NATURAL CRAFTING (BASIC)

YOU HAVE GAINED A BASIC PROFICIENCY IN CRAFTING FROM THE NATURAL MATERIALS AROUND YOU.

ITEMS YOU CRAFT WILL MAINTAIN THEIR INTEGRITY LONGER AND YOU WILL INHERENTLY KNOW THEIR DURABILITY.

YOU HAVE A LOW CHANCE TO GAIN INSIGHT INTO USES FOR FORAGED OR HARVESTED MATERIALS.

+10% AGILITY WHEN CRAFTING WITH NATURAL MATERIALS.

NATURAL WEAPON CRAFTING (BASIC)

YOU HAVE GAINED A BASIC PROFICIENCY IN CRAFTING WEAPONS FROM THE NATURAL MATERIALS AROUND YOU.

WEAPONS YOU CRAFT WILL BE STURDIER THAN OTHER WEAPONS OF THE SAME QUALITY WHEN YOU USE THEM AND YOU WILL INHERENTLY KNOW THEIR DURABILITY.

YOUR CRAFTED WEAPONS HAVE A LOW CHANCE TO GAIN A BONUS EFFECT UPON COMPLETION. DEPENDENT ON

MATERIALS USED IN CRAFTING.

+5% DAMAGE DONE BY NATURAL WEAPONS

"Odd.” I didn't recall getting a quest for making weapons, so where had these come from? I hopped over to the quest page and I didn't see any complete quests there. With some coaxing I was able to bring up my completed quests, and there wasn't any Quest there either that gave me the Basic Weapon Crafting skill.

"Hmm, it appears that I can gain skills outside of Quests." This could prove very useful. Those effects were very basic at the moment, but the ability to be able to add my own skills could be life-saving. But what counted as a skill? And what was just existing? I'd been breathing an awful lot and hadn't gained Basic Breathing skill or a Basic Calm in the face of the Absurd skill. I thought back to my inner monologue about crafting a Pain Stick and decided that maybe that skill would come later.

I probably hadn't earned it yet.

I looked down at the Pain Stick I had just crafted. No screen appeared, but I could tell that it had low durability. That wasn’t surprising, but it was a surprising sensation to be looking at something I had regarded with praise mere moments ago and to now see how flimsy it was. I looked at my small pile of baseball size rocks and made a mental note to add more to that pile.

“Wait, I have a literal mental note feature now” I promptly opened up my Notes page and added a few more entries to “My Quests” list.

* Add more Baseball rocks to pile

* Figure out what skills can be gained, and what they are, and how I got them, and how many I can get, and why I got them.

Looking at my personal quests I realized something was missing.

“My other quests have rewards, I should give myself rewards” I added a few indulgent rewards like “sit down for 25 minutes” and “let myself wallow in fear and sadness for 15 minutes”. Right now I desperately wanted to do both, which made them perfect rewards.

I went and gathered a few more rocks to add to the pile. I couldn’t tell the durability of the rocks I grabbed or the ones I had already piled. Smearing my own blood on them by accident didn’t count as crafting evidently, but I still guessed that they would fare better than Pain Stick. With my rock pile sufficiently restocked I felt a little more prepared and decided to set about with making a shelter. It looked to be late afternoon now and I didn't want to be caught out exposed. I had no idea what night might bring.

Unlike weapons, palm tree fronds and stalks make excellent shelters. I wanted to minimize the walls that were made of fronds, so I chose a nice area tucked up to the sandstone wall and behind a particularly large tree. I liked it because the tree and wall met in such a way that anything large would need to go through the entrance I would craft. This way I would only need to cover my front if more of those lizard-monkeys showed up. At least, that was the plan.

I started by propping a few of the large leaves over the space I wanted as a shelter at an angle, forming a lean-to. There were enough large leaves that my lean-to wall ended up having many layers of leaves. No hope of keeping anything determined out, but it gave me comfort.

With that complete I turned to adding an internal framework for support. I had all these great plans of making supports from woven palm stalks, but quickly ran into one issue.

Turns out that palm fronds are not “palm-friendly”. The damn stalks and leaves kept cutting my hands, just small little nicks mind you, but it was starting to get to me. I had only managed to get one decently sturdy support woven before finally having enough.

“OW!!!!” I couldn’t even grab another leaf without my hands stinging. The stupid things were almost more dangerous than the supposed "weapons" I had crafted. After holding my hands away so they weren’t touching anything, I eventually had to make my way to the water’s edge to soak away the small smears of blood.

Once again, the cooling sensation and dulling of pain was instantaneous.

I groaned with relief, kneeling at the water’s edge.

“If there is one bright point to this place, it’s this lake”. I had some more medicinal ointment, but didn’t want to waste it on this, hopefully the lake’s effects would last longer this time. The supports for my shelter would have to wait. Until I built up stronger calluses, I wouldn’t be doing any weaving of those serrated leaves. I added another to-do to my list.

* Go back to that Bamboo stand and bring back as much as possible

I didn’t wish to walk back to the stand right now, it wasn’t far, only 30 minutes or so, but the day had been long enough, it was all I could do to keep myself motivated to build a shelter. The lean-to I had formed would have to suffice for the time being, though it still needed a door.

Once the stinging in my hands had mostly stopped I walked back to the shelter and carefully wove a bunch of the leaves together to create a passable door. It took a while as I really didn’t want more cuts, but the end result was worth it. A bit tougher than the palms on their own, it remained rigid when put over the opening. With some strategic placements of my homemade crappy-string, the lean-to was complete, I'd have to spend some time getting better at making that, having rope would make so many things much easier.

Stolen novel; please report.

For a few seconds, looking at my small little lean-to with its leafy door, I almost got to feel like I had wanted to be here. Like I was just on a camp trip and was using my architectural and backwoods skills to make a little shelter. I stared at my creation for a few minutes, content. No artificial good feelings washed over me from the UI, guess it didn’t think it was that good. I was happy with it though.

I then moved on to firewood, gathering more palm fronds as well as some bark pulled from the massive palm trees. The stringy fibres in the palm tree bark I was using to make string should help it light up really well.

While out collecting I began seeing more life. I saw some little brown chunky birds that looked like Quail, a few more of those lizard-monkeys - at a distance thankfully - , and an odd brown lizard that bolted when I walked near it. I even saw what I think was a jackrabbit, but it bolted so fast I couldn’t be sure. I had Pain Stick with me just in case, keeping a firm hold after seeing the lizard-monkeys but didn't have to use it. I returned with some fire fuel, and added it to a decent pile I was getting near my shelter.

Once again, I was grateful that this little hovel I had found was well shaded, dry heat is mostly dissipated by shade, and collecting firewood, even in the late afternoon sun, was sweltering. I was in high spirits though as I had stumbled upon what appeared to be coconuts while collecting firewood, although the green shell was a bit spikier than I thought it would be, and looked forward to having some food aside from the Lizard-Monkey meat.

With that, my list was completed, I even managed to not die again, so big wins there. Night would be here soon, and I needed to do a bit more securing of my area. I laid down some dry palms across the entrance to my small clearing, hoping it would alert me of any invaders. I then set about making a fire, fairly easy with a lighter, palm fibers, and dry fronds. Seriously, those things were everywhere.

Once that was going I set up the small amount of meat I had taken from the lizard-monkey on a nice flat piece of shale above the coals I was forming and let that begin to fry. While that was frying, I found one of my better pointed shale knives I had made, and held it sharp side up between my legs, then used it to tear open a few coconuts by slamming them down against the sharpened end as I had seen them opened this way in movies.

The spikes on the shell made it tricky, and slamming a coconut down that close to my groin had me nervous, but aside from a very bruised thigh, I eventually pierced it and got access to the flesh and liquid inside, which I was very happy to discover looked and smelled like coconut.

The coconut water would take some getting used to. To its credit it tasted like what water strained through an entire tree and left to sit inside of a nut for a few weeks would taste like, so I couldn’t fault it. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and I was just happy to have another source of water and food. The coconut flesh was tasty enough, and would go well with the meat I hoped.

I just finished making my dinner as the suns were setting. Fried coconut monkey-lizard. I didn't have any spices but it was pretty decent on its own and tasted somewhat like tougher chicken.

For a moment, in the setting sun of the desert, I actually forgot how messed up the whole day had been. I was so exhausted by this point, I hadn't slept in, what felt to me like 2 full days, and I knew I needed to be vigilant, but with some food and water in me, a warm fire nearby, and a bunch of leaves to sleep on, it was a struggle to stay upright. I enjoyed the comfortable sounds of the crackling fire and the background chirping of insects as the suns dipped below the distant horizon.

Then, quite suddenly, the suns had set. Firstly, I didn't know this, but when the sun does finally set in a desert, it gets dark, like “I can't see anything” dark. This usually isn't a problem because the stars come out, But that was the second thing.

No stars. It wasn't cloudy, the sun had truly set, and there wasn't a single star in sight. My fire was the only source of light as far as I could tell. And I realized it was now the only source of sound. It was as if the entire world had agreed to completely shut down at a certain hour. No stars, no sound, just myself, my fire, and the darkness.

It should have been terrifying, and to an extent it was. But it was also…peaceful? I had spent the day in a different world running from different things and just trying to survive and not think too hard. Now, in absolute darkness with the strange world completely hidden from me, I could pretend that it wasn’t there. I could pretend that I was somewhere else. Somewhere safe. Somewhere familiar. I could almost picture Mom and Kate at the corners of my vision as I stared intently at the crackling fire. Those weren’t wavy shadows, those were my family.

“I miss you Mom….I miss you Kate” I said to the shadows. I had said I could sit in sadness for a bit if I got everything done. I was so worn out, so exhausted, but I couldn’t find the will to get up and go lay down. So I remained in that endless nothingness, sitting on a rock I had found, just me and the fire, and the wetness upon my cheek.

This moment, equally terrifying and beautiful, felt like a representation of the world I was in. If I focused only on the fear, I'd miss these moments of beauty.

Gradually, the quiet ended. That hush was slowly replaced with the familiar sounds of the night. The gentle lapping of water could now be heard, the basal humming of bugs, the sounds of sharp palm leaves scraping against each other in a gentle breeze. Still no stars, but the sounds were familiar, and allowed me to think of other things.

My thoughts wandered to my Archived Quest "Seek the Singularity". A part of me had been naïve enough to think that would be easy. That perhaps I could just stay up and spot it amongst the stars like a game of “I Spy”. Even if there was a black hole chilling within visible distance, which I truly hoped there wasn't for so many reasons, I doubted I’d be able to see it anyways.

As fire crackled, I was still unable to let my mind and body quiet enough to rest so I started making a spear by tying a jagged rock chip into the end of one of the palm stalks, and getting rid of the sharper bristles with another sharp rock. Once I finished one spear I began to make another, rolling more fibers into string as I ran out. I was better at that, not great but I'd gone from essentially 1-ply toilet paper and was now making something that looked like yarn. By the third spear I could feel my body finally calming down and becoming truly relaxed. Each spear I had made wasn’t anything special, and was fairly low durability, but the act of crafting them and doing something was slowly winding down my anxiety.

I sat like that for almost an hour, crafting spears. I had 4 by this point, when a moon rose over the horizon and finally broke the darkness. I say a moon and not The Moon because it was about a third the size of the one I was used to, and distinctly red-tinged. Not the red of blood, but how Mars looks in photos, like it's covered in rust. I stared at it in awe, my spear-making forgotten for a brief moment before I continued crafting in the red light.

20 minutes passed and I had finally convinced myself I was tired enough to sleep when a second moon rose. This one was white like I was used to, but also distinctly smaller than my Moon. I had barely taken this one when a third rose, then 5 minutes later a 4th, then a 5th. Within 20 more minutes there were 9 moons dotting the sky on the east horizon, coming from the distant flat lands that I had thought was dominated by a large dark line I thought was a lake when I had seen it. Most were the size of the first that had risen with a few very small ones, and one that appeared to be double the size of the Moon I was used to.

The sight was so breathtaking I had stopped crafting altogether, my 7th spear only partially finished in my hands. Once again, I was struck with a moment of awe as I took in the sky. Not a single star, but 9 unique moons filled the night. Each with their own unique hues and features. This day had been awful, but this… this was lovely.

Maybe this world would be alright. Maybe I would be alright.

Then the hissing started.