Warming Up [Part 2]

“Eh? Eh? What? What is it?”

Before the king could ask, “Were you after my life just now?” the family had already started bustling about.

Leonard took a large pot from their family’s carriage, Arban ran to fetch water after shooting the arrow, and Emma and Melsa prepared a knife and a chopping board while counting, “Oneee, twooo, threee.”

“Eh? Emma?”

“Excuse me, Your Highness, passing through!”

“Woah!”

Arban poured the water he fetched into the pot Leonard prepared.

“ “Thirty-five, thirty-six…” ”

“…A-Are you guys alright? What’s wrong, so suddenly…”

“!!! George, William! You’re slow!”

“ “Sorry! It got stuck on a tree and took us longer than expected!” ”

Leonard shouted at the two siblings, who returned from the forest at an incredible speed. His loud voice drowned out the king’s bewildered exclamation.

“Ehhhh?!”

George ran while dragging the tail feathers of a giant bird, while William got on the bird and focused on plucking its feathers.

“Wait, Geo—…!”

“ “Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine.” ”

Then, when George reached the side of the pot, the family gathered immediately and helped William pluck the feathers together.

“Fifty-six, fifty-seven.”

“Alrighty, everything’s plucked!”

“Everyone, step back!”

Melsa raised the knife in her hand and, *chop* severed the bird’s head in one big motion.

“Eek!”

“Woahh!”

“Ahhhh!”

The students who gathered around the Stuarts family’s camp out of curiosity all screamed.

“Don’t give up. We will make it!”

“Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine.”

While the students averted their eyes from the gruesome scene, Melsa continued cutting up the bird swiftly. The rest of the family lined up in a row and sent the cut-up bird meat into the pot one after another in a bucket brigade.

“Eighty-three, eighty-four, eighty-five…”

“This is the last chunk!”

As soon as the last piece of meat entered the pot, Leonard took a stone out from the fire that Emma lit to cook rice and curry and put it inside the pot with fire tongs. That stone was the one he had been heating to make hot water for their bath later but unexpectedly had to be used for another purpose.

*fsshh* The whole family turned to look at Emma as steam rose from the pot with the heated stone inside.

“Ninety-seven!”

“ “ “ “ “We made itttt!” ” ” ” ”

“ “ “ “ “OH YEAHHHHH!!!” ” ” ” ” the family roared in joy.

“No, wait. You made it in time for what?!”

The flabbergasted king interjected, even forgetting that someone in that family seriously aimed for his life a while ago.

“Your Majesty, this is a monster called roc.”

Melsa answered while wiping the blood spurted on her cheeks.

“What?! A monster?!”

Melsa’s answer made the king and their surroundings exclaim in surprise.

“Yes. It’s a very large bird monster, so it can easily snatch humans.”

“Ah! Err, this monster likes to fly high into the sky while clutching the prey it snatched, drop it from above, and repeat this action until its prey becomes minced meat before eating it.”

William continued explaining right after Melsa. He thought it was not proper for a countess to talk about humans turning into minces. …Well, it might have been too late to try saving her image now as everyone had already seen how she cut up the monster at high speed.

“How frightening… So, a monster like that exists…”

“Y-Yes… Moreover, it’s extremely difficult to detect rocs because they will circle around at quite a high altitude when aiming for their prey…”

The Monster Science teacher answered the king’s query. He looked at Emma in disbelief, thinking that it should have been almost impossible for ordinary humans to spot the monster with the naked eye.

“I have confidence in my eyesight.”

“Fufufu,” the count’s daughter, Emma, who had just plucked the feathers of that very roc vigorously until a few minutes ago, laughed with a graceful gesture she learned from Hilda.

Huh? Was that earlier just an illusion? Emma’s duality even made everyone present start doubting themselves.

“U-Um, Emma, was there a meaning behind you counting the numbers earlier…?

Prince Edward asked the reason why she had been counting all this time. In such a tense situation, the sound of someone constantly counting numbers made it all the scarier.