《Taken : New Beginnings》Chapter 13 - Progress
Advertisement
Waking up, I blink my eyes in mild pain at the bright-ish light which greets me. Getting up, I wince at the pain when I attempt to use my left arm to help lift myself up, as it is still slightly wounded from yesterday night. i figured it would be healed by now, however it seems that the system has many different rules that govern injury recovery.
I change out of my now ripped shirt into another one grabbed from the store, eat a small breakfst of more canned food, washed as best as I can in the stream, and headed back outside. Looking around the clearing, I see that in my absence the piles of sticks and vines I had laid out have all been battered around, mixed up, and many even are now broken.
Once again, I gather the different pieces of wood into their respective piles; by straightness and length, and survey what I have. After the wreckage done overnight, about half of the wood I gathered yesterday is unbroken, and all the vines are all still intact. Shuddering at the thought at heading back out to get more wood, I decide to make a start on some basic construction. Using my past knowledge, I begin placing sticks in the ground, using the vines to tie them together and make a relatively sturdy frame.
Soon, I use up all the sticks I still have availible after the wreckage done overnight. Seeing that it's about noon, I head into the dimensional structure to eat a meal of cold food. After lunch, I take some of the broken, yet still straight, pieces of wood. Layering them against the slanted walls of the shelter, I build up a thicker layer of wood, so that, especially after the addition of other features, will help protect the interior from rain.
About an hour later, I run out of the usable sticks, and decide to get a fire going so that I can cook all the food I have in my inventory. Luckily most of the food is of the same type, and so it doesn't bog down my relatively small inventory with only one or two things. Having dropped all the dry kindling in the woods after the snake attack, I have no choice but to either go and try to find more, or collect what I lost. Sadly, both involve a trip into the forest, and so I pull both knives from my inventory and head out along the same path as yesterday.
Advertisement
Soon, I reach the area where I first encountered the snake. Looking around in the relatively bright light, I can only see a few pieces of spindly kindling in the area, all of which are covered in the moist earth of the forest. Giving up on that plan, I continue deeper into the woods, until I find the fallen tree. Searching underneath, I again find the dead and dry vegatation from before, and collect a decent amount before heading back. This time, thankfully, I manage to avoid any monster encounters - although it would boost my experience, I do not want to have to do this trip again tomorrow.
Back at camp, I start digging out a small firepit. I build it about two meters away from the shelter, and out of the way of the dimensional shelter entrance - I don't want to break an ankle in it when I leave it in the morning, after all. Sadly, there are no rocks around either, as no fire pit looks complete without a stone ring around it, as well as the added safety it presents with the massive amount of wood around.
Once it's dug, I place the kindling and different thicknesses of sticks near me, in organised piles, to help build the fire when lit. Then, I take out a box of matches from the store back on Earth. However, when I look at the once colourful and well-branded box, I see that it has now become a small wooden container, which still has a sliding compartment like a matchbox. Opening it up, I can see a flint and striker, as well as a small pile of tinder. 'Really, a bloody tinderbox...'.
Deciding to go with it and not check what lighters have become - what medieval equivilent would that be? Hell, it might be magical or some shit - after all, mana exists - I place a small amount of tinder into the centre of the firepit, and attempt in near-futility to light it. The forest is currently near windless, which certainly helps, however I have no practice using an actual flint and steel. I have used ferrocerium rods before, but never a true flint and steel.
Advertisement
After about 10 minutes of trying, I finally get a small spark to catch. As the tinder starts to burn, I carefully place the kindling I had nearby over the flame, to build the fire. Luckily, it takes, and the kindling rapidly ignites into a much larger flame. I spend about 10 minutes growing the flame with progressively larger pieces of wood, before I have a relatively large fire burning, on substantially sized wood.
While I wait for the flames to die down enough to cook on, I decide to check through the notification I have had building for the last while. The first thing I check is the death notification for the forest snake;
Large Forest Snake - Level 15 - Has Died
2500 XP
Drops;
Snake Scales x23
Snake Meat x4
Snake Tendon x2
Looking at the window, the loot appears to be pretty standard - body parts only. Then again, now that I am on Terrae, these monsters are probably considered to be the lowest of the low - after all, the system has repeatedly told me that even young children from Terrae are much stronger than I am now, and if I can beat these monsters, then they're not really a challenge for anybody from here.
Despite this, they obviously have a working ecosystem, so perhaps this is an area controlled by a nearby town to train the younger generations, or provide food to the town. That, or this is some sort of initial growth area for low-tier monsters, where they grow and gain in strength before leaving to go to areas with higher levelled populations.
However, such a topic can't be answered for now, as after all I have nobody to give me the answers. And so, I look through the remaining notifications, of which there was nothing interesting, and by this time the fire has begun to die down. I take out a frying pan from Earth - the most fitting tool I have for the job - and the pan has obviously changed to fit Terrae aswell - it's plastic handle is now varnished wood, and the once shiny stainless metal is now a matt black, and is probably now cast iron, or perhaps some alloy similar to stainless steel from this world.
Despite the colour though, the pan is still just as smooth to the touch as polished metal, so perhaps the rules that govern the change decided that stainless steel was too far above cast iron to merely become that. However, such things don't change the cooking of the meat I have, so I get to it.
I cook each piece of meat the same way - well done, pretty burnt, and miraculously none ruined. I finish cooking the large amount of meat, before letting the fire die, and taking the pan inside to wash in the stream. All the cooked meat is also stored in my inventory. After all this, it's late evening, and I'm exhausted from the day's work. i sit down and eat a meal of burnt rabbit steak - I'm not brave enough to try sewer rat yet - and lie down to get a good night's sleep, thankfully not injured like I was yesterday.
Advertisement
Computerman
I've always loved playing games, I played them so much that the world bend to my will and allowed me to play them for eternity. Please don't be afraid I was human once let me tell you the tales of old times where everything was convoluted mess. The tale of my life and how I became Computerman. Cover art is from wombo art app, with prompt of "neutron Star" in synthwave category.
8 88Powerless
A normal convinience store trip turns fatal for Grant as he becomes part of a robbery which leaves the store attendant dead and the gun's nozzle pointed at him next. But before he is shot, he is suddenly transported into a frozen landscape with nothing but a few packs of instant noodles. With no way to defend himself or any possible way out, how can he survive? Chapter frequency: 2/week (Wednesdays and Saturdays) Feedback is always appreciated :)
8 315Parrotise
Unfair resource distribution, overconsumption, global warming, and the patriarchy got you depressed? Well, do not fear! Your savior, I, am here! Bringing you the solution to all of our problems: becoming birds!!! Paradise doesn't exist, this is true, but Parrotise can! So let's make Parrotise!
8 156Binary of Life and Death
Monsters, gold, chaos, glory, adventure, what more could attract two of the greatest players of all time to Sugarea, the most popular MMORPG of its time. But everyone makes errors, and unfortunate for these two brilliant players, they have made the grave mistake of not actually sleeping like normal humans and missed out on the very moment the new Dark Legion update would take effect. Or did they? They wake in what seems familiar yet not, but they soon realize their predicament. They are inside their game avatar's bodies! A half-Demon and a Dragonoid are now struggling with more than just power, these two men have to find their new purpose and calling in a completely different world. Will they concur it like ordinary land or will they enlighten the planet into equality? Do figures pull strings in the dark or is everything open to the public eye? Nothing is certain except the unknown, and nothing is ever as it seems... This is an Isekai story, as such, some parts may sound either cliché or similar to others, but I assure you, I tried to prevent that. To make it known, I took quite a lot of inspiration from the light novel/anime Overlord, but that doesn't mean it's a direct rip-off of it. You'll find there to be quite the amount of differences. Just a little heads up as well, you should expect irregular uploads, as it takes me a long time to write each chapter. I am currently trying for once every other week on Sundays around 10:00 A.M. Chapters are usually 7k words and up, with the longest (chapter 3) being 10.3k words. So, if you like to sit down and read a long chapter every two weeks at 10:00 A.M. EST on Sundays, then you can waste your time here! Small disclaimer: Profanity is far and few between, and mostly used by side characters, rarely the main character. When something with gore happens, I describe to the best of my ability, which will only get better the longer I write this... :) Small cuts between perspectives happen, and can hide what some characters do, which will be revealed in future chapters, I'm not that lazy... all the time... There are some parts that are long blocks of text, most, if not all, of them, are characters talking, but I try not to info dump. I know one of the tags says "Psychological", and for the most part, it is, but it's not as prominent as other stories, instead, it's more hidden and scattered, but I did try to make the pieces I did reveal all fit together. Cover art is bound to be changed when I have a good picture to use, so the Yin-Yang is a placeholder for now unless yall wanna gimme something to use *wink wink nudge nudge*. So yeah, please give it a try, as I have nothing better to do with my life, and I am banking solely off of a career in literature and am hoping that I can create a story that can actually be called something more than a child's imagination running wild. The eventual and inevitable end to the story won't be for a long while, at least till chapter 40 or so. I have thought long and hard about the message and themes at play, so I hope you, the reader (who has some amazing hair btw), can enjoy and partake on this adventure with me into my dark empty pit of an imagination.
8 168wife • shota aizawa [✓]
in which class 1-a finds out that their homeroom teacher, shota aizawa, is actually married.-inspired by: rings || aizawa shota by AmeatStick
8 134you don't know how much i was a day (a title sponsored by AUTOCORRECT)
⌜ • ° + ° • ¡ spam book ! ° • + • ° ⌟*・゜゚・ hehe the title is a randomizedkeyboard autocorrect suggestion lmao anyway get to know me as i spam this book when i remember it exists :) ・゜゚・*~ pg. 13 : includes explicit language
8 171