"I will do it once more so you guys can prepare your food yourselves."
As I said that, the students watching me looked relieved and hurriedly started to imitate what I did.
When I had finished preparing the portion for the exploration group, a major problem came to light.
We don't have any seasoning.
Are you serious?! This instructor, he has survival kit but not this?!
It's only natural to prepare the stuff you can't get naturally before camping.
"I am sorry! My Space Storage was full with the tents…"
Instructor A came earnestly apologizing to me, someone who isn't even a student.
I don't know his name so A is good enough.
He had bandages wrapped around his arms and his head so he's probably one of the instructors who fought against Laplace. It appears that Laplace also held back enough, since these guys already healed enough to move.
It seems he was the only one carrying tents but to me, seasoning is much more important than tents.
"Seasoning is more important than tents!"
"I-I am sorry! I thought we would be enduring with the rations when camping so…"
"So you don't have anything?"
"Umm… I have a bit of salt…"
"You have salt? Then it's fine."
Ah, I am relieved. I am really relieved.
Salt is all-purpose so we were able to avoid the worst case scenario.
He also had some citrus fruit so burning the salt and dripping some fruit juice should be enough.
Instructor A handed over the salt to me, feeling ashamed.
I took the salt with a smile.
He probably thought my anger had dissolved seeing my smile and shamelessly mixed with the other students and started imitating me.
I shall overlook this considering he provided the salt.
The students also looked relieved after hearing our conversation.
"This kid is scary~"
"He was really overwhelming, huh? Peter-sensei looked quite scared, didn't he?"
"T-there's no way. No way the sensei would be scared of an ordinary person, that too a kid!"
I could hear such conversations but since I was in a good mood, I decided not to bother.
The problem is the salt.
It seems he wasn't joking when he said he only had a bit of it. It looks like we will run out of salt soon.
Maybe even tomorrow.
While thinking to myself that I have to do something for tomorrow, I continued the work.
Dinner was in barbecue style.
In this situation, when we don't even have cooking equipment, the methods in which we can cook are limited.
The exploration group brought back edible monsters so I processed those too.
They could do that themselves since it is taught in their lessons.
It seems they also knew how to find out if it could be eaten or not so there doesn't seem to be a problem.
However, just in case, I used my Appraisal Study carefully on it and found out that not only was the processing not done properly, the monster's meat was crushed with a sword and so the quality was very low.
But we can't really be asking for much.
I also prepared it with chopped up herbs.
As if he was in our group to begin with, Magnus came mixing in.
He looked around and was searching for me.
He's very annoying but once you get used to him, he seems more like a dog.
"Yo, Satoru-chan. You also prepared our portion!"
Too over-familiar.
And the looks from the surrounding is annoying too.
"Not for your sake, though."
"Now, now. Are you tsundere?"
Oh just shut up.
I think there might be a need to call him out at the back and deal with him.
While thinking that, I decided to first grill the fish properly.
It gave off a savory scent, stimulating everyone's appetite.
In addition to the best spice of them all—an empty stomach, these are also the fish I caught so I grilled them good.
I mean, of course, if one were to judge it normally, it wouldn't be as good as Shuna's cooking. However, from the fact that I caught and cooked these by myself in this natural environment, this rivals the best cooking out there.
"Delicious! What is this? It's super delicious!"
Magnus, who came annoying me, took a bite and shouted.
"You're exaggerating, idiot."
Saying that, I also took a bite.
Delicious!
Are you serious?!
I only roasted some cotton plant. It must have been of high quality.
And such voices could be heard from here and there, proving that we weren't the only ones finding it delicious.
Mondo was eating with his whole heart and soul. Tears were flowing out of his ears, soaking him in bliss of a full stomach.
And looking at us with annoyed expressions were the great nobles from their own table, lined up with high class cooking.
I don't know how many days worth of food they have. It seems they have a whole separate menu for themselves as well.
Well, that's fine for now.
The monster meat wasn't that good but it was edible.
We don't even have seasoning so this is how it's supposed to be. It was enough to fill the belly.
And like this, we were enjoying a much more balanced meal than I thought we would.
After dinner.
"Well, how did the exploration go?"
I was full now so I asked casually.
"Yeah. It is going smoother than I thought. That pompous guy, he's Julius, but he's surprisingly good. He's noble —royalty at that too, and so is quite good at using others. Thanks to that, we were able to cover plenty of distance without having a single drop-out. We should be able to see the coastline within 3 more days."
It seems Julius looked capable even from Magnus' point of view.
He might actually be good if he got rid of that elitism.
It looks like he also looks up to Masayuki so telling him to lecture Julius might do the trick.