After World and Michael poof back to the temple which is kinda trippy when he poofs and not us I turn to the rest of us. “Right, you heard Mr Original. As discussed we’ll split up into teams!”
“Team A, Clones 1 through 10. Your job is to search for a suitable place to start digging out a home base, remember there may be monsters or other wildlife in the area so stick with your buddy”
“Team B, Clones 11 through 16. Your job is to set up our campsite by the river, check for fish, collect water and start prepping food.”
“We’ll all reconvene in four hours for lunch. If you see anything, report back to campsite via System to call everyone else back. Split up into teams of two, good hunting.”
I, Clone 1 or my full name being “Michael - Number 1” move over to number 2 and invite him to a voice chat, meanwhile number 11 on Team B has created a Party and invited one of the five Team A groups into a Party Chat. If we run into anything we can report back to number 11 and then they can let everyone else know.
So long as they are in range anyway.
Number 11 is managing the communications and receiving up to date reports from each group while the rest in Team B sets up camp. In two hours number 12 will take over from number 11 and so on so everyone has comms duty in Team B.
I headed out with number 2 down the riverbank, we decided before leaving to talk to these gods to figure out a rough idea of which group or Team would do what. Ours is to have a look down the river bank and to map it, group two with numbers 3 and 4 will be doing the same on the opposite shore.
The other groups are checking out behind us, like Michael says it looks like a very long oval so the other groups are checking our end of the oval. Its length is massive, several kilometres at least while width might be just over five kilometres maybe?
It’ll take us a while to sort this out, so we start walking.
After about two hours of walking one way and back again we reach comms range with number 12 and he gives us an update, kitchen and tents are all set up and food is getting cooked now. Firewood is getting collected but sparingly from loose stuff on the ground.
All the teams report that they have seen several animals, mostly smaller stuff that would resemble mice, deer, birds and the like but have a unique colour. Vibrant purple and yellow in the birds while the mice and deer lookalikes are more brown and green in colour.
There has been existence found of larger animals but only tracks at the moment.
Team B did also report they found some troughs in the sand, like something beached itself and so are going to move the campsite away from the water a bit and stop the fishing in case we attract something's attention.
We may be overly cautious but for now it’ll do. The campsite was moved to about 20 metres from the shoreline with some other teams also arriving. And we share our reports:
Group one (us), Group two and Group three had found nothing of importance but had mapped about 10 kilometres of coastline and the surrounding forests. The lake appears to be about 20 or 25 kilometres in length. The forest surrounding it is filled with green trees and other plantlife which might prove suitable for trade and eating.
The rest had only run into small animals and plants, nothing major in the forests that we can see. After a quick lunch and more talking, number 13 takes over comms and we head out again, surveying the edge of the forest and our path giving us more map details.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Using the food generator we had created some steaks and a salad with bread that had been cooked and toasted over the fire even though the generator can make cooked foods. Over the next hour we eat and rest up and then Group 1 heads out again walking to the edge of the mountains and moving in a circle around our side of the oval toward its tip. We ran across some caves that might have tunnels or more likely animal dens in them so steered clear of them.
Approaching the tip of the oval where the mountains start there is a large outcropping hanging over the forest, the mountain it comes from is also massive and only a three hour walk from the edge of the lake.
After discussing with the other groups who had also arrived there in the afternoon we decided to start carving a space out. Once we have rooms and a room for us to eat we’ll move our campsite “indoors”.
After checking around for any nests, animals or things that might be living nearby and finding nothing we head back to camp. The next day we head back to the outcropping and split into two teams of five.
Group 1 starts carving out an entrance with Elemental Avatar, for now it's all shaped in an arch so that it is balanced and we move slowly, we don’t know what composition the rocks are made of and we could have cave-ins at any moment. Don’t want to get most of the way started only for us to all poof in a cave in!
Group 2 on the other hand is looking to climb the mountain a bit, when groups 1 and 2 from yesterday were about to turn back we saw more mountains behind these ones so if we can find a suitable place to put the leftover rock and stone that would be awesome, group two also using Elemental Avatar carve steps into the rockface enough to climb up.
After a few hours Group 1 has moved about 10 metres into the rock face keeping that arched style but only two metres across, as they start to expand that Group 2 are almost up to the midway point up this mountain despite taking several breaks walking up due to them losing mana, they also need to make sure not to go too high or the mana sickness from being too high up might hit.
That or lack of oxygen, after another hour Group 2 find a spot where the mountain separates from the one next to it and can see more white covered mountains behind them. There are several deep pits that look like they have been filled in from all the ice and snow. Maybe not the best place being so far up.
Group 2 descends while Group 1 finishes the entrance, a large arched hallway 10 metres long by 5 metres with slight carvings for rooms marked out, though not too many. The stone from the excavation is quite heavy and so it was decided that it would be added to the entrance of the cliff face.
We are thinking over dinner that it might be an idea to break the leftover stone into gravel and place it at the base of the mountains where the trees don't grow or animals don’t nest but we will think on that more.
The third day we moved campsite into the cave with some still sleeping outside, we moved much rock and stone and reinforced the stuff already in place.
Number 7 made an interesting discovery, that Elemental Avatar can be used to fortify and make existing stone stronger after some experimentation. We had come across some cracks in the roof which lead to 7’s discovery, for now the stone we remove will be added to the existing stone to reinforce it. It will take longer to cut and move if we have to but at least the roof probably won't fall on our heads.
Day four we had stopped working and spent the next two days designing this level and the others we want. We already had an idea with OG Michaels memories so we planned and designed using stone tablets, which was not too bad. Elemental Avatar can allow you to do it easily by moving fingers across it like drawing on sand but finer.
And that is basically it for now, tomorrow Group 1 will continue to mine while group two is going to continue mapping out the area and do some climbing up the other mountains to see whats up there, using existing handholds when we can and new ones when there is no other way. I’ve seen enough rockclimbing videos that you just don’t carve into the rock face to make things easier but when we did we used Elemental Avatar to bring it back to its natural state.
I can see some signs of distinct personalities emerging from the others but it may be nothing, in any case this will be our home for a while or until we get into comms range again with number 0 has some are calling our original.