Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill - LN 3-4

Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill Volume 3 and 4 by Ren Eguchi, Illustrations by Masa. Translated by Kevin Chen. Published by J-Novel Club. 

Volumes 3 and 4 cover most of what was shown in Season 2 of the anime, which I watched first. Mukouda gains another familiar, a pixie dragon that he (unfortunately) decides to name "Dora-chan" (seriously Mukouda even I could probably think of a better name than that) and they explore the dungeon in Dolan and travel around some more.

Since the anime played these plot points pretty faithfully, there's not a lot that I can comment on about how they're portrayed in the novel. There's little tension here as we know that Fel is much stronger than any living creature we've met so far, and Fel, Dora, and Sui easily clear a dungeon and defeat anything that comes their way. Honestly, Mukouda's hardest task is having variety in their meals, and satisfying everyone's gargantuan appetite. 

It's interesting that the anime chose to leave out the entire plot surrounding the 3 highschoolers which were summoned, where they're nearly forced into slavery as the kingdom's pawns. This is one area that I thought was really interesting, as we see the "dark" side of this fantasy world, where Mukouda's prescience as an adult really shines. He really did a good job getting out of there as fast as possible after realizing how tenuous the situation was. There's even an interesting alternate scenario included in the bonus content for Volume 4. 

We see little flashes of the same malicious intent in the nobles and the king of the country of Merveille, where Elrand's insistence that it's a bad idea to interfere with Mukouda gets the king to leave him alone. Fel would raze the entire country to the ground for interfering with his tasty meals. 

The gods are, of course, annoying and funny at the same time. He is making money hand over fist, and their demands are only going to get more expensive. I wonder how he could possibly keep up with their lifestyle inflation? Especially when it comes to alcohol, where rare bottles can get ridiculously expensive. Then again, Mukouda's skill is "Online Grocery", so there's an upper limit to what he can purchase online (probably has to be mass produced and within purchasing power of a regular consumer).

Surprisingly, Season 2 actually adapted part of Volume 5 as well (not that I've read it yet) where they finally arrive at the ocean. I thought reading this series might get repetitive, but it's surprisingly easy to keep going. I can't get enough of Mukouda's heartwarming found family I guess!