Chapter 12

Although the path wasn’t narrow, it couldn’t be called spacious either, but in an instant, it widened, revealing a completely different scene ahead.

A vast space that could almost be called a cavern.

The width alone was enough to fit a noble’s mansion, and the height was even greater, easily reaching 20 meters to the ceiling.

In the center of the ceiling was a round hole, through which moonlight softly shone, and below it, a small spring and a bed of pure white flowers, seemingly nourished by the moonlight, exuded vitality.

A beautiful sight I never expected to see in a cave I had entered to escape the rain.

But what caught my eye more than the beautiful flowerbed was a small hut standing in one corner of the cavern.

The hut looked incredibly old, as if it had been abandoned for decades or more, and I couldn’t help but be surprised by its state.

“See! Mr. Kurt! Didn’t I tell you? There must be something hidden in this cave!”

A lie. Just moments ago, she had said there was nothing man-made in this cave.

And this isn’t a dungeon, nor is there any treasure.

Ignoring Mari’s smug attitude, I investigated the inside of the hut.

Clearly, the cave appeared untouched by human hands, a natural formation.

That much was certain.

My experience as a hunter tracking monsters and my heightened senses as a Transcendent allowed me to notice even the smallest traces that ordinary people would miss.

So, either this hut had been abandoned so long ago that all traces of human presence had vanished, or the person who lived here had led a reclusive life, never leaving after building the hut.

The former hypothesis didn’t make sense, as the hut would have disappeared long before the traces in the rock cave vanished.

Thus, the most plausible hypothesis was that the person who lived here, whether by choice or circumstance, never left this cavern.

Perhaps someone with a story.

I stepped inside the hut.

The hut’s condition was even worse than it appeared from the outside. The wood was completely rotten, and it felt like one wrong step would send me crashing through the floor.

“Mr. Kurt, I’m coming in too! Kyaaak!”

*Crunch*

See? You fell right through.

“…I was about to tell you to be careful. Take my hand.”

“Th-thank you.”

After helping Mari, whose leg had fallen through the rotten wood, I took another look around the hut.

As expected of a roughly constructed wooden hut, there wasn’t much inside, but what was surprising was that the few items there were anything but ordinary.

Though they were too old to have any antique value, they appeared to be artifacts that would have been highly valuable in their original state.

For such precious artifacts to be beyond repair…

Just how long had they been abandoned? It might have been centuries, not just decades.

Though I wasn’t well-versed in magic and couldn’t identify the exact nature of these items, it was clear that the person who lived here was of a very high status.

“Why would someone with such valuable items live in a hut like this…?”

“Ah! Look at this!”

“What is it?”

“It looks like the hut owner’s diary!”

Mari waved the diary she had found.

But in a place where even the wood of the hut had rotted from years of neglect, there was no way the diary could be intact. As Mari waved it, the diary crumbled in real-time.

“Stop shaking it!”

“Uh, what should I do?”

Mari finally stopped shaking the diary, but by then, it had already turned into something barely recognizable as a diary.

“Hoo. The diary is too damaged to read.”

“Sniff… I’m sorry.”

“No. While you did damage it, the diary itself had already weathered significantly from being abandoned for so long. Plus, the writing style is somewhat different from today’s.”

“Really? So it’s not my fault! By the way, what does the diary say?”

“There’s not much readable, so I can’t make out everything…”

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Imperial Year □□□□, Month □, Day 13

Finally, the world is facing □□□□.

But I managed to escape from □□□□.

However, all □□□□ are □□□□.

It was inevitable. I couldn’t □□ either.

While fleeing the capital, I stole □□□□□ to create a protective barrier, so at least I can □□□□…

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That was all I could read.

“Tsk. There’s hardly anything readable.”

Even the least damaged part only had less than half of the text legible.

And even that had gaps where characters were missing.

The other pages were even worse, with entire words missing, making them impossible to interpret.

“There’s no information here that would tell us who the diary’s owner was.”

“Is there anything about the location of treasure or something?”

“Of course not.”

Mari and I searched the hut further but found nothing else of note.

We reluctantly took the broken artifacts that seemed to have some antique value and left.

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Actually, while we had investigated the hut first, what I was really interested in were the pure white flowers growing in the center of the cavern.

Personally, I like to save the best food for last, so I had postponed exploring them.

“Wow, the flowers are so pretty.”

Mari, seemingly without a care, admired the flowers, but as an experienced hunter, I immediately recognized what they were.

“These are Moonlight Flowers. Quite rare.”

“Moonlight Flowers? Are they monsterified plants or something…?”

At my words, Mari, perhaps recalling a bad experience with plant monsters, shuddered and backed away.

“Don’t worry. They’re not monsters. Just purely rare flowers.”

“You scared me. But if they’re so rare, do they have any special properties?”

“Moonlight Flowers are highly valuable, used in medicine and as catalysts in alchemy.”

“Then let’s pick them now!”

“But if we don’t take special measures after picking them, they’ll wither in a few days, so we can’t take them with us.”

“Sniff… Then they’re useless.”

“No. Moonlight Flowers have another use. One we can use right now.”

“What’s that?”

“The petals have a unique fragrance and are considered quite a delicacy. It’s mealtime.”

As I said this, I took out cooking ingredients from my bag.

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At the mention of Moonlight Flowers being a delicacy, Mari, who had just been admiring the flowerbed, now looked at it with a face full of hunger.

I left her to it and took out some rye bread that was nearing the end of its shelf life.

Personally, I prefer bread made purely from wheat flour, with butter and milk, but such bread is expensive and hard to come by.

With Mari around, I couldn’t use butter or milk anyway.

So, my choice was rye bread, which has a rough texture but is better than bread made without butter or milk.

Rye bread isn’t made purely from rye.

It’s usually a mix of wheat flour and rye.

In fact, even in my past life, most rye bread sold in supermarkets or bakeries is a mix of rye and wheat flour.

Bread made purely from rye doesn’t rise well, resulting in a dense, hard loaf.

The kind of dark, hard bread often depicted in medieval media is exactly that.

So, the key to making good rye bread is balancing wheat and rye flour to bring out the grain’s aroma while maintaining a decent texture.

Cutting the rye bread in half, even after some time, it still released a fragrant grain aroma.

Inside, I added edible herbs I had gathered during our journey.

Personally, I would have liked to add tomatoes, lettuce, or even cabbage to the sandwich, but such vegetables aren’t found on the roadside, so I compromised.

But just that would be too bitter, so the sauce was crucial.

Sour cream or Thousand Island dressing would have been nice, but neither keeps well, and both contain animal-based ingredients like cream and eggs, so they were out.

Instead, I used a quick dressing made from salt, vinegar, and oil, with a hint of Rainbow Honey for sweetness.

The key was to use just a tiny amount.

Too much would overpower the other flavors, and the honey’s aroma would mask the rye bread’s graininess.

While sweetness can stand on its own, a small amount can also enhance salty or sour flavors.

Normally, this would complete the sandwich filling, but today I added a special ingredient.

I reached for the Moonlight Flowers, carefully plucking a few petals from several blossoms without damaging the plants.

The flowers’ intense aroma would perfectly mask the bitterness of the roadside herbs.

In my past life, in places like Turkey or Iran, rose water was used as a spice in cooking.

While it would have been ideal to steep the Moonlight Flowers in water and use the essence in the dressing, that was too much effort while traveling.

Instead, I simply scattered the petals throughout the sandwich.

Thus, the simple Moonlight Flower Rye Sandwich was complete.

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“Just adding one ingredient changed the flavor so much!”

Mari, stuffing the sandwich into her cheeks like a hamster, praised me.

Indeed, while the sandwiches I made with herbs gathered on the road still had a bitter taste despite the honey dressing, the unique aroma of the Moonlight Flowers made this sandwich much less bitter.

The flavor was similar to vanilla but not quite, with a unique aroma hard to compare to any other spice.

The best way to describe it would be a moonlight-like fragrance.

I was satisfied with the sandwich’s high quality, considering how simply it was made, and kept eating without pause.

I had wisely only added three slices per sandwich.

The aroma masked the bitterness without overpowering the rye bread’s graininess.

The bitterness was gone, and the oil dressing soaked into the bread, making it not too dry.

With the bitterness handled, I could generously fill the sandwich with herbs, resulting in a rich texture.

Normally, balancing the bitterness would limit how many vegetables I could add.

“I want another one!”

“Sure. I made extras, just in case.”

“Yay!”

I quickly finished one sandwich and, with a wry smile at Mari’s hopeful expression, handed her another.

From the moment we entered this cavern, I had felt something. Now, the rain had stopped, and the sky was clear, with a large full moon casting a soft moonlight.

Though we hadn’t discovered who had lived here or found any great treasure, the small adventure in this unexpected cave and the late dinner under the full moon in this secret place had a certain romance to it.

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