Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill Read online

  Chapter 1: Mukohda’s Party Braves the Wasteland

  Once again, we set off into the depths of the Brixt Dungeon. My teleportation stone brought us to the start of the fortieth floor, and it took two days to make our way through the forest from there. In other words, we made much faster progress than we had the first time we tackled the floor, though we still somehow ended up obtaining an excess of items in the process. I could only shake my head in resignation.

  And so I found myself once again staring down a zlatorog. No sooner had we sighted the creature than Dora-chan, who hadn’t gotten to fight one the previous time we cleared the floor, shot out ahead of us, kicking things off with a burst of Ice magic. He must’ve been itching to take his turn ever since the last one we found.

  The zlatorog let out a screeching shriek of pain and fury as Dora’s attack slammed into it. Lightning immediately began to crackle around the pair of golden antlers on its head. The zlatorog set its sights on Dora-chan, carefully aiming its head at the tiny dragon as it prepared to atomize him with its Lightning magic. Unfortunately for it, Dora-chan was an order of magnitude faster and more nimble, and the time it took to line up an attack gave him a massive opening to launch a strike of his own.

  Considering how huge the thing was, I had to imagine it made for a pretty easy target in Dora-chan’s eyes. The pixie dragon wreathed himself in a veil of Fire magic and charged at the zlatorog, slamming into and through its body, then turning around to open a second hole, and a third. In the end, the zlatorog fell without getting the chance to launch a single attack of its own. It vanished a moment later, leaving behind...

  《A pelt, a hoof, and a magic stone, eh? Peh—coulda had the decency to drop some meat, at least,》 Dora-chan grumbled as he surveyed the zlatorog’s drops. For all his complaining, I knew for a fact that the pelt was quite literally an item fit for a king. We’d somehow ended up with three of the things at that point, but it was still a luxury item among luxury items, so I made sure to snatch it up along with the rest of the zlatorog’s stuff.

  《Masteeer, let’s go pick some more of those tasty purple fruits!》 said Sui as it looked out over the nearby field of shrubs. Each bush was once again packed with ripe and juicy-looking purple fruit.

  That’s a dungeon for you, I guess. Will the wonders never cease? We’d picked the entire field clean of violetberries just a few days earlier, but the whole crop seemed to have regrown in the intervening period.

  “Violetberries, huh? Yeah, why not? We’ve had a lot of them lately, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re great. Nothing wrong with stocking up either,” I said to myself. “Let’s do it! You guys help out too, Fel, Dora-chan!”

  《Hmph. Nuisance though it may be, I must admit the sauce we had with our meat recently was of acceptable quality. I will assist, though only under protest,》 Fel grumbled.

  《Yeah, that stuff was real tasty. So was the sauce you put on that jiggly jelly stuff! I’ll help too, why not?》 chimed in Dora-chan.

  We ended up going with the same arrangement as last time: Fel stood guard, and the rest of us got down to business picking as many violetberries as we could. This was our second time harvesting the fruits, so thankfully we managed to work a bit faster and finish before another zlatorog could spawn to ruin our day. In the end we picked the field clean again, leaving me with another five sacks’ worth of berries.

  With that chore out of the way, it was finally time for us to head down to the forty-first floor! We proceeded through the cave, descended a staircase, and emerged on the next floor to find...

  “First a forest, now this?” I moaned.

  《Ha ha ha! Man, these dungeons never get old, do they?》 chortled Dora-chan.

  《Indeed,》 Fel agreed. 《That sense of the unknown is why I will never tire of them.》

  《Oh, wow! It’s so empty, Master!》 said Sui.

  A seemingly endless expanse of barren wasteland right out of a western spread out before us, stretching from one horizon to the other.

  ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

  A full day later, we were still traversing the wasteland that was the forty-first floor. We’d spent the first day forging ahead, eventually stopped to bed down for the night, then got right back to it the next morning.

  《This place really is empty-empty, huh? Not even a single monster,》 Dora-chan griped telepathically. He was flying along beside Fel, who was charging across the wastes in an all-out sprint. I was on Fel’s back, as always, and Sui was in its usual place in my satchel, taking a nap.

  《What are you talking about? There was a monster just yesterday!》 I beamed back to Dora-chan as I glanced upward.

  Yesterday, right after we’d arrived on the new floor, we’d been attacked by a flying monster called a poison vulture. It looked pretty similar to the vultures I knew, except for the fact that it was huge, with a wingspan of something like three meters. Its feathers were also dark purple, and when it got close to us, it started emitting some sort of purplish haze from its whole body that I could tell at a glance would be really bad news.

  According to Fel, it was a poisonous mist that the vultures surrounded themselves with when they went hunting. And they did hunt—they were just as carnivorous as normal vultures, but these ones would proactively kill their prey by way of poison, carry the bodies off somewhere safe, and wait for them to get nice and putrid before digging in.

  《Didn’t count!》 said Dora-chan. 《Those aren’t even a fight! You just shoot ’em down with magic, and that’s the end of it. We’ve barely seen any of ’em anyway.》

  《Okay, I admit, you have a point there.》 I didn’t know if the population on the floor was just small or what, but whatever the reason, only a few of them had actually tried to attack us. 《Just because there aren’t many of them doesn’t mean they can’t catch us off guard when we’re not paying attention, though! Keep an eye out!》 That was one of the nastier aspects of the poison vulture’s hunting style.

  《Sheesh, I know, already! Not like they drop anything other than magic stones when we beat ’em, though,》 Dora-chan grumbled. 《Hey, Fel, are those really the only monsters on this floor?》

  《Indeed,》 replied Fel, 《at least within the range I can sense. Several more of them are present in the vicinity, but nothing else.》

  《‘Within the range you can sense’?》 I parroted. 《Does that mean that this floor’s so big that you can’t sense the whole thing?》

  《It is most definitely larger than the forest above. That, I can say with certainty.》

  《Ugh! I was already fed up with two floors of endless forest, and now we have something even bigger than those were?》 I scowled as I looked out across the utterly featureless wasteland from atop Fel’s back.

  《It seems this may well be one of those floors,》 Fel said cryptically as he glared at the wastes before us as well.

  《One of what floors?》 I asked.

  《Consider this: I take great pride in my speed, yet even I will need no small amount of time to reach the next floor. How would a group of ordinary adventurers fare in our place?》

  《Oh, right... It could take them a solid two or three months to make it across. Maybe more.》

  《Quite. Note too that there are no sources of food or water to be found.》

  I hadn’t considered that until Fel brought it up, but he was right. I’d noticed a few of what looked like springs on the thirty-ninth and fortieth floors, and while they were few and far between, there were some monsters around that dropped meat as well. In a worst-case scenario it wouldn’t have been impossible to find enough provisions to get by up there, but
this floor was a whole different can of worms. After all, the only monsters around were poisonous, and only dropped magic stones to begin with—no meat to be seen.

  《I guess when you put it that way, you wouldn’t be able to make it through this floor at all without enough provisions,》 I said. And considering how long it would take to get across the floor, I can only imagine how much food you’d need for that... 《You’d just keep walking farther and farther as your food stores get lower and lower, with no sign of the path to the next floor to be seen... Not to mention how cold it gets here at night! This floor’s kinda hellish, huh?》

  I could easily see less strong-willed individuals breaking down long before they got anywhere near the end of the floor. The endless journey would have your spirit dangling by a fraying shoestring, and then the freezing-cold nights would set in the moment the sun went down to snap that last remaining thread. Speaking of the sun, I had no clue how it worked, but the larger, more open floors did light up in the daytime and get dark at night.

  It only took me one night on this floor to realize how miserably cold the nights here were going to be. It wasn’t so bad during the daytime, but when night came I could tell from feeling alone that it was below freezing out. I was so caught off guard by the cold I ended up throwing together a last-second kimchi hot pot for dinner to help warm us up, then had everyone cluster up together while we slept to try and share our body heat.

  《A floor that’s made to grind your spirit into the dirt, eh? Yeah, sounds like the sorta crap a dungeon would have in it,》 said Dora-chan.

  I nodded in agreement. 《Right? It’s kind of ridiculous how malicious it is, but I’m not at all surprised to see a dungeon with a floor like this.》 Though on second thought, it occurred to me that the grinding-your-spirit thing was only part of what made the floor so nasty. It was also liable to kill you via starvation. “Malicious” barely did it justice.

  《In our case, of course, provisions are hardly a concern and the distance we must travel is nothing more than an inconvenience,》 noted Fel.

  《Ha ha, true ’nuff!》 chuckled Dora-chan.

  Meanwhile, I was just thanking my lucky stars that I had my Item Box and Online Supermarket to get me through that awful place.

  Six days later, we finally reached a cave—the entryway to the next floor. Normally there’d be a floor boss waiting around to keep us away from the passageway, but this time there was no sign of any such monster. I wasn’t super surprised at that point, though. The whole floor had structured itself around beating you down psychologically without resorting to monster attacks, so not having a boss seemed like a reasonable enough extension of the theme.

  I thought back on the experience of crossing the floor. The poison vultures had the most uncanny way of only attacking when you least expected them, and a treasure chest that Dora-chan had found partway through the trip let out a cloud of poison gas when I opened it. I’d appraised it beforehand and carefully opened it from a distance, of course, so I wasn’t in any real danger, but looking inside after the gas dispersed and only finding a single gold coin was still a real letdown.

  The farther into the wasteland we went, the less the four of us had bothered chatting with each other. It was a real relief to know that I’d finally be free of that endless expanse of nothingness. My familiars seemed just as elated as I was too.

  “All right, guys, let’s get a move on! Goodbye to this floor, and good riddance!”

  《Well spoken.》

  《Seriously.》

  《Master, do you think there’ll be lots of monsters on the next floor? Sui hopes there are! Sui’ll beat them all up!》

  And so we arrived on the forty-second floor...where my jaw dropped. “Oh, come ooon,” I moaned as I surveyed another wasteland, identical to the one we’d just been through.

  “Grrr,” Fel growled, baring his teeth.

  《Ha ha ha... Another one! Great...》 Dora-chan sarcastically chuckled.

  《Mnhh, nothing again?》 grumbled Sui, who might’ve been the least pleased of all of us.

  《We will make our way through this place as quickly as possible. Get on.》

  “Wait, when you say ‘as quickly as possible,’ you don’t mean, like—”

  《Enough talk. Get on.》

  Fel was clearly not going to budge this time, so I shrugged and climbed up on his back.

  《Dora, Sui, are you prepared?》

  《You know it! Don’t underestimate how fast these wings can carry me. I’ll keep up just fine!》

  《Sui’s okay too! Sui’s safe and sound in Master’s bag!》

  “W-W-Wait a sec! What’re you planning, Fel?”

  《Good. Then let us be off!》

  “H-Hey, wait a—”

  Before I could stop him, Fel blasted off through the wasteland at mach speed. My anguished “Nooooooooo!” must’ve resounded for miles around...not that there was anyone there to hear it.

  ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

  “B-Bleeech,” I retched. I’d somehow managed to crawl my way off Fel’s back, only to double over with nausea and end up on all fours.

  《Hey, you alive down there?》

  《Master, are you okay?》

  《Your frailty never ceases to astonish, truly.》

  “Oh, screw you... Wh-Whose fault do you think this is, anyway?” I moaned, glaring up at Fel. It probably wasn’t much of a glare, though, considering how sickly I must’ve looked after three days of turbo travel.

  《We had few options if we hoped to escape this fearsomely tedious floor in good time.》

  “I said I was fine going slow...”

  《And you were overruled by the will of the majority. You had your vote, as did the rest of us, meaning you have no right to complain.》

  “Ugh...”

  The first day was bad enough that I ended up proposing that we take our time going through the floor, but Fel had stubbornly insisted that we keep going as quickly as possible. I tried to pull Dora-chan and Sui onto my side in an effort to convince him, since they were usually willing to back me up when he was unreasonable, but they went and sided with him instead! Apparently an almost endless floor with nothing but poison vultures for company was so torturously boring for them, they just couldn’t take it any longer.

  And so Fel took command, leading us forward at a full sprint across the whole wasteland in a three-day forced march. My familiars were full of energy at the end of the excursion, but I’d spent the past three days clinging to Fel for dear life, and was basically skin and bones. Not to get gross, but I’d known for a fact that anything I ate would probably come right back up again the moment I got on Fel’s back, so I’d been subsisting on nutrient jelly packs that I bought from my Online Supermarket. My familiars, meanwhile, kept up their usual carnivorous diet the whole time.

  《Very well, then. Let us spend the night here.》

  “Yeah, that’d be great, thanks,” I managed to choke out. I was spent, and by the time we arrived at the cave that led to the forty-third floor, the day was already almost over. We decided to file into the cave and bed down there for the night.

  ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

  “Urp,” I retched as I watched my familiars dig into the gigant minotaur cutlet sandwiches I’d pulled out of storage for them and tried to endure the emptiness of my stomach.

  《These are scrumptious indeed.》

  《Right? The way the sauce soaks into the bread makes it go so well with the meat!》

  《It’s sooo tasty!》

  Well, good for you guys... No way in hell I’m eating one of those tonight, I thought desolately. My stomach was still way too unsettled for me to keep much more than nutrient jelly down for long, so my meal came from a very different menu than theirs. I also didn’t have the energy to stand, so I ended up sitting cross-legged on the ground and pulling out a tool I hadn’t used in quite some time to cook my own food on: the portable camping burner I’d bought way back when.

  I needed something that would be f
illing but nice and easy on my stomach, so I decided to make egg and rice gruel. All you have to do is fill a clay pot with some water, granulated dashi, soy sauce, mirin, and salt, then put it on your burner. You can scramble the eggs while the mixture comes to a boil.

  When the mixture reaches a rolling boil you add the rice, and once the rice is mostly cooked you pour in the beaten egg. Let it sit for just a little while until it starts to go solid, then mix it all together, taste test for seasoning, and you’re finished! Normally I’d put sliced green onions or seaweed on top for a little extra flavor, but I just couldn’t be bothered tonight and skipped the finishing step.

  I blew on the piping-hot gruel to cool it down a little, then slurped up a spoonful. “Ahhh, man, this stuff really warms you right up,” I mumbled to myself. A nice, gentle gruel was exactly what my stomach needed, and I couldn’t have been happier to have real food in me again for the first time in days.

  As I went in for a second spoonful, I felt something prodding at my thigh. I looked down to find Sui poking me with its tentacle.

  《Hey, Master, is that tasty?》

  “I mean, I sure think it is,” I replied. “Wanna try?”

  《Yeah!》

  I pulled out a small bowl for Sui and spooned in a helping of gruel. The slime gave it a taste right away.

  “How is it?” I asked.

  《Hmm... It’s tasty, but Sui likes meat better, in the end.》

  “Ha ha, yeah, I had a feeling you’d say that.” In an effort to go extra easy on my stomach, I’d made it so watery on that particular day that it was almost closer to rice soup than gruel. It was no wonder it wasn’t up to Sui’s standard for flavor.

  《Hey! I have need of seconds!》 Fel called over.

  《Make that two of us!》 added Dora-chan.

  “Right, right! Do you want seconds too, Sui?”

  《Yeah!》

  After Fel, Dora-chan, and Sui finished their cutlet sandwiches and I finished my first real meal in ages, we all went to bed. That night, I slept like a log.

  ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

  “We’re just one staircase away from the forty-third floor now, huh?”