Wilderness Survival

"Hey! Look what I found! A Giant Lizard heading out to forage!"

On a cliff somewhere in the dungeon, Carl patted Hopp beside her and excitedly pointed at a rocky cave below.

At that moment, a large tan lizard was crawling out of the cave, swaggering toward the area to its right.

It was the only animal they had found in over an hour that looked edible.

At the sight of it, Carl felt like her eyes were about to glow green.

"Wait. Generally speaking, animals regularly go to water sources to rehydrate. We haven't had anything to drink in a while either. Let's follow it first; we might find a source of water."

Seeing that Carl had already drawn her Hand Crossbow, Hopp hurriedly stopped her for the moment.

When surviving in the wilderness, water was more important than food.

"Then let's hurry after it."

With difficulty, Carl swallowed a mouthful of saliva, rose to her feet, and chased after it downhill.

Following the Giant Lizard's trail, the two soon arrived at a pool of water.

The shallow pool was already surrounded by Giant Lizards. They soaked in the water, occasionally swishing their claws around and playing with nearby companions, looking utterly carefree.

Unfortunately, the pool had been constantly churned by the Giant Lizards, turning all its water into a murky blackish-yellow.

At the sight before him, the veins on Hopp's forehead twitched.

"Should we do it?"

Beside him, Carl stoked the flames at just the right moment.

She was starving to death now, itching to kill a Giant Lizard and have herself a wild barbecue.

As for water...

Didn't Giant Lizards have blood?

After treating its blood, it could still be used for hydration.

As a transmigrator from the Land of Flowers, Carl was not particularly picky about food.

"Go!"

With a helpless low shout, Hopp grabbed his Hand Axe and hurled it at the largest Giant Lizard.

At the same time, Carl raised her Hand Crossbow and pulled the trigger.

The magical arrow and Hand Axe struck two Giant Lizards one after the other. The one hit by the Hand Axe had its skull split open, but Carl's magical arrow failed to kill its target outright.

The wounded Giant Lizard detected the enemy's direction, turned around, and charged at Carl.

Reloading swiftly, Carl pulled the Hand Crossbow's trigger again, sending out another magical arrow.

This arrow did not hit the Giant Lizard directly, but it sliced a long wound across its body.

Blood gushed from the wound, painting a scarlet line across the black rocky ground.

Once the distance between them was about right, Carl quickly chanted the spell for Lightning Bolt.

When the Giant Lizard entered her attack range, she fired a bolt of electricity straight at it.

Having already lost a great deal of blood, the Giant Lizard was knocked straight to the ground by the current. Hopp did not hesitate either, stepping forward with the Hand Axe and cutting open its carotid artery.

The nearly three-meter-long Giant Lizard lost its life just like that. Carl shuddered all over, feeling her spirituality grow once more.

Naturally, the disturbance drew the Giant Lizard pack's attention, yet they merely watched the bloody scene without putting up any resistance.

Not only that, they even moved away from the Giant Lizard Hopp had killed directly with his Hand Axe, as though they were afraid of being associated with it and being killed by Hopp as well.

Seeing the Giant Lizards behave this way, Carl and Hopp exchanged a glance. They did not continue attacking. Instead, they cut off the tail meat from the two Giant Lizards, along with some meat from around their bellies, then ran to a nearby cliff to find a slab of rock and began barbecuing.

"Isn't something off about how those Giant Lizards are acting?"

Watching the Giant Lizards still moving about near the pool, Hopp sliced the two tails into chunks of steak while voicing his doubts to Carl.

"Something is definitely off. Even if Giant Lizards aren't truly social creatures and only gathered here to occupy the water source, they shouldn't be this calm, should they?"

As she spoke, Carl used Prestidigitation to draw a Giant Rune on a stone slab. Then she flipped it over and infused it with a little spirituality.

The rune representing a Fire Giant began absorbing the fire elements drifting through the surroundings under the boost of spirituality. As the fire elements gathered, the stone slab's temperature rose rapidly.

Hopp held his hand over the stone slab to test its heat, nodded, and placed a small piece of belly meat onto it.

"Sizzle—"

The scorching slab reacted violently the instant it came into contact with the meat. Under the high heat, abundant fat separated from the cells.

Holding down the fatty belly meat, Hopp rubbed it back and forth across every part of the stone slab.

In an instant, the entire slab became slick and gleaming with oil.

Then Carl began laying the steaks across the slab.

Amid loud sizzling, the fats and proteins underwent the Maillard reaction in the heat, and a fragrant aroma began drifting through the air.

"I keep feeling that those Giant Lizards might have been raised by intelligent creatures, like... like cattle and sheep in a livestock pen."

Once all the steaks were cooking, Hopp returned his attention to the question from before.

"Yeah. And the meat is a little abnormal too. Smell it—the gamey odor isn't strong. This doesn't seem like the meat of a completely wild animal."

In her previous life, Carl had seen plenty of people on e-commerce platforms boast about how delicious wild boar meat was.

But in truth, because wild boars had not been castrated, their meat was not only tough and dry, but also carried an extremely strong gamey odor.

By the same logic, as a large beast, wild Giant Lizard meat was destined not to be particularly tasty.

To make wild Giant Lizard meat like this, edible after nothing more than simple roasting, it could only have been done through artificial domestication and selective breeding.

Carl and Hopp had already prepared themselves to eat while pinching their noses shut, but the situation before them forced them to worry about what exactly was going on in this dungeon.

"Forget it. Let's not overthink it for now. Eat the meat first."

After sitting silently on the rocks for a while, Carl called Hopp over to eat.

Whatever came later, they needed to handle what was in front of them first.

No one knew whether tomorrow or disaster would arrive first.

"Mm!"

Hopp nodded, picked up a steak, and began eating in large mouthfuls.

"Sniff, sniff!"

"Do you smell something really good?"

In a crude settlement, a goblin twitched its nose and asked the companion beside it.

"No, I don't smell anything. Don't tell me you're hungry? I still have some meat bones left over from Dire Goblin Lord's meal a few days ago. Want a bite?"

As he spoke, the other goblin pulled a bone with a few shreds of meat still clinging to it from a bag at his side.

The meat on it had long since dried out, and it even gave off a rotten stench.

Yet the goblin had kept it as though it were a treasure.

"No, no need. I'll just go find some Bioluminescent Mushrooms to eat later."

"Oh! Then I won't stand on ceremony with these remaining scraps of meat!"

With that, he licked the bone and began happily sucking on it again.