I Formed a Party with a Girl via an Adventurer Matching App - Chapter 33

 The Wild Camping Manifesto

"Let's set up camp around here for the night."

The exact millisecond the words left my mouth, Cordelia—who was walking directly alongside me—screwed her face into an expression of intense, undisguised disapproval.

"What is with that look?"

"Could you kindly refrain from using terms like 'setting up camp' just to make the situation sound artificially sophisticated?"

"I'm not trying to sound sophisticated at all."

"You can dress it up with flowery terminology all you like, but at the end of the day, it is nothing more than sleeping outside in the dirt."

"Sleeping outside…… well, yeah, technically, but—"

"If we simply press onward for a fraction longer, we will comfortably arrive at the nearest town, you know?"

"No, even if we did, there's still a considerable distance to cover. I don't care how powerful we've become; monsters grow exceptionally volatile under the cover of darkness. Getting blindsided because we couldn't see our own feet in the dark is a nightmare scenario. We lose absolutely nothing by exercising basic caution."

"Are you genuinely so starved for entertainment that you are this desperate to sleep in the wilderness?"

"It's not sleeping in the wilderness, it's setting up ca—ugh, look, it's not like I actively want to do this."

"Ah, what a tragedy. If only someone hadn't delayed our departure from the tower, we would have safely reached civilization well before sunset."

Evidently harboring a profound, deep-seated hatred for sleeping outside…… excuse me, setting up camp, Cordelia continuously spat out a relentless stream of petty grievances.

This administrative logistical crisis unfolded while we were actively charting our return course back to the city after successfully executing the Slime Queen subjugation.

The monument known as the "Tower of the Slime Queen" was situated an incredible geographical distance away from our home base. To bridge that massive gap, Cordelia and I had been forced to migrate from one localized settlement to another, taking a grand total of seven days and seven nights of continuous travel just to reach the destination in the first place.

……For the record, Susie had fiercely maintained her stance that her professional obligations were strictly limited to those of a stationary housemaid, electing to remain behind to watch over Cordelia’s residence. While I was entirely convinced she was a housemaid capable of comfortably overpowering the vast majority of active mercenaries on the market, her personal pride was non-negotiable, leaving me with zero logical grounds to drag her along by force.

Under normal operating conditions, if a standard adventuring party has a clearly defined objective, they don't waste precious time making leisurely pit stops at intermediate towns. They forge a direct path straight through the dense forests and jagged mountain ranges, setting up camp wherever they happen to land when night falls to maximize their travel velocity.

However, in our specific case, Cordelia—being a meticulously raised high-society young lady—had raised a fierce, uncompromising objection to that standard itinerary.

According to her dictates, sleeping under the open sky was an absolute, non-negotiable impossibility. According to her dictates, a proper bath to cleanse her body was a strict daily requirement. According to her dictates, substituting a beautifully prepared dinner with dry, preserved rations was an insult to her very existence.

……Consequently, we had spent the entire journey toward the Slime Queen's tower halting our advance while the sun was still high in the sky, checking into the nearest premium establishment, and securing a proper night's rest before repeating the process the following morning. It was a comically luxurious, sluggish itinerary that would have undoubtedly earned us a chorus of mockery from any hardened mercenary in the industry.

Yet, despite her exhaustive efforts to systematically dodge a night in the wilderness, our pristine travel formula had finally suffered an absolute operational collapse.

The Tower of the Slime Queen was remarkably isolated, sitting a considerable distance away from even the closest localized settlement. To compensate, we had departed from our last transit town at the crack of dawn to launch our assault against the boss.

The tactical execution itself had yielded a legendary, highly successful outcome—which was all well and good—but a highly specific irregular variable had manifested the exact millisecond the Slime Queen expired. Thanks to that unforeseen complication, our departure from the tower had been severely delayed. As a direct consequence, darkness had completely enveloped the landscape well before we could breach the safety of the town gates, forcing an emergency camp scenario upon us.

"Look, it's not even a bad setup. There's a massive lake right in our immediate vicinity where we can wash up, and we've secured a perfectly sturdy cave that completely eliminates any structural issues with sleeping. It's a fantastic spot."

"Only someone who actively harbors a bizarre, romanticized desire to camp in the dirt would look at this environment with such delusional optimism. Allow me to educate you on a basic fundamental truth: a lake is not, under any logical framework, a substitute for a proper bathtub."

"Speaking as a commoner, utilizing a local lake to cleanse one's body is a completely standard, everyday reality, you know……"

"Hmph. Pray tell, at what exact point in my chronology was I suddenly categorized as a commoner?" Cordelia spat back arrogantly, darting a sharp, narrow-eyed glare straight at me.

"Furthermore, if we are tracing the absolute root cause of how we ended up stranded in this predicament, the fault lies entirely and exclusively with you."

"How is this my fault?!"

"Because you insisted on spending an eternity hovering over the battlefield like a pathetic miser, meticulously harvesting every single piece of monster drop-items. It was an absolute waste of operational time."

With a sharp, dramatic gesture, Cordelia pointed her finger directly at the massive backpack strapped to my shoulders. Nestled inside the main compartment were several reinforced glass vials, each filled to the brim with our freshly harvested drop-item: the viscous, gelatinous fluid of the Slime Queen, which had lost its structural integrity the moment her core shattered.

"You can complain all you like, but slime secretions actually fetch a remarkably high premium at the commercial guild boards, you know. And since this batch was harvested from an actual Elite Four general, the final evaluation price is going to be astronomical."

"We are already guaranteed a colossal, life-changing financial windfall from the official Guild bounty alone! Why on earth are you stressing over a microscopic, petty discrepancy in retail profit?"

"Because the exact millisecond that colossal bounty lands in our account, you're going to hand it all over to some random orphanage, scream about 'nob-nob oblige', and leave us completely broke! I am actively running around performing manual labor to secure a secondary stream of pocket money precisely because I know how your brain operates!"

"Am I to understand you are attempting to articulate the concept of noblesse oblige?"

"That's the one! It's a phrase that an ordinary commoner has absolutely zero interaction with over the course of their natural life, so it refuses to permanently anchor itself to my brain cells!"

"Perhaps your cognitive retention is simply beneath standard parameters?"

Letting out a slow, dramatic sigh, Cordelia extended her hand toward my backpack.

Without a single shred of hesitation, she reached inside and pulled out one of the heavily packed glass vials. Within the palm-sized container, the intensely viscous fluid that had once comprised the living anatomy of the Slime Queen sloshed around with a heavy, wet density.

"Furthermore, can we even guarantee this junk will actually sell? It is an utterly grotesque, dark purple slime fluid."

"The coloration is definitely a bit intense, I'll grant you that, but the practical utility is phenomenal. Slime fluids possess an innate, highly efficient self-purifying property, meaning this stuff functions as an exceptional liquid soap. And since it's a naturally occurring organic secretion harvested from a monster, you can wash it straight into the ecosystem without generating a single molecule of environmental pollution."

"……So it possesses actual, demonstrable utility. I see."

A highly complex, conflicted expression crossed Cordelia's features as she stared down at the fluids sloshing inside the vial.

Letting out another long, thoroughly defeated sigh, she shook her head from side to side, her expression shifting into one of reluctant resignation.

"I suppose I have no choice. Since a primitive night in the wilderness has been forcefully dictated to me, and this lake is apparently my mandatory substitute for a proper bath…… given that we went through the immense trouble of securing this military exploit, I suppose I might as well test the efficacy of this specialized slime soap for myself."

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