Putting the filtered water into the pan, Uria boiled it to kill off any germs. With Urist’s suggestion, they added some charcoal to the water for extra taste. With every filter they made, the amount of processed water increased, allowing for more clean water to be made. When the water was finished boiling, one of them poured it into the bamboo water bottles Ariel made.

The dwarfs took turns running to and from the river to gather water and within two hours, they had gathered enough water to fill over ten of the bamboo bottles. Doing the math in his head, at this pace they could finish about sixty to one hundred bottles a day. Whatever they didn’t use, they could store in the cave. Although a slow method, the dwarfs wouldn’t need to worry about water.

The next problem was finding a stable supply of food for their day to day needs. Urist asked the others if they found anything of interest while they worked on making filters. Other than what they had just brought in they had seen nothing else.

He didn’t know the current season, yet with how warm it was and the stage of the plants growing, he guessed it was spring. If that was the case, then planting was around the corner. With taro plants, they could get some plant fiber from the balls of roots they create. As for the wild carrots, it would be best to eat them on the go and wait to harvest the seeds at the end of summer. The blueberries would also be a late summer plant as well and couldn’t be easily moved.

Even the hares would take time to mature and grow into a sizeable farm. The chickens would be better to raise if they could hatch some of the eggs and increase the flock’s size. And of the plants found only the taro plants would be of good to plant all year round until winter came. The leaves could be eaten for greens and the roots could be cut into chips to sunbake or used in a stew to be cooked.

Urist was roused from his thoughts as a sudden shuffle came from the bush. At least it wasn't some beast, just Rork and Rat walking with smug smiles carrying the bamboo traps in their hands.

With a closer inspection, fish could be seen inside splashing about. He looked at the fish inside the traps and his mouth started to water. “Today we shall have fish for dinner. Corn Dogs be damned!”

It didn’t long for Urist to see that the dwarfs had blank expressions on their faces along the lines of, ‘How do we eat these things?’

“Hey guys, come on over here. I’ll show you how to prepare the fish on this rock.”

The newbie fisherman moved over to where Urist was and handed over the traps to him. Urist fearlessly reached inside the trap and pulled out a fish.

As expected of a fish it felt slimy, but another thing caught his eye, 'I’ve never seen this type of fish before.'

Its eyes were that of a cat’s and were glazed yellow. Its scales were silver, with a black line running down its sides. This fish had pronounced teeth and three pairs of fins on its side. It also had a split tail.

It was so strange that he opened the survival book to see if this thing was even edible.

Black Steel Fish

Distribution: Black Steel Fish appear from temperate to cold, fresh and salt waters. A person can tell if the fish is a Sea or Saltfish depending on the color of its meat. The darker the meat means it was caught near the ocean. Otherwise, it suggests that the fish has lived in rivers and doesn't frequent the sea.

Characteristics: The Black Steel fish is known to swim without company. Only when they sense danger will black tails release a special scent signaling others of its kind to swarm together and create a school for defense. In rare cases, a mega school can be created if major climate dangers threaten the species.

Editability: It contains no poison and is a perfectly edible fish. Only beware choking on its large bones.

--

Reading about the sea a thought occurred to him that they needed salt. Not just for tanning but also dietary reasons although he didn’t know much about a dwarfs biology he figured that dwarfs would fall into the mammal category when he checked his member.

As a test, he decided to taste the sweat on his arm and found that it was salty, meaning that their bodies excreted salt. In the beginning, their bodies would be fine but after a week of not digesting salt at stable levels, they would die from how much salt they were sweating out.

Fish could supply the salt intake for a while, but it wouldn’t good to rely on just fish to meet their salt needs. If they couldn’t find any natural salt licks, he hoped that there were at least large mammals to hunt for their meat and cook their blood into a gel for salt.

Urist started dissecting the fish. He remembered how his old man taught him how to clean a fish and went through the motions.

Finding where the fish’s skull ended, he cut down between it and the body, but not too deep as to cut into the organs. Doing the other side, he separated sides and guts into two different piles. The heads were saved to be used for the soup and the gills removed for flavor. Next, the skin on the fish was removed to leave the meat. Scaling the fish would be too troublesome with only one knife.

Rork and Rat watched with amazed expressions as they saw how their boss treated the fish, asking questions along the way. Urist answered them one by one with a smile. He enjoyed talking about survival since it was a subject so dear to his heart. He was happy to see that the Black Steel fish had a fairly strong pink color to its flesh, meaning that a salt sea was nearby.

After gutting and cleaning the fish, the three dwarfs took turns cutting up the fish. Despite not being used to dissecting yet, they handled it fairly well, with only a few fish being ruined.

They only had two traps going, so the catch was low, around twenty fish. Four were ruined, making a total of thirty-two fillets and twenty fish heads. Even if the amount was small, it was the first time that they had caught any food.

“Let's cook some fish.”