When we returned to our nation, we were met with shouts and cheering.
“Three cheers for the Great Camp Bravo Kingdom!”
“Long live the King! Er, the King’s representative!”
“Glory to the Ninja! Eternal glory to Taiga the Special!”
Their adulations were somewhat odd, but our first expedition had been a great success regardless. We’d accomplished our objective without a single casualty and managed to get back with more than we’d expected.
Immediately, we put some of the bloodsucking kudzu ivy into the campfire. The glowing embers took no time at all to burst into a bright-red blaze. Still, there was no time to rest upon our homecoming. I built several more fires, since we only had one, then divided up the fuel and assigned citizens to tend to each.
Thankfully, having watched me from the start, the people were quick to learn. As I was able to entrust more and more tasks to others, it looked like I wouldn’t have to worry about managing the fires anymore, which was good.
The greatbats we’d brought back were butchered expertly. They hung one from its legs, and I watched their cutting process with keen interest. They stripped off the skin and washed it with water. Doubtless, it would be made into tanned leather later. It seemed they’d be able to put the wing membranes to practical use, too.
Given how large the creatures were, we gathered quite a bit of meat from them. And then, as if it was the natural thing to do, every citizen in the nation came together around the fire for a celebratory feast. Though it was simple, greatbat meat roasted over the campfire was delicious to our empty stomachs, and a few people even broke down in tears. Complaints quickly started about not having any alcohol, but I had that tea from earlier, so I was fine for now.
Nightfall brought a chill with it, but on this night, at least, the faces of all those nestled together and sleeping around the now numerous campfires in the “palace” looked to be at peace.
Starting the next day, we began the organization and classification of what we’d gathered.
From the greatbat meat, we took anything not immediately edible and smoked it. First, we cut it into thin slices, then laid them atop a shelf made of branches and heated them from underneath. We used a blanket for the smoking area. The vapors did grow pungent, but that would also serve to keep the bugs away.
As for the first campfire, we stacked more stones around it, transforming it into a turtle-shell-shaped hearth. My survival teacher in the Regiment had called this type of oven a Yukon stove. You wouldn’t make one unless you planned on staying in one spot for a long time, so this was the first time I’d actually constructed one myself.
We filled the spaces between the piled-up stones with mud taken from the river, then laid a large, flat rock on the top. The countertop obviously served as a cooking stove, but we could also place food directly on it and use it as a hot plate, which broadened our culinary possibilities considerably. We’d turned the pot the slime had swallowed onto its side and buried it inside the stonework. This way, it would act as an oven.
“Which I will leave to you,” I told Potesara. “You’ll need it for meal preparation, right?”
The man was more grateful than I’d expected. Looking like he was about to cry from raw emotion, the former innkeeper said, “Taiga, we all owe you our lives. I’m going to rebuild my inn right here. Any food you order will be on the house.”
“Ah right, well, thank you.”
As long as I’d lived, I’d had few opportunities to express my thanks to someone’s face, so my response was a stammered one. Then, realizing something, I asked, “Just the food? Not the drink?”
Potesara answered with a solemn look, “Booze is the business. Still, for you, the first round will be free.”
We considered trying to make a second stove, but we held off, leaving it aside for future thought. I had thought Savakan’s smithing job would need one, too, but even with my survival knowledge, I didn’t have the know-how to understand what sort of equipment was needed for heating and striking metal. When I asked her about it, she said she actually needed a lot of fuel to really get the furnace going, so we carried it over as a future problem.
“It’s fortunate that we’re near a river,” Savakan remarked. “Smithing uses a lot of water. If it was up to me, I’d put a furnace right by the stream.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
For the time being, Savakan requested a job repairing broken pots and sharpening dulled blades. She claimed the campfire heat would be enough for that.
And my big souvenir for her was the door in that room where the slime had attacked me. The outside was rusted, but the other side was fine. If you took off the rust, it was a perfectly usable hunk of metal. She was overjoyed and started thinking right away about how to use it.
Still, it was a heavy door, so it’d taken a lot of work putting ropes around it and hauling it out of the pit, but once we had it up, we could also employ it as a sled to put our things on, making our return easier. (For getting across the pitfall, we removed the luggage and turned the door on its side, passing it along the wall so as not to trip the switches.) Next time we went, I wanted to have a similar device—preferably one with wheels on it.
As for the executioner (they called him Naaham the Merciful), his eyes lit up when he saw the bundles of bloodsucking kudzu vines. He informed me that by stripping off the skin, washing it with water, and weaving it together, he’d be able to make a strong rope. Additionally, he was accustomed to handling blades, so I had him work with Savakan to maintain and restore metal objects. Savakan gave the executioner an oddly wide berth, and Naaham seemed none too pleased to be polishing pots and pans, but after a few hours, they were freely yelling back and forth at each other while working, so I decided all was well.
The wood we took from the treant was used both as fuel and to make personal tools—we quickly started to run out of it. The people of Million Dungeon, in general, were good with their fingers; they’d make little items for themselves, and they’d fix broken ones rather than throwing them away. That was probably because of our current situation of scarcity.
I personally checked whether the fruit taken from the treant was safe. Whenever you first ran across new edible vegetation in a survival situation, you always had to test it. The process typically went like this.
First, you’d break the fruit or plant apart and rub its juice against the inside of your wrist. After fifteen minutes, the spot should be checked to ensure nothing unusual occurred.
Following that, the next step was to place a tiny piece of the fruit or plant in your mouth and wait five minutes without chewing it. If there was no issue, bite it. So long as it wasn’t incredibly bitter or otherwise irritating, you’d then drink only the juice and spit the rest out.
After eight hours, if nothing strange happened to your body, you’d take about half a spoonful of it and then wait another eight hours.
If there were still no problematic symptoms, you’d eat a handful and wait twenty-four hours. After that, you could assume the produce was fit to eat.
That was the long and short of it. The test took the better part of two days—an arduous trial when starving. Plus, the symptoms of certain toxic foods only manifested over long periods of ingestion. You could never be too sure.