I did not feel rested the next morning, but I was relieved to see my sanity at seventy-five percent and my stamina back to full. Now that I had a bit more sanity to play with, I knew I’d have to inspect my bedroom window. In the red dawn light, I walked over to that window and pulled back the broken blinds. There was no one there, but I could see the small pile of beer cans and cigarette butts there. Someone was still approaching the house. I was not doing as well as I could with calculating what this meant, mostly because it made me freeze in fear any time I thought about it.

I walked outside, quickly going through my morning routine. Part of that was adding the new glass into the second green house and retrieving a few shattered glass in return. I wanted my lettuce and carrots to grow faster. I then checked on Daisy. She hadn’t given an egg, but I petted my chicken, promising her that I would be foraging today, and I would look for the medicinal plant to help her. And maybe even find her another friend. I put more broken stone into the tool before I quickly went to work shaping clay into brick shapes and leaving over thirty clays out to bake in the sun. I even made five more for the furnace.

I had six more days until they attacked. I checked my to-do list.

Repair all damages done by them

Build a barn

Purchase a cow

Purchase the fourth article of clothing for building

Build a trap

Set trap in your foraging area

Clean their residue from the house

Okay, maybe that wasn’t a ton. For how much I worked yesterday, this felt like more should be crossed off. But it was okay. I still had six days. My mind again turned toward Theo. We needed to communicate. It was an entire day since I’d seen him, and he hadn’t come over to my side. I refused to believe he was just a hallucination. We needed a way to contact. Maybe I could leave him a note somewhere on the bridge. Ask him one of the billions of questions circling my brain. I just needed paper. Where could I find some paper?

It was then that I was still staring at the to-do list. Written on paper.

It could be worse. It could have taken me three hours to figure that out.

I rushed into the house, going out of my way to avoid the residue on the carpet. I reached the kitchen counter, leaning over as I grabbed the roll of paper and tugged it loose before tearing it off.

“Yes!” I hissed.

I didn’t care if this didn’t work. It was something, and I was in desperate need to find some way to contact Theo without marching over to that monster infested land. I grabbed one of the pens in the cups by the phone. The pens that didn’t work, I set those aside to toss in the dumpster. I was starting to worry that none of the pens worked when one finally got some ink. I turned the paper on its side and wrote as big as I could.

Theo! We need to talk! Come over to the house!

I nodded in satisfaction before heading toward the river. It would be nice if I ran into Theo on the way there, but I had no such luck. Instead, I gathered two stones and walked onto the bridge, spreading the paper out and securing it with the stones. There was a chance the monsters might tear this to shreds. The wolf might, too. But if they did tear it to shreds, I would know this wasn’t a good idea and I needed to try something else.

It was something. I needed to do something, and I was happy with the results. He might stop by as early as tonight. That would be fantastic, honestly.

With that done, I took the time to smash a spider monster before gathering four more bags of sand. I would have done more, but I was really worried about running into that demon zombie monkey.

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Once I was back home, I focused most of my energy on building the fences around the greenhouse. It didn’t take long before they, too, were asking for bricks. Despite wanting to finish upgrading the storage unit, that asked for stone blocks and bricks. The last batch of stone blocks were in the tool, and then I’d stick fifteen bricks in there. As much as I wanted to do glass, I had other things to make.

Instead, I spent the rest of the morning chopping down logs for the barn. When I heard the tool stop rocking, an indication that it was done, I had 143/200 logs in the barn. I was really close.

I passed by the house, and since it was noon, I allowed myself to glance at the window. No one was there except the pile of trash.

I switched out the stone blocks and put in fifteen baked clay. There would be enough time that I could switch out the bricks by tonight and place another five bags of sand in the tool. I then used all my courage to gather the beer cans and the cigarette butts and drop them in the dumpster. As far as I could figure, this stranger had appeared every night to stare at me through my bedroom window.

After felling one tree and cutting them each into boards, I dumped them all in the dumpster to get +140.00 total added to my overall dopamine points. It was a lot, but I told myself I needed to start with two traps.

I bought the chicken trap, both the regular one and the box one. I was starting to feel the lack of eggs in the morning. It was also a good thing I didn’t spend all my points, because the traps took a lot of metal shards. The box took way more than the regular trap.

After two boards in each, three firewood, three metal shards for the regular trap and five shards for the box, I was done with the traps. All the logs I chopped down in order to get the boards for the traps went right back into the dumpster to feed my dopamine points to get the metal. Every time I thought I was getting a nice cushion of points, I soon drained it. Though I still had a nice 96.63 points left. Who knows what the next thing I would need to drain those points again. Probably another trap.

I placed the traps in my inventory. I then dressed in my cooking outfit and headed out into the forest. Not my bedroom window side of the forest, but the one by the garage. The one in wolf territory.

I kept walking, the darkness surrounding me. It was afternoon when I entered the forest, and I couldn’t tell what time it was by the time it prompted me to choose whether I wanted to be in wolf territory.

I mentally chose yes, then walked for a bit. The silence was absolute. There were no birds, no crickets. At first, I was afraid that meant the wolf was close, but I didn’t dare turn around now. Even if I just set the traps and foraged for some food, I would be happy with that.

My wolf timer had three question marks above it. I pulled out one of my chicken traps. The trap casted a shadow, except this shadow was red for some reason. I understood the game logic instantly, walking around a bit with the trap until the shadow underneath was green. I set it down, and I felt a strong impression enter my mind. I would find this trap if I wanted to, even in the middle of the night. It was the same instinct that told me where the house was right at this moment.

I then brought out the box trap and did the same thing, searching the ground until the shadow turned green. With that done, I glanced around feeling information enter my mind.

Wolf was here not too long ago. Be careful.

Right. Not a problem. I was not in the mood to press my luck. I didn’t want to stay far from the house after asking Theo to find me, anyway. I gathered some blueberries as well as some nuts, sticking them in my inventory. I then found a plum tree and picked a few of those before heading back to the house. Honestly, not being able to tell what time it was had to be the most unsettling aspect of this all. Also the fact that the wolf could pop out at any time.

It wasn’t until I was back in the clearing of the house that I pulled out the to-do list, reading it in the sunlight.

Repair all damages done by them

Build a barn

Purchase a cow

Purchase the fourth article of clothing for building

Build a trap

Set trap in your foraging area

Clean the blackness in the house

That felt nice. I hadn’t found any medicinal plants for little Daisy. Did I have to wear my animal care outfit for that? I wasn’t sure. But I would have to go foraging again tomorrow anyway. Maybe I could spend more time there. I was mostly unsettled by how close the wolf was.

I entered the covered back porch and flipped to the back page to check my progress.

Farming level 20

Cleaning level 21

Logging level 26

Cooking level 17

Building level 26

Animal Care level 18

Logging and building really needed to calm down. Then again, how could they stop when I had spent most of the day cutting down trees or building fences? That much made sense, I suppose. Still, knowing I would be getting another huge upgrade with my animal care and cooking both reaching level twenty, I was anxious to get that going. I just needed more food.