Now before Jake went on to do anything, he had a few ideas to get food. The first idea was to just scavenge the nearby forest for edible plants. Second was to try to eat and cook monster meat. And the third was to get a supply-run drone system set up to get food from human cities.
These were the few ideas he had to get a new reliable source of food going at the moment. Maybe in the future when he got more advanced technology he could start creating his own food or start super growing plants or something.
But for now, these were really the only viable options for him. Unless the girl had some sort of skill for acquiring food, which would be convenient but he highly doubted it was the case.
Now he had 1600 mana and a bunch of still-yet-to-be-counted mana stones to work with. He also had 16 out of his maximum of 20 scout drones summoned. He decided to just summon another 4 scout drones for 400 MP to get to the maximum.
Then he ordered his scout drones to search all of the nearby forest for any potential food sources.
Now that that was taken care of he would immediately start trying out the second option of acquiring food too. But before he could even start cooking any monster meat, he should build a proper kitchen.
As he was sure he wouldn’t need to spend 1200MP on just a fully furnished kitchen he skipped over counting the mana stones for now and just got straight into building the kitchen with Construction.
He added picked out a room next to his living room that was big enough to fit his kitchen. He then filled the room with counters all along the rooms walls inside of a U shape. Then between some of the counters he made space for a good luxury fridge, a luxury oven and stove, a good dishwasher, and a good sink, Then he hooked everything up to power and water. He even added an extra filtration system into the pipes near the kitchen. Just so he would be sure of clean and quality water.
Then he made a kitchen island and added some bar stools around it. Filled the upper parts of the walls with storage and cupboards. Then he added some kitchenware holders around the place. Now he still had 300MP left over, even after all those additions, showing just how much the price depended on how advanced or big the tech he built was.
As he still had so much MP leftover he decided to just finish his kitchen entirely and make it look good. So he went on to add nice wood onto the walls and a tiled floor with a smooth stone roof. Then he gave everything in the kitchen a nice matching brown and black and white color scheme.
He took a step back and looked at his finished product. Then a faint idea of this reminding him of a certain popular living simulator washed through his thoughts. And he gave off a light chuckle at the thought of doing something akin to the game but in reality with way more choices and functions.
He was quite happy with how it looked. He had even gotten the extra big oven and stove so that he could cook larger quantities of food at once. Overall it looked like a luxury cozy kitchen with a lot of nice and detailed woodwork. He had even found some cozy lights to really finish off the vibe in the kitchen.
After checking everything through again and doing quick tests to see if everything worked he finalized the build. In total, he had spent 1120MP out of the 1200 he had left over.
As he watched his creation come into existence, he took a moment to reflect on what he had experienced over the past few days. Although a lot that had happened to him had been terrible and his week had been exhausting. He had also had way more enjoyed life than he had ever done before. He felt like this evolving earth and new life suited him pretty well.
And as he was thinking over his future plans he got hit with a notification from the system.
Required threshold reached..
Skill Construction has leveled up to level 2..
He had already been in a pretty great mood after finishing his kitchen. But now his mood was truly soaring, to the point that if his new roommate hadn’t been asleep he would have cheering out loud.
Excited to see what had changed he quickly opened the Construction skills menu.
Construction [Info] [Skill changes] [Building mode}
1. Defenses
2. Miscellaneous
3. Furniture
4. Mechanisms
5. Landscaping
6. Base building
7. Resources
8. Magi tech
Jake's excitement soared when he saw the new tab of magi tech, and before deciding to check out the skill changes he just couldn’t stop himself from checking out the options magi tech gave him.
He quickly opened the magi tech catalog and took a look to see what it would allow him to make. And as the name implied it was a mixture of magic and technology. Many things just being buildings with magic effects. Such as a little machine that if powered with mana would use a cleanse effect in a 10-meter radius around it.
The cleansing effect literally cleaned anything filthy that didn’t go above a certain level of corruption or poison. For example, if he didn’t feel like showering for whatever unimaginable reason, he could use cleanse to become the cleanest he had ever been in his life after just a few seconds.
The magi tech section was filled with such handy and almost skill-like abilities. Although all the effects were at most only comparable to level 1 skills at best. Most not even being at that level.
There were two downsides to the magi tech tab though, the most important one being everything was crazy expensive mana-wise! The cleanser cost 5k MP alone! Which to Jake right now seemed like a huge amount of mana. And the second problem was everything in the magi tech tab took mana as power. So for him to use anything he would have to spend mana, and mana was such a precious thing to him currently he wasn’t sure he wanted to spend any on these tools.
While he may rethink his stance of not using mana on magi tech on certain defensive magi tech artifacts. He didn’t see the need to spend the mana to build and use a cleanser when he could just take showers instead. Unless he got poisoned for some reason he would probably refrain from buying the cleanser for a while.
Stolen novel; please report.
At least so he thought, until he came across something very interesting in the catalog. An electricity to mana transmuter, it would take a huge amount of electricity, more than the average household did in a month. And somehow turned all that electricity into 10MP.
Now this got his attention, if he could set up a big electrical grid that generated tons of electricity. He could have a potential mana generator to power all his magi tech for him. And immediately he started thinking up ways of creating such an amount of electricity. But with what he had access to at level 1 construction just wouldn’t be anything good enough to generate such an amount of electricity.
But now his skill was at level 2 and maybe, just maybe now there was such a possibility. After all, he still hadn’t checked his skill changes and other catalogs for any updates.
He wasted no time as he was determined to set up a mana generator as soon as he could. And clicked on the skill changes tab.
Construction
Level of technology; Earth, year 2020 -> 2100
Catalogs:
1. Defenses
2. Miscellaneous
3. Furniture
4. Mechanisms
5. Landscaping
6. Base building
7. Resources
8. Magi tech [new]
Mp building efficiency
50% -> 60%
Now these were overall some pretty big changes, and he was quite happy about them. But he was also staring at the menu with his mouth hanging wide open. He had access to the technology of Earth at the year 2100?! He had access to true futuristic tech now! He could really start building with futuristic technology!
Now granted it probably wouldn’t be a major difference since it wasn’t that big a gap in technology and scientific development was slowing down ever since hitting the year 2020. But there would still be some huge upgrades to the technology he would have available to him! He could already see an even better shower sitting in his bathroom, or a luxury jacuzzi.
Also seeing as his building MP efficiency went up, Which he didn’t even know he had?! A lot of the tech he already had access to, he noticed was now 10% cheaper in terms of mana to build. Which was what made his smile even bigger than it already had been, it was basically stretching his mouth to its limits at this point.
He should really start upgrading and decorating his base more after he got his food situation sorted. Then again he had magi-tech now and he felt like that would have some really nice options for him to acquire food. Maybe it would even have some sort of plant growth booster so he could rapidly start growing food?
All these new options and possibilities yet to be discovered made him really excited. He had been an aspiring inventor and freelance engineer before all this system stuff had happened. So getting excited over cool technology and futuristic things was very much a part of him.
Then he remembered though, he still had a food problem to solve. He smacked himself on the head, reprimanding himself for getting off track.
As he got back on his task of solving the food problem he put his experiment of eating monster meat on hold for now, even if he now had an amazing kitchen.
First, he decided to check out all his new building options, just to see if there would be anything that could help with his food problem. And as it turned out, there were actually a bunch. Both ordinary technology-wise and magi tech-wise.
The best ones were magi tech though. So he wanted to focus on those, and of the magi tech variety there was one solution in particular that he fancied. A growing bed with a quick growth magic worked into it. Plants or vegetables that would normally take months could grow in a day with this bed.
And as it turned out he could probably afford it in terms of mana too. Since it only cost 1800Mp to build per growing bed a stark difference with a lot of the other magi tech. One growing bed able to hold about a week's worth of vegetables at a time.
Now he could initially just power the growing bed with his own mana until he got a good electricity-to-mana system set up.
But before he would start on the growing bed, he would need to expand his base. After all, he couldn’t just stuff everything into his main room. That would need to serve as his living compartment. No, he would instead start expanding from the main room outwards, adding more and more rooms with different and useful functions as he went.
Then again before he started expanding his main room he might have to consider moving the main room deeper into the huge rock. After all, right now there was only one room between where he lived and the outside, and even if his base was well hidden. With all the new skills that people were getting he didn’t know when one that could find him popped up, even in this far-away forest.
So he might need to put the main room in the middle of the big rock. And then make a few layers of defenses to stop unwanted people from reaching him. Deciding to just get started on it and add defenses later he first moved his main room to the middle of the central rock with build mode. Then he connected just a straight pathway from his flush door to his main room now 25 meters away from the nearest wall.
Right as he was about to hit finalize on the construction menu, he remembered something pretty crucial. He was still standing in where his main room currently was. And if he moved it now would he just get stuck inside of rock? Not to mention his new guest? Just to be safe he would wait until both the girl and him were outside of the building when the changes would happen. Even if it was unlikely his skill didn’t have some sort of safeguard it was better not to mess around and find out with their lives.
So he waited about an hour before the girl also woke up, he immediately walked with her towards his first-ever room that connected to the outside. And only then did he finalize the changes on this movement of the main room.
When everything was finished moving the girl walked off to take a shower without speaking even a word to him. And he actually didn’t mind this since he still had a lot he had to finish for today.
Before continuing to build anything he thought it would be a pretty smart idea to see how much mana he had to work with in the first place. Since he had gained enough creatures to level up to level 5, and ever since leveling up even more still. So he gathered up all his mana stones and got to counting.
And what he ended at was a shocking 78 minor mana stones! That meant he had 7,8K MP to work with! Then another idea hit him, Couldn’t he just use the mana stones to power the magi tech until he got his mana power system running? Since the actual usage of most magi tech devices only cost around 10 to 20MP per day. A minor mana stone should be able to power most devices for 10 to 5 days.
Now moving on to building his growing room he decided to make the room above his main room instead of next to it. Since he would just turn it into a big growing floor for all his growing and food-related needs. He quickly made a room of the same size as his main room. In other words a 20 meter by 20 meters wide and long room with a 3-meter high ceiling. He then added an elevator section connecting both floors to each other.
He added a security system into the elevator as well, that would lock down the elevator unless he or someone he authorized used it. The elevator itself even having some self-destruct mechanisms and reinforced walls just for some extra security.
He would use Program to create the system for its workings later after he had his food problem solved. Truly he had way too much he wanted to do and there was just not enough time in a day for him to be able to do it.
Sighing at the thought of never having enough time, he quickly moved on the setting up the rest of the floor.
After hooking up power to another air purifier, this time an even better one from his new futuristic tech, and connecting it to all over the second floor he moved on to buildings closed off sections and rooms that would serve different purposes. The biggest room of them all was what would become his growing room. Now he was already sitting at 2700MP which he had spent on everything he had built and moved so far. Which left him with enough MP to buy a growth table with magi tech in it.
He would only buy one for now since it could produce enough to last him a month in just a day. The only problem with it being; that he didn’t have anything to grow in it. And then he remembered the village the girl had come from. Surely it must have had some food he could re-plant into his growing table.
After checking everything over again and fixing some minor issues with the elevator. He hooked everything up to power and finalized the build. Then he took a while just waiting for the building to finish while he kept his mana replenished with the minor mana stones.
When he was finished he walked over to his still bare living room that only had a couch and TV corner with nothing else in it. It was pretty depressing really, he would fix that up tomorrow. Tomorrow he decided he would focus on two things. The food issue if it was still there, and fixing up his base to make it more comfortable and accommodating. And if he had both the time and mana to spare he would start on getting his electricity to mana system set up.
For now though, he made the scout drone he had sent off with his worker drone toward the cities connect to his TV. And when the image appeared of what the drone was currently seeing, he immediately knew the drone had passed that rural village by a long shot.
And he knew this because he could already see a not-so-rural village in the distance. Which meant it was getting closer to civilization than it was to him in this faraway forest.
“Well, time to meet some new people and hopefully get some information on what is currently going on around the world and in the cities. Maybe even get me some useful plants to grow back here”
And after I've done this, I should probably check in with that girl, talk about what we’re going to do from now on and get to know each other a bit. At the very least I want to get to know her name.