TCP 15

Chapter 15

Unlike vegetables, which are relatively easy to combine due to their short life cycle, animals were extremely difficult.

Just because the land was fertile did not mean the quality or yield of meat improved accordingly, so Chloe felt a brief sense of despair.

‘Meat that’s dry and lacking in flavor… worse, with a strong gamey smell… so tough and stiff it can only be eaten if it’s minced…’

Thinking about the meat in this world made her even more gloomy. When making hamburg steak, she had to mince the meat desperately just to make it chewable. But it wasn’t as if all meat dishes could be turned into ground meat.

‘I want spicy stir-fried pork. Pork belly barbecue too!’

Good meat, grilled as it is, could already be fine dining. She couldn’t give that up.

The people of this world were used to it, so they simply ate that tough, tasteless meat as steak, but for Chloe, it was impossible.

At least cattle and pigs were still being raised here, even if they hadn’t been improved through breeding.

‘How am I supposed to get fish?’

After quickly looking into it, she learned that aquaculture was barely developed here, and the available fish species were limited.

It wasn’t as if she could send people into the sea and demand they catch every fish in nets all year round.

Of course, with the duke’s authority, it might be possible—but still.

‘My 21st-century conscience is screaming at me…’

Chloe tried to think of a solution while slowly organizing her thoughts, but there was no real progress.

‘Then let’s set the first goal.’

Improving meat quality wouldn’t happen anytime soon, and since there were already livestock animals, she decided to make a more long-term plan.

So, fish—specifically saltwater fish.

Chloe recalled something the duke’s head chef had once said.

At that point, Chloe’s goal had already become singular.

‘Flatfish!’

In her previous life, Chloe had loved flatfish sashimi. After possessing this body, it was the food she missed most, the one she kept thinking about nonstop.

‘I know it might be irrational!’

It might be more reasonable to look for other fish that were easier to catch, or to research meats that already had some development potential.

It was also possible that no fish resembling flatfish existed anywhere in the sea. And even if she did find one, there would still be problems afterward.

Even though Chloe had invented a refrigerator, transporting freshly caught fish while keeping it preserved was not an easy task.

So she should think more carefully—find a similar species, plan how to distribute it, and consider how to farm it…

‘How can a person live only rationally?’

Chloe was convinced she needed flatfish right now. Of course, the reason was simply that Chloe was obsessed with flatfish.

Just thinking about the chewy texture of flatfish sashimi made her mouth water. She swallowed hard and searched her memories carefully.

She liked flatfish so much that she had even watched videos of flatfish fishing in her previous life.

Fortunately, Chloe’s excellent memory allowed her to recall the contents of those videos vividly.

‘With this kind of memory, isn’t it basically a superpower?’

Thanks to that, the details of flatfish farming were vividly reconstructed in her mind.

Chloe quickly began searching for any fish in this world that might resemble “flatfish.”

And before long, she unexpectedly discovered something truly astonishing.

Chloe spent several days pouring through all sorts of books and even consulting scholars, but still couldn’t find anything like a flatfish. She ended up grumbling in frustration.

“Seriously. How can there be no fish where both the eyes and face are on one side?”

She swallowed the rest of her words—“Do they even know how delicious that is?”

The person listening to her complaints, Esir, looked at her as if she were absurd and asked,

“Why on earth would something like that have to exist?”

Yet Chloe didn’t get angry, even with Esir’s consistently rude attitude.

There was a reason she had brought this up in front of him.

“But what if… there really are no fish with eyes and faces shifted to one side…”

“…Then what?”

“Maybe they exist as magical creatures?”

At that, Esir made a “of course it’s that kind of logic” expression and replied in disbelief,

“You should apologize to magical creatures right now.”

He added dismissively that magical creatures were generally cute enough that something like a deformed one-sided-face fish couldn’t possibly exist.

“Hah. I am your employer, you know? Watch your tone!”

As Chloe scolded him, Esir grumbled but tilted his white head slightly and fell into thought. After a deep sigh, he still gave an answer.

“I can’t think of anything that grotesque, honestly.”

Despite his young age, Esir knew a surprisingly wide range of strange and miscellaneous magical knowledge. He almost seemed more knowledgeable than other mages.

‘If he doesn’t know, then no one does.’

At least around Chloe, there was no one as knowledgeable as that prickly Esir, so she felt a little deflated.

‘Should I hire some great archmage or something?’

But hiring the Tower Master just to find a flatfish was ridiculous. It would be terribly inefficient.

‘Besides, the Tower Master wouldn’t even come for something like this.’

As Chloe’s expression darkened with various thoughts, the boy glanced at her and added with a sigh,

“Well, things that look that grotesque… would probably just be monsters anyway. That’s all I can think of. Stop looking for that weird fish.”

Though he meant it as a suggestion to give up on the strange fish—

…Wait a moment.

Monsters?

Suddenly, Chloe remembered something the duke’s head chef had once said.

‘Oh dear, my lady. The sea is full of monsters, isn’t it? There are no edible fish there, and even if there were, monsters would have eaten them long ago!’

“Why didn’t I think of that?”

Magical creatures were sometimes studied or kept as familiars by mages, and occasionally sold at extremely high prices as nobles’ pets.

Monsters, on the other hand, were also called “creatures of magic” in another sense, but they were fearsome beings that slaughtered humans and wild animals alike—targets to be subjugated.

And when Chloe’s eyes began to sparkle at the mention of monsters, Esir, unintentionally witnessing it right in front of him, broke into a cold sweat.

“Wait. It’s not what I think it is, right?”

Even though he understood what Esir was implying, Chloe asked innocently,

“What?”

In this absurd situation where a question was answered with another question, Esir spoke faster, sweating nervously.

“I was just talking. There’s no way a sane… strange person would eat monsters in this world. I meant you should stop looking for it.”

He clearly used inappropriate language, but Chloe, now in a good mood, decided to let it slide generously.

“Let’s go immediately.”

Esir tried to evade reality.

“G-go where exactly?”

“Where else?”

But Chloe had no intention of accommodating his escape from reality, so she firmly grabbed his collar and replied,

“To hunt monsters. To the northernmost part of Gannet territory!”

The Gannet duchy, which Chloe was to inherit, was indeed fertile land, but its territory was extremely vast.

Among that vast land, the harsh northern region where no people lived was frequently invaded by monsters, and it was her father, the Duke of Gannet, who held them back.

Chloe’s eyes sparkled as she headed to the duke’s office to obtain permission to enter the northernmost region.

Of course, she dragged Esir along by the back of his neck in case he tried to escape.

After several failed attempts to wriggle free from Chloe’s grip, the physically weak mage eventually sighed and pleaded,

“Please… just spare me…”

But Chloe didn’t particularly care.