NOVEL NEXT [Vol-1] Ch.6 Fire!
With some time to spare still before I sleep, I go back to the campfire area, and start trying to make the fire again. Although I don't start the fire despite multiple attempts, I think I'm on the right track. Some of the small wood shavings have deteriorated to ash. I just need to try harder I suppose. Maybe I should dry some leaves in the cave, and crumble those to use instead of wood shavings. I'll try to remember next time I go to get more roots to eat to bring back their leaves as well.
I eat my second meal for the day, more roots and a small amount of dried imp. While chewing the food, I check my stats.
<RARE IMP>
Level: 34
HP: 225/225
MP: 48/48
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation
Although I'm glad I'm leveling up, at this pace, it's still going to be quite a while before I prestige again. After eating, I'm feeling rather sleepy, so I crawl up to my crystal pile and sleep, the warmth radiating off the crystals quickly soothing my sore muscles.
I decide now is a good time to retake stock of my food given my new rate of eating, and supplementing with the edible roots. I divvy up the dried imp into smaller portions, and plan for two meals a day, with the extra roots. At the rate I'm going, I'll run out of imp meat in about 30 days. Until I know how long the roots last, I'll also need to go out and get new ones every 4 or 5 days. I don't want to pick all the conveniently located ones right away, only to find out they go bad after only 5 days, and have to find new ones again.
I start eating my food for the day while considering just how long I want to dedicate to getting a fire going. I've been at it for quite a while now. I don't currently need it for anything other than potentially cooking the roots, so it's not like it's an absolute must, that said, I'd really like to stop eating barely edible foods. What else would I want to maybe do?
I start going through options of things I should do. Hunt for some food? I didn't see any wildlife outside the last few times I was out there, but considering how easily the goblin killed all those other imps, I'm a little worried that I might be too weak. So I'd have to make a trap of some kind probably. Even then, with so little info, I think I'll have to wait until I know more about wildlife, if there is any. It'd likely take more than a day to reach the water too, so finding fish is off the table as well for the time being.
Next option, build some furniture. That isn't as bad of an idea, but build it from what? The trees are super hard outside, and the only wood I can pick up is loose things from the ground. Plus I'm not exactly a skilled carpenter. The next option would be to make it from stone. Worth a shot I suppose.
I try to ram my claws into the rock floor. OUCH. Damn. Ok, that was a bad idea. I just thought maybe with Earth Manipulation, I could at least chip the rock.
<RARE IMP>
Level: 35
HP: 222/228
MP: 49/49
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation
Well, I suppose I deserve to lose some HP. I did just ram my claws against the stone floor as hard as I could.
Then maybe making a tool is the better idea? I could search around for some loose stones that I could use as a pickaxe or an axe head, or even just a loose stone that I could use to hit against another stone, to try to sharpen it. My understanding is that stone tools are pretty labor intensive to make, and require a bit of dexterity to make correctly, but it's not a bad idea. I go over to my wall todo list, and scratch in: 3. Make stone tools.
Fire would help with that. Some stones have trapped water in them, and by heating them, they'll fracture and make sharp edges, which I could refine from there if I had a second stone. Which means again, I'm brought back to making fire. At least with this, I have more reason to make fire.
I spend the next 3 days attempting to start a fire. The exhaustive effort spent day after day is really getting to me. Today I need to go out and get more roots. The batch of test roots on the room side are still in decent shape, but that's to be expected. I decide today, I won't just get more meal roots, but I'll get their broad leaves to dry out, and I'll actually make an extra trip to gather even more wood. I would hate at this point to get a fire going, only to run out of firewood before I can go get more.
I verify my stats before I head outside.
<RARE IMP>
Level: 63
HP: 312/312
MP: 64/64
When I finally get outside, I'm greeted by a new discovery. I finally know what the giant dark object overhead was before. It appears to be the moon... or maybe we're the moon. It's technically night time right now, but it's not that dark. Overhead, filling a large part of the sky is a gigantic planet. With green and blue, with white caps. I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and say there is probably life there.
For now though, my focus is on getting more food and wood, and to keep an eye out for any good stones, sticks, or vines that might be useful for making a stone tool with.
After gathering the edible root plants and bundling their leaves to carry back, I find a nice stick with a V shape at the top that is just hefty enough to be a handle for a tool if I want to use it, and not rotted in any places. I add it to my pile of things to carry back to the cave, and drop my first load of things off inside before repeating the process to gather a bundle of wood, while focusing my efforts on gathering the biggest pieces I can, so that I can hopefully have coals left if the fire goes out while I sleep.
Two more days pass before I finally get a fire going. I nearly messed up I was so excited to see the cinders heat up that I almost failed to transfer it over into the campfire, but I somehow managed to dodge catastrophe, and got the fire going. Now that I have it, I want to try to cook some of those roots.
I take a moment to find a straight stick, and sharpen one end enough that I can jam it through some of the roots, and begin carefully trying to roast it over the fire, pulling it back every few minutes to check on the consistency. After the 5th check I start to notice the root getting a little softer, and decide to set it aside to cool to try to eat.
Once cooled, while not flavorful, at least the root was a lot less crunchy, and was slightly easier to eat. I resolve myself to try different cooking durations to find if any taste good or not. For now I'm just happy to have the fire going, so I decide to just spend the rest of my evening watching the fire, and attempting a second root cooking before I go to sleep.
Thankfully, while watching the fire, I notice that the smoke seems to trail up towards the exit. I assumed as much from when the goblins had a fire here, but it's good to see that the whole place won't fill with smoke.
<RARE IMP>
Level: 71
HP: 336/336
MP: 69/69
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation
Tomorrow, I resolve to start looking for rocks and binding for stone tools, preferably a stone axe. I don't know for sure if it'll work against those trees, but I'd like to try at least. If not, it might be useful as a weapon at least.
The search for rocks and binding isn't going great, partly because I keep gathering wood while I search, and eventually coming back after a little while with a whole pile of sticks, which I set in the cave entrance before going to search again. After getting 3 piles of sticks, I tell myself that this time, I'm either coming back empty handed, or I'll have one or both of the items I'm actually looking for.
Just as I'm about to turn back again for the day, I find something that might work as a binding. There is a particularly large tree I stumbled upon, which has ivy growing up it in many places. I'm cautious though, so I carefully pluck some leaves, and some vine, and very carefully rub a leaf on the back of one hand, and a bit of the vine on the back of the other. I'm not planning on eating it, but I'd hate for the binding of a tool to be something like poison ivy, and end up itching and in pain any time I need to use a tool.
I resolve to come back tomorrow if the experiment goes well to gather vine, but the rest of my day today will be filled with hauling firewood into the cave.