Melting Vegetable

Guide Book Entry
Vegetables that only grow inside the water of Mamono Realm lakes and ponds, etc. They often grow in clusters, especially in lakes where undine live. The part corresponding to the fruit grows inside the water, and only the leaves and stem are visible from the water's surface. They're not floating weeds, yet they don't have roots in the ground. Instead, they're mysterious vegetables that grow using water as a substitute for soil, as if buried in water. One can pull them up from inside the water with the same feeling that one gets when pulling a vegetable up from the ground.

The fruit, stem and leaves of this vegetable are all comprised of a half-transparent, semi-liquid substance that's almost like solidified water given form. It seems that it actually is liquid maintaining its shape through mamono mana after all. When you extract the green-colored leaf part and stem part, the fruit is unable to maintain its shape, and it crumbles, changing into liquid.

This vegetable is extremely peculiar, and the taste has the property of changing like flowing water, depending on what ingredients it's eaten with. Every part of it is said to be the perfect accompaniment to various ingredients. The leaf part is the perfect accompaniment for the meat of mamono realm beasts, fish, etc., and when eaten together, the flavor of the juicy meat increases, and the rich taste is accentuated. If eaten by itself after the mouth has become greasy from meat, it can refresh the inside of the mouth. The semi-transparent water-colored stem is almost like a fruit, and if eaten together with other fruits or used as an ingredient in confectionery, it accentuates the sweetness to a moderate degree.

The fruit part that crumbles into liquid makes a savory sauce if put on meat. If put on vegetables, it's the perfect dressing for invigorating the taste of the raw ingredients. If put on fruit, it changes form into sweet syrup. In this way, it's an extremely convenient vegetable, but since the flavor changes right away when it is eaten with something else, it's extremely difficult to cook using the taste of the melting vegetable itself in a way that won't interfere with the other ingredients. If one could accomplish this, it would leave no doubt as to one's status as a first-rate culinary master.

The special effect of this vegetable is to melt the mana and mamono mana that's inside the body of the person who ate it, weakening resistance to mamono mana from the outside. In other words, it becomes extremely easy for the effects of charm spells using mamono mana or mamono realm ingredients that are mixed with mamono mana to kick in. For example, if a monster eats this vegetable, with leaves from the outside of a “Wrapping Vegetable”, regardless of it being the part of the wrapping vegetable that has the thinnest mana, the monster will feel as if she's eaten a core and throw off her clothes on the spot. With this point, we can probably say it is after all, an excellent vegetable as “an accompaniment for mamono realm ingredients”.

Also, it is said that when resistance to mamono mana weakens, human women become extremely susceptible to monsterisation. The effect of this vegetable is enough to make a human woman who has eaten it change into a succubus instantly after taking a single breath of the air of a Mamono Realm.