Day 116

It's been over a week since…

Let's not talk about it.

The dreaded time has finally come. Ever since I was dragged to this world, my environment has been nothing but endless forests. Different types of forests, sure, each containing different expressions of life on all fronts. But finally, finally! We've run into a mountain range.

And it sucks.

If it was just the three of us, it'd be a walk in the park. Fun, even. However, just Gnosis' existence will make our trek through the mountains perilous. Add the children on top of that? It'll take us weeks to cross.

"But really though, how are we supposed to transport Gnosis?" Once we reached an area where the land only barely began to rise, we set up a temporary camp to figure out our next steps.

A few problems. One, the mountain range stretches out as far as the eye can see, which means we can't go around. Two, thanks to the shape of the mountains, all the valleys are completely blocked off at points, meaning we have to go up the mountains. Three, our passengers.

"We'll have to wake him up. There's no other way cause Oldren, you can't suddenly make a hover bike or anything, right?"

"Correct. Even if I did have enough stuff for a vehicle, I'd be hard pressed to find something that could move Gnosis."

I looked at Lily.

"Oh, right now?"

"Yes."

She scurried off toward the back of the camp, where we stowed the cart between a cluster of rocks. I looked up at the sheer cliff face. It rose up at a walkable incline for a few hundred feet, before sharply lifting enough that we'd have to climb.

The side was a huge wall of rocks that looked like they were stacked on top of each other. The rock wall sported tons of hand holds and places to stand. Really, it would be a fairly easy climb. However, another issue was stamina.

I'm not exactly a prolific rock climber, but I know that sort of excessive use of strength would tire out anyone not used to it, like all of us. Everyone in our clan can just use my [Journeyman] if push comes to shove, but the kids can't. And with how frail they all are, I have no confidence that they'll be able to make the journey at all.

We can't go under it. We can't go around it. We can't go through it. We have to go over it, there's no other choice.

Max 10:11 am

Lily, have you tried inviting any of the kids into the clan?

Lily 10:14 am

Yes. Didn't work. I guess it only works on otherworlders?

A minute later the ground shook with heavy steps. I heard the children gasp as Gnosis' hulking form walked over to us. "Sup."

Gnosis 10:16 am

Yo.

"Alright, first things first, recruitment. You wanna join us?"

Gnosis 10:16 am

Sure.

"...Why? Like, what are your goals, aspirations? What do you want out of this?"

Gnosis 10:16 am

Nothing really.

Oldren jumped in. "So, Lily is sticking with Max cause she's too young to go on her own. I'm kinda just drifting, I guess? I appreciate the companionship, plus I get a bunch of materials and excuses to make stuff. Not to mention, safety in numbers."

I nodded. "I'm just trying to survive. Companionship and safety in numbers, like Oldren said."

We all looked at him expectantly. The yellow dots that made up his eyes didn't move. He really looked like a statue at that moment, standing completely still.

Gnosis 10:18 am

…Like I said. I don't really have any reasons.

I'll join you. Isn't that enough?

"No, it isn't."

"Gnosis, how did you get here? What were you doing before you got dislocated? I was in the middle of English class, wishing I was anywhere else. As you can see, I got my wish." I looked at Lily.

"I woke up in some kind of illusion. Everything was really bright. I couldn't see anything out of the windows, and my family had these big, fake smiles on their faces. When I tried to see past the blinding white light coming through the windows, the glass shattered, and I found myself in that weird in-between space."

That actually sounds scary.

I nodded. None of us had ever talked about our time directly before we were displaced. The question wasn't just for Gnosis, but for my own curiosity. None of us really keep secrets from each other, anything we don't already know is just a question we haven't asked.

Oldren looked visibly uncomfortable. "Uh, well-"

"So that's us." I said, cutting him off. "What's your story?" Oldren flashed me a thumbs up and mimicked my neutral expression. Though his sense of relief was obvious.

Gnosis 10:20 am

I don't remember.

Been to long.

Oldren 10:20 am

*too

Gnosis 10:20 am

🖕

"Okay, well, do you at least remember what year it was? What country you lived in? Family situation?"

Gnosis 10:20 am

I believe It was 1987

Or around then.

Oldren's eyes went wide, Lily put her hands around her mouth and I audibly remarked: "Holy shit."

Max -> Lily, Oldren

So it's been at least 30 years since he came here?

Oldren 10:23 am

On Earth maybe. Who knows, time might be different here.

Still terrible though.

Lily 10:23 am

Do we tell him?

Max 10:23 am

I'm not sure. He deserves to know, but imagine how upsetting finding something like that out would be?

Oldren?

Oldren 10:24 am

…

There's no way, right?

Max 10:24 am

Hmm?

"Say, Gnosis…" Oldren started. "You didn't happen to live in Georgia did you?" Two yellow beads swiveled towards him.

All

Gnosis 10:24 am

…

...Sounds familiar.

I gave him a questioning look. "Alright so this might just be a huge coincidence but.. I remember hearing about a case like this. I saw a youtube video about it. Some dude in his fifties suddenly vanished out of nowhere, leaving behind his wife and three kids… Ring any bells?"

Gnosis 10:25 am

…

What a revelation. To think some of the missing person incidents were just them getting isekai'd. And it started so long ago too. I've only been here a few months and I'm basically a whole different person! No wonder Gnosis is so despondent.

We waited for a response, but Gnosis remained quiet. "Fine, keep your secrets." I took the opportunity to continue our actual conversation. "Well, revelations aside, Gnosis, why do you want to come with us?"

Gnosis 10:28 am

Because you asked me to.

"Besides that. Why are you doing what I ask?"

Gnosis 10:28 am

… That's just how it's been.

I wake up.

Find a group.

Go on adventures.

They die.

I go back to sleep.

It's an endless cycle.

I can't avoid it.

I've stopped trying.

That's heavy. I thought.

"How many times?" Oldren asked.

Gnosis 10:29 am

This will be my sixth loop.

Jesus.

"..You don't have some sort of curse do you?"

Gnosis 10:29 am

No.

My Luck Stat is average as well.

I've come to learn,

Such is the nature of fate.

"Alright!" I clapped my hands together. "Depression aside, we need to get up that mountain. Gnosis, can you handle yourself?"

Gnosis 10:29 am

Yes.

I stared at him so hard I wouldn't have been surprised if his armor started smoking.

Gnosis 10:29 am

I can create shields with my origin spell.

If I build them enough, they can handle my weight.

Lily 10:29 am

Origin spell?

Max 10:29 am

He can tell us later. We need to get moving!

Lily nodded and took Oldren off towards camp. Gnosis put his hands together and summoned light-gold strings of energy that he began weaving into a tapestry between his fingers. I left him to it, and walked up the gravely slope towards the cliff face.

As I started my ascent up the rocky slope, stumbling my way across the loose gravel and debris, I let my shoulders fall and spine relax. As my body tenses up, so do my senses. They contract and amplify, giving me extreme detail of my immediate vicinity but not making me aware of the larger world.

I let the calming sounds of the forest wash past my ears. All noises I had long become familiar with. But each time the sounds had new depths. New voices mixed in with the chorus completely changing its tune. You couldn't tell the difference normally, but I found the complexity comforting.

Bird calls, all sorts of different chirps, short, static beats or long winded songs, others like a low rumbling and a band of cocophanus humming and whistling. I heard the sound of tree bark gritting against themselves, wood bending as the various canopy dwellers shot throughout, claiming its vibrant bounty.

The sound of leaves in the wind, hooves pressing in dirt, worms digging through the ground. Prey letting out echoes of alarm and predators relentlessly chasing their obsession. The sound of small streams and large rivers echoed from the mountain range, water cascading across the rocks and sanding them down to sediment.

When I heard the sound of grass being crushed en masse, I began to climb. I dug my armored hands into the natural divots in the stone, clawing myself higher into the air. "Hey! Don't leave us behind!" I hear Lily shout.

"You'll catch up!" I shout back, speeding up slightly. The power to judge distance at a glance was one I was still practicing. Clearly, there's no such thing as a measuring skill in the system. A shame, really.

The cliff is huge, exceedingly tall but not very wide. It spans about a hundred feet in width, but shrinks a bit as it goes up, a sort of trapezoid shape at the base that becomes completely rectangular a third of the way up. The part we're climbing is a protrusion from the main mass of mountains. I think it's called a peninsula?

The cliff is probably around half a mile up? I think I'm over shooting that quite a bit, but what can you do? Now, that sort of vertical distance is crazy, especially considering our lack of equipment, safety or otherwise.

This sort of thing would be insurmountable for normal people. Just how do we expect the kids to make the journey? We're not stupid. If we had doubts that the kids could make the journey, we would carry them up one by one.

It'd take days, probably over a week of back breaking labor from all four of us, but it could be done. However, after days of observing the kids, we know they're strengths.

As expected of aliens, they're stronger than expected. And that is what they are. To us, at least. They may look like us, and have similar physiology, but there's no possible way that two different species from different planets with different environments and difficulties could be the exact same.

And it's not just mana, either. According to Lily, every native has a bank of mana stored somewhere within themselves. I don't know if it's some kind of extra organ, or a spiritual aspect. Maybe the material their bodies are made of are able to absorb mana?

These guys have lived a completely different life than us. Not just the magic and medieval tech, but their primal beginnings. They lived in villages. Simple, unclean and savage settlements. We grew up in cities. Suburbs. Even the most back water farm houses have cars and phones.

We were born softer, weaker. Even through working out, it didn't change our soft mindset. We grew up in peace. They grew in war. They were forged from the fires of conflict. We might have lived more mentally arduous lives, but the threat of your life will always transcend mere insanity.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Or so I believe.

These kids are strong. Over three times as strong as I was when I was first displaced. Of course, they got to that level once they were no longer malnourished, a feat that proved exceedingly easy with the monstrous levels of nutrition we threw at them.

All sorts of concepts don't exist here. Nutrition and the knowledge of balanced diets is, somewhat surprisingly, one of them. In barely a week, through supplying all of them with tons of fruits, vegetables, and protein, we got them all to a level of vitality it would take us Earth humans months of physical therapy to reach.

As I reached up for another handhold, one that already looked brittle at a glance, it snapped once I put all of my weight on it, sending me careening downwards. Adrenaline flooded my system putting me to action in less than a second.

I flexed my armored hand causing the reinforced armor around my finger tips to slide forward. They formed sharp tips like claws that I immediately dug into the rock. I slid an extra three feet before I finally stopped.

I held still for a second until the terrible feeling subsided. Like when going over a big bump on a roller coaster you levitate as you come back down, creating this terrible feeling in your stomach. I felt the same way, but prolonged.

Lily and the others were far enough down that they didn't notice my drop. I doubt they can even see me this far up. They were only about 30% of the way up, while I was around 70%. This was actually on purpose, on my end at least.

Instead of just throwing myself upwards continuously, I'm actually trying to learn how to climb. And it's paid off.

<[Vice Grip] lv8 -> lv10>

While not my most useful skill, it helps me hold onto my weapons and keep a clenched fist while getting thrown around in combat. The rational next move for a skill like this is definitely climbing, right? Even if not, I can definitely see it going on that path.

I flexed my right hand, fully extending the claws on both gauntlets. I only started climbing again once I had calmed down. Oldren had hooked me up a few days prior. Not the full kit, god forbid I'm ever fully prepared, right? But enough.

He had made my shoes completely standalone from the rest of the armor. Durability, comfort, and a mechanical snapping mechanism to easily take it off yet making it a snug fit at the same time.

The only other armor I had on was my hands. The gauntlets, labeled Unnamed Mark ll prototype, according to [Super Appraisal], were lightly enchanted as opposed to the already finished boots.

They covered the entirety of my forearms and hands, cutting off ¼ of an inch before reaching my elbows. The structure consisted of a cyber mesh sock, with the armor built around it. The metal consisted of two layers, thin, wide plates coating the mesh and smaller and thicker complex plating coating the thinner ones. It formed a complex and fancy looking puzzle of protection.

The formation was a bit different at my hands though. Between the two types of plates, was an experimental material Oldren had gotten from one of his gatchas. A black rubbery substance he dubbed: 'Symbiont', a not so subtle reference to a certain marvel character.

It was sticky and gooey, yet strangely reactive. Capable of tensing up in reaction to stimulus like living tendons. Oldren had spent the last few days attempting to teach the liquid about appropriate reactions in an effort to tame its responses.

It kind of worked. The liquid was able to react to my hand flexing, and could quickly move the mechanical parts to activate the claws. However, that was it. Apparently he had tried to teach it defensive forms, like dispersing force and grouping up in certain places, but the results had been slow.

Since it doesn't have any intelligence, Oldren had quoted, its learning process is really slow. Rather than changing its ways to narrow down a certain solution when faced with a problem, it makes very slight variations. It's good that it tries, but it takes forever.

I put forward the idea of alloying it with something in the future to bring out its intelligence, and he agreed, but also didn't. On one hand, it would probably work. But on the other hand, do we really wanna do that?

He's shelved the idea for now. Personally, I'm fond of the little fella. Even if it's not a living being or something with a soul, I feel a connection to it. It's just trying its best to survive, even if the way it's going about it is inefficient.

The only other parts of my outfit where the pants Lily had knitted me, a shirt being added two days after the… 'incident'. And of course, the cybermesh underneath them both. After that, a metal belt made out of armor scrap and left over cyber mesh, constructed at my request. It carried only one thing, a sheath containing Dusk.

One of a kind, now that I'd apparently shattered its twin. Truth be told, I didn't remember much after I took a leap of faith off Gnosis' shields. Only fragments of emotion. Exhilaration, followed quickly by pain. A profound sense of victory, followed by a bit of confusion.

Then, agonizing finality.

The memories felt fresh when I woke up. But now, they were distant. When I look back, the times I remember the best were the "boring" ones. Time spent talking, eating, traveling, making stuff. The pain from modifying, fighting, and cursing out the world was muted at best.

Is that an aspect of the world? Do painful memories fade quickly, or is this more manipulation from the system?

I focused back on the mountain side until my head became blank. The sound of scraping and huffing, grunts of effort and curses at the world's entropy became the only thoughts in my mind. I soared so deep into thoughtlessness and focus, that I began to reminisce.

It was a thoughtless thing. Inactive. Eventually, my blank headed self stumbled upon a familiar toon. Some sort of ode. A song that relied on the story of the words, and not the music. I began to hum it. Silently first, the tremors of my vocal cords contained within my throat.

As I sunk into simplicity, the sound began to emerge. The rocks around me were serenaded by my clumsy reconstruction. I lapped the music a few times, forgetting the notes and then starting again.

Once I got the song right, I began upping the volume a bit more. I sang the lyrics in my head. I began bobbing my head to the sound of the music, as though the wind were tugging at my clothes.

Clarity bloomed. I stopped climbing and looked around. I triple checked the distance between me, before I sunk back into the simple monotony.

I began to sing.

The hum and the song swapped places. The harmony now dwelt only in my mind, whilst the words rang across my lips. Quietly at first, in mere chunks. I slowly built up the courage to sing the lyrics completely. I upped the volume again, until I could hear the sound not just as a mental recreation, but through my ears as well.

My voice was clumsy, horribly off, and was interrupted multiple times in favor of catching my breath. But I smiled as, even though I was pretty bad, I was having fun. Every now and again I switched back to humming when I forgot a lyric. I'd rather that then make up something on the spot.

Enraptured in my gaiety, I ventured the rest of the way up with no more fuss. I swapped between clawing my way up and slotting my hands into the natural holds. I tried my best to find a formula to the climb, but by the time I made it all the way up, the technique continued to elude me.

Once I reached the top I clawed my way onto the ledge and flopped onto my back. I took a few minutes to rest before I got up and analyzed my surroundings.

Max 12:32 pm

How are you guys doing?

Oldren 12:32 pm

We're fine

Kids are also doing remarkably well.

Max 12:32 pm

Lily?

Lily 12:32 pm

Fine.

…The kids are scarily good, aren't they?

Oldren 12:32 pm

Real.

How are you doing @Max

Max 12:33 pm

We can @ people?!?!?

Uh, I'm fine.

I'm actually at the top.

Oldren 12:33 pm

Honestly thought you would be at the top way sooner.

Max 12:33 pm

I could say the same about you.

Can't you fly??

Oldren 12:33 pm

Only for a bit. Besides, the whole point of this is to escort the kids.

Or did you forget?

Max 12:33 pm

I'm just, uh, scouting ahead?

Speaking of.

Now that I'm at the top, what should I do?

Wait for you guys, or go further ahead?

Lily 12:33 pm

Just wait up there for us.

We shouldn't be another hour.

..These kids are scarily competent.

Max 12:34 pm

Btw, Oldren

You got the cart right?

Some of the scrabbling of the climbers far below me quietened down for a second, as one of their members froze.

Oldren 12:34 pm

Ah shit.

Hold on!

The rock vibrated as Oldren blasted off the cliff face. I looked over the cliff and saw him transform his legs into those clunky rocket boosters. It was the same flashy transformation he used when we were in prison. When he made his arms.

Now that I think of it, why are his transformations different? He has to manually build everything else, why are those few designs different?

..I'll ask him later.

Max 12:35 pm

Uh huh.

Gnosis, how are you holding up?

Max 12:37 pm

@Gnosis

Lily 12:38 pm

.. He's asleep.

Max 12:38 pm

Bruh

I'll put a trace on him next time I see him.

Lily 12:38 pm

Good idea

Oldren 12:38 pm

K I broke down the cart.

Lily do you need me to come back?

Lily 12:38 pm

Uhh

Yeah.

Some of the kids are lagging behind so

If you could escort them up that'd be pretty cool of you.

Oldren 12:38 pm

👍

Out of sheer boredom, I wandered over to the nearby vegetation. Not with any purpose, just inspection. I continued humming some songs, their melodies and lyrics blooming in my memory the longer I committed. Soon, memories I didn't even realize I'd buried surfaced.

Sheet music.

While I hadn't memorized the actual notes, I still remembered how to play all sorts of songs. While I knew all the simple stuff, music any violist worth his salt would know, most of my repertoire of songs consisted of meme music I learned for fun.

Band songs, passing melodies I searched religiously online for, game music. I wonder, if I manage to acquire some sort of orchestra skill, would I be able to play these songs in my head?

I only listened to the ode after I'd dropped orchestra. It's not that I grew bored or anything. It's just that the transition from middle school to high school orchestra really wiped out my motivation. The new teacher was an asshole, not to mention watching the band kids get all the gigs and glory.

It was quite demotivating.

As I reminisced about my playing days, I began to warm to the idea of, well…

Building a viola.

I remember the overall structure of it, not just size but all of its parts. I have no clue what I'll make it out of, both the body and cords. I'm sure figuring out how tuning works, and how to get the sound right will be a bitch in and of itself.

Not to mention the bow. I believe the strings are either synthetic or made of horse tails. I don't think I've seen any horses, except maybe at the garrison. I definitely haven't seen any in the wild. The more I thought about it, the more impossible it seemed.

Then again, Oldren is basically a walking factory. Making synthetic stuff should be a breeze for him. And all that planning stuff I need to do can be facilitated with [Complex Crafting]...

I felt the skill rouse from its slumber at the mention of its name. I presented the long dormant skill with the idea, and felt it rub its hands together. Quickly, me and the skill worked in tandem to draw up some plans.

There are three parts I need to work on: The actual instrument, the bow, and the rosin. I also separated these into further steps. I created a mental list of notes.

Viola-

Wooden body: Figure out shape, thickness, and material. Do the shape and position of the F holes matter? Can it just be wood, or does it need to be coated?

Cords: Material. Probably metal, but does its structure affect its interaction with the bow? How thick should it be?

Tuning: How the hell am I supposed to figure that out? How does it work?

Bow-

Main body: Wood or metal? Does it need to be curved? What parts are aesthetic and what parts are necessary to the creation of sound?

Hair: What material can I use for the hair? Can I use plant matter? What exactly would synthetic material be made of?

Rosin-

What exactly is bow rosin? Where can I get it? What kind of processes will I need to construct it?

I ran the questions through [Compex Crafting], compiled its answers into more notes and different questions, and then fed them through again. Like feeding paper into a shredder and then piecing it back together, except I have like, a hundred hands.

What I mean is the process isn't slow at all. In just five minutes I have a big list of notes floating in a system textbox. I didn't type all of the information in manu- mentally. I more of… impressed the image of the notes I had in my head onto the system board. And what do you know? It worked. Like taking a screen shot.

Hm, I wonder if I can use this method to send images in the discor- I mean, concord! They're totally different.

The "simplest" part of the new notes was the rosin. I'd have to leave it almost entirely up to Oldren. Bow rosin is made of tree sap, which then needs to be bereft of impurities through heating and sieving out the bad stuff. [Complex Crafting] also gave me a recipe for a concoction to mix into the rosin. After that I'd just need to pour it into a mold and let it cool.

Me and [Complex Crafting] poured over a 3d model of the viola and bow in separate windows. We checked each other's work, bounced ideas off of each other, and continuously debated and innovated. The skill contributed with its unique knowledge of the world's resources, while I used my memory of the instrument's structure.

After fifteen minutes, I had a plan. I walked off into the nearby flora, and inspected it for resources. Hearing the sound of Oldren's rockets ascending up the cliff side, I decided to get the 'easy part' over with first.

I picked up a decent sized rock about twice the size of my armored fist. Unwilling to use Dusk's massive blade for such a delicate task, I resorted to my claws to whittle down the stone. I attempted to use [Cleave] on my index claw tip, but failed. My three primary skills are powerful, but all three have a usage restriction of some kind.

Well, two now. [Puncture] lost its usage restriction at tier 2, not that that made it more usable. [Cleave] can only be used on blades, and [Wrecking Sma-

Oh wait, I forgot I upgraded that skill. I actually haven't tried either of them out yet. My bow is still in the shop. Its upgrade didn't mention anything about usage restrictions. I tried using it on a stick once, with no luck. It's constrained to my hands only.

I carefully but strongly whittled away at the rock. The resulting tree tap was huge in comparison to one you might see on Earth. This was for one reason, durability. Making it any smaller would compromise its structure. It's why these are always made out of metal.

To counteract its bulk, I sharpened the end of the pipe to a razor edge. I was hoping it'd help when I began to hammer it into a tree. The actual tap, basically the lower part of a bird's beak attached to a ring I could fit on the pipe, was a second piece I'd made off another rock I'd found in the vicinity.

I found a decent tree and set the sharpened edge of the pipe against the bark. I then began very carefully pounding the stone into the wood. It took some effort and.. Honestly I gave up once it was halfway in.

It was bent a bit to the left and kinda shit in general, but it works. I attached the tap at the end and placed a carved wooden bowl under the tap. Then, I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And-

Fuck this.

I bashed the stone pipe into pieces and manually ripped the trunk open with my clawed hands. I inspected the layers of wood for anything resembling condensation. Nothing. Spurred by a comment from [Complex Crafting], I wrenched the tree's roots out of the ground and inspected them for sap as well.

Also nothing.

Annoyed, I walked off toward the cliff in a huff and waited for everyone else to climb up. Oldren had deposited three exhausted kids nearby and was already coming up with his fourth. I sighed and jumped down to do the same.

-

Later that night, once everyone had made it over the mountain's edge, we wandered a few miles into the highlands before setting up camp. Understandably, everyone was exhausted beyond measure. Many of the kids fell asleep before they could even have dinner.

Tonight, me and Oldren let Lily take a break by making dinner. He gathered the herbs and vegetables, while I hunted the meat. Lily ran a poll for favorite kinds of meat, snake being the winning option.

Which surprised me. I always considered snake a delicacy, that is, something you don't eat unless you need to. Oldren seemed to agree. However, snake ended up getting the vast majority vote, so we went with it.

I searched for a species of snake that wasn't venomous. I failed. The only ones I managed to find was a den of tiny ones, and I did not want to deal with that.

Eventually, I found a boa covered in rocks disguising itself near a family of other creatures. I honestly didn't know what to make of them at the time, so I decided to forget about them for my own sanity. The fight was honestly pretty difficult but c'mon, you know me! As if I'd ever lose to some seven(ty) ton snake!

It broke half of my bones. That's a low bar though, fucking everything breaks my bones these days. I dragged it back to base, and began dismantling it.

First I ripped the rocky chunks off of its back/spine. Now that it was dead, they lost their durability and defensive value. The once metal like-structures now crumpled in my hands like loose dirt. I was hoping to maybe make some new armor out of them. Screw me I guess.

I asked Lily to make a few balls of water. She was using her break to practice her magic anyways, so she didn't mind in the least. She made two of them and had them float above the S shaped corpse of the snake.

I used dusk as a shovel and splashed chunks of the water spheres onto the snake's skin. Once that section was hydrated, I began peeling off its scales. Using my hands turned out to be too effective, the scales breaking in half. I ended up using dusk to rake them off instead.

I had Oldren help me flip it over. I stood on top of it and activated [Cleave], using the now very sharp blade to cut open a long line on its belly. I mentally prepared myself and began ripping out its entrails, mostly fat and one really loooooong stomach.

Whilst I was getting myself covered in blood and fat-oil, Oldren was smugly dicing up all the vegetables and herbs we had acquired. Lily was washing the produce from where she was laying on the ground, using [War Conduction] to see a bird's eye view and manipulate her magic without looking up.

I'd be impressed if I wasn't so soggy.

I did a once over from the head of the snake to the tip of its tail ensuring that not a speck of fat or gross stuff remained. I moistened its insides as well as its skin and began breaking it down into chunks. I buffed [Cleave], increasing the blades AOE even more and began cutting the massive serpent into pieces.

While I was doing that, Oldren transported the snake fat into a massive frying pan. The scorched metal was smoking from the roiling fire beneath it, courtesy of some extra flammable materials we found nearby.

He took the fat off the large bark plate I had prepared beforehand and began spooning it into the massive circle of ferrous with a golden shovel he'd conjured out of his left tricep.

I cut the snake chunks down even further. The tutorial being fed into my mind was only for an average sized snake, so I had to improvise a little. I chopped up the meat after removing the spine and skin. The skin is edible, I just don't think it'll taste very good.

I passed the chopped up portions over to Oldren, who had cooked up a delicious smelling saute of alien vegetables. Beans, chilies, something close to rice, onion-adjacents and many other off brand vegetables. He shoveled the snake meat into the mixture, about one eight of the snakes meat was cooked off in that pan.

The night continued like that. I would chop up the meat as the night wound on, whilst Oldren prepared and cooked off the other ingredients. Every pan of food was varied as he experimented with different amounts and liquids. He even added tree sap in one. I made a mental note to ask how he got it.

With all of our stomachs full, we got to work on constructing our sleeping quarters. Me and Oldren chopped down trees and compiled all sorts of woodstuff in the area. The older kids collected mass amounts of fire wood, and the youngsters collected whatever they wanted for their own personal bedding.

We created a shitty looking but structurally sound beaver dam to inhabit the children. Me and Oldren decided to swap sleeping positions for the night, him sneaking up into a tree and me laying on the ground.

Luckily, Lily was so tired she didn't try anything.

Lily had yelled at me before for not sleeping, and I, ever the rebellious teenager, listened. I folded my arms under my head and listened to the sounds of the forest. The creaking of the trees in the cold winds. The crackling of the many fires we constructed.

The whistling of omens through the trees. Critters running through roots, scrabbling at the dirt. Nocturnal creatures howling in the night, predators haunting and prey scampering. As I yawned and began to drift away, a scant thought ran through my mind.

Did we put someone on watch?

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