Just a few hours later, I proudly inspected the result of my work. It was a flat-bottomed boat, similar in shape to river barges. It was three meters wide, ten meters long, and two meters high. The titanium bottom was weighted to prevent the boat from capsizing. The top was covered with an aluminum roof, and at the front was a 'cockpit' with fairly thick windows made of transparent corundum. The boat was powered by four paddle wheels, similar to those on 19th-century steamboats. These wheels turned due to the action of fuinjutsu seals. There were no conveniences, but the clone didn’t need any.
After testing the new vehicle, the clone created another clone to build a copy of the all-terrain vehicle, while the 'original' took the driver's seat and continued south. As I feared, it took a very long time to reach open water. My all-terrain vehicle had to travel over two thousand kilometers across snow and ice. I began to worry that the titanium bottom would wear out from the strain. I had to stop halfway to reinforce it with fuinjutsu seals.
In total, I sent four clones on reconnaissance. Unfortunately, the spider brain was poorly suited for multitasking. In other words, schizophrenia was very rare among my kind.
Once reaching open water, the boat successfully passed the test for operation of the propulsion system in its new mode, after which the clones set off in different directions in search of land. The journey was quite prolonged. If I had gone personally, I would have starved to death in the open sea. Of course, I could catch fish, but a spider’s body needs certain 'vitamins' that can only be obtained from scarabs. So, I remained at the base, studying magic and keeping an eye on the clones navigating the vast ocean.
The geographic exploration plan was fairly simple—reach the equator and then travel along it until I found land. Unfortunately, this plan didn’t account for the fact that there were no continents at the equator. The spiders had no global map of the planet. It had been lost in the destroyed imperial library. Over the following millennia, the foolish insects never thought to consolidate their geographical knowledge. I only knew of two continents at the poles, large islands near them, and another continent somewhere in the middle.
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Unfortunately, the desired continent was clearly not at the equator, as I had secretly hoped. Despite the ice age, temperatures at the equator had only dropped slightly. It was now not plus thirty, but plus twenty-five. Still, these were excellent living conditions. The problem was that there was no place to live. I was not yet ready to create a civilization living on artificial islands.
My clones had to circle the planet twice before they stumbled upon a decent island stretching from north to south. I even started considering inventing an airplane. What held me back was that my knowledge of aerodynamics was limited to a high school physics course and how to fold paper airplanes. Besides, boats in good weather reached speeds of over a hundred kilometers per hour. Considering the average diameter of Earth-like planets, the length of the equator should be around forty thousand kilometers, so my clones circumnavigated the globe in just twenty days.
Fortunately, by the end of the second month of sailing, a group of islands was discovered that was quite suitable for permanent habitation. The largest island was comparable in size to New Zealand. It also geologically resembled New Zealand—a mountain range ran through the center, with peaks reaching several kilometers high, adorned with snowy caps.
I was somewhat tired of staying in my hideout, so I eagerly teleported myself to the clone and participated in the landing on the shore. The exploration revealed a complete absence of intelligent life forms and an endless abundance of non-intelligent life. After collecting a few captured animals, I decided to fully relocate to the new residence. However, first, I needed to set up a mushroom farm and an enclosure for breeding beetles. Quite a hassle.
Given my insect origins, I decided to make the house in the form of a termite mound. For now, aesthetics were not a priority. Instead, protection from rain, sunlight, and various critters took precedence. I drew inspiration for the interior from scenes in films about alien nests. I constructed a small three-story mansion with chakra in just one day. After that, I set up the mushroom spores and beetle eggs in suitable conditions. I thought that until I established a stable food production system, I would eat the local animals.