Chapter 67: Let's Breed Ekko and Jinx!

Saber foraged pine-melons for lunch. It had been weeks since I last had those. They tasted great, like honeydews, with subtle grassy notes layered on top. I ate in big bites, and the juices ran clear and free down my chin.

I had also caught a few fishes by hurling a Cold Grenade into the river, freezing a section of it, then chipping out blocks of ice with fish still stuck inside. It wasn't the most efficient way to catch fishes. But it'd have to do, until we found time to make nets. The fishes would be for dinner, once we had time to start a proper fire and cook.

I wondered if we had to worry about overfishing. I doubted it; the river was a couple miles long, so there ought to be enough fish to feed the six of us indefinitely.

In the afternoon, Saber and I constructed an earthen wall that fenced off about a bedroom's worth of space, in one corner of our base. It reached up to my thighs, and I could comfortably step over. We'd use it as our animal enclosure. For now, the only residents there were our two bunnies, courtesy of Brandon.

"I'm going to name them Ekko and Jinx," Saber decided.

I watched as the two rabbits frolicked inside the pen we had just constructed for them. They had finally calmed down a bit.

"If we want to start a farm, should we get more genetic diversity?" I asked her. "We can't breed only the two of them, since then their babies would just, like, commit incest."

"That's a fair point. How many do we need?"

I estimated eight.

"I'll need to catch them by hand," I pointed out. "If I try to immobilize them with Cold Grenade, they'll just die."

"Bummer. We'll figure out the farm later then."

I agreed. We definitely wanted crops and domesticated animals, but that wasn't top priority, since we had a steady source of food from foraging and hunting. Not to mention the rations we brought with us from the suburbs.

What about shelter? We had a tent, but it'd be nice to set up a house soon. A log cabin would easily take months to build in real life. But here, Saber was superhuman, with bull-like strength even at level 1. And my Frost Missiles would make short work of cutting down trees. I knew I had some capacity of reshaping the projectiles. Instead of the regular, dart-like missiles, I could shape ones into a flat blade?

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

I began to conjure a Frost Missile, imagining it to be in the shape of an axe head. To my surprise, it came out exactly as I had imagined.

Sometimes, I'd forget how experienced I was as a mage now.

On the opposite side of our base, Tanin had set up a second, smaller tent next to Saber and mine. He hadn't mentioned that he'd bring his own tent, but it was nice that the three of us didn't have to all squeeze into a single one. He had also started a small campfire near our tents. The gray wisps of smoke rose higher and higher, eventually fading away into the clear, blue sky.

Saber and I spent the rest of the afternoon fetching logs from the forests nearby. By evening, we had a dozen or so logs hauled into our base. Tanin pan-seared fishes for our dinner, and we ate heartily, appetites worked up by labor.

After a long day of building and planning, Saber and I were ready to take a break. We decided to go for a swim in the river as the sun began to set.

The water was cool and clear, and we waded in up to our waists. I splashed the cool, crisp water on my face. We dunked our heads under the water and swam around, enjoying the weightlessness. After a while, we made our way back to shore and sat on a nearby rock to dry off. The sky turned pink and orange as the sun dipped below the horizon, and the stars began to twinkle above.

From the river, we could see all three lanes. The golems were all fighting at the midpoints of the lanes, between the towers, like they were supposed to.

As night fell, we returned to our base. I changed into pajamas, and even Saber exchanged her armor for sleepwear. And Saber and I huddled into the sleeping bags inside our tent. Tanin, meanwhile, sat outside by the dancing, crackling campfire.

"Night, Tanin," I bid him, and tucked myself into my sleeping bag.

The last thing I remembered before falling asleep was Saber's soft, tired snoring.

Throughout the night I must've woken up and went back to sleep several times, the way I would on a long plane trip. I always tried to sleep through those 12-hour, 14-hour flights. I'd doze off after takeoff, then wake up, thinking the trip was nearly over, but invariably only a couple hours would've passed. That was how I spent this night – I'd wake up, expecting dawn, only to realize it was still dark, then fall back asleep.

Eventually, some time during the night, Saber called my name.

"Sophia," she said gently. "Are you awake?"

"No."

"..."

"OK, that was a lie," I said while stifling a yawn. "Yeah, what's up? It's still dark…"

Saber looked at her phone, which still had battery left. We had made sure to fully charge all our electronics before the start of this challenge.

"...That's the thing," Saber said. "It's still dark."

"Huh?"

"It's already noon," Saber said. "But the sun still hasn't come up."