kscans

Chapter 12 - Butchering and Cooking

Upon returning to the village, Yuri used earth magic to create a workbench in front of his house. He took the carcass out of his Storage, took a deep breath, and slowly began to butcher it. He had no prior experience with butchering, of course, nor had he ever even seen it done. He had read scenes of butchering in light novels a few times, but he did not remember every little detail. His only hope was his mentor, the Rural Life Guide.

"Okay... first, the skin on the belly..."

Yuri began the butchering process with great trepidation, but with the help of his unique skill, Rural Life Guide, the work progressed more smoothly than he had expected. However, even with his enhanced stats, he was still an inexperienced person in the body of a seven-year-old. The work was not going to be over so easily, and by the time he finished, it was starting to get dark. Towards the end, he was working by the light of the life magic spell Light and even some light magic.

"Phew... I’m finally done..."

He sorted the cuts of meat, the pelt, and other materials and put them into his Storage. He had thought about throwing away the organs, but on second thought, he decided they might be useful for something later, so he stored them by part as well. After all, this was a Storage he had received directly from the god. He optimistically assumed it must have a large capacity and stuffed everything in. Fortunately, the capacity was indeed large, and even after packing in the meat and materials from the over-hundred-kilogram Mudderboar, there still seemed to be plenty of room.

After washing the blood-stained workbench with water, Yuri finally went inside. Despite a long day of foraging for wild vegetables, hunting a boar, bleeding it, and transporting it, he had only had a light lunch of rations, which were about to run out. And since returning to the village, he had been butchering the boar all by himself. It was only natural that he would feel hungry. Incidentally, to be precise, it was not a wild boar but a monster called a Mudderboar, but in Yuri’s mind, it was a "wild boar." After all, it was a pathetic monster that could be hunted by someone at his minimal level, or so he believed. It might look a little big, but it was probably just like a normal wild boar.

He was completely wrong.

Yuri paid no mind to such trivialities. He was about to start cooking... when he realized he did not even have a knife, let alone dishes. No, before that, was the Kamado stove even usable? He had only given it a quick look yesterday and had not inspected it in detail...

"...I know this is all new to me... but I’m missing so much..."

His shoulders slumped in disappointment. Yuri checked the kitchen again, and this is what he found.

The Kamado stove seemed to be usable. At least, it did not appear to be broken.

However, the chain and iron hook for hanging pots and pans, or the trivet for setting them on, which should have been there, had been completely taken. The iron skewers for roasting meat were also gone.

There was no chimney for smoke. It seemed the hole in the ceiling for letting in light also served as a smoke vent, but it was currently closed. It seemed you were supposed to prop it open with a pole or something, but the pole in question was nowhere to be found.

There was no fuel for cooking.

"Sigh..."

In the end, that day, he had to use earth magic to create a knife for cutting, a skewer for roasting the meat, and dishes, and then used fire magic to cook the meat. It was a completely makeshift affair.

Maintaining the right amount of heat to cook the meat properly was difficult, and it is a secret that his fire magic improved just from this alone.