Chapter 7 Searching for Delicacies

The Great Palace of Nova Lemuria, the current center of Lemurian politics as well as Hercule's residence. As far as Hercule knew, the Great Palace of Nova Lemuria was the biggest one in the world.

The palace constructed by a great number of dwarven builders was a work of art in itself. The building was lavishly decorated with stained glass and mosaics and laid with beautiful carpets of purple color, whose use was reserved to emperors only. The palace walls were made entirely of marble, and you could see meticulous engravings on them upon a closer look.

It was the finest example of Lemurian architectural mastery and art, and the pride of the Lemurian people.

However…

This can be said for infrastructure like roads as well, but it cost more to maintain a building than it is to build it. This Great Palace of Nova Lemuria was no exception.

The beautiful engravings and mosaics were surprisingly sturdy, so they didn't require much repair. The palace's lavishness was not a problem.

The problem was how spacious it was.

The bigger a building is, the more eye-catching it gets. This is a fact. The Great Palace of Nova Lemuria was gigantic, which means a big cleaning staff was required.

Therefore Hercule blocked off two-thirds of the palace.

Thanks to that, he managed to shrink the Great Palace's maintenance cost down to only one fifth. If a room was required for some ceremony, he simply had the room cleaned immediately before and after that. Since most rooms were hardly used, cleaning them once a month was already enough. It was as stupid as scrubbing your kitchen clean every day.

With the mindset of eliminating all waste, Hercule managed to restore the financial situation… But there were certain areas where he squandered more than Hadrianus III.

First was the uniforms of palace servants; that is, (female) attendant uniforms. The uniforms were very plain before Hercule replaced them with beautiful and charming miniskirt designs. This should go without saying but those miniskirt uniforms were only worn by young, attractive, unmarried women. Aunties continued to wear their old clothes as-is. And there's no need to say anything about the eunuchs.

But what if they get dirty? He'd just get replacements with tax money, duh.

The young female attendants who worked in the Great Palace were—thirty human girls, and twenty high elf girls. Since there were only fifty in total, it didn't cost much to pay them. Incidentally, all fifty were top class beauties.

Hercule took the designs from an artist whom he knew in his past life; this artist had enthusiastically designed dozens of cute maid clothes. Hercule adopted them all so the design changed depending on the day.

Why miniskirts? They were to Hercule's taste, that's why.

He thought that his meal would more pleasant (sexual) with cute girls around. This makes Hercule sound like a total sleazebag, but that was not far from the truth…

And to begin with, young women serving in the Great Palace were prospect concubines for the emperor. Appearance was an important criterion for selection. The girls were aware of that, and they were even hoping to become the emperor's concubine.

Hercule was handsome even by elven standards, his build was muscular, he was young and above all, he held absolute authority in the Empire. The girls were very eager to receive his seed. But Hercule was currently smitten with Carolina, so it's unlikely that he would get it on with another girl for now.

As an aside, young female servants usually would leave the palace after about ten years. If they couldn't gain the emperor's attention after ten years, they had no choice but to settle for another man.

Well, humans aside, high elves would still remain beautiful after ten years so they didn't have trouble finding marriage. But becoming the emperor's concubine was still the better choice after all.

Today as well, those girls were wearing the miniskirt uniforms with slightly flushed faces and waggled their butts in front of Hercule while hoping in their mind, "Please, ravish me!"

Other than miniskirt maid clothes, Hercule didn't hesitate to splurge on another thing. That was food.

"Today's meal is delicious as well."

Hercule scooped a spoon of soup, blew on it then gulped it down. Then he twirled the pasta with a silver fork and brought it to his mouth.

Including labor and ingredient costs, the meal before him cost about 100 thousand yen (when converted to Japanese yen).

Salad, pasta, a fish dish, a meat dish, soup, and dessert. They were all made from seasonal ingredients gathered from within the Lemurian Empire, and cooked by the very best Lemurian chefs.

The feast before Hercule was no doubt of the highest standard for this world. But even though he was partaking such a luxurious meal, Hercule seemed a little dejected.

(This still pales to three-star cuisine that I remember from my past life…)

"I would rate it 1.5 stars, maybe? Well, that's still much better than before."

"I'm most grateful for Your Majesty's kind words… I will continue to devote myself to making a dish that can make you exclaim in delight."

The head chef deeply conveyed his gratitude to Hercule. Hercule replied that he would look forward to it, then went back to his meal.

In truth, Hercule in his past life wasn't some sort of multi-millionaire who could afford to eat three-star cooking on a daily basis; he actually mostly ate frozen food. His current meal was in fact superior both in terms of nutritional value and taste.

But the current Hercule was an emperor. There should be no problem with the greatest person in the country eating three-star cuisine every day.

That said…

Unfortunately, the current level of Lemurian cooking was only about one or two Michelin stars by his previous world's standard.

The technical level of the Lemurian Empire, even in the most advanced fields, could rival the Renaissance period at best.

Thanks to the existence of magecraft and magic, ingredients could be preserved long-term and remained fresh even when transported from afar, and firepower for cooking could be controlled just as well or even better than modern stoves.

And with the Lemurian Empire being a trading nation, there were spices and sugar available, if a little pricey—though the emperor could easily get his hand on them.

And yet, it only amounted to this level.

But there was no way around it. There hadn't been much research into cooking after all.

Lemurian cuisine was already vastly superior to the food of surrounding countries. Even aristocrats from the western countries still ate with their hands, and their food was roasted with only a dash of spice.

The Lemurian Empire was highly advanced. But that was not nearly satisfactory for Hercule.

That's why Hercule had upped the number of cooks and ordered them to develop new dishes and improve the taste. And they were successful to an extent.

He made them research new flavorings as well. One example was mayonnaise… They also developed a variety of sauce other than that, and at present, they'd completed five kinds of flavorings. Although recently they had started to run out of ideas, so the head chef was racking his brain for something that could please the emperor.

The improvement of taste was progressing steadily. The chefs experimented with dishes day and night and collected points that could be improved into reports, then moved on to a new dish… They repeated that process over and over again and improved their cooking little by little.

The most extreme improvement was found in soup dishes. The many kinds of soups made with the concept of "umami"—contributed by Hercule—in mind were far beyond the standard of this world.

Hercule had also been collecting all kinds of foodstuffs from within the Empire in order to increase the variety of dishes. Coffee was one of them. He's sure that there must be delicious food that he had yet to discover somewhere.

Hercule started the search for foodstuffs with that in mind and managed to find tomato. And as you know, tomato is a fundamental ingredient for cooking.

Tomato had already become a vital part of the Lemurian Empire's palace cuisine. It had yet to spread to the common people, however. Hercule didn't really care what was on the common people's menu though as long as his appetite was satisfied.

The level of Lemurian palace cuisine rose sharply thanks to the immense amount of gold spent and the chefs' hardships. And yet that wasn't enough to satisfy Hercule.

While eating the ice cream dessert, Hercule inadvertently muttered.

"Bread, pasta, pizza… They are tasty enough, but I wanna eat something else."

Specifically, he wanted to eat rice. Hercule himself had never eaten rice and Japanese food. But the man of his past life was enthused with such food, and it made Hercule interested as well.

"I wanna eat rice. I'm sick of western food… I wanna eat Chinese and Indian cooking too."

But as expected, even the most elite Lemurian chefs could not reproduce cuisine that they had neither seen nor heard about; and there was no rice in the Lemurian Empire to begin with.

What should I do… just as Hercule thought that, an idea struck his mind.

"Of course! If there's no rice in the Empire, I just have to get it from outside the country!"

He found coffee and tomato within the Lemurian Empire, but since the discovery of tomato there hadn't any new ingredient found. It was about time he looked overseas.

"I will tell merchants to look for it."

It's fortunate that the Lemurian Empire was a trading nation. There were plenty of foreign merchants coming to conduct business.

If he could get information from them…

"Bring me all sorts of foodstuffs and chefs from all over the world… Yeah, what a great idea."

Hercule was the authority. He had all the money in the world, and you could get anything you want with enough money.

Let's start with rice. After that will be miso and soy sauce. If there aren't any, then soybeans. Some adzuki beans would be nice too…

A big grin appeared on Hercule's face.

The gourmet capital, Noval Lemuria.

That's what Lemurian Empire's capital city would soon be referred to as.