The water deer or more commonly known as the vampire deer known to inhabit areas of China and Korean Peninsula was a peculiar creature that he had chanced upon along his travels with his father and mother when they were visiting Asia to study poison and medicine.

It could swim miles through rivers to reach distant islands. The main habitat of the deer was alongside rivers, mountains, swamps, and grasslands. Its appearance made Urist grow quiet. If that was a true water deer then the area might be similar to China and Korea.

On second thought, this area might be in Korea or China. This threw him for a loop as he remembered he lived nowhere near the area since he had spent his time recently in America. But, as luck would have it, even if it had been a long time he remembered the distinct climate, bamboo, and the trees; meaning that his unease of the seasons was now understood.

Winter would be coming meaning they would need to stock up on food or be forced to starve to death. Fortunately, he figured his guess was right about the season being spring with the plants still budding and flowering giving them a window of time to prepare.

Calming the nerves of his fellow dwarfs, they headed back to cave where everyone was at full tilt at getting to work. Urmom was currently working on hare capturing traps to catch them alive with Urat as his assistant teaching him how to set it up. Urmila worked on making baskets together with Ulun using either tree bark or strips of bamboo from what the group had built up these last few days.

Uria didn’t have to keep too much of an eye on the fire with everyone around so she took this chance to make the pen for the chickens using bamboo and rope to make a fence. To work the bamboo into the ground, she used a hammer stone and the shovel to make it have a nice and firm hold.

She had finished the fence when Urist and his group came back. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, she smiled at Urist, “Urist did you find anything when you went exploring?”

At her question, Urist pulled out what he found with a smug smile, “Check it out! See this rock it’s called Flint and we’ll be able to make some fine stone knives and hand axes with it! And these mushrooms we found will be a great food source if we plant them nearby in a damp area that has some dead trees!”

Now that they had flint they wouldn’t need to rely on the bronze knife that had a growing dull edge. With a little shaping and some handles added to the flint, they could prepare more then one fish at a time allowing them to keep up with the demand. Urist made a mental note to keep their tools and weapons from getting dull by finding some good stones near the river later to sharpen them.

“Mushrooms? Are they poisonous?”

Reading through the survival book when it was late in the day, Uria remembered that many types of these things called mushrooms were poisonous that could kill dwarfs and it wasn’t good to eat them unless you were 100% sure they were safe to eat and now they were going to grow them?!

“It’ll be fine Uria. We made sure these were the correct mushrooms. Besides, some mushrooms make a meal a whole lot better y'know?" Urist grinned, giddy at the thought of masking the lingering taste of the corn dogs. "Anyways, on a more pressing note, Uora can you help Urork in fetching water and the fish from the traps? As for Briana, can you help Uria in finishing up the chicken coop? I want to make this flint into knives and plant these mushrooms somewhere nearby. When I’m finished, I’ll help you guys out.”

“Un.”

“Understood boss.”

“Alright, Urist.”

Finished splitting up jobs, Urist headed out of the base to find some dead trees and leaves. He brought them back and looked around for a good spot, it didn’t take him long to find an overhang near the base. Gathering up all the dead trees and leaves under the overhang, he placed about half of the mushrooms inside and some of the soil he brought over near the mushrooms. He hoped they would sprout well and give them a good supply of food.

For the wolf’s eye mushroom, he walked a good distance away from the camp and placed the core of the mushroom in the crotch of a large tree after climbing it up like a monkey. He only kept some of the strands to cook with later inside the fish soup for this afternoon. Then he would check both spots of their progress and see if they would even grow.

Picking up the bronze hammer and he also grabbed hammer stone; just in case the bronze hammer was too cumbersome to use. Next, he set up by a large flat stone forge near the cave’s mouth and placed the flint they gathered in arms reach. Grabbing one of the stones he started carefully eyeing the flint to figure out the best place to hit in order to get some good knives.

Standing the stone upon the stone forge in an angle where he guessed would be a good spot to hit the flint, Urist took his bronze hammer and smashed downward with enough force to crack the stone into pieces.

His luck was pretty good in somehow gaining two, good, usable pieces for a short knife and a medium-sized knife. The rest of the rock was unfit for a knife so he discarded the rock into a pile. He might be able to make them into a spearhead or arrowheads but that would be for later.

Looking at the dozen flint cores, he hoped he could make about four or five ax heads by chipping their size, and for the others as many knives as he could make so everyone could carry at least one on their person.

Grinding and chipping away at the stone, Urist got better with each stone he worked on making finer knives and stone ax heads with growing proficiency. He ended up with a total amount of five ax heads and eleven blades, he only failed at making his first ax head ruining the flint.

Other than that, he had good luck in making the knife blades. All he had to do was shape the handles for wrapping which would take him around twenty or thirty minutes for doing both. With this, all of the dwarfs would be armed with tools that could be used as weapons in case of some predator decides to maul them.

Now, it was time to start making eating utensils.