The remaining two extermination commissions were dispatched quickly by Jhin using Time Stop combined with elemental weapons. The quest left for Megumin wasn't the Sharp-Fanged Blue Wolves after all — it turned out to be a pack of Stone Golem Giants with exceptionally high physical resistance. Slow-moving and oblivious to their surroundings, they made perfect stationary targets for Explosion Magic.
Megumin didn't even need Jhin to remind her. The moment they arrived, she snatched up the True Crimson Flame Staff and launched straight into her incantation. Then, with a look of complete and utter satisfaction, she crumpled to the ground amid the blooming explosion.
Jhin carried her on his back to Landosol to regroup with the others — only to find that while the two of them had been working through the extermination quests, the rest of the party had incidentally completed the missing-item requests along the way. A tidy time-saver, all things considered.
Thirteen commissions in total, plus the materials harvested from the monsters they'd hunted — the Gourmet Hall's inaugural haul came to three hundred and twenty-four thousand Eris. For a guild that had only just hung out its shingle, that was a very respectable sum.
"Jhin, Jhin, come look — this is the delicious carrot juice we collected from the Carrot Moles!" Pecorine patted the large wooden barrel beside her with barely contained excitement. "It's such a shame you weren't with us — we could've brought back even more.")
Carrot Moles were small monsters that subsisted exclusively on carrots and rocks. Unlike ordinary monsters, the fluid running through their bodies wasn't blood at all — it was carrot juice, which was precisely how they'd gotten their name.
"We couldn't drink that much carrot juice even if we tried — what we have is plenty. Oh, and we ended up with seven Giant Frogs in total, so there's no shortage of frog legs. Quite the haul."
"Wonderful! Let's hurry home and cook!"
The five of them rushed back to the guild cottage in high spirits. Jhin brought the frog legs outside and laid them out neatly on the lawn, then summoned a current of water to rinse the slime from their surfaces.
"They're huge — there's no way we could deep-fry these inside the kitchen, is there?" Kyaru frowned at the frog legs, each a full two meters long.
Pecorine had already anticipated this. She hauled a massive iron wok — five meters across — out of the storeroom and set it on the ground. "No problem at all, Kyaru! We just need to build a proper stove and we can start frying right away."
Jhin, still rinsing the ingredients nearby, glanced over at the wok, sized it up in an instant, and let a thought drift into motion. The earth slowly rose beneath it, shaping itself into a clay stove. Pecorine cheered and hoisted the wok into place on top.
Kyaru felt the flow of elemental energy in the air and immediately recognized Jhin's handiwork. She couldn't help but mutter, "Honestly, calling you a mage is being generous. You're more of an architect."
"On the continent of Arad, there's a class called the Creator that would be far better suited to the title than me. They can conjure anything they can imagine — everything except life itself."
"That's basically indistinguishable from being a god," Kyaru said, unable to wrap her head around power on that scale.
If I had strength like that... would I finally be free from serving His Majesty...? No — no, no, no. Stop it, Kyaru. Don't let your mind wander. Focus on the mission.
"Who knows. I've only heard about it secondhand myself."
Jhin finished rinsing the frog legs and crouched down. He conjured a knife from condensed wind elements and drew it in a long, clean stroke from top to bottom, slitting the skin and revealing the pale, faintly quivering muscle beneath. He looked over at Kyaru, who was still lost in thought. "Hey, Kyaru — come help me peel this."
"Hm? Oh — right, of course."
The two of them each grabbed an edge and tore the skin back from the incision — it peeled away as easily as pulling a strip of tape off a page.
While Jhin and Kyaru handled the frog legs, Pecorine and Kokkoro were keeping themselves busy. Kokkoro fed the leftover scraps from the dining table they'd built earlier into the base of the stove as firewood, and coaxed the oil above it into heat.
Pecorine was preparing the egg wash and flour for frying. She added an assortment of seasonings to the large iron mixing bowl of flour and stirred them through evenly, then added hot water a little at a time, working the mixture by hand until it clumped into small powdery pieces — exactly the texture that, when it coated the ingredients, would fry up into a beautifully layered, flaky crust.
By the time Jhin and the others finished prepping the frog legs, the hot oil, egg wash, and seasoned flour were all ready and waiting. Each frog leg went first into a separate bowl of plain flour for a thin base coat, then into the egg wash to put on its golden undershirt, and finally into Pecorine's specially prepared seasoned flour to be fully armored up.
The white, flaky coating blanketed the golden egg layer beneath. The frog legs hadn't touched the oil yet, but everyone could already picture exactly what they'd look like once fried — a perfect shell of golden crust.
The moment the legs went into the oil, a great rush of bubbles surged up around them, and the wok filled with a fierce, rolling crackle. Once they were in, there was really nothing left to do — just wait for the hot oil to cook the frog meat and batter through and through.
Standing off to the side while they waited, Jhin suddenly remembered he still had gifts he hadn't handed out to the girls yet. He walked over to the barrel full of carrot juice. "Everyone — I still have those presents I bought before. Haven't given them out yet."
"Presents?!" Megumin had been lounging in the recliner on the veranda — but the instant she heard the words free stuff, the fatigue in her back and legs evaporated on the spot, and every last aftereffect of her drained magic reserves vanished without a trace. She sprang up and ran straight to Jhin's side, one small hand extended. "Give it here."
Jhin didn't bother with any preamble. He reached into his Storage Space and produced a mug painted with a chibi version of her and handed it over.
"Ooh, ooh, ooh — even the little figure on the mug is casting Explosion Magic! Jhin, you really get me, don't you... hm? Wait a second..." Megumin held the mug up and studied the tiny figure closely, and then arrived at a revelation that genuinely stunned her. "Wait — that's supposed to be me?!"
"I thought I painted it obviously enough. How did it take you that long to figure out?"
"You — you painted this??" Megumin pointed at the vividly rendered chibi figure on the mug.
"Who else would it be?" Jhin rolled his eyes and distributed the remaining mugs to the other girls.
"Ah — ahaha, I just... didn't realize you could paint, that's all." Megumin laughed awkwardly and scratched her head. It was really starting to feel like Jhin could do absolutely everything — he'd even figured out the spellcasting methods of ancient mages.
Kokkoro turned the mug over in her hands, growing fonder of it with every look, and finally declared with great solemnity, "Master — I shall treasure this cup always."
"It's a cup, Kokkoro. You're supposed to use it, not put it in a display case."
"Thank you so much, Jhin — I love it!" Pecorine's mug was, with careful deliberation, the largest of the set — Jhin had factored in her appetite. The chibi version of her on it was clutching an enormous piece of roasted meat and biting into it with both hands.
Not everyone was delighted with their gift. Kyaru was the one exception — and she was furious. On her mug, chibi-Kyaru was huddled in a corner, trembling, while a pair of large hands reached toward her very sensitive cat ears.
"Jhin — are you mocking me?!" Kyaru's fists tightened. She really, truly wanted to punch him.
"Don't get worked up just yet, Kyaru." Jhin took the mug out of her hands, pulled the cork from the carrot juice barrel, and filled it to the brim. The chibi image on the surface slowly shifted — and when it settled, chibi-Kyaru was beaming, playing happily with a cluster of little kittens. He handed the mug back to her. "Well? Not bad design, right?"
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