Day 1.11

The [Basic Campfire] was easier to manage with the materials he’d already collected. August placed each of his border stones down at the front half of his [Lean-to] so the overhang covered it completely.

Once he had a nice ring of stones, he used one of the rocks to dig into its center. He removed a couple of inches of dirt. The dirt was used to further short up the supports of his shelter. He then removed some of the bark, twigs, and other small pieces of wood he’d collected along the way from his inventory. He spent several minutes stripping wire-thin slivers of wood off a branch, making a tiny pile of the threads to use as kindling.

Then he set his sights on something he had absolutely no experience with—making fire without a lighter. He’d seen a video once of a man spinning a stick against a piece of wood, and the friction of the wood grinding against it was enough to burn the wood.

August looked through his remaining materials, picking out a dead branch that had been partially split down the center, and he managed to pry it apart, leaving two strips, and he placed one down in front of him—August looked up as the [Efkini] sat down on the other side of the fire pit.

“Can you understand me?” August tried.

The monster wiggled a bit, making itself comfortable on the ground, but made no motion to express understanding.

“Guess not, huh?” August murmured. “Wonder how this taming thing is even supposed to work then? You were friendly before I tamed you, so I can’t even tell if you’re on my side because of being tamed or if it’s just you.”

While he spoke, he searched through the wood by him until he found a stick, durable enough to survive some pressure to it but still fairly thin. He placed it by the wood strip and then removed his favored flint knife from his inventory.

“If I’d tried that on the [Otrogon] earlier, would it have attacked me?” August wondered. “What was the trait it had? [Agile]? No, that was the big one—[Danger]? What do they do?”

The [Efkini] chirped at the continued speech, and he felt like he was actually speaking to someone for a moment. He placed the flint knife pointy bit against the wood and then pressed down, it went in a little bit, and he twisted it roughly against the wood. When he pulled it back, there was a small hole there, he tried to fit the stick in, but it was still too small.

“Agile probably just means it’s fast?” August guessed before swallowing. “Something with a mouth that big running at me is a terrible thought.”

[Efkini] chirped again, as if in empathy—August wondered if it had experienced something like that. If the level was somehow tied to age, like the size of the [Otrogon] might have suggested, then the low level of [Efkini] might be an indication of its age, in which case it might have been just a juvenile one. It might not have seen a [Otrogon] yet if it had never left its forest.

“I stole you away from you’re family, didn’t I?” August said in realization.

[Efkini] said nothing to his apparent crime, and August sighed. The stick was still slightly bigger than the hole, but he thought it might do it. He placed his feet on each end of the flat piece to pin it to the ground before aligning the stick above the hole. August clapped his hands around the stick and then rolled it between his palms—the stick spun, the [Efkini] chirped, and a series of blue words flashed in front of his eyes.

Basic Hand-Drill Blueprint Unlocked

August shook his head, looking down at his work with a sigh—it was barely serviceable by what he now knew. He used the flint knife to clean up the blockages he’d left in the hole and then set the stick back in; he picked up his pile of wire-thin wood slivers and placed them on the flat by the hole.

“I wonder if I can make a plane somehow and fly the fuck off this island—a boat might work too,” August said, rolling the wood between his hands. “Then again, where the hell would I go? For all I know, there might be worse places on this planet; Devil’s Home, Devil’s City, Devil’s Palace—no thanks.”

A tiny wisp of smoke curled up in front of his eyes, and he was stumped for a moment. He sped up his hands, then fumbled to get the threads to catch. As soon as they started to burn, he scooped the pile-up, placed it at the bottom of his [Basic Campfire], and started adjusting everything.

Survive Completed

Within a minute, the bottom layer of twigs and thin bark was burning, and thirty seconds later, he had a fire burning in front of him. A deluge of blue text appeared within his vision, quickly fading away after a few seconds.

Leadership Unlocked

Recruit Learned

Exile Learned

Delegate Learned

Quest Learned

Survival Unlocked

Health Regeneration I Learned

Mana Regeneration I Learned

Stamina Regeneration I Learned

Before he had any time to investigate the situation, the [Efkini] hopped to its feet and started moving towards the fire. August leaned past the left side of the fire to try and get his hand in the way to stop the creature from getting burnt.

“Hey!” August said quickly, and the [Efkini] stopped. “Don’t get too close; you’ll hurt yourself—come over here.”

August slowly sat back up and patted the ground beside him. The [Efkini] stopped its journey into the fire, waddling its way around and sitting down beside him. August wasn’t sure if it had been the words he’d spoken or the panicked gesture that had translated enough of his request for it to understand.

He reached out and scratched at the creature’s fur, just to see if it was still friendly despite essentially yelling at it. It leaned into his hand again, seemingly just as friendly as it had been earlier. He patted it once more before sitting back on his hands and looking up at the roof of the shelter.

August could see the sky through the gaps in the wood, just one more problem he was going to have to deal with. With his quest completed, and nothing new to replace it, he was once more adrift. He needed to start setting up concrete goals, starting with things he could do now to make his existence here safer.

That probably meant more structures, storing more food in his inventory, making better weapons, making some kind of clothing, and collecting enough materials to at least keep the fire going through the night—that last one was probably the most important, short-term.

As it was, he had maybe two more hours of light left before he was going to be unable to see anything. He’d need to start stockpiling wood specifically for each night’s fire, and then he’d need to make some kind of structure to keep it out of the rain.

He could keep it in his inventory in the short term, but eventually, he wanted a storage solution that existed in the physical world. Carrying around everything he owned all the time probably wasn’t a good idea in the long term.

The other thing he needed to do, was figure out how to make some better tools. For one, he needed a better knife, and some kind of ax would be good as well. A shovel as well for when he got around to digging that pit he’d been thinking of earlier.

It was either that or a cage of some kind so he could test out [Summon] without putting himself into unnecessary danger. If he could summon whatever it was inside a confined space by sticking his arm through the gaps, it would give him time to either kill the thing or run away if he needed to.

He’d been extremely lucky with finding a monster as friendly as [Efkini], and he couldn’t count on something like that happening again.