Dividing the Spoils
The dragon was dead, but what about the demon from before?
"Did it escape?"
Lorenzo frowned slightly.
"Don't bother looking. That demon is already dead."
Frieren stood beside the Windwing Dragon's corpse, studying the purple-black spell formations as they dissipated, and spoke to them.
Lorenzo glanced at the Windwing Dragon.
"Was it backlash from having its control forcibly severed?"
"Not just backlash."
Frieren shook her head.
"Controlling this Windwing Dragon used up all its mana and life force. From the looks of it, it wasn't the one that cast the True Magic that bewitched the dragon."
"So there's someone else pulling the strings?"
Lorenzo recalled the gray eye he had seen earlier and felt a headache coming on. He hated this sort of thing most of all, one layer leading to another. A demon had been hiding behind the Demon Wolf, and an even stronger demon was hiding behind that one. If things kept going this way, some bizarre organization and a plan spanning hundreds of years might turn up behind the stronger demon too.
Wow, what a cliché. Whatever evil these demons want to do, why can't they just do it openly? What's with all the scheming?
"That's how it looks for now... but this clearly has nothing to do with us anymore. The Continental True Magic Association should handle whatever comes next."
As Frieren spoke, she glanced at Zanze. How strange. When Zanze had restrained the Windwing Dragon earlier, the wind blades had clearly cut off quite a bit of her long hair, but now its length and volume seemed little different from before the battle. Could she have True Magic that made her hair grow quickly?
"That's true. I'll report the Windwing Dragon and Demon Wolf to Lady Serie. Someone will also be sent to the Northern Plateau to investigate why the Windwing Dragon left its habitat."
Zanze replied.
The villagers also began emerging from the chapel and their cellars. Tonight was bound to be a night they would never forget.
After all, to ordinary people, a Demon Wolf was already a disaster capable of destroying a village. A Windwing Dragon was more like a monster that only appeared in bards' tales, yet one had actually died in their village.
"Speaking of which, what are we going to do with the Windwing Dragon's corpse? We can't just leave it here to rot."
Lorenzo suddenly realized there was an important question to address. A dragon this big had to have valuable parts, and perhaps he could even use its materials to make a few Mystic Codes.
Mystic Codes made from a dragon from another world. Just thinking about them feels novel.
"I'll leave the claws, bones, scales, and such to you two, as payment for helping defeat this dragon."
Zanze spoke.
"As for the meat, we can distribute it to the villagers once we've made sure there's nothing wrong with it."
"Then it's settled. Oh, and don't forget the Magecraft you promised me, the one that keeps hair clean."
Frieren reminded Zanze.
"Of course I haven't forgotten."
Processing the Windwing Dragon's corpse was no easy task. It took until nearly noon the next day to finish butchering it, even with Zanze, their "handy little worker," helping out.
Meanwhile, several large pots had been set up in the village square. The dragon meat was cut into chunks and put in water to stew with salt, herbs, and ale the villagers had just brewed.
The women in charge of cooking had evidently never prepared Windwing Dragon before either. After all, ordinary people probably had few opportunities in their lives to stand over a pot wondering how much longer dragon meat needed to simmer.
They could only follow their experience preparing large birds and beasts for every step: blanching the meat, skimming off the foam, adding herbs to mask the gamy smell, and finally simmering it slowly over low heat.
As for how it would taste, that was up to fate.
As the broth bubbled away, the aroma of meat gradually spread through the air, mingled with the scents of ale and herbs.
Frieren stood beside a pot and sniffed carefully for a while.
"How does it smell?"
Lorenzo asked.
"Like chicken."
"Dragon meat smells like chicken?"
"A lot of things people haven't eaten before end up being described as chicken."
That seemed to make a lot of sense, though it was hard to say exactly why. Perhaps, when faced with a kind of meat they had never eaten before, people always needed something familiar to compare it to, and chicken was the ultimate destination for all these unknown meats.
After a long simmer, the first pot of dragon meat was finally served, but the villagers didn't reach for their chopsticks right away. Everyone's eyes fell on the three mages.
They clearly wanted the people who had defeated the Windwing Dragon to prove it was really safe to eat first. Dragon meat might have been rare, but rare didn't mean nonpoisonous. If the whole village collapsed after eating it, that would be an absurdly unfortunate end to a battle they had fought so hard to win.
After a brief silence, Lorenzo noticed that neither Frieren nor Zanze seemed inclined to reach for the food either. Apparently, the person who had landed the killing blow also had to take on the duty of testing for poison.
The moment to test his courage had arrived...
So he had no choice but to pick up a piece of dragon meat and put it in his bowl first.
The meat was firmer than he had imagined, with a thin layer of fat on the surface. The herbs and ale had masked the gamy smell common to monster meat.
Lorenzo took a bite.
He chewed.
It really did taste quite a bit like chicken, though it must have been a chicken that loved working out. Maybe it even played basketball.
Seeing that nothing happened to Lorenzo after he ate, the villagers finally crowded around. Before long, the once-terrifying Windwing Dragon had become part of everyone's lunch.
In the end, they couldn't finish all the Windwing Dragon's meat at noon. It had been such a huge dragon that even with the whole village pitching in, there was no way to finish it all in one meal.
The remaining meat was cut into pieces of roughly equal size. Some was salted and hung in a well-ventilated place to dry, while the villagers packed the rest into wooden barrels to pickle with ale and spices.
As for how it would taste, they would have to wait a while to find out.
It probably wouldn't turn out too badly. It felt like anything would taste decent as long as enough spices were added. Though it would lose its original flavor, at least it wouldn't taste bad in the end, making it a safe fallback.
After the meal, Zanze went back to report, while Frieren and Lorenzo stayed in the village for a few more days.
The main thing they did during those days was wait for Lorenzo to turn the Windwing Dragon materials he had selected into Mystic Codes.
Although he specialized in Celestial Magecraft, he had learned quite a bit about making Mystic Codes in his previous life, through both legitimate and illegitimate means. In particular, he had been thinking about Kayneth's "Volumen Hydrargyrum" ever since he first transmigrated into the Nasuverse. It could automatically attack, defend, and search for enemies, and could even be modified into a mercury maid to handle everyday life. It was the perfect Mystic Code.
Unfortunately, he still hadn't found the raw materials needed to make "Volumen Hydrargyrum" in this world, so for now he could only use the Windwing Dragon to "review" how to make Mystic Codes.