Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill: Volume 11 Read online

  Chapter 1: Next Stop, the Brixt Dungeon

  The ominous warning that Demiurge had given me the night before weighed heavily on my mind as I made my way to Brixt’s Adventurer’s guild.

  “Ugggh,” I moaned, “are we seriously doing this...?”

  《Cease your complaining. We have come too far to turn back, however much you whine.》

  《Right? ’Course we’re doing this, it’s the whole reason we came all the way out here!》

  Fel, who was walking by my side, and Dora-chan, who was flapping along above us, were both exactly as excited for our next venture as I was dreading it. Even Sui was riled up—normally it would be riding (and probably napping) in the leather satchel I carried slung over my shoulder, but this time it was wobbling with glee on Fel’s back, mentally humming a happy dungeon song.

  “I mean, we did come out here for the dungeon, yeah, but that was before the gods warned us about what’s down there,” I protested. I had decided to tell my familiars about Demiurge’s warning in the end, and informed them over breakfast. They reacted about how you’d expect.

  《Why’s that a problem? I’ve been itchin’ for a good fight; works fine for me!》

  《Dora-chan is entirely correct. The God of All Creation went so far as to tell us to call him for aid should the situation go awry. It seems our dearth of worthy opponents will finally end!》

  Why would an explicit warning from a literal god make you more willing to do this?! What is wrong with you two lunatics?!

  “Okay, no, you totally missed the point! When a god goes that far to warn you about something, it means it’s gonna be really, really nasty! I get that you’re all excited for the dungeon, and I’m resigning myself to at least setting foot in the thing, but we don’t have to go all the way to the bottom, right? Let’s go down through, like, the middle layer or so and turn back before we hit the lower reaches, okay?”

  《Why would we do such a thing? We will explore all the way to the final floor. You cannot claim to have traveled a dungeon if you turn back before the finish line, and if a worthy foe awaits us in the lower reaches, we have even less reason not to brave them. Long has it been since I last met a foe I could unleash my full strength upon—oh, how I have waited for this day to come! Bwa ha ha ha!》 Fel blasted my mind with a ferocious, booming laugh. He was as hyped up as I’d ever seen him.

  《Seriously though, you’re worrying too much,》 added Dora-chan with a confident smirk. 《You’ve got me, Fel, and Sui around, and there ain’t a monster out there the three of us can’t handle! Right?》

  Not right! There could be—and probably were—all sorts of horrifying baddies out there that the likes of us couldn’t even imagine. Considering that, again, the God of All Creation himself seemed to think something down there was capable of giving us a hard time, the probability of me being right about that was looking higher and higher.

  《Enough talk—this is a waste of time, and the Adventurer’s guild awaits. You insisted we pay them a visit before we depart for the dungeon, did you not?》

  “Yeah, that’s right. Pretty sure it’d be a major faux-pas to head straight into the dungeon without showing my face there at least once beforehand. I’ve heard rumors that they have maps of the place all the way down to the thirtieth floor too, so I’m hoping to get my hands on one of those.”

  Our teleportation stone could take us anywhere from the first floor to the thirtieth, so having a map would give us the chance to talk it through and decide what floor we wanted to start from. Demiurge had also dropped a hint about something special for me on the twentieth floor, of course, so we’d have to go there no matter what else we settled on.

  Man, I’ve got a really bad feeling about this one. Are we gonna be all right down there...?

  ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

  “Oh, wow. Think that’s the biggest one yet...”

  The Brixt Adventurer’s guild towered over me. Dolan and Aveling were dungeon cities too, but this one put even their guilds to shame, and it was bustling with adventurers first thing in the morning.

  Of course, the moment our party walked inside, the commotion came to a sudden stop as all eyes turned to us. I tried not to let the stares get to me as I awkwardly shuffled over to wait in line for the next available receptionist. It wasn’t moving especially quickly, though, and it looked like we’d be in for a bit of a wait.

  《How long do we intend to waste time here?》 Fel griped telepathically.

  《Until it’s our turn,》 I replied. 《Just look at this crowd—of course it’d take a while for them to get to us.》

  《Right, sure, but we haven’t even made it into the dungeon and Sui’s already out like a light,》 noted Dora-chan.

  I glanced over at Fel’s back and found that the slime had indeed gone from singing about the dungeon to blearily sleep-talking about it. All that bouncing around with excitement must’ve tired it out.

  《Sui...?》 I tried giving it a telepathic nudge, but didn’t get a response. 《W-Well, we can just wake it up when we get to the dungeon. It’s fine!》

  《Man, could that slime get any more careless?》 said Dora-chan, rolling his eyes then turning to look out over the chaotic crowd that packed the guildhall. 《Anyway, are all these people gunning for the dungeon, or what?》

  《Most likely. It’s supposed to be super hard, sure, but the loot that drops from monsters and treasure chests tends to be really valuable, apparently. I guess that’s why it’s so popular in spite of the danger.》 Isaac, the master of the Adventurer’s guild in Hirschfeld, had given me an idea of what to expect here.

  《Valuable drops, you say? Would that mean magical items?》 Fel’s ears perked up with interest.

  《Sometimes, but from what I heard, it’s mostly gems and precious metals. Those are always in demand no matter where you go, so you can make a pretty penny selling them off for sure. That’s why a lot of profit-oriented adventurers make their way here the minute their rank is high enough to manage it.》

  《Oh, is that all? Hmph.》

  《What do you mean, ‘is that all’? It’s money! More money means buying more stuff from my Online Supermarket and making more donations to Ninrir’s church, I’ll have you know.》

  《Hmm. Reasonable, I suppose. In that case, I will expect you to feed us a veritable feast of otherworldly meat after we return from the dungeon, and make a sizable donation to the Goddess’s temple as well.》

  《A-After we make it through the dungeon.》 Whether or not we’d actually manage to make it through at all was the biggest worry on my mind, at that moment.

  《Arright, let’s make a mountain of dough!》 shouted Dora-chan, who was suddenly as motivated as I’d ever seen him thanks to the mention of otherworldly meat.

  The three of us kept chatting telepathically to kill the time until suddenly I heard a new commotion cut through the already overpowering ambient noise.

  “Okay, move it pal! Clear the way, I got places to be!” shouted a potbellied, middle-aged man who I could barely make out as he elbowed his way through the crowd—directly toward us. Sure enough, he stopped right in front of me.

  “Hello, there! I presume you would be Mukohda and his familiars? Welcome to Brixt! Karelina’s guildmaster sent word you’d be making your way here, so we’ve been expecting you! My name is Tristan, and I serve as this town’s guildmaster. I assure you that we of the Brixt branch very much look forward to your patronage! Please, come with me—we have much to discuss!”

  The chubby old guildmaster beamed with delight as he led us up to his office on the second floor. I was a
little caught off-guard by how humble and polite he was, especially considering the sheer size of the guild he presided over. I could easily imagine him being the master of a Merchant’s guild branch, but an Adventurer’s guild? Not so much.

  We stepped into Tristan’s office, and at his urging, I sat down across from him at a table. Fel, Dora-chan, and Sui all took up positions behind me, willing and able to lounge around until my business was done. The office itself wasn’t all that different from the others I’d been in, in terms of design, but it was way larger than any I’d seen before and Fel could fit inside without the slightest trouble.

  Speaking of Fel, he’d already started telepathically badgering me to speed things up, so I cut to the chase and started explaining our dungeon-crawling plans right away. I mentioned that I wanted to buy a map, while I was at it.

  “I couldn’t be happier to hear it!” Tristan declared after I was finished, rubbing his hands together and smiling a big, toothy grin. “Please, by all means, take the grand tour of Brixt’s dungeon! I assure you that my guild will be more than happy to purchase all the treasure you obtain on your venture that we can possibly afford!”

  Then he leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “Thanks to the timely message from Karelina’s guildmaster, we’ve prepared ample funding to accommodate your expected output well in advance. We’ll be particularly interested in purchasing any gems or precious metals you happen to come across—they’re considered a local specialty, and we’ve had a terrible time keeping them in stock for as long as I can remember!”

  The guildmaster explained that the jewels and metals found in the dungeon were massively popular among the nobility all across the land, and flew off the shelves as quickly as they could be procured. The demand was so great, in fact, that from the sound of things I’d even be able to sell all the gems that had been collecting dust in my Item Box since I found them in Dolan and Aveling’s dungeons. I was more than a little impressed by the fact that he’d prepared an ample stock of funding in anticipation of my arrival, incidentally.

  With the important ground covered and my familiars’ urgings getting less and less patient by the minute, I decided to cut the conversation short there and get a move on to the dungeon. Tristan was considerate enough to personally guide us all the way to its entrance, and even handed over a map of the dungeon free of charge.

  The walk from the guild to the dungeon—which was located outside of the city walls—took about fifteen minutes in total, and Tristan gave me a crash-course on the dungeon en route. Judging by all the information I got from him, a quick look at the dungeon map, and Demiurge’s advice to be especially thorough in my exploration of the twentieth floor, I decided that it’d be best to use our teleportation stone and check out the twentieth floor before anything else. A quick telepathic chat with Fel and the others later, and we were all on the same page.

  According to Tristan, everything up to the twenty-second floor, from the layout of the dungeon to the sorts of monsters that appeared, had been fairly exhaustively researched and noted on the map. Things were a little sketchier from the twenty-third to thirtieth floors. The map was full of unexplored regions, and some of the foes we’d face were described simply as “monsters.”

  However well explored the twentieth floor supposedly was, though, I couldn’t imagine that Demiurge had been off base with his advice. Surely there had to be something that had escaped notice up until now? My best guess was that there was a hidden room waiting for us somewhere down there.

  When I showed Fel the map and its descriptions of the monsters on the twenty-first floor and lower, he scowled. 《Pathetic. I have no interest in wasting my time on mere fodder.》

  《Agreed,》 added Dora-chan and Sui. I decided to ignore them.

  The plan was to give the twentieth floor a solid once-over, before teleporting first up to the entrance and then down all the way to the thirtieth floor to start our exploration in earnest from there. Our teleportation stone was one of the multi-use varieties, so we didn’t have to worry about it breaking. I was really grateful to all the adventurers in Ark for letting us have it.

  《The twentieth floor is patrolled by gargoyles? Hardly worthy foes, but we cannot disregard a missive from the gods. We shall search out every last nook and cranny on the floor.》

  《Yeah, knowing there’s something there that’s not on the map makes the whole thing sound kinda fun!》

  《Sui’s gonna search all over!》

  《Sounds great, but this dungeon’s a lot bigger than the ones in Dolan and Aveling,》 I cautioned. 《It might take a pretty long time to cover the whole thing.》

  《Heh! All the better, then.》

  《Right? Let’s see how quick we can track this thing down!》

  《Sui’ll find it for sure!》

  《Yeah, yeah. Might as well make use of the map, though, since we have it and all. Let’s start by doing a lap around the floor—for all we know, we might run into whatever we’re looking for just like that.》

  We soon arrived at the dungeon. Tristan invoked his authority as the guildmaster to let us jump the queue, guiding us into a room beside the entrance that was intended for use by parties with teleportation stones. Inside the room was a pretty large magical circle—around five meters in diameter, or so—with some sort of cylindrical pedestal standing in the center. All I had to do to teleport was hold the stone by the pedestal and say the floor number I wanted to go to out loud.

  Moments before we teleported away, Tristan turned to face us. “I’m expecting great things from you!” he declared with a smile as broad as could be.

  I hope you’re right about that, but I can’t stop worrying about those lower reaches... Guess I should be worrying about the twentieth floor before anything else, though.

  Chapter 2: Sui Does All the Work (And Then Some)

  In the blink of an eye, I found myself standing in a dimly lit room atop another magical circle. The mossy stone walls emitted the very specific sort of not too bright, not too dim light that was characteristic of dungeons. In fact, the whole place just screamed “dungeon” in the classical RPG sense of the word.

  In that respect, the place felt at least a little reminiscent of Aveling’s dungeon. From what I’d heard, though, this dungeon’s floors were all at least twice the size of Aveling’s equivalents. I couldn’t expect them to be too similar.

  《Get on,》 said Fel. 《We shall search this floor in short order, then descend immediately.》

  《Sounds like a plan!》 Dora-chan agreed. 《This floor’s fulla, what was it? Gargoyles? Buncha weaklings that don’t even drop meat! No point in killing those things at all.》

  “What do you mean, ‘no point’? They’re supposed to drop gems when you beat them!”

  From what I’d been told, gargoyles had about a one in five chance of leaving something behind after they died. They were supposed to look more like big moving statues than traditional monsters, and were as slow as you’d expect considering their appearance, but also incredibly resistant to both physical and magical attacks. I’d heard that even mid-ranking adventurers struggled to take them down.

  《Sure,》 the pixie dragon said back, 《but they also said the gems’re super tiny, right?》

  “Well, yeah. But gems are gems, tiny or not. We can still sell them, and apparently they fetch a decent price. I guess we don’t have to go that far out of our way to gather a ton of them, though.” I was already swimming in wealth thanks to my familiars, after all. “By the way, you said I should get on your back, Fel? Are you planning on sprinting around the floor, or something? Will you really be able to find whatever hidden thing we’re looking for if we’re moving that fast?”

  Needless to say, Fel’s top speed was terrifically fast. I had a hard time imagining we’d be able to see anything at that pace, much less something hidden well enough to evade detection for who knows how long.

  《Hmph! Of course I will. I can sense even the smallest facets of the surrounding area. It will p
ose no trouble,》 Fel declared with a confident smirk. I knew him well enough to know that I’d probably be fine leaving it up to him.

  《Heeey, Master, let’s hurry up and go! Sui wants to beat lots and lots of baddies!》 Sui was so excited it was bouncing all the way up to my chest.

  《Hah! In that case, you should ride upon my back as well,》 offered Fel. 《We shall leave it to you to deal with any monsters in our path.》

  《Okay, Uncle Fel! Sui’s gonna work super hard!》

  《Yeah, great! You got this, Sui!》 added Dora-chan.

  《Yeah!》

  In other words, Fel and Dora-chan couldn’t be bothered to deal with the gargoyles and shoved all the work onto Sui. I thought about calling them out for a second, but considering how excited Sui was to “Beat aaall the bad guys,” in its own words, I decided to keep quiet.

  《Now then—let us away! Get on!》 commanded Fel. I heaved myself onto his back, and Sui bounced all the way up to his head.

  “Oh, right—hey, Sui! Make sure not to attack anything other than the gargoyles! They’re monsters that look like they’re made out of stone. Be really, really careful not to hit any adventurers, okay?”

  《Okaaay!》

  《Arright, finally! It’s spelunking time!》

  With an enthusiastic shout from Dora-chan, we set forth into Brixt’s dungeon.

  ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

  Pew! Pew! Peeew!

  Sui’s Acid Bullets splashed directly into the hideous face of a gargoyle, melting a hole all the way through to the back of its skull. The monster toppled backward, dead as a doornail.

  “Gaaah, sorry! I’m so sorry!” I yelled at the party of adventurers who’d been engaged in a heated battle with the creature until we’d plowed onto the scene. They stared at us in dumbfounded silence as we moved on as quickly as we’d arrived. “Dang it, Sui, what did I just tell you?!”

  There were plenty of other parties exploring the twentieth floor at the same time as us. The corridors of Brixt’s dungeon were wider than I was used to, thankfully, so even when we ran into a battle between several adventurers and a gargoyle, we could slip past them without stopping, or jump over them in the worst case. It wasn’t how I would’ve chosen to explore the place, but Fel outright refused to stop each and every time we ran into trouble.