The next two days go by in a flash as I tweak various aspects of the honeycomb tray. Although there is still plenty of testing and optimization that could be done, I've got a pretty satisfactory product now. The individual hexagons are now smaller, and the wrapping on the sides of the tray is a little thicker. It's still relatively light, considering it's made of stone, but it has a uniform stability that the regular igneous trays lacked. The downside is that it takes me quite a while to make a single tray due to the complexity of the tray's lattice.
I spend half of the next day making trays and loading them up with charcoal, until after 7 trays, I've finally got all the charcoal loaded up. Tomorrow, I'll be getting more food, and removing a large amount of the charcoal. I've also started to amass a decent sized pile of used crystals. While I still have plenty of them, if I keep going at this rate, I'll need to consider taking more crystals from around the cave here.
I checked the first batch of test roots, and sadly, it seems that some of them have started to go bad. They've lost their rigidity, and have gained a bad smell. I throw them onto a tray of charcoal, to dispose of outside tomorrow. To try to reduce waste in the future, I'll only gather 15 days worth of food I think.
For the rest of today though, I spend my time near my campfire. I'm also getting low on fuel for it, so tomorrow is going to be quite the long day outside. As I go to sleep today, I check my stats.
Level: 10
HP: 173/173
MP: 46/46
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation
Magic: Stone Shaping
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The next day, I eat the last of my roots, put the last of the wood on the campfire, grab the first of the 7 trays, and head out to where I harvest the roots. On the way, I check the bucket for water, and am disappointed to see that I haven't gathered any yet. It's still dark outside, although not quite as dark as the cave with the large moon reflecting a lot of light. When I reach the clearing with the harvestable roots, I begin spreading the charcoal, and carefully pulling up the rooted plants, leaving some to seed and regrow, if that even is how they reproduce.
I haul back what I estimate is about 15 days worth of roots with me, and judging from the remaining plants in the clearing, I can only probably harvest from here one more time, so I'll need to try to find somewhere else to harvest from, or find a new food source. One problem at a time though. For now I need to haul the rest of this charcoal out of the cave.
With each tray of charcoal that I haul out of the cave, I be sure to pile the tray back up with any loose wood on my way back from the clearing, in this way I end up with a decent amount of wood again by the time the charcoal is removed. I still want to gather more, but at least I felt like I was productive this way.
Now I grab my axe and head back outside. What I'd like is if I could cut down a tree. That would provide me with plenty of wood. Obviously though, a large tree would be impossible. I'm just an imp after all. I might be bigger than a normal imp, but I'm still pretty small. I'd estimate between two and three feet tall. So instead, I'm going to look for a smaller tree. Maybe a few years old, that I could hopefully chop down and break down into wood without the size being so overwhelming that I can't utilize it.
As I look for a suitable tree, I also take the opportunity to look for a new source of either the root plants, or potentially a new food source. Unfortunately, I don't find any new plants that would be useful. I remember from Earth that alpine climates tended to have pretty weak plant growth though, so I guess it's not that surprising. Maybe instead I should be surprised that I found any substantial plants at all.
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I do find a suitable tree after a little while, shortly after the sun rises, and prepare myself to begin the process of cutting it down. I swing my axe up against it, and chip off some of the bark, revealing the wood beneath, and cutting into it a little. I bring my axe back and swing into it again, but this time, it feels like I hit something much harder than wood, and part of the axe head cracks. Damn. What happened this time. The first thing I do is spend some mana fixing the axe head. I only have to use 8 mana to fix it.
Next I inspect the wood. It looks normal. I feel it. It feels like regular wood. I go over to a larger tree, and swing my axe into it. Much like the smaller tree, the first swing knocks away some bark and cuts into the wood a little. I swing with a little less force on the second hit, to hopefully prevent the axe cracking, and again, it feels like hitting a hard wall. I go back to the small tree, and try another swing. Still hard.
Why could I get a first swing into the tree, but not a second one? Is it some kind of defense mechanism? By what mechanism though? Magic maybe? If it's magic, then why aren't the trees always that hard? Wouldn't that be better than only having it on sometimes? Maybe there is a restriction on it. If I can run out of mana, maybe trees use it too? If that's the case, maybe I can wait it out? How long am I willing to wait it out though? I'll give it a little time to wait and see, but if after about 30 minutes I can't do anything, I need to just go collect twigs like I'm used to.
Without anything else to do, I check my stats, and am surprised to see my mana has refilled. I'm a little confused, I thought it took about ten minutes to regenerate 1 mana, and it's only been about twenty minutes, and all eight mana has regenerated. I grab a nearby rock, and use half my mana stone shaping, and begin counting. it only takes 41 seconds to regenerate a mana. That's significantly faster than it took before. Is it because I'm on the surface, or because I've gained levels?
I wait around 30 minutes, and try cutting the tree again, and am disappointed, it's still too hard to chop. I reluctantly head back to the cave to return the axe, but before I go in, I spend some mana, then once inside, I check my mana regen rate at various distances from the surface.
As I go deeper into the cave, I notice that my mana regen rate goes down. The next question would be is it being underground in particular that slows my mana regeneration, or is it a peculiarity of this particular cave. Potentially the crystals found lower down? I decide to bring up two crystals with me on my way back up after leaving my axe in my cave. I bring both an empty, and a full crystal.
As I get close to the surface, the full crystal cracks. I stop to look at it, and as I observe it, the crystal hasn't just cracked. The crack isn't just spreading, but seemingly rapidly vaporizing the crystal. Thin black flakes form and are blown out of the crack by the escaping gas. I quickly drop the crystal, and observe it as it deteriorates into nothing. I check my status, and am glad to see I haven't lost any HP. So whatever gas was being released isn't very poisonous, toxic, or corrosive, if at all.
I check the empty crystal, or I should probably say the previously empty crystal. It now has a decent glow to it. Not quite what would be considered full yet, but close. I decide to retreat back down into the cave and leave the almost full crystal here for now. I don't want it to break too, at least not without a plan.
For the rest of today though, I feel like I've had enough surprises, so I just focus on gathering sticks and small branches, and bringing the bundles into the cave. Thankfully, there is no shortage of wood within this forest. By the end of the day, I've gathered enough wood to hopefully last me until my next outing to gather roots. I'm doubly thankful as well as I return, because on the horizon I see a storm approaching. Hopefully that means I'll get some water in my bucket soon.
Level: 12
HP: 180/180
MP: 48/48
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation
Magic: Stone Shaping