The sun had dipped significantly in the sky by now and Joanne had gained several levels in sneak and One-handed. She had also used her ice spike spell to kill a few of the tougher animals and used close wounds to repair the dead bodies.
All of them gave loot and she had filled her inventory rather quickly.
She had cast Longstride a few times to move more quickly and return to the crater where she had placed several crates that had survived in the undamaged infrastructure on the island. These crates were the sorts of crates one saw in military movies. The bulky ones that looked like they were made of tough plastic. They had been used to transport the machine parts that had made up the portal machine and were now being used to store various materials. Whenever she wanted to put anything in or out of the crates she felt the same tug on her mind and in following that tug she could open an inventory interface for each crate. She hoped that this meant that storage worked the same as it did in the game in the sense that time didn’t really pass inside of them and would thus keep the food fresh.
She had tried several times to fashion a bowl from animal skulls by cutting off the top of the cranium and removing the brain. She wasn’t scared of running the island dry of resources as she had noticed the plants growing at a rapid rate after she plucked a flower or berry from it. She suspected that the glowing ball of light was influencing the growth rate of the island.
The reason why Joanne was trying to make a bowl was so she could do alchemy. She had found a particularly smooth rock on the shore of the island.
Throughout the day, Joanne had made a few race levels and with that, she had gained a few perks. After half a day of hunting she had gained 3 levels. She had put one perk into One-handed, sneak, and restoration, getting the first perk in each.
Upon picking each, she didn’t feel different per se, but she knew that she had improved somehow.
She had also been able to increase her health, magicka, or stamina and had increased all three once.
Once Joanne had emptied her inventory of everything she didn’t need she curled up under a bush near the swirling light, waiting for sleep to claim her.
Upon waking, Joanne saw a notification that she had missed the day before:
You awaken feeling rested.
She remembered that the buff gave a 5% experience gain for eight hours and with the Pioneers’ gift that would give her a total of 25% bonus to experience gains.
Not wanting to waste a second, she grabbed the skull bowl and rock from her inventory and stocked up on ingredients from the surrounding bushes and the crates and got straight to work. Or she would have if she hadn’t felt as groggy as she did. After eating some food and sitting in the sun for several minutes she had finally woken up enough to get to work.
By the time she had started, over an hour had passed.
Sitting down with her legs crossed, the bowl between her legs, Joanne started putting ingredients that she vaguely remembered would go together to make useful potions. Many of the attempts ended in failure but many more resulted in potions.
While he was holding the bowl she was aware of a list of potions recipes slowly growing after successful brews. When she started she had unlocked far more recipes and ingredient effects in the beginning but Joanne still got many levels in alchemy.
Once she had figured out the recipe for restore health, stamina, and magicka as well as the damage versions of each, Joanne made as many of those as she could before beginning to experiment again with the ingredients she had left.
She gained quite a few levels in alchemy and she saw slow improvements in the quality of the potions she was making. The skill had begun at level 25 which meant that the potions were already somewhat decent.
By the time Joanne had gone through a considerable amount of ingredients (that she had refilled several times with the quickly growing plants around her) but she had eventually stopped as she had no space to place the potions. Strangely enough, with every successful brew the potions would form into a bottle within her inventory, just like in the game she had played so frequently making her prior worry proven misplaced and making her plan to just pour out the potions after she had made them seem a little silly in retrospect.
She had gained a total of 7 levels in alchemy, bringing the skill to level 32. She had also gained another race level granting another perk. The race level had also allowed her to increase her stamina again, she wanted to make sure she could carry as many ingredients as possible. She put the new perk in the first perk in the alchemy skill tree.
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For the rest of the day, Joanne spent the rest of the day exploring the island while sneaking gaining only two levels.
While exploring the island she had found a few random low rarity items like coins, dolls, leather strips, and even a few Dwemer cogs.
“That light must be responsible for this” Joanne thought to herself.
After she had explored a substantial amount of the island, Joanne returned to her little camp. At the camp, she began scribbling on a roll of paper with some charcoal she had picked up. She drew for quite some time, creating pages of doodles and she scrunched up the paper into balls.
On a whim, she threw one of the balls of paper at the swirling light. The paper ball by no means hit true, but it got rather close, making Joanne a little proud. But when the ball got closer it got sucked into the light and disappeared inside.
Curious, Joanne threw another ball and it too got sucked into the swirling light. She began throwing more of the crumpled balls at the light, each of them getting sucked into the light. Eventually she ran out of crumpled balls of paper and after a handful of seconds a piece of the light sloughed off and wound its way toward Joanne like a ribbon in the wind.
It slowly reached the hagraven and with a jerky movement the ribbon of light zoomed towards her chest.
Pioneers’ gift has been upgraded.
Even more curious, Joanne checked her active effects list.
Pioneers’ gift:
As you are the one who brought the gift of power to your world, it only makes sense for you to gain a reward. +50% health, stamina, and magicka regen. +50 health, stamina, magicka. +20% skill experience. Your base aim is increased by 1%. Your base drawing ability is increased by 1%.
More excited than she had been since the explosion she began grabbing a few of the random items that she had no use for: small cloth dolls, the bones of small animals, some potions that had bizarre effects, she even tried casting some of her spells into the light which had been sucked into its depth.
Once she had finished throwing what she could afford to give up, she waited for several seconds. The light seemed to be… digesting. Or at least Joanne thought so.
After at least a minute, the swirling light ejected a ribbon, almost like a burp.
As before, the ribbon of light entered Joannes chest. The notification she received this time was very different:
Gift received
A moment later a new screen appeared in front of Joannes eyes:
Choose a crafting station to receive:
* Cooking station (includes food crate)
* Alchemy lab (includes apothecary satchel)
* Book binder (includes spell sigils)
As much as Joanne wanted cooked food and an actual alchemy lab, the spell sigils that were apparently included with the book binded made her too curious not to choose the third and final option.
The swirling light spat out another ribbon of light that drifted out and struck the ground a few paces away from the original ball. From the place where the ribbon struck a table with various parts attached to it.
As Joanne walked up to it she felt a familiar tug and as she followed it, she saw a new screen.
Create book
Create spell book
Opening the ‘Create book’ tab, she saw she needed leather, leather straps, and a fair amount of paper. Paper she had found while exploring the island for hours which had seemingly replenished itself when she had passed back over certain areas.
Upon crafting the book, she opened the ‘Create spell book’ tab.
In this tab, she was required to select the only book she had available and then she was able to combine parts of spells and could make certain parts more or less prevalent. She could also imbibe a spell she already had into the book.
She closed the tab as she didn’t really have many spells currently. She would need to obtain some spell tombs before she could really make something special.
She decided to go to sleep and wait to see what tomorrow brought.
Over the next few days, Joanne fell into a rhythm of alchemy in the morning and exploring in the evening. With each day more items appeared and ones of increased usefulness. She had gained a full set of hide armour. While she didn’t plan on getting hit, she knew that she eventually would.
She also found some spell tombs and learned all the spells they contained. They were all novice rank spells but she wouldn’t complain about getting new spells to experiment with using the Book Binder.
Joanne had, by this point, explored the whole island. The map she was able to access using the map option on the compass menu. The map showed only the island and there was only one marker, which was the crater where the swirling light was. She hadn’t tried the fast travel that she knew was a thing within the game but she had tried adding a marker of her own, and when she did she found that she instinctively knew where the marker was at all time.
With the island fully explored, she had taken to drawing many of the creatures she saw, saving the ones she was most proud of and feeding the ones she was disappointed in, to the light. It took some time but she had eventually gotten the aim and drawing buff that the Pioneers’ gift gave to a respectable 12.7%. The increase in the percentage seemed random but Joanne found that by feeding more to the swirling light she could ensure a higher buff. She also found that the light would give nothing if she didn’t give a minimum of 10 of her discarded drawings, which would usually give a 0.1 bonus at the lowest and 0.3 at the highest.
The scientist in her made Joanne start noting as much as she could into the book she had made and she had been cataloguing as much as she could of the island and her life since the day of the explosion. Writing and drawing helped to keep her thoughts from getting too out of control and the mundanity helped to ground her in reality, as strange as that now was.