets preferentially.
Nowadays, the whole army would be watching closely with bated breaths which units would be visited by Marco’s supply unit whenever the time for food distribution came around. And depending on the outcome, cries of joy or grief would fill the encampment.
Garam and Zurgu, who had protested against this, eventually gave up altogether and even Souma was flabbergasted, stating that he didn’t expect the impact of the sweets to be so big.
But, it’s said that even the sober and straight navy officers on the Supply Fleet Ship 「Mamiya」, which represented the original idea behind Marco’s fleet supply unit, scrambled with frenzy in their eyes to get their hands on the superb sweet bean jelly produced on the ship, so you could say that this outcome was only natural in a certain sense.
“Hey, Soma, I’ll admit that it’s delicious, but can you really take a city with sweets?” Shyemul asked while chewing on the jelly she had been offered at the same time as Souma.
Souma nodded, “That’s my intention.”
This time Souma had assigned the special mission of capturing Luoma to Marco’s unit.
At first, Souma’s capture of Luoma was about blaming Alexius, advertising how gently his side was treating their prisoners of war, and inducing betrayal and alienation among the city residents, just as Adomius had estimated. And just when he planned to release a part of the prisoners as part of his overall plan to win over the city’s residents, the prisoners suddenly started to refuse their release.
Even Souma was surprised by this. Holmea should denounce them as savage zoan and revolting slaves. Logically it was weird of the Holmean prisoners to say that they wanted to stay with Souma’s army.
Having his interest piqued by that, Souma directly talked with the representative of the prisoners, just to learn something totally unexpected.
“The food over here is great.”
This was the reason for the prisoners to refuse their own release. However, although Souma didn’t plan to abuse or torture the prisoners, it wasn’t as though he was treating them overly well either. The meals provided to them were the same porridge of provision balls Souma and his men were eating as well.
Yet, the prisoners loved that porridge. Souma considered that to be surprising, but the reason for that stemmed from Souma himself. He was quite simple for a ruler of this era.
In this epoch of feudalism where the tyranny of those in power was seen as normal, it wasn’t unusual for authorities to use their money and influence to indulge in every possible luxury. Even Mythos, who was known as a good and smart lord, kept several concubines and the furnishings around him as well as his clothes were all extravagant so that his authority would be clear to anyone.
However, Souma was different. Probably because he had been born into an ordinary family in modern Japan, he preferred a frugal lifestyle and wasn’t familiar with indulging in luxury.
Even though he had invested huge amounts of money on the parlor where he’d receive guests, his own room was the complete opposite. Saying that he wouldn’t be able to calm down in a spacious room, he deliberately divided the big room of the previous lord Viltas into smaller compartments and used one of those. Saying that he was scared to dirty or damage the furnishing inside that room, he opted for things that had become dirty and worn-down from long use.
Moreover, the same applied to his clothes. Of course, even Souma would put on a proper attire whenever he was receiving guests, but usually he’d wear the zoan-style clothes which he received from Shyemul five years ago, saying that those were easier to move in.
Naturally those clothes would get torn and frayed at various places after five years of continuous wear. But, without minding that, Souma kept wearing them. On top of that, the necklace he had received from the young zoan Jeeta and Shyepoma, which didn’t look elegant by any standard, was hanging from his neck.
In short, no one seeing his appearance would expect him to be the lord of Bolnis, a city which was continuing to amass dazzling riches.
There was a funny story being secretly passed on between the court ladies of Bolnis: A court lady who had just recently joined chased Souma out his room, later telling her coworkers, “There was a shabby-looking guy inside the lord’s room.” But, once she was told that this had actually been Souma, she became ghastly pale and fainted.
But, this incarnation of frugality as a lord had one obsession for which he didn’t spare any money ―― the research of food.
As might be expected, he was forbidden to experiment with something that would stink badly like the failed natto attempts, but because food research would also benefit other people, a lot was overlooked as “Lord Soma’s sole hobby.”
Thanks to these favorable circumstances, Souma invested quite a bit of passion and money into the research and development of new dishes. Furthermore, the one dealing with the actual improvements was Marco who exceeded Souma in being a glutton.
This heretic boy, who simply wished to eat and have others eat delicious food, was able to capitalize on his ability to the maximum because he had gained the best possible patron with Souma in this world, which assessed food to be fine as long as it sated one’s hunger.
Because of these two food maniacs, the cuisine in Bolnis had developed much more than in other places. And when it came to the army’s provisions, which directly profited from the achievements of those two, there was no need to talk about the height of the provisions’ standard.
“To begin with, soldiers are often having trouble with food. On top of the prince having done something so stupid, they were able to eat delicious food over here, so I think it’s only natural for people to have taken a liking to this place.”
Just as Souma said, several of Luoma’s guards had already sneaked out of the city and surrendered to them. But, even after knowing this much, Shyemul still didn’t seem to be convinced.
“That makes sense, but isn’t the number of people you can win over with food rather limited?”
Where a big city like Luoma was concerned, you would find some people who prioritize their own desires over loyalty. But, Shyemul couldn’t imagine that enough people to make the city surrender would appear with this method.
“I guess you’re right. ――For this reason, I had them prepare this.”
Souma pointed at his half-eaten sweet jelly bean.
“Just as you have ordered, Lord Soma, we have preferentially created yohkan. But, the others still can’t make them as well as I can, so we cannot produce them in big numbers yet.” 2
Souma nodded at Marco implicitly bragging about him being the only one currently capable of preparing sweet bean jelly.
“That’s fine. With the sugar and gelatin not delivered, you’re likely lacking ingredients anyway, right?”
Seaweed, which closely resembled red algae, the main ingredient for gelatin, had become easier to obtain thanks to the friendly relationship Souma built with the marmen, but sugar wasn’t produced in the West, making its procurement difficult.
But, thinking of it as an investment into sugar-based sweets that hadn’t been around thus far, such as ice cream, Yoash had sent a considerable amount of sugar to Souma through his family’s Shapiro company. Souma expected that Yoash would be able to handle it one way or another, if he asked him for more.
If he had to mention a problem with this solution, it’d be the fact of Yoash demanding the recipe for sweet bean jelly as payment for the sugar.
“However, Soma, you won’t be able to win over all the people in the city if you can only produce this much, will you?”
Shyemul believed the number of bean jelly was far too lacking, if Souma planned to win over the enemy by using the jelly. Once she pointed that out, Souma became dumbfounded.
“I’m not planning to try to win them over with the bean jelly, you know?”
“No?”
Souma smiled lightly at Shyemul, who clearly expected him to use the sweets as bait to win over the citizens, and said, “I intend to use it as coercion instead.”
“Coercion? Isn’t that what’s being done to you?”
Souma groaned while being at a loss for words.
When speaking of sweets on Seldeas, people usually meant baked sweats made out of wheat. Sweet bean jelly, which possessed a strange elasticity and softness, was a novelty for many people. Because of that, it was the most popular pastry of Marco’s supply unit, just as it had been the most popular on the Supply Fleet Ship 「Mamiya」.
But, because lately many of the produced bean jellies were preferentially sent as souvenirs to the city through the soldiers who had surrendered, the share available to Souma’s army had been decreased. Due to that, the elven girls Ilza, Nina, and Paula, who were serving as apprentice court ladies, had become sulky, complaining that they wanted a lot more sweet bean jelly.
Souma pulled himself together by intentionally coughing and then continued, “For normal people it’s just a sweet and unusual pastry, but I’m sure anyone with a bit of wit will quickly realize.”
And then Souma revealed an evil smile.
“That their own perception had been too lacking.”
<– Previous Chapter | ToC | Glossary | Next Chapter –>
Translation Notes: