Chapter 5: Staple Food

After I finish hauling all the crystals from the previous cave to my new one. I haven't noticed any new problem with the bulbous roots on my lips. I'll wait a while longer before the next step, tasting. Other than that though, I'm actually not sure what I should work on next. I've basically fully moved into the biggest sub-cave now, so I'm actually at a loss as to what I should do next.

Well, I suppose I should think about the basics of survival. Food, Water, Shelter. Uhhhh. Wait. I haven't drank any water in a long time. Do I not need it? I thought about this once a few days ago, but given how long it's been, that seems likely. With shelter taken care of for the most part, I suppose focusing on food further is a good idea. Fire would be a good idea, after all, even if the roots might be edible, they're probably more palatable cooked, rather than raw. They might be even better boiled, but that would require something to actually boil with, which obviously, I don't have.

Well, if I want to make a fire, I'll need more wood, and a place to actually make the fire. I don't know if I need air or not, but fires in closed spaces are generally a bad idea. With that, I begin the trek back out of the cave, to try to gather more wood.

When I reach the outside, I'm greeted by a different view than the last time I was out here. It's now bright out, and I can see a while further. There are many things to take in.

First, I'm on a mountainside overlooking a vast body of water. Looking left and right doesn't give me much extra info, as the mountain tends to curve towards the water, so I can't see beyond it from where I am.

Second, and maybe more shockingly, there are two suns in the sky. One is much larger than the other, but they're close together in the sky, part of the way to the horizon. On that horizon are some storm clouds with sporadic lightning arcing into the ocean. I'll have to keep an eye on that as I gather things to be sure not to get caught in a storm.

On that topic, I turn move forward a bit to get a look at the cave entrance. Thankfully, there is a bit of a hump in the entrance with an overhang over it, so I probably won't get flooded in my sleep if there was a sudden downpour.

Well, I suppose I should get to gathering. I have no idea how I'm going to actually start a fire, considering my dexterity is pretty bad with my claws, but I still want to try. After searching around for a while, I've collected a nice pile of sticks and some thicker branches as well. With good timing as well, because those storm clouds from the horizon have gotten closer, and it will probably start raining soon.

I move into the cave entrance, and wait for the rain, which arrives in a few minutes. After verifying that the water isn't running into the cave, I set the wood down, and go out briefly into the rain. A little cold, but it seems like normal rain to me. A sudden thought comes to me, what if it was acid rain or something, and I was severely hurt? I make a mental note to be more careful in the future, just because I think I know what something is, there are still things here that defy understanding of the world, and that could easily get me killed.

With a renewed resolve to be careful in the future, I take my pile of wood back into the cave, again being careful in the darker spots until I arrive back to the crystal lighted areas. I decide to put the wood in a pile near where the imps turned goblins made their campfire. I still have some spare energy, so I decide to gather some rocks to surround the actual fire, to give it a proper campfire look. Over this whole time, I didn't notice any negative reactions on my lips from the root from earlier, so I chew on some and spit it out before going to go to sleep. For the record, it was very woody, with little flavor.

---

I wake up naturally, and check my status. Last time when I had a small rash from the plants, I was missing some HP, so I eagerly await to see how I'm doing, especially since I don't feel like there is any issue.

<RARE IMP>
Level: 20
HP: 183/183
MP: 40/40
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation

Well, it's good to see that I'm not missing any HP. I note my stat values down on the wall again. As I scratch my MP value down, I think back to when I first prestiged, I believe my MP was 40 at that time, now at level 20 as a rare imp, I'm already at 40 MP. It's nice to see the impact of prestige, since the immediate feeling is that of getting weaker, seeing that the growth is faster after is uplifting. The downside though is that it's taking longer and longer to level each time. Which implies that at some point, it's going to be a slog to just gain a single level.

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For now though, I decide it's time to try to eat some of the remaining bulbous roots, since they've passed all my tests for poison. Whether they'll be able to actually sustain me will be the next test, so it's now or never.

After eating a few roots, I decide I should try my hand at making a fire. The first thing I do is use my claws on a larger stick to dig out a channel that a smaller stick can fit into. I put all the wood scrapings into a pile in the campfire pit, and then begin forcibly rubbing a small stick down the channel, trying to get enough heat to make cinders.

---

Needless to say, after what feels like hours, I haven't got any fire to show for it. The sticks got hot, but not hot enough. At least I'm not sick from the roots from before though, although I am hungrier that I normally would be. Whether it's from all this physical exercise, or that the roots don't quite sustain me as well as the meat, I can't tell, but for now, I'll have a mix of some meat and the roots as my next meal. All things in moderation I suppose. At least this will extend my meat supply for longer if I supplement it.

After eating, I have a bit of an idea for fire. Using lint is something people normally do when camping, as a quick fire-starting base. My understanding is that the high surface area on flammable materials makes it easier to catch fire. Maybe if I finely shave some wood, and put it in the channel as I rub the other stick in, I'll get lucky and catch some of it on fire.

Although I'd like to say I have time to fully test my idea today, I think it's going to take some extra time to actually shave some wood down, even with the help of my claws. Partially because I want them to be extra fine, which means I'll need to either break down bigger peelings, or sort them somehow. Either way, it'll take my until I'm ready to sleep I think.

Ultimately, I settle on having to sort them. It's just too hard with these claws to actually manipulate the pieces when they're already small to try to rip or shred them, so I put the bigger pieces into the campfire pile, and then have the smaller ones off to the side to use with the firestick tomorrow.

<RARE IMP>
Level: 28
HP: 207/207
MP: 45/45
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation

---

When I wake up, I have what's left of the roots I collected before, and a small amount of the meat. I suppose that means that today I should maybe go try to find more of those roots. Which means fire goes on the backburner again. Well, I suppose I wasn't making great progress on it anyway.

When I make it back to the outside, it's just barely getting bright outside, which confuses me slightly. Last time I came out here, it was getting close to sunset, which takes place in the direction that the cave opens. Right now, gaging from the lack of suns in the sky, it must be about sunrise. Which means my sleep estimation must be way off. Two sleep cycles and it's sunrise. Something is amiss, what exactly though, I'm not sure. Am I over estimating days, underestimating, or are days longer, or maybe shorter, than I think? Without actually spending a long time outside to get a gauge for it, I can only theorize. For now though, I need to go and find more of those broad leafed planets to get more roots.

It takes a lot less time than I thought it would to get some, thanks to finding a nearby area where there is an abundance of them growing beneath some trees. There should be plenty there to last me quite a while as well, beyond what I can carry. Since I don't know how long they last outside of the ground, I grab a few extra to experiment with. Then I grab a few large sticks on my way back to the cave. There's no harm in having extra firewood.

When I make it back inside, I set a few roots away from the rest, to use for testing. First test, how long until they spoil. Next, I go over to a different wall than where my leveling scratchings are, and scratch in a todo list, and scratch in: 1. Start a fire. 2. Sync up my sense of time with the suns.

 

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