Way early in the morning, we sailed our ship to the deep sea to grab some fish. We needed to go a bit farther than first intended, as there were more fish to catch further away, lest we’d be stuck scratching our heads waiting to get a lot if we didn’t. The closer we were to the island, the fewer good fish there were. Incidentally, we left some guys back at the port. You know, just in case some questions were asked. They were capable, so there was no need to worry about them being left behind.

I was among the ones looking into the fishing, and with all my time on the sea, I was starting to get familiar with the activity. And what was my contribution? If the fish were hard to catch, I shock them, and they would come floating back up! Nothing a little lightning power couldn’t handle. Of course I had to be careful not to fry them outright. Just low power enough to neutralize them. And after that, we throw the nets! Of course, my power was not always needed, just the conventional way was enough most of the time.

It didn’t take long for us to finish fishing, since we were basically catching a load of them with our big net. It took half a day before we returned to port. But preparation was not yet done with that. Everyone started taking out the fish and cutting through them, taking out the guts and such. But of course fish were not the only ones we’d be eating. I mean, that would just be plain boring. There should be an assortment of food!

Not to mention alcohol! Lots of liquor! Even though I wouldn’t drink any of it because I’m a very good girl, we’d still need a lot of them. Everyone would wake up with headaches in the morning, but who the fuck cares? You know I was never a party girl, never liked it, never disliked it either. But a farewell party was just warranted, you know.

Me and me crew, about to embark on a separate journey. And I’d be breaking up with me precious ship. Make the goodbyes worthwhile.

“What are we shopping for?” Hartwin asked.

“How is their local liquor, by the way?” I asked.

“Eh, they’re fine. Want me to buy some?”

“Yeah, maybe some of the crew would want to have a taste. Oh, if you can find liquor from different continents aside from ours, get some.”

“They’re quite expensive, though.”

“Just something we can afford.”

Maybe I could also have a taste, you know. Different parts of the world should have a variety when it comes to flavors. ‘But Estelia you just said you don’t drink’ — drinking and tasting are different!

“As for meat…” I placed a finger on my chin. “They mostly have monster meat, right? Guess we’ll be fine tasting more of the local produce.”

“So also buy some monster meat?”

“Yeah. Ah, I learned that they have spices here as well. Although quite pricey, please do your best to find some. They might be nice to add to our food.”

“Spices, huh? Got it.”

People go crazy for spices, so they are pretty good. Maybe I could get a flavor good enough and comparable to the food back home. I don’t mean the flavor, of course, just the level of deliciousness. You have no idea how dull the food I had been eating since I was away from home, it was honestly a bit depressing.

As a fancy princess, of course I would want something truly good. Perhaps these spices might provide a good experience.

“How much budget do we even have?” Hartwin asked.

“Hold up.” I retrieved a pouch from my cabin and threw them into Hartwin’s hands. “Found more gold in my room. The old captain was a greedy guy, it would seem.”

Hartwin peeked into the pouch. “Woah, okay. Hopefully we still have money left for our travels, though.”

“I still have my reward money from the bounty. That should be plenty.”

At least I hope so.

I mean, whew, it would be pretty bad if we ran out of money. Being broke sucks! You would never catch me broke. Even I was never really broke back in my old world. Except the fact that I couldn’t freely spend, but that’s already a given…

“So I can spend all of these?”

“Just don’t overspend, and get the best deals. Nothing beats being thrifty.” For some reason, I grew anxious about giving away that much money. My paranoia was worried about going broke. But, there should be no problem… no problem at all. “Bring Velar with you and some others to carry the stuff. I imagine you’d need a few hands.”

“Got it.”

With that, he left with a few guys. Now all that was left was for me to wait around and check what everyone was doing. I didn’t have to do anything, everyone else was doing the work. Being a freeloader was I now? Nope. Just comes with the station, you know.

Observing from the bridge, I noticed the little girl, Nira, helping out. She was mainly beside Shayla. It would seem she finally opened up to someone. During the day, if she was well fed, we should have nothing to worry about. Nira was slightly smiling as she did some work, preparing the knives, handing out the fish, and being taught how to cut fish.

Guess you wouldn’t need to know how to properly cut fish if you could just bite into them. They even let Nira cut some herself. And people say you shouldn’t let children near sharp objects — what a bunch of pussies. I’m kidding, I’m kidding! No need to call the police.

Anyway, it was good that she was having a good time at least.

Considering that this was the city harbor, there were plenty of strangers around us. And some weird ones as well. Some of them noticed what we were doing, of course. Some were even curious enough to approach, sniffing the fish that we were cooking, and the ruckus we were making.

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They were a bit annoying, they weren’t part of the party. Some were big guys as well, so they were a bit difficult to drive away. But I just let Taneva handle them, he was intimidating enough. I supposed that it was rare for someone to hold a party on a ship, a big one at that. Too bad, I imagine we’d be pretty noisy later tonight. And we’d beat anyone who tries to get in the way.

Come on, we were a ship of monsters basically. I imagine even the entire garrison wouldn’t be able to win against creatures that literally cannot die. And if I wanna gamble my life, I could just freeze this entire city. Huh, strange, why was I thinking about destruction again? Forget that.

While I was doing nothing anyway, I should prepare for the start of the journey tomorrow. So I proceeded to sort out what I should need to sort out for our departure, wouldn't want to leave something behind on this ship.

It took roughly a couple of hours for Hartwin and the others to come back. They carried a few bags, and inside were the things they bought.

“Took a while to find the spices,” Hartwin said. “But my goodness, they’re quite expensive.”

“Did you buy plenty, though?”

“Of course. It should be enough for all the food. We asked how much people typically use for each dish.”

The spices were placed in small pouches, three of them. I opened each one, curious about what they look like. We had a dark green powder, another was dark red, and the other brown.

“You know how to use these?” I asked.

“Well, we asked the vendor, and he gave us some tips. This green one is good for soups, the red is good for fried food, and the brown is additional flavoring for either. Still need to try, though.”

“I sure hope we don’t mess up the food.”

“We also bought a lot of local fruits! We thought it might be a good try adding them to our food.”

I couldn’t help but wince. “We’re really experimenting?”

“Come now, Princess. Let’s be adventurous.”

“Just make sure it’s the minority. We wouldn’t want all our food to suck.”

“Sure.”

“And the meat? What did you get?”

Hartwin sighed. “Well, as you’d expect. Monster meat.”

“Not only dried ones, I hope. If you want to get adventurous, we could try cooking them ourselves conventionally.” Although I would prefer normal meat, not like we had other options. And eating fish entirely was just too dull for me when it comes to parties.

“Yeah, we have a few varieties of meat.”

“And the liquor?”

“Mostly local. Got a couple from a continent in the southwest.”

“Are they good?”

“That’s the question.”

I shrugged. “Well, whatever. We’ll figure it out later, anyway.” I looked at the sky. “It’s late in the afternoon. Best start cooking.”

***

“CHEERS!”

Everyone raised their glasses filled with beer under the bright rays of the moon, me included. We placed tables at the center of the deck filled with wooden plates full of food. Everyone was standing as they grabbed some food for their personal plates.

I already had food on my plate, and they were a variety! Got some barbecued fish, fried monster meat, soup in a bowl. No matter what, I’d be eating all of these. We also figured out how to put in the spices, turns out it wasn’t that complicated. Not too different from the spices we put on the continent, at least to those that have encountered spices. We also got people from a poor origin here after all, and didn’t have quite a lot of options. And well, not like it’s too different from the other world too.

I watched everyone eat their food with delight. They chattered with loud conversations and spread laughter. Some talked about their life stories or memorable moments in their life.

“Me and a couple of friends once entered a place said to be haunted,” I heard one guy. “Was a middle of the night, with nothing but a torch.”

“Why would you even do that?”

“Hey, we were curious. I mean, haunted, really? It’s just bullshit.”

“So, did you find anything?”

“Thing is, we heard some tapping sounds, like footsteps or something. Kinda a big abandoned place, and the sound just echoed creepily. We wanted to check it out, but one of my friends just started running like a rat!” He laughed loudly, rubbing his eyes. “We didn’t even see what it was yet!”

“Yeah I bet you ran along with him.” Upon hearing that, the group laughed.

“N-No, I didn’t!”

“Yeeaah? You liar.”

“So did you see what it was?”

“Well…” The guy awkwardly looked away.

“Aha! You really did run away!”

Everyone laughed at him.

The guy frowned. “W-What’s the problem with that?! It could be a dangerous monster or something.”

“Or could be a small critter! Hahahaha!”

I chuckled lightly as I listened to them. I have to hand it to him, quite brave of him to put himself in a possible precarious situation. I leaned back in my chair as I forked a piece of sliced meat, one that had spices on them. Upon eating it, I nodded in satisfaction. I understood why people would go crazy for spices. This thing was almost on a par with the simplest food back at the palace.

“Or could be a ghost, you know!” the storytelling guy added.

“Oh really now?” But they still laughed at him.

Ghosts, huh.

I think I barely heard ghost stories here in this world. Taneva suddenly quietly chuckled.

“If there were actual ghosts, we’d be in a hell of a trouble.”

I glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. “Are you a skeptic?”

“Skeptic of what? Ghosts? Lost souls that get stuck in this world, that kind of stuff?”

I merely shrugged.

“Ghosts are impossible,” Taneva said. “Rules are strict, the dead go straight to the underworld to be sent away, no exception. No one can come back from the dead.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Then what would that make me?”

He fell silent, having no answer. “... You, Princess, are a mystery. You didn’t actually die, did you?”

“I thought that’s what the prophecy said.”

“As I said, no one should come back from the dead. Maybe the prophecy is wrong, and you didn’t die at all. The fall from the stairs didn’t kill you.”

“... Well, I did die.” And certainly Estelia did.

“Then it’s a mystery… Although I don’t quite understand it. You truly have no idea how?”

“Why are you asking me? I’m just the victim in all this.”

“Oh, then we really have no answers to the mystery and the prophecy’s… weirdness.”

Well, I was technically a lost soul, right? Being from another world and all. But that shall never be mentioned. But I should not really be thinking about something that didn’t matter. Yeah, how I got here didn’t matter to me right now. There were more important things and more worrying than that.

I focused on eating my food, the atmosphere was quite festive in a way. However, I couldn’t completely enjoy it. Something was weighing on my mind… I let out a tired sigh. I just wanted to really enjoy something for once in a while. It sucks, fucking sucks…

I was quite jealous of how everyone was enjoying this to their hearts’ content, so I couldn’t help but glance at the nearby bottles of liquor. It was a thing people used to loosen up. But I found myself hesitating. I was not really fond of such a vice.

I took some of my food, but seeing how everyone was enjoying the occasion, it tinged a little. Only made me feel more depressed. I clenched my fists, various thoughts swirled in my mind amidst my deliberation — or rather, as I fell into temptation.

It shouldn’t be that bad, right? Just this once is fine, right? I mean, it’s just drinking… Nothing bad about getting drunk to drown the depressive feelings.

Maybe just this once…

I grabbed a bottle of strong wine and a cup of glass, and poured the liquor into it. I swirled the wine glass, staring at its contents for a moment. There was quite a lot of liquor in the glass… I drank plenty of liquor in my past life, so even the strong flavor shouldn’t be a problem. The problem was this body…

Ah, fuck it.

I chugged the entire glass content, the strong liquor flavor stung my tongue and throat. Once the glass was empty, I could feel my belly warm up inside. My face wincing, I lowered the glass. It was fine. This was a classy wine bottle we got in the ship’s storage. So it had a more fancy flavor than the rest. But that didn’t mean it had low alcohol content, judging from the strong flavor.

All in all, it was okay.

And thus, I poured more into my glass and drank more liquor. After that, I drank another one. And another one. And another. And another…

… And I was feeling a bit better.