My Wife and I Became Sages in Another World
Chapter 119: Imperial Banquet

Chapter 119: Imperial Banquet

While I was having dinner with the empress and the princess of the Droman Empire, I asked for permission to use the kitchen since I believed that the food was slightly too bland for my taste.

After the maids guided me there, I found myself in a massive kitchen where five cooks were working on different stations.

I thought it was a bit of an overkill to have all those workers when the palace didn’t have that many people to take care of.

The only people who lived there were the empress and her two siblings, but at least thirty different maids were walking around the palace.

’Hmm, it probably made more sense to have all these servants when the old emperor and his wife were alive...’ I thought.

In the kitchen, I pulled out a few fillets of redback boar since I knew that it was a type of meat that couldn’t be found in the empire.

Redback boars only appeared in End Forest, so it was a delicacy that only the citizens of the Sephyr Kingdom, more specifically, End Town, had the luxury to eat often.

The good thing about the palace’s kitchen was all of the ingredients they had, the most important one being black pepper.

I asked one of the cooks if they produced their own pepper, but he told me that they imported it from the Aridonia Kingdom in the desert.

’Interesting...’ I thought, adding some black pepper to the fillet since I was craving it.

Once the redback boar fillets were done, I made a side of french fries since frying stuff wasn’t very common for the people of this world.

Lastly, I used some of the ingredients they had in the kitchen to make the base of a pie. Then, I brought out a few apples from my void pocket since they grew abundantly in End Forest.

After cutting the apple into small pieces and mixing it with water and sugar for a while above the fire, I got the filling for the pie, poured it inside the raw pastry, and placed it inside their magic oven.

The chefs were watching me cook intently with their eyes widened. I even saw one of them taking notes.

When I returned to the banquet hall, the empress had already downed over half of the large bottle of wine and exclaimed for the food to be served promptly.

Lucky for her, the dishes I prepared went pretty well with liquor, and seeing that she had poured me a glass of wine, too, I decided to join her.

I was still sixteen years old, so technically, I shouldn’t have been drinking. However, I was much older mentally, and this world didn’t have any laws against underage drinking.

The only reason I didn’t drink when I was younger was because alcohol isn’t good for a kid’s development. Even if I wasn’t a normal kid, my body did feel like one, so I thought it was wiser not to drink until I got older.

Nevertheless, sixteen was old enough to drink one cup in a friendly setting like the one I was at that moment.

After we cheered, the two royals began digging into their food and stayed silent for a few minutes as they devoured their plates.

"This is amazing..." the princess said, covering her mouth elegantly.

*munch* "It’s shooo good!" said the half-drunk empress with a mouthful of boar and fries.

I chuckled after seeing their reactions, as the two sisters were utterly different from each other.

The older sister, the empress, was very rugged and commanding. She didn’t seem to care much for nobles’ costumes and acted friendly towards everyone around her, even commoners.

I was told by Jen, the alchemist, that since the empress had trained her swordsmanship with the knights and soldiers of the empire, she had been friends with commoners ever since she was a child, so she never discriminated against them.

The princess, Arabella, was much more calm and composed. She was the one who took care of a lot of the paperwork relating to politics in the empire, and her elegant demeanor made it evident that she was the face of the imperial family politics.

After we were finished with our plates, we stayed on the table, resting and digesting the food as we talked a little more.

The empress, a little drunk, mentioned that she would be joining the frontlines soon and gazed at her sister, saying that she would have to take care of the empire if anything happened to her.

The princess seemed angry at the comment and told her big sister not to say such things, but the empress simply smiled at her solemnly.

"It’s a war, my cute little Bella. Anything can happen..." the empress replied, making the princess look down with a hint of sadness.

"Is it necessary for you to go there? I mean, you are the empress." I asked ignorantly.

"That’s the more reason I have to go. The ruler of the country shouldn’t be hiding behind the palace’s walls when their soldiers are fighting for the safety of their nation..." she replied.

She was right. I didn’t think about it when I asked, but the empress was THE imperial master swordswoman, so of course, her presence on the battlefield would motivate the soldiers.

"My little brother has been there for a while. It’s time to give him some rest..." the empress continued.

I asked about the prince out of curiosity, and the empress told me that her little brother, Cedric, had become a swordmaster a few years ago and had been leading their forces on the frontlines against Kalusia.

Nonetheless, she had been receiving reports from him saying that the enemy’s forces were getting stronger and that more of them were arriving from the desert.

After Romanov kidnapped Jen, the amount of potions that the soldiers were receiving decreased, so they were having a hard time keeping them out of their borders.

I told the empress that I had already sent a message to the alchemists in the Sephyr Kingdom to send me as many potions as they could.

"I appreciate the help. If we can get something remotely close to what Jen makes, I think we can manage..." the empress said.

However, I didn’t want to brag to her, but I had to show her that the potions I was bringing were much more potent than the versions that Jen brewed.

Apart from the healing(+), I also ordered some of the stamina potions that gave people energy, some MP potions, and holy panaceas in case we found more cursed people.

The empress seemed to sober up as she inspected the potions closely. I had shown her the holy panacea, but she hadn’t seen my other inventions.

"Ichiro, these are amazing... And you make them all?" she asked, passing one of the potions to the princess to inspect.

"I came up with them a long time ago. I taught a group of alchemists how to make it, and they have been taking care of the distribution ever since..." I explained.

"C-could I show these to Jen?" the princess asked.

"Yeah, I got hundreds of those, so you can keep them," I replied.

The empress said that she would go to the frontlines in three days. Now that the gang of the Crimson Scorpions had been dealt with, she felt like she could leave the capital and support her troops.

I had a little idea about the people that remained in the gang.

When Romanov was captured along with everyone in the underground, the people who were being threatened by a curse were freed at my request.

The empress thought that some of them still had to pay for their crimes, but I found it to be pretty cruel since all of those people had been trying to protect their loved ones, so I asked the empress to allow me to choose their punishment.

Surprisingly, she agreed and left the fate of all the freed bandits under my care.

Of course, the others who were working for Romanov of their own volition were sent to jail, and I’m pretty sure that some of them were sentenced to death, along with Romanov himself, since they had committed plenty of atrocities.

The following day, I went to the underground area, where all of the freed bandits were waiting for me after I asked them to meet me there.

At the front of the group were Nisa and Tony, the first two bandits we freed after luring them out with Gina.

There were a total of fifty members, standing tall in arranged rows as if they were expecting orders from me.

I needed to find a way to give them orders efficiently without putting their lives at risk too much since I would feel bad if someone died after I asked them to do something.

When I asked for the most discreet members to take a step forward, Nisa, Tony, and two others complied.

"We are gonna need infiltrators. Can you guys handle that?" I asked, making the four of them nod with confidence.

"Yes, sir!" they replied.

’Sir? I... Whatever...’ I thought, not paying too much attention to their words since there were more important things to take care of.