CH 117.1

Chapter 117.1 : Camping

「Aah … Sorry, let’s take a break for a while — 」

「Out of mana huh, Momokawa. Well, not a bad idea anyway~!」

The one who understood my feeling seeing me out of breath was my fellow from sorcerer vocation Shimowa.

Yes, I was currently out of mana.

The reason why I ended up in this kind of a situation was because I used one of the raptor’s corpse to recreate my 『Corpse Doll of Resentment』, Rem, and another for her reinforcing materials. Honestly, doing that at the same time emptied my mana tank.

「This makes You more like a Monster user, or Necromancer」

「It’s cool that you can resurrect it as it is. But then, I think it’s more like a zombie with its blackish color.」

Those were Ueda and Nakai’s, our vanguards, impression upon seeing the raptor’s corpse being transformed into 『Corpse Doll of Resentment』.

Her appearance still that of a raptor, but her color was changed to black and grey from its original dark green with stripes. I thought her current color was more badass than before.

「KURURU」

It was such an adorable purr. The way she rubbed the tip of her nose on me reminded me of a pet.

Well, the inside was still Rem after all.

「The skeleton also changed considerably.」

Shimokawa voiced his admiration to the Skeleton Rem who just reinforced with Raptor materials.

Green scaled armor formed around her limbs, torso, and waist, her defense was still a far cry from the previous Rem, but it was far better than the skeleton-only form.

Just like Mantis Knights equipped with mantis blade on their arms, Raptor Rem was also equipped with Raptor’s deadliest weapon, giant sharp claw, on her limbs.

A glance was enough to convince me that she was fully resurrected in her Raptor form with all its advantages but … What surprised me even more than that was her tail.

Though her tail was smaller than the normal raptor’s, it grew from Rem’s butt, her pelvis, and continued on with her long but flexible and slender tail.

Could it be that she underwent something similar to level up? Well, it’s not like I could confirm it since whose current grade was lower than the one killed by that bitch Reina couldn’t speak 「Ga」 anymore. The future, where I could engage in a conversation with her, might come someday.

I was looking forward for such a future but at the same time, I was getting scared of knowing her evaluation about me, her master … Well, I could put that matter aside for now.

「Our war potential has increased for the time being.」

「But still, the one who got killed by Reina-chan’s sacred beast before was stronger than this one, right?」

「Indeed. She’s made of high quality materials after all.」

Nevertheless, I was back in the first step again right now.

When I was collecting Jurimari’s spear and axe that was thrown by Rem before she got destroyed by breath attack, I found something sparkling on the ground. That thing was that salamander’s … bright red scale.

I had to say that it was as expected of dragon scale that could resist extremely hot temperature, that scale had survived the breath attack that annihilated Rem. Thus, I took it back with me, and used it to strengthen the current Rem.

In addition, I also collected the other splinter of Salamander and Thunder T-Rex’s scales from the place that became their battlefield.

As a result, a dark red, small, circular shield was formed on Rem’s left hand. It might be durable, but its size was simply too small. Nevertheless, the current Rem should be able to make full use of its toughness in real combat after some practice.

「Oi, the sun is about to set.」

「Seriously, it’s already that late huh.」

Come to think of it, we had walked quite far from our base. I assure you that it’s not because we took a prolonged rest along the way.

「We’ll be arriving at night if we choose to go back to our base now.」

「I guess we’ve no choice but to camp outside.」

When I said those words, the expression on the Totempole Trio’s face told me that they’re not too keen on the idea of camping outside. But it’s not like their disagreement could stop the sun from setting into the western sky.

[TL : This actually have its own sky and sun]

「Tch, can’t be helped then, let’s do it with guts.」

「OOOH!」

「So that means we’re sleeping outside huh, we did not even bring a tent with us.」

「I think we should sleep in the jungle, huddling together to keep our warmth from getting sapped away by the wind.」

「No waaaay …. The hell is this! Punishment game!?」

Well, despite living a primitive life, we’re actually still quite spoiled thanks to the existence of the safe zone called fairy plaza.

Well this was also the first time for me camping outside of the fairy plaza like this. I wished that all of us could safely pass this night without any kind of accident whatsoever.

===

「Everyone~, the bath is ready~」

「HYAHHAAAA! BAAATH!」

Three naked youths happily jumped into the 『Witch’s Kettle』 filled with hot water … hot enough that one could see the steam rising from it.

「Ha~h … so damn good— 」

「O~oh, here it is, I can feel i~t— 」

「This is it, bathtub is the Japanese soul indeed.」

That moment, the Totem Pole Trio showed a blissful expression as if they’re melting in the hot water bath. It seemed like my first customers were quite satisfied with Momokawa Bath House.

Regarding our camping zone, we decided on using the area around the river. It’s hard to find a more suitable campsite when the sun was slowly sinking in the western horizon after all.

Well, we might be an amateur who didn’t know left from right of the camping, but I noticed that we could literally spend a wonderful night camping outside with my current abilities.

The first proof was the bath being enjoyed by the trio right now.

I, who had found out during my crazy experiment of the fact that I could use 『Witch’s Kettle』 as makeshift bathtub by adjusting the heat, made a huge pot in which few people could enter at once. We could take the water directly from the river. Well, though it’s true that filling the huge kettle with the water from the river took quite a lot of manpower, I could just leave that job to Rem and the trio.

Where’s the bucket you ask? No problem, everyone was using their own trousers.

We found out that it could hold quite a lot of water after tying the end of their trouser into a knot.

As for the water that was already inside the pot, it’s naturally muddy colored such that we couldn’t see the bottom of the pot. Naturally, there’s no way anyone wanted to immerse themselves into this muddy water, even if it’s hot, but this is where the 『Witch’s Kettle』 showed its magic.

Yes, it had a water filter function too.

By using its filtering function to the fullest, it’ll keep filtering, filtering, and filtering till there’s no mud left in the water. I knew the filter structures since I went to the sewage filtration plant for field study back in my elementary grade. I’d no idea whether this vague knowledge of mine was useful, but seeing the crystal clear water, I guess it worked out somehow.

「Ah … Shouldn’t we be able to fill the water at once by using my water magic?」

A while after the filling process, our water magician, Shimokawa suddenly muttered those words. I offered a silent prayer to Shimokawa who got beaten by Ueda and Nakai combined in the background. Sorry, Shimokawa, I completely forgot about your magic.

Anyway, as long as we could fill the giant kettle with water, the aftermath was as easy as flipping one switch. There you go, the hot bath was done.

I continued on to make our dinner while the trio enjoyed the crystallization of their useless hard work, namely the hot bath. I threw in my wet trousers into the 『Witch’s Kettle』and put it into dehydrate mode. While at it, I adjusted its heat and pressure to achieve an ironing-like effect. So, please forgive me if it turned into disaster.

Now I just needed to cook the only dish I could cook- hot pot. Just like when I made wild boar’s hot pot with 『Witch’s Kettle』, I diced the meat and threw it into the pot.

Naturally, it’s not like we met a wild boar along the way, this was leftover meat from the great boar that I killed before. As expected of a monster called the great boar, it had a lot of meat. It was too much for me to finish it by myself. Even though it was a week since I killed it, I who had a small appetite couldn’t eat all of the great boar meat.

Naturally, leaving the meat as it is would spoil the meat, but I had the almighty cookware at my disposal- the 『Witch’s Kettle』, this almighty cookware could produce tons of dried meat with just a flip of switch. I couldn’t completely eliminate the gamey smell of the great bear since the only seasoning I used was salt. Uhm, it seemed desalinating was far from enough.

Anyhow, I had brought with me a large chunk of great boar meat as a precious source of protein. Now let’s have a blast with a lot of this meat.

In addition, I added the pig-faced-frog that was loitering around the riverside to the menu. My 『Pharmacy Intuition』 said it was edible after all …

Let’s get cooking the pig-frog.