The NPC-MAKER ran towards the first cactus he saw, and there were several others in the vicinity as well! They were only 50 cm tall but a good sign that he was getting closer to a wetter area with water. Cactus do require water even if very little to survive. As long as he had water, he could possibly survive a good 2 weeks in the desert without food with his above-average body.

“ Yes! There are more cactus and small shrubs over there!”

The area was becoming less sandy and rockier, the temperature became more bearable at about 35C. Bigger and bigger green cactus and shrubbery came into view as he kept running at full speed in his excitement to find something more substantial. Desert insects started showing up, then desert mice with desert small birds. Nothing overly big and scary yet.

The NPC-MAKER slashed open a huge cactus with his bone knife to drain out some of its water to bait out the desert mice into taking a drink. He also took a bunch of its needles. He waited patiently before one mouse ran over there and started sipping the water on the sand voraciously. He flicked a cactus needle into the mouse at high speed, whooooooooosh, killing it almost instantly.

He pulled out the needle and skinned it with his bone knife. He ate the mouse raw as he didn’t want to waste time setting up a fire and to quench his thirst with its blood. Several more mice fell prey to his hunger and thirst.

Now that the NPC-maker had a stable source of food/water. His survival was no longer a problem and it was time for him to start building up his empire.

He spent the next several days hunting and eating the mice as he traversed the new hot biome. Almost every single mouse was hunted down by the npc-maker as he collected all of their biomass. He consumed the 100 kg of dead mice biomass while using his npc-creation skill on himself at the same time to properly rebuild his body. His ability restricted his form to his current adult body as the max limit. Now he was in his prime once more! Ready to begin his journey in taking over the world and having many beautiful ladies serve him. But he was still naked.

Eventually, he came across a strange-looking cactus. He was extremely cautious of it and stood a fair distance away. He flicked his needle to the cactus and the big green cactus immediately retaliated by shooting hundreds of needles in all directions. The npc-maker ran away and did his best to dodge it but its range penetrated dozens of needles into his body. The cactus monster was slow-moving and stopped attacking after a short while and went back to its original position.

“ Fucking hell… wait these needles, it’s fucking poisonous, great just when I got my proper adult body back too….”

His body was becoming paralyzed as the poison wreaked havoc on all of his organs. The npc-maker had to sacrifice his main body once again and created a new 12-year-old body before transferring his consciousness to it, lest he died from his stupidity again.

He went back to the safer biome and re-hunted more mice over the next several days to regain his proper adult body. As he was hunting the mice again, he pondered about his strategy in dealing with the cactus monster.

> ( NPC-MAKER)

> ( NPC-MAKER)

The npc-maker went back to the area with the monster and as he slowly walked closer and closer, nothing happened. When he went past the monster, he breathed a sigh of relief. He kept walking further and further into the unknown territory and more cactus monsters were around as well as normal cactuses. The mice here were even bigger than before and now desert rabbits and desert foxes were here as well, but they posed no threat to the npc-maker.

He gathered more cactus needles to flick shoot them at the bigger mice for his daily food/water needs.

He came across a huge mouse den, there were easily hundreds of them with several more entrances all over the place. He went over each hole and covered them up with sand and rocks. Although the mice can dig their way back out again, some of them will panic and try to run out of the remaining hole that he didn’t destroy.

The npc-maker waited by the only entrance and shot his cactus needle at the entrance unsure if it would hit anything. It did hit one of the stray mice and it sent the colony into full panic! The mouse tried to escape from the other holes but they were all blocked! Some of them tried digging their way out again but some of them foolishly tried to escape through the 1 available entrance. He kept flicking his needles to kill as many mice that were trying to escape as he could as they all kept pouring out.

A grand total of 98 mice were killed in this exchange with hundreds more escaping with their lives.

> ( NPC-MAKER)

A few desert foxes also snatched the fleeing mice before running off with their new food. The npc-maker smiled at his new plan and went to try hunting the desert rabbits.

The rabbits are eager to run away when the npc-maker comes too close to them. Instead of using his finger flick that can shoot 1 needle which was all that was needed to 1-hit headshot the mice, he changed his strategy to using 3 needles in between his fingers to shoot like a ninja. Since the rabbits could be more durable than the mice and take more hits to kill.

He stalked a lone rabbit eating some shrubbery before it perked up at his presence, getting ready to run away. The npc-maker quickly shot out 3 cactus needles to it’s head at high speed. It was hit in the head and blood was oozing out from it’s wound. The rabbit suddenly jolted up into the air and tried to run away, only for it to eventually succumb to it’s brain injury a short distance away.

>

He ran over to the rabbit and skinned off it’s fur that will be used to make clothes. Then he collected some dry branches and placed some dried leaves that can be easily ignited. He took 2 sticks that he found and rubbed them together to produce enough heat and a spark to ignite the dried leaves. It was proving to be difficult to start a fire in these circumstances so he gave up doing it with his hand.

He collected more desert grass and pulled out the string-like fiber off them. With several of the string-like fibers, he twisted them together to create a stronger mini-rope. He tied the new rope on 2 ends of a sturdy stick to create a bow. With the new bow, he went back to his fire starter and used the bow to quickly twist and turn the stick to create enough heat to ignite the dried leaves. It worked, and a baby fire was born before he added more dried grass and branches to make a bigger fire.

First, he drained the rabbit of its blood, before cutting up its meat with his bone knife, and piercing them with his stick skewers over the fire. The npc-maker was salivating at his chance of eating properly after eating raw food for so long that gave his stomach the cramps but he persevered!

After 10 minutes of cooking, he couldn’t handle waiting anymore and devoured his cooked rabbit meat, it was super delicious. He ate the entire thing and was completely satisfied. Even though it was still daytime, he felt extremely tired from his long and exhausting journey and decided to have a proper sleep. He slept until the very next day.

The npc-maker got up from his amazing sleep despite sleeping in the hot desert, he felt extremely good. Then he went hunting down several more rabbits for their fur to make proper clothes, and their meat because it was pretty damn good compared to raw mouse meat. He used his bone needle to crudely sew the rabbit pelts together to create something like pants and a shirt. It was crudely made but clothes were clothes!

> ( npc-maker)

The green cactus monsters were still all around him but he wasn’t worried at all. Unless some idiot attacked one and made it shoot its poisonous needles all over the place. The desert foxes were more trickery to hunt because there are fewer of them and they are more likely to run away at first sight of you than the dumb rabbits that wait until you get close enough.

He decided he was going to make a fox trap by using the rabbit meat as bait. The npc-maker placed one of his dead rabbits near an area where he last saw a fox and waited. The insect scavengers of the desert immediately pounce onto the dead rabbit for free food. Even the poisonous desert centipedes went for it. The npc-maker was never afraid of the insects or the poisonous desert centipedes because he discovered early on that mice scent repels insects very well which he always used when he was sleeping for short periods of time or traveling to new places. It’s probably because the mice prey on these insects.

10 minutes later, a desert fox came sniffing by and checking out the area. It hadn’t approached the corpse yet and the npc-maker was very patient. But the fox wasn’t going for it and ran off instead.

>

He remained a good distance away from the rabbit corpse. A short time later the fox came back, only to stare at him from a distance. This time the fox ran for the rabbit but before it could snatch the dead rabbit and run away. The npc-maker had blasted the fox with several cactus needles to its head. It yelped in pain and tried to shake out the needles but it couldn’t. The fox quickly abandoned the rabbit meat and ran as fast as it could. However the npc-maker didn’t let it run away as he quickly ran towards the fox and kept on sending even more cactus needle to the head. His accuracy was pretty insane with the needles because he always practiced his aim with it and had great hand skills, to begin with.

The fox eventually succumbed to its death and the npc-maker rejoiced in victory. This method of hunting wasn’t the quickest and he wanted to find a faster way to get more foxes!

> ( NPC maker)

He set up the trap in a different area with multiple dead rabbits and waited. Just like before the insect scavengers lay feast onto the corpse before the mice came running after them. Then the foxes showed up and there were several of them eyeing for the prize. Instead of patience, normally seen from the foxes, they all charged forward to the rabbit pile, hoping to take rabbit meat for themselves rather than miss out on the opportunity.

The npc-maker smiled and charged forward with his needle shooting skills. He killed 3 of the foxes but at least 7 or 9 of them got away in the chaos and all the rabbit meat was now gone.

>

A few weeks went by as he hunted more rabbits and decided to use singular fox bait instead as it was more efficient. However, the foxes in his area were starting to wisen up to his antics so he had to travel even further than before to hunt down the foxes who were still naive. He eventually accumulated enough fox biomass to create his first NPC companion! Of course, it had to be a female.

“ Create NPC!”

All NPCs created with animal biomass only with have a randomized personality and starting base stats.

The fox biomass was all used up and a new naked girl stood there. She had semi-long brown hair with a modest chest. The NPC-maker was very tanned from all of the sun he was getting lately but Freya was naturally tanned and she was slightly darker than him because of the desert fox biomass attributes. She looked at her new surroundings and saw her smiling master. When she looked at herself being completely naked…

“ YOU PERVERT!” shouted the girl as she tried covering herself with her arms.

“ Tcch, I knew this would happen as I can’t fine-tune their personality yet,” said the npc-maker to himself.

“ You are not going to do anything perverted to me right?” asked the girl.

“ No I won’t. Anyways you can call me -”

“ Stardust.”

“ Good you know my name already. I will be naming you Freya.”

“ Don’t you have clothes for me? Or are you too much of a pervert?”

“ Yes yes… I will make it right now with the rabbit pelts that I collected.”