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Once Rir had washed her face, I handed her a bowl of the bird-meat soup.

“Thank you, Master.”
“Right, it’s breakfast. Just tell me if you want another helping, alright?”
“Yeah! Thank you for… oh, please wait a moment,” Rir said, and took out two wooden spoons from her own magic bag, which was on the smaller side. “I had too much time yesterday, so I made these, you see. Should we use them?”
“Alright, let’s give them a try.

Oh, that made her smile a little So, she’s happy that we’re usin’ ’em?

“In that case, thanks for the food.”
“Thank you for the food, Master.”

As an effect of using the herbs, the bird-bone soup possessed a nice flavor. It had turned out quite well.

Once I get my hands on more SKP¹, I gotta invest them into Cooking, don’t I?

It turned out I had cooked too much, so we stored the remaining soup in my magic bag for later. Not that I understood how it worked, but that apparently wouldn’t cause any issues.

Then, Rir and I told each other what we had done during the five hours we kept watch.

As I thought, Rir had been crafting various things of wood and performed maintenance on our tools. When I touched upon the wooden craft in progress with my face carved into it, Rir turned red and stiffened, while repeatedly mumbling a cryptic “You’re wrong, that’s not what it is”.

…I wonder, what exactly am I wrong about?

I also told her what I did last night. I showed her the magic cores that had emerged when I defeated the cow monsters, and it turned out they were B-Rank after all.

These things kinda died in a single attack, so I honestly couldn’t judge how strong they are², y’know.

When I explained that to Rir, her eyes turned round.
Doesn’t feel bad to be looked at with such admiration. Though it makes me a bit bashful.

“Then, should we be on our way?”
“Hm.”

As for the trash we had produced… we buried the wood chips and food scraps before we headed out. For now, we kept Detection active.

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We did nothing but walk.

Rir and I simply kept walking straight ahead. Thanks to keeping Detection up and our compass, we didn’t lose our way, but… anywhere we looked was just trees, trees, trees. Nothing but friggin’ trees. As a result of moving while getting rid of all the magic beasts who either attacked us or stood in our path, our stores of C-Rank magic cores also increased by a large amount.

I should probably figure out the best way to use those soonish. And not rush it.

“Then, let’s make this here our campin’ ground for today.”

Rir and I, once more, put down our luggage in a perfunctory spot. She then created another small clearing with her axe.
Lookin’ at it closely, she’s cuttin’ down those trees in a single swing, don’t she…? Just what superhuman strength does she have?

Oh right, I’ll make today’s dinner a bit more extravagant than the one yesterday, y’know. The reason for that is that I found some edible mushrooms, wild grasses, and fruits thanks to Appraisal and Harvesting.
This is huge.

“Today, I’m going to make bird meat and mushroom stir fry.”
“Personally, I think that steak is… oh… no! We already had steak yesterday, so let’s eat stir fry, alright, Master?”
“What do you mean? Rir… If you’re fine with steak, then I can make that, y’know? I should also manage some sauces today.”
“Woof~… Master…”

For some reason, Rir is lookin’ really sorry ’bout somethin’, ain’t she? Is somethin’ wrong? Is she already sick and tired of steaks…? Nah, the moment she said the word “steak”, her eyes lit up an awful lot… So, I guess that ain’t it…

At the end of the day, I just don’t get how girls think.

Or rather, the moment she mentioned steaks, I also ended up gettin’ a cravin’ for them, don’t I? No way I can make anythin’ but steaks at this point.

“I don’t mind eatin’ steaks. It depends on you, Rir… what should we have?”
“…Steaks… I’m fine with steaks.”
“Steaks it is.”

In the end, we ate even more bird meat steaks than we had yesterday, probably because we were exhausted. Afterwards, we wiped off with towels soaked in hot water.

This is pretty embarrasin’, y’know… If it’s that bad for me as a boy, I wonder how it is for Rir.
Seriously, we’re pretty much buck-naked out in the wild. I gotta think of some better way too keep our bodies clean, don’t I…?

Really. Rir’s a girl…

At any rate, once that was more or less done, I went to sleep. And after I was woken up, I watched our surroundings while Rir slept³.

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It was the third day of our crisis.

At this rate, Rir’s and my stamina might run out sooner or later. Right now, we were somehow still doing fine… We took breaks when we needed to, but our surroundings were a breeding ground⁴ for magic beasts. It didn’t leave our minds the leeway to rest.

“Hey, Rir.”
“What is it, Master?”
“Ain’t you tired? Until the week before last, your body was super weak, y’know… No matter how often you tell me that beastfolk are more hardy than normal humans, we never got any proper rest these three days…”
“I’m fine. Aren’t you more exhausted than me, Master?”
“Hm…? Well, I’m still goin’ strong.”

Maybe to show me that she was fine, Rir performed a spinning jump.
Well… in that case, guess it’s alright?

Come to think of it, I wonder what I’m supposed to do if Rir gets too tired. Walk while carryin’ her on my back? Or should I take watch for a whole night? One of these.

Apart from that, Rir and I single mindedly continued walking onwards while bringing down magic beasts.

“…Woof!?” she let out a surprised bark as she stopped in place.
“Is something wrong, Rir?”
“No… uhm… it’s that over there…”

Rir was pointing at a large, straight up unnatural looking hole…

TL notes:
Looks like they found a dungeon. If it works like the ones Alim encountered, they might finally get a safe place to sleep. And their leveling/material issues might also be solved, if they notice that they can respawn stuff in there.

1. Didn’t he just kill 7 C-Rank and 2 B-Rank monsters last night. No way he didn’t get at least one level from that, which would be enough to max out Cooking (and likely True Cooking along with it).
2. The original is just “…I don’t know/understand”. I assume he means that he can’t judge monsters’ strength since he oneshots everything.
3. The original (寝起きし、周囲を見ながら眠った。) is very ambiguous. From context, what I used seemed to be the most probable, but it might also be a more general “while one of us watched the surrounding, the other one slept”.
4. The original is 巣靴 (“Nest Shoe”) which I assume is a typo since it isn’t a proper word. My guess is that it’s supposed to be something like “nesting/breeding ground”, but who knows.