Chapter 41: Real food

"Food! I want real food~"

"Yes, Princess!"

"Real food is important! Right, White-haired~!" I was pumping a fist in the air, holding it to the sky, emblematically. "Real, real important! Is it not so, now, White-haired~!"

"Yes, Princess!" He could only agree with me.

"Consider it then a matter upon which my decree has come to pass!"

"S-Surely, Princess!"

"So, White-haired... you keep that nasty bag of dried veggies away from my sight!"

"Immediately, Princess!"

I was glad White-haired understood. Yes. In the little ruckus that shook our creaky carriage, I and my subjects were casually cheering ourselves up. Because, of course, food! Good food has to bring about cheerful spirits, doesn't it? Aaah~ Good food.

Right. Today, I was four-day-old, soon to be five. Already my fourth day. I started to think I had gotten quite the long way now and was overall used to living a life. "Hideous. You pull over there. You make sure you don't scratch my wooden lambo. Park us down here. Right. Hideous, you're pretty good with horses."

Clicking his tongue again and again, as I had allowed the man to at least express his resentment and irritation with clicking Tsks, he obeyed his princess. And his tongue clicked a lot. Tsk tsk tsk.

"Good. We're hopping off. Yesterday Hideous took care of the horses." I turned and faced White-haired. "Today you will." It was getting late. To my happy surprise, the forest wasn't full of trees everywhere. There were some inhabited areas, after all. From these areas, we could see the sky best. And at present, that sky was turning to a dark shade of blue.

The horses needed something to eat and rest for the night. And we needed a place to sleep too. Or rather, we wanted to. Well, maybe it was just me. Yesterday night, I had been sick of sleeping on the carriage's bench.

White-haired excitedly exited first after his badass princess tasked him with some job. "Hideous, hideous, hideous." I loved the man's name. "Aren't you happy too? You won't sleep on the sturdy ground you're stepping on right now. Hideous turned and made to step off the chariot. "Sure, Princess." It was the first time he deigned to address me with some words in a while.

There was an inn. Again. People resorted to those facilities a lot for many needs. Travelers, especially, wouldn't go anywhere without an inn. For that reason, there were a lot of them. All scattered around the world. Right here too, there was an inn. Despite it being an inn, this one sure was different than the inn we had in Sville.

In three words, it was dilapidated, rundown, and gloomy. Well, that was still a house though. With some food and a bed for the night. In the past, I got to taste some good food. So I wanted some again, the dried foods White-haired had just didn't cut it for me. A bed, however, I never really tasted that yet. To be quite honest, I was looking forward to the experience.

My stomach growled. Hushing it, I told him we were getting fed in a few, cradling it in my hands. "Hang in there, stomach. I know you got it in you," I muttered. Moving on, we got inside the inn. After White-haired had taken care of the horses, gotten them fed and everything, he joined me and Hideous: we sat in the inn around one sorry table. My seat supported me just okay. I wasn't so heavy. But among my two elves however, Hideous must have been the bigger fella because—

Thud! "Sh-Shitty place!" The stool he sat on broke down. Heh. And with that reaction, with his face twisted in anger, a huge frown of disgust carved on his full complexion, that was our good old Hideous who came back. For the past few days he had been way less aggressive, but it was actually to the point even I worried about him. In my worry, I even thought I might have had to change the man's name. But well there you go. His face was hideously twisted with anger and disgust. After he'd sat on his rotten seat, it collapsed under his bulk. And he got hideous again.

Well, the inns were different, after all. While the outside of the inn didn't look very pretty, especially that late at night, the inside wasn't raising the level even a bit. The place was so silent and grim. The people—lizardmen, elves, and orcs—certainly talked to each other, but only with hushed whispers. They were like snakes, in a way. I could hardly imagine the same good cries of joy and celebrations one would hear in the kind ma'am's place.

The war was indeed responsible for a lot of awful things. And people were responsible for the war. Well. Life's so beautiful. What shocked me the most was the very scarce number of humans roaming about this place. I had grown used to them thinking they were the majority everywhere, but man, I could barely see one out there. And even when I did, they were cloaked, masked, and hidden.

"What's with these... shitty materials...? Huh!" Hideous complained. The place was so grim that even Hideous was accommodating itself to it for once. He blurted out his complaint, being as angry as ever, but in a surprisingly low voice. Was even the bold, hideous elf afraid of making a scene here? After he lifted himself up with rage, he snatched another nearby chair and sat on it. A few stares were directed at our group, and that was it.

"What will you eat, Princess?"

"The best you can get me."

The man stood up, ordered some food, and got back to us. My stomach had had time to sing for only three minutes before the food was ready. Voila! It appeared in front of me. To my disappointment, I only had stewed vegetables on my plate. Letting that show on my face, the kinder elf asked what the matter was. I told him I wanted meat. What followed then was eerie coming from him, but he suspiciously frowned at me, wondering when did his princess come to enjoy meat? Come on, White-haired. Don't break on me now. You can't be having doubts about my identity as your princess right now.

"I-I'm sorry, Princess... I thought you would enjoy this. I'm truly sorry." His head lowered and he stared at his knees, pinching his lips together. Telling him not to worry about it, even though I desired meat, I would eat what the man got me. I made it clear that, now, the princess was fond of meat, and only meat. My food smelled quite good anyway. White-haired's eyes lit up.

He happily nodded at me, a genuine smile on his pale complexion. That smile had so much to tell. He looked at me like a father at his beloved son—or no, daughter. The elf, worried, asked me whether I was really okay with eating what didn't please my empty stomach or not. He could always go and order something else. I said I was okay, I understood we didn't have enough money. And to my surprise, I discovered the two of them would still eat their dried vegetables and bread here.

That made me grateful for what I had. In the end, I kindly ate the contents of my plate with no complaints. I also forced each one of them to at least have a spoonful of what I was served: I fed my boys myself.

After that, wolfing down the contents of my plate didn't take more than three minutes. Just like this, we were done eating. My stomach was packed. White-haired bought us a room for the night, and we headed upstairs. He directed us to our room. "There it is." We would sleep in this room. There were two beds, we could only afford that much.

Aside from the beds, no furniture was in the empty room. That was poor. The beds looked all right, at least. There were spider webs everywhere. During the time the two elves settled our affairs in, I had a little time to play with a spider in the room. When I played with it, I scared it away. And as it was time to sleep, the little spider ran and hid far up in a crease of the wall. I marveled at that sight knowing it was indeed time to sleep. Both I and the spider got to our beds, then.

Tomorrow will be a long day. According to White-haired's calculations, we only needed to go like this for two days straight and we would be in the very inner parts of the woods. The place in which it was normally forbidden to step.

The Dryads were at the end of the route, waiting for us to come... and not deliver the elven people from their shackles at all. Only to help me out with the quest. Maybe. I reckoned the elf was right. Remember, what the System put at my disposal, the Guiding Fragrance?

It kind of worked the same way as Mana Perception, or that's how I understood it anyway. When I concentrated on it, on my destination or quest, I could feel the System's directions. It only demanded I paused and focused on it, really. And using that fragrance thingy, I could tell we were nearing the end of the trip.