Thud.

The rock makes a dull sound as it falls on top of the wall – really, just a sorry pile of rocks for now – I’ve been building. I push some sweat away from my eyes with the soaked sleeve of my T-shirt, and decide to take a short break staring down at the valley.

It’s really a sight worth beholding.

As I kept going uphill, the vegetation ever so slowly grew thinner, the slope got sensibly steeper, and the rich soil turned into dusty and rocky ground.

Not only have I found a place where the stream is easily accessible up here, there’s also… Almost a cave. A rocky overhang rises from the mountain, and a massive boulder rests against it. In between, it’s a narrow but well sheltered passage, perhaps ten square meters of flat ground, hopefully good enough to sleep on.

The problem is that the entrance to get to the sheltered corner is massive, a huge gap easily big enough to let a bear through. So, I’ve been working for the past hour on reducing that in the only way available : moving rocks around.

Judging by how tired they feel, neither my arms not my back appreciated the idea.

And my legs are sore too, I walked enough to get three further points of hiker progress. I was really disappointed to see that unlike the trait formation, those steps didn't bring any extra stats. I guess I won't become twice as enduring as a normal human from just some walking around. On the upside, if the system isn't going to give stat points like candy, perhaps my basic human strength isn't too bad in this world.

Not that this line of thought is going to stop me from building a wall to protect my resting spot.

But damn, rocks are heavy.

I never gave it much thought but a rock the size of my head weighs at least 30 kilos. It takes a lot of rocks to build a wall.

Well, it's not like we could know how hard it would be before starting.

Bob has been pretty supportive. Obviously, neither of us feel like waking up with a pack of hungry beasts at my throat. At least I can really see the value in having him around, this whole survival thing would have been much harder to bear if I was alone.

Would be even better if there was an actual other person around, we could have fun toughening up out here.

I turn back to my unfinished work. I've managed to reduce the entrance down to a roughly triangular gaping hole that is perhaps a meter high and wide. I guess an hazardous pile of irregularly shaped rocks will have to count as a door.

Honestly, I’d like to improve it further but I've reached the point where getting a little bit more height means bringing in a huge amount of rocks to stabilize the pile, and the immediate surroundings are already picked clean.

Furthermore, the sun that cooked me all day is gone, hidden by a high peak. The night isn’t quite there yet, but I’m tired and my hands are hurt.

Tomorrow is going to be a rough day.

Hopefully, the sunburns aren't too bad. It's a shame this mountain flank has such a good sunlight exposure.

Yeah. I have no idea what exactly it means for my white skinned ass that the sunlight here is blue opposed to the yellow color of the sun on Earth but the result is that it has turned a delicate shade of red. It turns out the side of mountain I'm on faces south, so it had plenty of sun all day. The mountain flanks across the valley have been in attractive looking shadows for hours now, but I completely failed to realize how much of an issue the sun exposure would be when I climbed on this side. Going back down, cross the forest and then climb up the other side would take hours, it’s simply not an option anymore.

I push these worries off my mind and sit down to enjoy the colors of the distant sunset. I have to hand it to this place, the nature is gorgeous. The sky and the occasional cloud is filled with colors, mostly shades of purple, green and orange. I have no idea if that's normal relative to the laws of optics but I sure like it.

I can also see some birds for the first time, soaring gracefully trough the sky on the horizon. A few dark shapes flying to unknown destinations.

So birds do exist in this place.

I wonder why it took so long before they started showing up.

Maybe our arrival here somehow chased the wildlife away from us? As a part of that ‘favorable conditions of arrival’ thing.

What about that wolf we saw?

It was hurt and got ignored because it didn’t count as dangerous?

I have no answer to Bob's musings. Instead, I crawl into my cave, careful not to hurt myself crossing the glorified pile of rocks I shall call a wall. In spite of how tired I feel, there's one last thing I want to do before going to sleep.

My status showed me I have 128 mana points and that particular tidbit has been in the back of my mind all day.