NOVEL NEXT [Vol-1] Ch.25 Slow Labor
I'm a little nervous about heading outside today. I haven't been out in over forty days now, which is quite a while. Despite my mild anxiety I get ready for the day, and begin the long trek to the surface. Normally it doesn't take a particularly long time, but I'm going extra slow because of the crutch and my leg. When I finally make it up to the surface, the area is still mostly how I remember it. The only difference is that the paths that I used to take on occasion are now covered in plants again.
I start by just slowly making my way around the nearby trees looking for any good sized sticks that might be useful. Thankfully, the undergrowth isn't nearly as thick this high up. If I were to head down toward the cliff where I harvest lion root, the plants are much taller and thicker on the forest floor, which would make travel with a crutch nearly impossible.
It ends up taking me quite a while to find some reasonably sized sticks that I can carry in one hand. The fact that I've harvested a lot of wood here multiple times near the entryway of the cave meant that I had to go a little ways before I found anything good. Thanks to my leg and crutch, that meant a lot of slow travel and searching. For once I'm actually a little thankful for my claws though. Thanks to the large, long nails on my claws, I'm able to carry 4 reasonably sized sticks in one go. A human hand would have trouble holding all of them at once, but the extra size on the claws lets me hold all of them.
I make my way back down to my room in the cave, and choose one of the sticks that I'll attempt to make into a spear. The others I set with my dwindling wood pile, and then start whittling the handle for my future spear. Thankfully, a spear is relatively simple, and I have plenty of the refined stone from before stored up, so I finish crafting the spear just before I go to sleep for the day.
It's now been approximately 31 days since the goblins showed up last, and I have a big problem. I piled all those bodies up to dispose of them, but I haven't actually disposed of them, and if the goblins show up and there is a pile of corpses, they're probably going to be a bit curious, and I don't want them to be curious at all.
I have two options then. One, I burn the bodies again, which they seemingly didn't note or care when they were gone last time. Two, I spread the bodies out in the cavern again. Which I imagine would also seem normal to them. As much as I'd prefer to burn them, carrying enough wood for that in my current condition is a no go, which means I'll have to undo all my work from a few days ago, and move all the corpses around.
I'm really trying to give my leg as much time to rest as possible here. Since, I'd like to make a smaller cast for just the bone that is broken so I can fight some imps for food when the goblin returns again. So, for the next few days, I suppose I'll be moving corpses about, and making a trip to the surface to get a small amount of wood for my own fire.
It took four full days, but I've moved the corpses about again. They really are quite gross at this point as well. Many times I'd pull on a limb only for it to immediately detach from its body. It'd have been done faster, but each trip to the surface for wood took about half a day, so I was working with a lot less time than I'd like.
I've got less than 10 days until the goblins show up again as well, which has me a little worried. I don't know for certain that they arrive at the same time. Which means I'm going to have to keep meticulous records again.
Even though my condition isn't great, I'd like to gather enough wood to get me through the goblin's return. My only fear is what to do if they arrive early, and then either camp outside the cave, or come inside. With that in mind, I'll just have to be extra careful, and hope that I can gather enough wood that I can stop before they show up.
I spent five whole days of traveling in and out of the cave getting enough wood to last me through the goblin's visit. I finished with just a little time to spare. The goblins should be arriving any day now, and I have a little bit of extra prep work I'd like to do.
First, I need to attempt to move some sealed buckets around in the slaughterhouse. It'll definitely be a slow process, because I need to use both hands to lift the buckets properly. Which means I'll basically be moving them one step at a time. I don't need to move them that far, just enough that I can put new buckets where I would slaughter the imps. All in all, it should only take a day or two.
The second thing I'd like to do if I find the time, is build a barricade for fighting. It's not much, but if I can get behind a barricade with a spear, I might be able to get an extra attack in before any potential enemies can fight back.
With some ideas planned out, I start working on moving the buckets.
The buckets plus the barricade took three days to finish, and by the time I finished the barricade, I checked the cavern again, and found that there were a few imps inside again. Thankfully, I'm just getting ready to sleep now, and I know that the goblins summon imps for a few hours at least, so tomorrow I should be able to hunt a few imps for myself. I check my wall, and it seems like it has been approximately 45 days again since the goblins arrived. I check my status briefly before falling asleep.
<LEGENDARY IMP>
Level: 86
HP: 664/672
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Mighty Imp
Magic: Stone Shaping
I wake up, and make my preparations to fight for the day. Ideally, I wouldn't need to fight much, but since I'll be reaching level 100 soon, I feel that I need to gather as much food as I can. I'm hoping that the healing effects of prestige are fairly good. Back when I was checking plants for toxicity, prestiging had cleared the irritation that was on my skin. Whether it fixes poorly set bones or not is an entirely different story.
With my new spear in hand, I slowly make my way to peek out into the cavern. As I peer out, I notice that there aren't any goblins in sight, which is nice. I open up the entrance more, and attempt to coax a nearby imp up to my entryway. The nearest imp is munching away on another imp's corpse, so it takes a little bit of coaxing, but eventually I throw a stone and hit it, which gets its attention. Once it starts moving towards me, I hobble my way down my entrance, and wait for it to spot me before ducking into the slaughterhouse.
As it rounds the corner, I stab out with the spear from behind my small barricade, and hit it square in its chest. It quickly succumbs to its wound before it can even get over the barricade, so I begin the process of setting it up and draining its blood.
It takes longer than I'd like to set the imp up given my leg, but I quickly return to the cavern afterwards, and begin the process all over again. After a few hours, I have five imps strung up once again. This time when I return to check the cavern, I spot two goblins in it again. I'm not too sure that this time I'd be able to win given my leg. Even if I'm much stronger than I was at the time. Instead, I opt to watch and wait. Maybe I'll get lucky and get one or two more imps, but if not, then I'll have to live with getting five.
After a few hours of watching and waiting, I'm lucky as an imp passes close enough that I hit it with a rock and it runs towards my entrance. I quickly finish it off, and string it up like the others. With six imps killed, I feel confident in my food total, and go close my entrance off so nothing else can slip inside.
With only a few hours before I go to sleep, I begin butchering the first imps that I killed for the day. By the time I go to sleep, two of the six imps have been fully butchered, and the refuse put in sealed buckets to be dealt with at a later time.
<LEGENDARY IMP>
Level: 93
HP: 708/714
MP: 204/204
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Mighty Imp
Magic: Stone Shaping