89. Visitors from the wilderness

When the young nobles on the north shore gathered to eat cold wheat cakes, they didn't even light a campfire. It was hard to find even a few low bushes on the moor near the north shore here, and a campfire could not be sustained by dry clover leaves, but it seems that some people really could not stand the dry pastry and went into the meadows to collect stalks of dead grass, presumably to prepare something for supper, after all, at least a hot meal before nightfall, and it was still a cold night in the early spring in the moor.

Kurtz did manage to get some oil, for which he hunted a full-grown boar of over three hundred pounds and returned it savagely to camp with a piece of twine tied around its leg, which I found with only two arrow wounds, one right in the right eye socket after the boar had lost its right side of vision, and the latter directly between the lower two front legs of the neck and into the heart.

We set up a cauldron on the bank of the river, with a scroll of fire gathering magic underneath to bring the water to a rolling boil, and I somewhat helplessly shaved the thick fat off the boar's flesh and skin, throwing it into the cauldron with the two slabs of oil in its abdominal cavity, waiting for the hot water to boil dry, and the fat in this fat would slowly be? come out. This is what Kurtz had in mind for me, as he would have walked five or six kilometres to hunt a male boar for the sake of eating fried rabbit legs, and only wanted the fat from its body. The meat and oil came out.

Kig came running back from the meadow with glee to tell me that there was more blood-stopping grass than I could count, and that I could even find some kudzu and ninja. She was holding a piece of kudzu just dug out of the earth in her hand, and she kept shaking it in front of me and saying to me proudly, "Look! When I first saw this kudzu root, I thought it was very insignificant and dry, but I didn't expect it to be so big. Maybe I can use it to prepare a bottle of primary power potion when I take the magic potion master graduation exam."

Kudzu, an earth-attribute primary magic herb, can be formulated into a potion to make an earth-attribute magic potion. The orc herbal sheepskin scroll that old Kulu showed me clearly recorded the functions of kudzu root, and the scroll even described that the power magic potion made from kudzu root with a growth period of more than a hundred years could permanently increase the power attribute after processing. But even this primary potion is very expensive in the market, very popular among warriors, usually used in life-saving situations or during important missions or duels, and very precious.

I marinated the whole cutlet in salt and pepper and laid it aside on a washed and flattened pebble, the blood dripping slowly down the pebble into the river, where Kurtz lamentably threw all the boar's innards, bloody hide and hairy hideous head into the river. They were a pain to dispose of, and since the four of us couldn't eat them all, there was no point in keeping them, and the strong smell of blood might attract hyenas or wolves, so it would have been better to just throw them away. It's just that the river is so deep that these fish usually live in deep water, but it seems that the fish here have no sense of danger, so they are eating the offal of the animals that have been thrown in the river right under our noses, and if we didn't have enough food, I would have caught two of them and cooked them for a change.

"This is a paradise for beginner herbs, and even intermediate herbs can be found further in. Most of the hunters who have the means to cross the river don't see the beginner herbs here, they head deeper into the wilderness to find those intermediate herbs." Cuz crouched on the ground and was desperately fanning a pot lid against a pile of charcoal that had been turned into a pile of blackened charcoal only after the defeated boy Cuz had burned a piece of wood used to pitch his tent right into the water in order to get it. The boy really didn't care about anything for a bite to eat, claiming that he would sleep in the grass wrapped in a fur coat as long as he had something to eat.

Kiger was impressed, although she didn't have a good impression of Kurtz, perhaps because she was naturally a bit hostile towards orcs, which was a common problem among the Grimm Empire, thinking that orcs were country bumpkins who had never seen anything.

In the orc world, marrying a Skyfox girl would mean that their children would have the chance to learn magic and become the most respected shaman priests of the orc tribe, which led directly to the disappearance of the Skyfox tribe from the history books.

Then there was the reason for old Kulu's wary heart, and Kiger had always been hostile to Kuz. It was only after we formed a team together that Kiger's opinion of Kuz gradually changed. At this time, when she heard Kuz say that she could find intermediate magic herbs that were considered rare even in the Green Empire, she could not help but ask, "Can we find Heonan Grass, Flame Flower and Cold Ice Grass there?"

"Heather grass grows in the stone forests near the mountains, not here. I have not seen the flame flower, but I have heard it said that there is an entrance to the underworld in the wasteland, which leads to the underground castle of the grey dwarves, and that some flame flowers grow in that strip of ground. There is cold grass, but then we'd have to go completely through the hyena camps and meet lions, who are the natural hunters of the grasslands. If you're unlucky enough to meet a first-class magical beast, the scorpion-tailed lion, you must remember to drop all your cumbersome supplies and run as far away as you can!" Kurtz said as he placed the lit charcoal in an iron pot with a grate made of chopstick-thick steel wire.

The charcoal was placed on one side of the iron pot, the grate was placed in the pot, the marinated pork chops were placed on the other side of the grate, and the round lid was fastened, just waiting for the heat of the charcoal to smoke the marinated meat in the iron pot, which made a great roast with a smoky flavour.

Kig and Katrina had to wait on the sidelines, not helping at all. The dazzling cooking techniques that Kurtz and I were doing seemed so different that they were straight out of the orc tribe's secret cooking techniques, since the common orcs didn't know much about them! By this time the boar lard was simmering in another frying pan and I asked Katrina to help me get the drippings out and put them in a leather pocket. Kurtz liked the fatty drippings, they were crisp and tasty, and if you added a little salt to them they were easy to store and take on the road.

The rabbit meat was fished out of the river, cut into chunks half the size of my hand, marinated in seasoning, rolled in a layer of ground potato starch, rolled in black bread crumbs and put straight into the frying pan. Kig stood watching, her eyes shining, her nose sniffing the aroma and asking me if the meat that had just been put into the frying pan was cooked yet, and it was always true that a girl's mouth is the greediest.

At this point I was thinking to myself: we're a bunch of foodies, and even when the group that was chasing us was only a river away, what we did instead of running away was actually set up camp on the riverbank and went to the trouble of cooking ourselves a hearty meal, which was so heartless.

The rest of the pork leg was chopped up by Kurtz into patties, which were actually piled up like a mountain on a copper plate, and by now I was frying them together in a frying pan, turning them into flattened meatballs. At this time of year, the meat pies should last for three or five days and we can take them with us on the road, or when we stop somewhere, we can just boil a pot of water and put a few of the fried meatballs into it and it will easily turn into a delicious pot of braised meatballs, even better if we can pick some wild shepherds and put them in.

We spread a clean tablecloth on the grass by the river and laid out a delicious spread of food, from roasted and crispy wild boar chops, to golden fried pieces of hare, to a huge plate of meatballs, and Kiger even had Katrina warm up some wheat cakes, with a thick pork bone and wild vegetable soup simmering in a saucepan. As we sat down to share the food we'd been working on all afternoon, Kurtz's hairy ears twitched nimbly and his hand, which had been gripping a floppy cutlet, dropped to fumble with the alloy bow he'd set aside.

I could feel the fear in her heart and marvelled at the alertness of the beasts in the wild. I had brought them with me. Katrina sat down beside me and whispered, "There's someone coming!"

My first thought was that the noblemen had suddenly found a way to cross the river! But it immediately occurred to me that it couldn't be, because Kurtz and Katrina were looking not in the direction of the north bank of the river, but in the direction of the meadow to the south. I followed their gaze and saw a dragon racing across the horizon under a blue sky, its pale green scales reflecting brightly in the sun, and a tall figure sitting in a leather saddle on its back, the reins in one hand and a hand on its leg.

I had seen the two-metre-tall Zorosaurus in the market in Yemen, a rare land creature of untamed temperament, with wings that had degenerated to the point where they looked like two faded chicken wings and long, strong legs that were said to be able to leap up to a dozen metres in one bound. And according to Kurtz, only powerful warriors would dare to ride such a fierce mount. The way the dragon was running, we decided that it was running straight towards us, and a few of us didn't know what to do with such a strong person who dared to walk alone in the wilderness.

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