How the Prince Makes Friends Chapter 90

“KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

“……”

Evan froze on the spot. He felt that if he moved even a little, the girl in front of him might faint. After all, she had screamed at the sight of him.

Nihil, who had been distributing hot water in response to the girl’s scream, looked at Evan, who had returned covered in blood from head to toe, and spoke with an awkward expression.

“…Couldn’t you have wiped off some of that blood before coming back?”

“……”

Evan set down the wild boar and looked at his hands. They were covered in blood from gutting the animal, and the sight was hardly pleasant.

Come to think of it, he was probably splattered with blood in various places from when he had taken the boar down from the tree, too.

“…Sorry for frightening you.”

The other children had gathered at the sound of the piercing scream. They, too, stiffened in shock at Evan’s gruesome appearance, but once they realized the wild boar he had carried back would become their food, their faces soon brightened.

“Meat!”

“Meat!”

The twins happily circled Evan, chattering excitedly.

“I thought I was going to freeze to death today! Thank goodness I didn’t!”

“How could we die when there’s meat to eat?!”

At the twins’ over-the-top reactions, Yvonne laughed and chided them, saying, “Exactly! You should’ve stopped being so stubborn and drunk your medicinal tea.”

Rianus, however, who had never felt cold since coming to Sharton, tilted his head in confusion.

“Was it that cold?”

“It was as cold as usual, but today was different! An angel appeared in my dream!”

“Oh, Elara? Me too! I thought I was going to die if I followed the angel, but I was too sleepy, so I didn’t follow it.”

“An angel…?”

An angel? Knowing that the twins weren’t exactly the romantic or sentimental type, the other children exchanged puzzled looks.

Rianus looked at Nihil and asked, “Neil, did you take off your hood?”

“…No.”

Nihil answered a good while later, then pulled his hood down even tighter.

Having figured out who the angel was, Evan burst into laughter.

“Pfft—BWAHAHAHAHA! A-an angel! R-right, an angel…! Hahahaha! First a fairy, and now an angel? You should be grateful this wild boar was personally bestowed upon you by an angel!”

“Wow~ Meat! Meat!”

“Meat! Meat!”

The twins continued shouting about the meat, completely oblivious to the angel’s true identity. Noticing several boys staring at him, Nihil deliberately ignored their gazes and hurriedly changed the subject.

“Gut it before it gets cold. Do you know how?”

“What do you take me for? Go over there and play hand games with the little one.”

Evan drew his dagger and waved the children away.

He had hunted beasts and monsters since childhood, selling their parts to make a living. He was confident he could butcher a pig with his eyes closed.

Leaving the task to the confident-looking Evan, Nihil laid out the medicinal roots he had gathered at dawn and explained them one by one.

None of them were particularly valuable, but they could come in handy in an emergency, so learning how to use them couldn’t hurt.

Evan soon finished butchering the wild boar and washed away the blood as he muttered, “The problem is how to store all this.”

He stared at the enormous pile of meat, enough to feed dozens of people.

Salting it would be ideal, but that would require a tremendous amount of salt. Besides, salt was a little more expensive in Harpense than in other countries.

Evan wondered if they should simply sell the meat, but Nihil dragged a wooden box over from somewhere and set it down in front of him.

“What’s this?”

“I put some herbs inside that act as preservatives. Put the meat in here.”

Taking Nihil’s explanation at face value, Evan shoved the butchered meat into the wooden box without much ceremony. Naturally, the box wasn’t particularly large, and there was a lot of meat, so it wouldn’t all fit.

“It won’t all fit.”

“……”

The big dog had asked a question, but the wildcat merely gazed up at him as though wondering what he intended to do about it.

The big dog offered a solution.

“It tastes best while it’s still warm.”

“What kind of nonsense—”

“Wow! Are we eating meat?”

“Meat! Meat, meat!”

“Fairy big brother, can we roast it today?”

“My lifelong dream is to eat nothing but meat until I burst!”

“Haah…”

Nihil had been about to tell them to stop talking nonsense, but he let out a small sigh at the children’s excitement.

Meat this early in the morning…

With no other choice, Nihil asked Bella to buy some ingredients, milk for the puppy, salt, spices, and a few other things.

He couldn’t very well serve the wild boar meat, which was bound to smell gamey, to Rianus, who was accustomed to fine cuisine.

After casually giving Bella her instructions, Nihil glared at Evan.

Evan snorted.

“Well, you shouldn’t have asked me in the first place.”

If there wasn’t a box to put it in, wasn’t the obvious solution to put it in their stomachs?

 

***

 

“AAARGH!”

“You broke it again. Cut it cleanly.”

“You think that’s easy?!”

Evan shouted at Nihil, then wiped the sweat trickling down his forehead with his sleeve. Piles of pebbles lay scattered around his feet.

More than twenty small rocks had already been reduced to rubble. No matter how thin and sharp he made his aura, the rocks refused to split cleanly and simply shattered instead.

Evan was seething with frustration at his inability to get it right. Meanwhile, the children watching him looked as though they were witnessing a strongman performance. Every time Evan crushed another rock, they applauded him with looks of admiration.

Only that damned wildcat kept nagging him from the side.

“Make it rotate faster and thinner. No, don’t reduce the amount of aura. Compress it instead.”

“…Damn it!”

Evan concentrated again and compressed his aura.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had focused this intensely. And yet, here he was, suffering just to make a stone slab on which to roast meat.

Of course, he knew this was all happening because he had run his mouth, so he couldn’t complain any further.

Nihil smiled with satisfaction at Evan’s aura, which was far more refined than it had been at first.

To be honest, flat slabs of stone were easy enough to find. In fact, they had already found one, and there were plenty of ways to roast meat without a stone slab.

Nihil was making Evan jump through hoops purely on a whim.

He wanted to make Evan pay for creating extra work, put him through his usual early-morning training, and give the guard dog, who had grown soft from peace and quiet, something to keep him on his toes.

“You’re putting too much tension into your body. It’s already sharp enough. Relax a little and bring your blade down slowly.”

“……”

Evan didn’t answer. He relaxed his shoulders, then took a deep, slow breath and brought his sword down in a single stroke.

“……?”

Nothing happened.

When the rock showed no signs of changing, both Evan and the children watching him looked bewildered.

Evan awkwardly scratched the back of his head.

“I definitely felt like I cut through it… Did I relax too much?”

“No. Good work.”

Nihil rose from the pile of rocks he had been sitting on and approached the boulder.

When Nihil gave it a light tap, the boulder finally split neatly in half with a smooth sliding motion, and the two halves fell apart with a heavy thud.

“WOOOOOW!”

The bewildered children jumped to their feet and cheered as if they had accomplished the feat themselves. Even Evan, whose face had been stiff with repeated failures, broke into a smile.

“Don’t celebrate yet. You have to cut it one more time.”

Evan’s expression stiffened again. He was supposed to make a stone slab, not a pair of half-spherical boulders split down the middle.

Nihil rolled the two halves of the boulder, each as large as himself, upright.

“I don’t want to be cut, so aim carefully.”

“……”

“If you break it, you start all over again.”

“…Damn it!”

Evan cursed, but in the end, he succeeded in making a stone slab. The surface of the second cut was rough, as though something had ground it down, but it was perfectly suitable for grilling meat.

In the meantime, Bella returned with the “Mommy Cat.” Bella entrusted the puppy to the mother cat, while Nihil took care of the children.

While they waited for the stone slab to heat up, Nihil quickly prepared potato soup and served it to the children first.

Rianus, who had expected to eat roasted potatoes, gazed at his friend with admiration. His friend was even good at cooking!

Evan took responsibility for grilling the meat. He pierced the well-cooked pieces with wooden skewers and handed one to each child.

After setting aside a portion for Bella as well, Evan spoke with a suspicious look.

“Come to think of it, if we’d just skewered the meat and roasted it from the beginning, we wouldn’t have needed a stone slab at all, would we?”

“……”

Nihil didn’t answer. But Evan caught sight of the infuriating smile tugging at the lower half of his face, barely visible beneath his hood.

“AAARGH! You damned wildcat…!”

Realizing he had been completely played by Nihil, Evan grabbed his own hair and tugged at it in frustration.

Bella, who had only returned after the stone slab was finished, tilted her head in confusion, her cheeks stuffed full of meat.

Just then, Rianus spread his arms wide, his eyes sparkling.

“Big brother, you were really amazing, though!”

He wasn’t just saying that to be nice. Evan really had been amazing. Truly, unbelievably amazing.

Rianus was so proud of his knight. Surely even his older brother’s escort knights couldn’t compare to Sir Evan.

How had someone so amazing ended up becoming his knight?!

Rianus looked up at Evan with shining eyes.

Evan saw his young master gazing up at him with such sparkling eyes and broke into a wide, delighted grin. Telling Rianus to eat plenty, he handed him a skewer with an especially large piece of meat on it.

As for the insolent wildcat who liked to tease adults, Evan shoved some charred scraps onto a skewer—the bits he had set aside to throw away—and handed it to him.

“Here. Eat up.”

Evan grinned, looking forward to teasing the irritable wildcat. But contrary to his expectations, the brat accepted the skewer without complaint and took a bite.

Evan’s expression immediately darkened.

After all, the wildcat was the one who had hunted the boar. He could easily have complained about the unfair treatment, yet he hadn’t said a single word.

When Nihil went to take another bite, Evan snatched the skewer away in irritation. He flung it far away and shouted furiously.

“Take care of yourself for once!”

“…What are you suddenly yelling about while we’re eating?”

“Get angry sometimes! Be greedy! Make sure you get your fair share!”

Rianus agreed with Evan and gave a slight nod. But Nihil furrowed his brows as though he had no idea what Evan was talking about, then picked up a skewer of well-cooked meat and held it out toward him.

“Big dog, stop barking and eat.”

“……”

“You need to eat a lot to maintain that size.”

“……”

Evan stared at him with cold, incredulous eyes. Nihil wiggled the skewer impatiently, as though asking why he wasn’t eating already, and added another remark.

“Big dog, time for your din-dins.”

“…You little—!”

Dog—no… AAARGH! You dog-like wildcat brat!

 

***

 

“Ah, I’m stuffed.”

“I can’t eat another bite!”

The children had been acting as though they were about to devour all the meat in a single day, yet they were defeated after eating less than a single serving each.

Nihil wiped the grease from Rianus’s face, then called Yvonne and Jane over.

“You two big ones, come here.”

“…Okay.”

“……”