Chapter 15: [Vol-1] Ch.15 Exploration

Well, today I suppose I'll start on cleaning the burned area up. The trays were useful before for the big parts, so I'll go ahead and fill them again. This time though, I'm going to make a shovel and some spare buckets to gather up as much of the fine soot as I can. Now that I have a fire in my room rather than in the cavern, I could also purposefully pour water here to clean up what's left at some point. Maybe once I empty the buckets of soot I gather in them, I'll set them up to gather water as well. Either way, it's going to take me at least all of today to clean up this mess, if not part of tomorrow as well, so I should get to work.

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It took all of yesterday, and part of today, but I got as much as I reasonably could using a shovel. The floor is quite uneven, so getting all of it is basically impossible, so I'll settle for it being mostly clean. The idea of repaving the area comes to mind, but for now I don't know when or if the goblins will turn up again, so having something obvious like that would worry me.

Speaking of the goblins, I am worried about being prepared for whenever they arrive next. I don't know the exact number of days between their last visit and now, but it was more than 30 days. That said, they could come back tomorrow. So, although I hate to say it, I actually think I should try to make a better weapon, and a shield. I want a decently sized shield as well. Those fireballs seem like they do a lot of damage, but they don't seem to really do much to rock, so I'd like to make a shield of stone, and if I'm lucky, I can intercept a fireball with it. It could save my life. I'm actually quite confident that if I made it into my room, I could seal it off, and live there for a while, but what if they could get in somehow? Plus, it would be nice to have in case of some other enemy I need to fight.

I start tinkering with designs, which unfortunately, due to my claws, are limited. As far as a shield goes, I come up with a large buckler design that I have to move my arm through to wield. As for a weapon, I'm not actually familiar with any combat styles, and I've found that although I can wield a tool by gripping, it's slightly awkward. Instead though, I settle on a bladed gauntlet style of weapon. It's basically the same as my own claws, but it's even more designed for maximum damage. The long prongs on the gauntlet are designed to puncture as deep as they can with the full weight of the stone gauntlet behind it. If it gets stuck, I just let go and slide out of it. While not perfect, I think I could probably one-shot a new goblin with it. If not at least leaving it so wounded as to be able to finish it off.

With my weaponry completed, I make a stand to store it on near the room entrance, and then go to sleep.

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Today, I think I'll explore a bit outside to try to find a new source of food, be it more roots, or something new. I decide to take my gauntlet with me. Today, I won't be gathering wood while I search, and I'll make a little bit further of a trip. I'll stay close enough that I won't get lost, but I've already searched a lot of the nearby woods, so I feel like exploring further would be beneficial to finding new resources.

The first direction that is obvious to me, is to head in a downhill direction. Although the climate up here is alpine, normally as you decend a mountain, the climate shifts, and you get new kinds of plants, and potentially animals. I've seen some bird like creatures at one point flying above, I haven't seen any other animals up this high, so maybe by descending the mountain, I'll find something.

I travel carefully down the mountain, keeping to inclines that I can easily navigate back up when the time to return comes. As I descend, I do notice the air warming more, and the ground scatter of plants begins to thicken, slowing my travel. Eventually though, I reach a point of no return, a cliff. While the cliff itself isn't massively tall, it stretches quite some distance, and if I go down it, I doubt I'd easily get back up. Maybe on a different trip I'll attempt to navigate around it, but for now, I'll start making my trek back up the mountain.

While going back up, I grab a few samples from two plants that I'm seeing a lot of. One is a long stemmed plant with many leaves branching off that stands at about my height. The other is a short, flowering plant, that when pulled has a long thick root.

When I get back to the cave, I've only spent a few hours out so far, so I set my plant samples down by the entrance, and decide to head off in a direction opposite where I found the root clearing before.

As I travel along, the terrain becomes more rocky and abrupt, and I am constantly having to slow down to navigate around rock outcroppings. After a while, I do spot something interesting though. In the distance, I spot an animal. Only a little taller than me, jumping from rock to rock. It's odd how they jump though. It's not as if it is forcibly jumping, instead it seems to be a slower glide through the air from rock to rock. The animal is fairly plump, with a long neck. After it lands on a particular rock, it lowers its neck down to the ground, and eats some of the ground clutter plants before gliding off to the next rock.

It'll take me a little bit, but I want to see what plants it was eating, so I navigate my way through the rocky area that I saw the animal, and make my way to where I roughly spotted it, and I eventually see what plants it was eating. Covering the ground is a sprawling vine plant that crisscrosses itself between all these boulders, but where the animal was, the flowering bulbs that sprout out are missing. I decide to pick some for myself, and then head back to the cave.

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Once I get back to the cave, I decide to start the process of testing the various plants again before I go to sleep. I still have a few hours left for today, so while I wait to see if my skin reacts to the plants, I go out to gather more wood. After all, of all the things I use, wood doesn't go bad so the only cost of having more is storage space.

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Well, there wasn't any adverse reactions on my skin at least for these plants even by the next morning, so the next step is to test them on my mouth, one at a time. While I wait on any results from that, I figure I'll stay in the room and experiment with the crystals.

The first thing I want to try is to touch an empty and full crystal's face to each other. I grab a few of each, and sit down at my desk. First, I try just touching two empty crystals together, as a control. When nothing happens after a few seconds, I move on to touching two full crystals of similar size. Again, nothing. So I finally put an empty and a full crystal face to face. Although it doesn't initially seem to do anything, I notice the empty crystal starts to faintly gain light, and the full crystal dims slightly.

I maneuver them to a different portion of the desk, and keep them in contact with each other, while I move on to another test. Before, these were using similar sized crystals, but what about different sizes? I again try an empty large crystal, with a small one. When nothing happens, I move on to a full large crystal, and a full small crystal. Again, nothing. Then, a small empty crystal, and a full big crystal. Similar to the first test, it seems to very slowly start to regain light in the small crystal, although the big crystal doesn't noticeably dim. Then I try a big empty crystal with a small full one. This time, I only really notice the small crystal dim, and don't notice any initial changes in the big crystal.

I set all three of these shifting brightness crystals on the desk where they're touching, to let them run like this while I go and perform my next test. For this, I'll be returning to the point in the cave where the one crystal broke. For this experiment, I bring two full, and two empty crystals, one each big and small.

As I ascend the cave, I hear a crack, and set the crystals down. The small full crystal begins decaying and turning to that black flaky material, along with the gas flying off.

As I sit and wait, the next crystal to crack is the full big crystal, although it's very quickly followed by the small empty crystal. One thing I noticed is that I call the crystals full, but they get a bit brighter before they actually break, so they might be as full as they get in the cave, but they actually have a bit more capacity than that. Either way, it's then quite a long while before the last crystal breaks. Although it's a shame to have lost these crystals, I gained some insight into how they work through this test.

When I return, I check the desk crystals. All three pairs have equalized in brightness with their partner, but the actual light level depends on which size was full. For the large full crystal with a small empty, it would be hard to tell that they both weren't full, where as the inverse could be said for the opposite pairing.

There will have to be further research done on the subject, but for now, it seems like the small crystals have quite a reduced capacity, but they all seem to have the same mana flux rate through their faces. So a larger crystal seems to reach full charge much slower, but holds much more. Some day, I'd like to put actual numbers to it, but for now, the most I can do is speak in generalities.

<EPIC IMP>
Level: 75
HP: 401/401
MP: 100/100
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation
Magic: Stone Shaping

 

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