Chapter 9
The Super Shelter
Rance scrounged wild greens along with some onions and garlic. He ate a bitter wild spring salad for lunch, while he thought about his next move.
“System, how much farther do I need to go before I am out of the spawn area?” He asked.
“You passed out of the spawn area at the first beaver dam.” The answer came.
“Does the border go directly across the valley?”
“It does.”
Rance considered this for a bit before he made his decision. He repacked the few things he had taken from his pack and started moving on an angle up the valley but up the slope away from the creek, beaver ponds, and into the trees.
Rance continued up the valley all the while climbing the side of it. He had only been walking for 30 minutes or so when he came to a nice flat spot on the side of the hill. It was like an excavator had come in years before and leveled a homesite, and then just left it to go back to nature.
“Well this looks interesting.” He said aloud.
He took stock of the location. The trees were thin, almost a small clearing. No widowmakers that he could see. Looking down the hill he could see the sun glinting off water in the bottom of the valley.
He laid down his packs and started walking the small area picking up protruding rocks and sticks and tossing them to the side. There were plenty of smallish dead trees about so he slowly started dragging them back to his chosen camp site.
Rance had been considering his options during his walk. He didn’t think he wanted to stake a homestead claim up in this valley. It just didn’t look like the right area for that. But it was a great area for gathering, trapping, hunting, and he hoped fishing, so he decided he would set up a base camp and work on leveling up while attempting to make some coin from the natural resources available.
Whilst he was dragging his small logs he managed to find a better piece of wood for a staff. This one was a heavier hardwood. He tossed his old staff on his growing pile of logs. He also managed to find another stick that he figured he could carve into a good digging stick.
Rance tired quickly, and took several breaks. He nibbled more greens and onions, and he emptied out the pheasant back mushrooms from the slot in his pack. He looked at them and sighed.
“No one really likes these,” he said aloud. “The only reason they get eaten is they are ready at the same time as morels, and people pick them when they don’t find morels.” He stopped at this. “Wait a minute,” he said.
“System”
“Yes”
“Why are all the mushrooms ready at the same time?”
“I explained that already.” The system said “There are no seasons.”
“Okay, I get that I guess. I just realized another thing that has been bothering me.” Rance said “It just dawned on me that some of these trees are North American Eastern Woodlands trees, and some or definitely Rocky Mountain or Great Basin trees.”
“You are correct. You are in a mixed area. This is possible in Otherworld.”
“So are the animals mixed as well?”
“Yes, as are the monsters.”
“Wait…What?”
“Monsters are not taken from any specific region of lore. Any monster may spawn in any general area with several specific exceptions of course.”
“Back up. There are monsters in this game?”
“I would ask if you had never played a game like this before, but of course I know you haven’t.”
“How prevalent are they?” Rance asked. “I mean why haven’t I seen any signs of any yet?”
“You have not exited the safe zone around the village of Westerveldt.”
“Well Shit! How far is the edge of the safe zone?”
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“132 yards up the valley from your current position. You will receive a notification whenever you leave a safe zone.” The system said.
“So I am in a kind of buffer zone between criminal spawns and monster free for all?”
“Yes”
Rance picked up a pheasant back from the pile of mushrooms and sliced off a piece. He started slowly chewing the mostly tasteless food while he considered his options. He was in a relatively safe area. He was close to resources he knew how to use and hopefully profit from.
“Looks like I’ll go ahead and stay here then” he said, talking to himself as much as the system.
He stood and started to lay out the super shelter. A super shelter usually consisted of a stout lean-to with an enclosed… yard would be the best word for it. The lean-to had a covered bed and the yard contained a fire pit which the walls of the yard reflected the heat onto the bed area.
Rance had his own peculiar way of making things. He tried to simplify whenever possible. He took his largest logs and laid them in a rough circle…the ends overlapping. Once the circle was complete, he decided where he wanted his entrance and took the two overlapping logs at that point and separated them. Laying one log slightly inside the circle and one log slightly outside the circle.
He placed the ends of those two logs about three feet apart. This gave him a nice doorway into the circle. He then started adding the second layer of logs on top of the first overlapping the first row like a rail fence.
In the middle of the third layer he got a notification. Needing a break, he sat again and munched on pheasant backs whilst he read the notification.
“Congratulations, you have leveled up in strength. Congratulations, you have leveled up in constitution.” He read.
Rance didn’t even bother checking his stat sheet. He knew that at this point the numbers meant very little to him, and looking would only tempt him to try something stupid like spending his boon before he had a grasp of how he was going to try to get ahead in the game.
After he had rested a while Rance continued his building project. After the third row of logs was on he took smaller sticks and drove them into the ground at each where the logs overlapped. One on the inside and one on the outside of the circle.
Where the entrance was he had taken short pieces he had broken off his logs to make spacers so his two entrance walls were the same height as the rest of the shelter.
He took the wall up to a little over four feet, resting and gathering new logs as needed.
When he was done with the wall the shelter looked like a corral made from logs about 15 feet across. He stood back and surveyed what he had accomplished so far. Walking around and shaking the wall here and there making sure it was solid.
“Okay, now to start on the actual lean-to.” he said aloud.
He made his way down to the stream and started cutting long willows, his plan was to cut several and haul them back to his shelter.
“THIS KNIFE SUCKS!” He yelled into the air at the top of his lungs.
Rance was fed up working with just his small belt knife. He only managed to cut a couple of willows with his knife. He started breaking off the largest dead ones he could find. When he had an arm-load he climbed back to his shelter.
When he got back to the shelter he tossed the willows on the ground outside the shelter and entered the circle. He didn’t have enough willows to build the lean-to part, so he settled for draping one of his oilskins over the framework of one of the walls.
This gave him some protection from the wind and rain should a storm pop up, and his conversation with the system confirmed that it was possible.
He took his second oilskin and laid it on the ground where he intended to sleep to form a vapor barrier to stop any moisture from seeping up from the ground. Then he laid out his two threadbare wool blankets.
His sleeping arrangements taken care of, he used his new digging stick to excavate a shallow hole in the center of his corral. In this he started a fire after several attempts and with much struggle.
The sun was beginning to set when his thin pheasant back mushroom and wild garlic broth was ready to drink. The garlic improved the flavor of the mushrooms, but he decided he wouldn’t try to pawn them off on Beulla since he had seven slots full of better tasting ones available.
After he finished eating Rance made a pot of pine needle tea, “to keep his vitamin C up” He told himself. Really it was just so he had something to sip while he worked on his evening project.
Rance had grabbed a few dead milkweed stalks on his trip down to the creek, and he wanted to start making cordage. In the real world Rance had made miles of natural cordage, but from the experiences of the last two days he knew he would be starting over his learning process.
So just like he was reading it from a book for the first time, Rance picked up a milkweed stalk and carefully squeezed it flat between his fingers. He did this down the length of the stalk, and then turned it 90 degrees and flattened it the other way.
This caused the stalk to break a few places along each edge of where he had flattened it. This allowed him to pull the stalk apart into four long quarters.
“I know this next part is going to be tricky,” Rance said aloud. The fiber is on the outside of the stalk, with the inside being made up of a thin wood-like cellulose. He had to get the inner part separated from the fibers without causing too much damage.
In the real world he was skilled enough to process the fibers down to where they were fine and clean, but here he knew that would be a lost cause for a while. He picked up one of the quarters and about an inch from one end he slowly bent the stalk until there was a “snap”.
He looked closely and saw the fibers intact while the wood behind it had broken. He slowly peeled the wood away. Some of the fibers came with it as he peeled it off.
“Shit! I hate you, you rich bastard! He shouted at the dark sky “You hear me you bastard?”
With no answer forthcoming Rance turned back to his task. “Slow and steady” he told himself aloud.
Rance continued removing the backing from his milkweed fiber until he had done all the stalks he had collected. Towards the end he had gotten a dexterity level notice, and it had made things slightly easier. Not much but enough he had noticed it.
He took the piles of curly fiber and put them into a slot in his pack. Banked the fire, rolled up in his blanket and went to sleep.