As soon as the last stone was in place, the whole thing expanded. It was about four feet wide, and about four feet tall. Tanisha considered this for a moment, and decided that it was likely intended for people to build two walls on top of each other, while letting them build mountable stair structures with these half-wall heights. But if she didn’t want to ride her chair around inside, this was high enough for her to live pretty comfortably.
She took a moment to examine the walls more closely, trying to decide how suitable they would be for her protection. Despite her having had no mortar or anything like it, they seemed cemented together. There were no visible gaps between the stones. When she touched it, the wall didn’t move, despite it having no visible foundations.
“I know architects who would kill for this technology,” she said with a chuckle. Walking on her hands up next to the wall, she leaned against it. Put her whole weight onto it. And it didn’t budge. “How much easier would my job have been if I just stacked rocks on top of each other and they became magically immobile?”
Shinji appeared from around the wall, holding up another cut stone. She took it with a smile, letting him do his little mustelan victory dance. Once he was done, she handed him two more stones.
“The reward for work done well,” she advised, “is more work.”
He seemed happy with this development, and went to work right away. Tanisha worked on the next wall. This time, Shinji finished up about the same time as her, so they continued around the circle. She left a gap on the side towards the campfire, with intent to fill it with a door later.
Eventually, she had to slow down to help Shinji craft cut stone. But she was done the craft with time to spare. It was four walls by two walls, making it a nice cozy twelve-by-eight room. Everything fit together solidly. And there was even some daylight left on the horizon. Not much, of course, but every bit counted.
Tanisha mounted up on her mech and went out to check the raquail trap. This time, it had two meat and two feathers. Upon returning to camp, she cooked the chunks of meat, using one to top off her hunger bar, while Shinji got to enjoy the other. When they were finished, Tanisha went to work on the roof of her abbreviated house.
The roof only took four cut stone per “square” and she only needed four to ensure the room was fully enclosed. She considered dragging herself inside and crafting it from below, but her engineer brain outright refused. There were no hard hats in the False Lands.
Instead, she stayed on her mech and leaned over the walls from the outside to put it together. It was surreal to basically set the blocks down in empty space and have them grow right before her eyes to fill the area. By the time she placed the last one, she had not only used all the rocks she’d gathered earlier that day, but also most of those she’d had before. Her inventory was down to single digits now, but she’d gotten a construction skill increase out of it.
“And only thanks to your help,” Tanisha said to Shinji as she finished the final craft. “I’ve converted almost every rock I’ve picked up since I got here into this. Without you, I would have been here all night.”
He chirped happily, spinning in place to do his dance again. Shinji seemed to understand he was being praised, and focused his attention back on her with that look of adoration he’d given when she’d healed his leg.
Almost as if on cue, the orange-browns of dusk gave way to the purples of night. The black curtain fell over the grasslands first, and then engulfed her camp. She could still see, thanks to her campfire, but the sheer blackness outside the globe of light was just as foreboding as on the first night.
“Good game, team. Let’s get some well-deserved rest.” When she looked back down at Shinji, she noticed he’d taken up a position beneath her chair. “We’ll be okay, Shinji. I promise.”
Together, they made their way to the hut’s entryway. Tanisha tried to control the legs so that Shinji didn’t accidently get stomped. Once there, she lowered the chair down and climbed out, dragging herself into the little room.
It took Shinji a moment to get up the courage to venture into the unlit room. The firelight coming through the door was bright enough that she could watch him approach the sleeping mat and sniff it. She watched quietly as he crawled up on the foot of the construction, turned himself around a few times, and curled up just beyond her feet.
It’s nice, she thought as she drifted off to sleep, to not be alone here.
Chapter 30
The next day was more of the same.
Tanisha went about her morning routine—bathing, eating, fueling up—and then returned to the rocky biome with Shinji in tow. She collected more stones, this time with the focus of extending her camp with a storage shed.
Today’s collection was done carefully, though. Tanisha stopped after the hundreth stone, not wanting to draw another rock lizard without some way to protect Shinji from the creature. The mining went quickly, amplified both by an increase in skill and the company. Tanisha’s mining skill was her highest by far, nearly Level 9, when her next-highest was Level 5. Not counting her other gathering skills, the next highest was Level 3. That wasn’t good. If she was going to be playing this game, she had to get to grinding.
On the way back “home” after her mining expedition—although, it was more quarrying than mining, not that the game would make that distinction—she looked up at the sun and saw that it was barely midday. She thought for a moment on how to proceed, and how best to optimize the rest of her day.
“I could gather some grass,” she said aloud, looking over at the little mustelan marching beside her. He weaved in and out of the legs of her chair fearlessly. “But then I’m still building up my harvesting and refining skills. I really need to start working on other stuff, too.”
Shinji made a little trilling noise at her. She wasn’t sure if he understood what she said, but he definitely understood that, in conversation, he was expected to respond. He seemed pleased to be included in her internal monologue, at the very least.
“Glad you agree. I’m thinking we should do some exploring. There are some rarer resources we need to find. If I can locate a herd of some prey creatures, or maybe a beehive? We’d be in a good place.”
Her companion chittered, darting ahead of her a few feet, before looking back. His nose wiggled at her as he sniffed the air.
“Yeah. If I can find some bees, I can harvest some more wax and honey.” She moved her hands in a braiding motion, mining the net creation. “Using the wax, I can get us some more easy food. And the honey can be used for healing items.” She reached out and flicked her fingers at the red health bar on her UI. “I could use some of those. And, bonus, I wouldn’t need to eat a mushroom.”
Shinji waited until she caught up to him. He squeaked happily before falling in beside her mech once again.
“Alright. You’ve convinced me. I’ll look for some bees.”
She lost track of where, exactly, she was, but the mountain made for a good landmark to reorient herself. That was “east,” after all. With Shinji’s help, she crafted a weapon for herself along the way. Her highest skill currently was with the sword, but she didn’t have the materials or workbench to make it. And so that meant her weapon of choice was going to be a repurposed tool.
Which meant she was going to use the hammer.
“Other tools do damage in the appropriate situation,” she explained to Shinji as she followed the blueprint’s instructions. The rope was wrapped around the stone head of the tool to fasten it to the handle. “But the hammer does the most damage natively.” He chirped curiously. “So, in dARkness, tools do six damage, unless used against something weak to it, like the pickaxe against the rock lizards. Or if I used a machete against the saladmanders.”
She completed the craft and the rock, stick, and rope in her hands transformed into a pretty well balanced hammer. Tanisha gave it a few experimental swings. “See, a hammer does ten points of damage. Its purpose is to break down buildings. And buildings are really tanky. Hence the h
igher base damage.” She popped her inventory open and deposited the tool into an empty slot. Not that she had many. Her inventory was getting a little out of control. But that’s why she was trying to build a storage shed. “Right,” she said after a moment, looking down to Shinji. “Let’s go find some bees!”
It took Tanisha the better part of the afternoon to find the creatures. The grasslands gave her an advantage, since it was pretty flat and open. She discovered that she could direct the chair to stand up taller, too. It was sort of like the opposite of when it crouched down—so it gathered its legs beneath it and straightened them. Like a gopher. It was adorable, if only because Shinji immediately tried to mimic it.
To her disappointment, she wasn’t able to find a beehive through the grass. But she did spot a few worker bees bumbling about between the tall grasses, and they would be a good starting point.
Fights against the worker bees were short and efficient. Worker bees were slow and posed very little threat. She was able to get four attacks in between swipes of their pointy stingers, and five swings of her hammer were all that was required to take one down. After the second bee was dead, Tanisha gained a level of hammer skill, although it didn’t do anything for her damage.
She had originally wanted to collect ten wax total. But after the third bee, she decided to keep going until her hammer skill got up to Level 3. The sun was starting to ride low in the sky when she accomplished that goal, but it gave her enough skill ups to get to Level 4. After a moment’s through, she decided to keep her stability in pace with her hunger, and thus increased her maximum to 120.
After the points were distributed, Tanisha went through the corpses quickly, harvesting what honey and wax she could. It honestly weirded her out that the corpses hadn’t despawned, but perhaps that mechanic only happened when it had been a full day. Or when you exited the immediate area. She was also grateful that the battle happened far enough from whatever hives these bees originated from that they didn’t draw forth the protective soldiers.
She gained two more levels of butchering, and gathered more than two dozen honey and wax. When they were safely in her inventory, she took a look at her character sheet.
Name: Koest
Level: 4 (TNL: 02/10)
Hit Points: 150/240
Stability: 85/120
Hunger: 60/120
Stamina: 98/150
Butchering: 5 (8/72)
Fishing: 0 (0/10)
Herbalism: 5 (50/72)
Logging: 2 (23/33)
Mining: 8 (108/112)
Outfitting: 0 (4/10)
Construction: 2 (1/33)
Refining: 3 (22/46)
Survival: 2 (9/33)
Toolmaking: 1 (2/21)
Weaponmaking: 2 (2/10)
Axe: 1 (6/21)
Bow: 0 (0/10)
Dagger: 0 (0/10)
Hammer: 3 (1/46)
Machete: 0 (0/10)
Pick: 1 (10/21)
Shovel: 1 (10/21)
Spear: 0 (0/10)
Sword: 3 (26/46)
“Not perfect, but we’re getting somewhere,” she said, nodding. “And evening is coming soon.” Tanisha looked to Shinji, and then to the horizon. It wasn’t like she had a map that auto-updated with where she was, where she’d been, and where camp was. “We don’t have a lot of time to dally around. So let’s go home.”
In spite of her nervousness about her wayfinding, the trip back to camp was pretty uneventful. It was easy for her to travel in vaguely the right direction, thanks to the mountain. The sky didn’t darken until after she found the edge of the forest biome, and from there it was simple to follow the line between the two zones until she reached the camp. She harvested the day’s catch from the trap in order to feed herself and her mustelan companion.
After dinner, she used Shinji’s help to quickly craft a pair of nets. She grabbed the grass from her inventory and handed it over to the small critter, who easily wove it into rope. When the rope was done, she coated them in wax and weaved them together to make nets. The sticks were the last part, and finally she was able to set the additional traps.
Night was just falling as she finished, and, once more, by the light of the campfire, she walked on her hands into her stone hut and curled up on her sleeping mat. Her little fuzzy friend gave a squeak of goodnight before he curled up at her feet.
As she drifted off, she realized she was feeling a bit anxious. Her inventory was a massive problem, especially after the day’s farming. She had originally wanted to gather some more materials first, but there was a good chance she’d be riding around with her items on her lap if she didn’t deal with it sooner.
Tomorrow, she’d go about building her storage space.
With her inventory woes fresh in her mind, Tanisha’s dreams were filled with the bane of gamers everywhere—inventory management. There were items that refused to stack, rare key items that couldn’t be thrown out, and no auto-sort or search features. She woke up more than once in a cold sweat.
Chapter 31
As soon as she was finished with her morning routine, Tanisha got right to work on the storage area.
She was surprised by how little her stamina and stability bars were affected by her terrible night’s sleep. Especially considering how her terror seemed to alter her stability bar even as she was trying to keep calm. They were just slightly lower than normal, and while Tanisha felt a little more sluggish, she was still functional.
Move over, coffee. A gamified stamina bar was a thousand times better.
Tanisha designed a small space next to her sleeping quarters and built a sort of gazebo. She used a quartet of stone walls, arranged like pillars, to lay out the space. The entire area was protected by roof tiles in order to keep her storage away from the elements. When the structure was in place, Tanisha went off into the woods and chopped down almost a dozen trees to convert them into boards at her woodworking workbench. She crafted a number of chests and secured them under the cover of her new storage space.
At the end of her crafting expedition, Tanisha still had some boards left over, and so she decided to craft herself a new suit of wooden armor. She had some plans that required her to hunt things more dangerous than a handful of slow bees.
The five chests did wonders to relieve her inventory woes. Without an immediate need for honey or wax, she was able to stow it, along with a number of other less-necessary finds, like the raquail feathers and ore. When all was said and done, her inventory was back to being only half full, and the clay pot of tools was a key element of that.
All of the crafting and gathering took up most of her day though, so Tanisha and Shinji decided to spend the rest of the afternoon at camp, getting some well-deserved rest. Not everything had to be ultra-optimized. She wasn’t trying to speedrun anymore, and she wanted to make sure she maintained her bars. While her stability and stamina had seen fine upon waking up, they seemed to drain faster during the day than she was used to. There was no need to risk another night of low stability just because she had the hankering to stay busy.
The next morning, she went out hunting. It was still bear season, in her mind, and so she ventured out into the woods. It took her awhile to find a trail, but by the end of the afternoon she’d tracked down a blackened bear and spent the better part of an hour dancing around it with her hammer. Shinji was careful to stay very far away. In fact, the first roar of flames had sent him scurrying away, and Tanisha didn’t see him again until she was harvesting her rewards from the bear’s corpse. She ended up gaining another level of skill with her hammer, rounding out all of the construction and gathering skills from the previous day to bring her to Level 5.
When the sun rose again, Tanisha and Shinji went out to get more stone. Instead of having Shinji help with crafting though, Tanisha handled it herself. Every craft he did was at least a single point of experience she didn’t get to keep, which was going to cost her in the long term. Sure, he saved her a lot of time. And there were moments where she would abso
lutely require his help. But she didn’t need the little critter to be useful in order to justify keeping him around. He was cute! And fuzzy! And it was just comforting to have him nearby, even if his humanoid shape was a little strange.
She kept expecting his chittering, trilling, squeaking, or chirping to come out in English eventually, like a parrot. He also ate a considerable amount of food every day, and so she expected him to eventually grow. Just, hopefully not to human size. He was the only mustelan she’d seen, so she wasn’t sure what to expect. There was no indication of how big he might grow.
Once her base camp was a little more established, Tanisha decided to return to focusing on her skills. She started spamming tool crafts, building a pile of them in her storage chests. Shinji was fine to just watch her work, which was great. Eventually, Tanisha got two more levels of toolmaking experience, along with what she earned from refining the materials. It felt rewarding to grind out her skills, and it felt like exactly the right sort of progress to be making.
Increasing her toolmaking skill meant and increased chance of crafting higher quality tools. This low in the skill, it was still an abysmal chance. But all she had to do was gather a ton of materials and then go at it, spamming her crafts until she made one that was better than the rest. As she went about it, she remember a conversation on Eris about quality. A new player had been complaining about the system, and someone had told them that getting an HQ at crafting Level 4 was about the same as the chances of rolling a natural 20—unlikely, but not impossible. In theory, she could expect to see one soon if she just kept devoting herself to crafting.
Darkness Named Page 22
