I was on such a roll. I was feeling like I could do anything. My stride had more confidence, and I was starting to not be as nervous.

Then I put the five glass panes in the greenhouse and received five shattered glass in return.

I wouldn’t say this completely broke my spirits, but I guess I never considered that putting full glass into a greenhouse would give me shattered glass since I replaced it. It made sense using earth logic. After all, that shattered glass needed to be replaced, so one would have to take out the broken glass to put in the new. I hadn’t thought about testing that out with the five glass panes that I made yesterday. I didn’t really want to test it, anyway. Fences were always my top priority. If I had the thought to try it, I wasn’t sure if I would. But now I knew. There was nothing left to do but tuck this information away and keep going.

Instead of the greenhouse marking it as 5/15, it instead marked it as 0/10. Also, the blinking words stopped blinking, so I hoped that meant the greenhouse wouldn’t be destroyed in the next attack. That at least was some good news. I was not ready to build a greenhouse from scratch.

I stuffed in ten sections of broken stones to make the blocks and got that cooking for half a day before moving on to making twenty-five clay bricks to bake in the sun. Tomorrow it would rain, so this was the only day I could start the process of baking the bricks.

I went back to extending my storage. I was getting close to all the boards I would need.

The second those blocks were done cooking, I quickly placed them into the garage, waiting.

0/5 logs

Okay, easy enough. That was one tree. I quickly put in the logs and waited for the words.

0/10 boards

Also easy enough. The baked clay was starting to finish, and whatever happened, I would put the baked clay in the tool. That way it could finish tonight, and I put more sand in the tool for glass to be done in the morning.

Halfway through, I stuffed the tool with fifteen baked clay pieces, the most it could get in. If the garage needed it or not, I was going to have it ready. Once the garage had the boards, it requested 0/15 firewood. I was really starting to cut down a wide circle of trees around the house.

Didn’t matter. I had enough trees.

Once the firewood was done, I got my moment of validation.

0/20 bricks

Semi-validation. Fifteen bricks were all the tool could fit. It was fine. This was part of the game. I couldn’t have everything go my way.

“The wolf dying would be nice, though,” I said.

I would need another batch of bricks, and it would be stupid not to make another full batch of fifteen bricks, even if I only needed five more.

Working non-stop throughout the day made me realize something as the sun was setting. I was coming to realize I was not going to finish the to-do-list. Again. If repairing the greenhouse was the only thing I needed to do, then yes, I could finish it, but the garage needed to be upgraded, too.

I finished putting the bricks into the garage, then placed five bags of sand in there.

“Maybe next to-do list, when I don’t have to make so much glass,” I said.

Though I glanced at the calendar. This was the end of the season, and it didn’t look like I was getting a break. I had four more days before they attacked again, and then only three days after that. And the last three days of summer were all raining. That was going to be hard. I really needed my greenhouse to be producing like normal before then. I had a feeling I would be going through so many soups those last three days.

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A part of my mental self did not expect to prepare for another attack from them so soon. The attacks kept getting faster and faster, and my body still felt the shivers of those attacks when they managed to break through. I hated it. Even though they only got me once, I still felt like every attack was a drain on my wellbeing.

“Why can’t I forget when they attacked me? If you’re so keen on erasing memories that make me feel distressed, why aren’t you erasing that one? You already mentioned it was a miscalculation, so why isn’t it gone already?

I stayed focused as I forced myself to sleep and wake up again. It didn’t feel restful, but I was coming to terms with that. I almost would rather wake up not feeling as rested if it meant I didn’t have to dream in this place.

In the pouring rain, I put five more panes of glass into the greenhouse and received two shattered glass in return. Some of the panes were completely gone, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that I didn’t get shattered glass out of that. I was just annoyed when the game decided to have logic. It was a sore spot, still.

Then again, it was a relief to only wait two days for tomatoes.

I hated eating soup if I didn’t need the additional stamina, so I suffered in the cold while doing my morning routine. It just made me shiver the entire time and lose a small chunk of stamina as I gathered eggs and farmed. I then placed thirteen baked clay items in the tool to start cooking. It wasn’t a full fifteen, but I would still have extra bricks to store.

And that was it. My to-do list was now waiting on the bricks. Once the garage was finished, I would make another batch of glass to be ready to add to the greenhouse. I was so close to completely finishing my to-do list. The glass would be done by the time they arrived. Which… I would not want to be out here putting glass in the greenhouse during that time. But a part of me hoped that for the next to-do list, I could get it done. I was confident the greenhouse would be all finished in the next day or so. That would be such a huge relief.

Until then, I had half a day until the bricks were done. Everything on the first floor of the house was decluttered, the walls were wiped down, and the tables and cabinets were cleaned off. I would have to start working on decluttering the two other rooms on the second floor.

I wasn’t sure what to do with that locked room. Every time I thought about it, a dark feeling hit my gut. There was a reason why that place was still locked, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Not when I saw that blood trickling out of the bottom of the door.

I focused on decluttering the landing area on the second floor, then worked on the hallway. I went back into my pattern of making sure everything was on the front porch. Killie came to check in on me every once in a while, and I gave her all the love and attention she would let me give her. I seriously needed to make sure that cat never ran away from me. She was my lifeline.

It was almost time to check on the bricks. I used some of my stamina to finish decluttering the small room under the stairs before I ate a bowl of soup and was warm enough to start dumping the junk in the pouring rain.

As I dropped the stuff in the dumpster, I kept an eye on my dopamine points. It was a slow yet steady trickle back to the positive.

-13.84

-13.80

-13.74

-13.68

I could, of course, drop two boards in the dumpster and be done with it, but if the junk was giving me something, it was almost relaxing to see the negative balance slowly get added to.

Maybe I was weird that way, but also, I don’t think anyone has ever experienced waking up in a farming game that was also in the horror genre for some reason. This made me happy. If it made me happy, I was doing it.

I put the last remaining junk into the dumpster and checked on the bricks. They were almost done, but they’d probably finish a good twenty minutes after my heat timer ran out.

I used the time to make sure the hallway from the kitchen to the bedroom was completely clear of clutter. Part of me hoped that decluttering the second floor would give me another boost to my sanity and stamina. I remembered the last time they came. They didn’t even attack and I was only holding on to a sliver of sanity.

I spent the next little while getting a lot of junk onto the porch from the second level. Decluttering the two rooms on the second floor would undoubtably take days of solid work. But while I was killing time, it was nice to get this done now.

Once I had a good collection of junk on the front porch, I ate one of my last two potato soups and went outside to the tool. I placed bricks into the garage, then waited.

It gave a nice sheen, and I let out a breath. The garage was fully updated. Despite wanting to run inside right then to see what it did, I used my heat timer to put the rest of the bricks in the storage area, then started five more bags of sand to make glass. Another attack by them tonight would hurt the greenhouse, but I was still confident I could get it back to normal soon. I then dumped the last of the junk into dumpster. My dopamine point hit -12.94 which was a boost of dopamine in itself.

I then ran into the garage, excited to see what the upgrade gave me.