I enjoy when it rains. It's pleasant to hear the comforting pitter-patter of raindrops and feel the accompanying brisk air. The experience is made all the better by curling up with a blanket and a good book. Hot cocoa too. The contrast of the cold, dark rainclouds with the comforting coziness of a warm blanket is just heavenly. It is, unfortunately, a far cry from the rain I'm experiencing right now.

Right now I'm wishing to have built the roof on my hut. Rain is a lot less enjoyable when you have to be in it. My cave is keeping the worst of it off of me, but given that I'll have to venture out into the weather if I want to get anything done today, it isn't much of a comfort.

Hmm.

It'll be a hassle to dry my clothes after this, if I even get the chance today. I guess I'll just not wear most of them. It's not like they'd really afford much warmth anyway. I strip down into my boxers and do a bit of busy work tidying up my cave while trying to work up the resolve to go out into the cold rain.

"Well, may as well get it over with."

I hop out of my cave and instantly start shivering. I take the time to take care of myself, and go through my morning routine to try to warm up and acclimate to the cold. My thigh wound has scabbed up surprisingly quickly. I'll leave it bandaged for now to prevent something snagging it and reopening it, but they won't be necessary soon enough.

A walk around camp shows me that the river's too muddied to do any spearfishing, so I eat most of the moss nuts I brought home yesterday. They're probably safe since I haven't had any adverse effects from eating any yet. It's a pain to have to break open all the shells, and when do I'm left with a surprisingly little amount of food. Most of the volume of the moss nuts is taken up by the shell. I consider eating the fernberries, but I end up putting off their poison test for later.

That takes care of breakfast, now what's on the agenda?

Hmm.

My options are significantly limited on account of the weather. I guess I'll finish my hut. It'll be more troublesome to build in this weather, but at least I'll be able to immediately tell if my roof is leaking.

I head out of camp toward where I found all those canes I used. I need a few more to finish the walls. If I remember correctly that's where there was some shrubbery around that area I planned on using for roofing material.

My plan to create a water-tight roof is to layer bundles of grass and ferns in rows along the spars that make up it's structure. That should, in theory, allow the water to flow off the top of my hut. Leaves are impermeable, so it should work. The downside to this is that the roofing will probably need to be replaced fairly often. By the time that becomes an issue, I should have a more permanent solution ready. Namely some sort of slate or tiling. It should be relatively easy to bake clay pottery, so roofing tiles are definitely a possibility. I can't exactly do that in an afternoon though, since significant amounts of infrastructure is necessary to create enough tiles to cover my entire roof in any reasonable time frame. Makeshift thatch should do the trick for now.

I spend time cutting and bundling shrubbery. It's dull and repetitive. The process of severing stems and slashing stalks is just demanding enough that I can't completely drift into thought while doing it. With better tools it would be possible, but for now I'm stuck in the cycle of searching, cutting, bundling, and transporting whatever shrubbery seems to fit my purpose. The work forces me to concentrate on the objects closest to myself, and the white noise and dulling effect of the rainfall and distant thunder accentuates this, leaving me relatively oblivious to my surroundings. Given all this, you could forgive me for not noticing this particular peculiarity before practically bumping into it.

There's a stone pillar in front of me.

It has an oval shape, jutting out of the ground and has a perfect circle through it near the top. It's made of greenish-brown rock and is mostly covered in moss and lichen, which creates a natural camoflauge in the dense swampy forest. There are some obvious patterns in the stone of various geometrical shapes that are somewhat covered up by the moss. The mosses around the hole at the top are blackened. Its approximately ten feet tall, so I scale it to give the hole a better look. The rain makes it slippery, but the geometric designs are carved deep enough into the surface of the pillar to provide decent handholds. A nearby tree would make this process easier, but the stone is in a small clearing. The hole is empty, and instead of the treasure I was hoping for, I find ash. The previous growth around the hole is completely carbonized.

Perhaps it was struck by lightning?

Lightning, huh? I glance up at the grey rainy sky.

I hastily climb back down the pillar, and notice another few peculiarities. The pillar is warm, and the various bits of plantlife that call this stone their home are charred where they touch the pillar. This lends credence to the lightning strike theory, as it makes sense that lightning would have enough energy to heat up this rock to char the plant life sticking to the pillar.

I back a bit farther away from the pillar as my next thought forms. The stone that makes this pillar up could have relatively large amounts of conductive material, which would lead to it being struck instead of the taller but less conductive trees surrounding it.

A point against the lightning strike theory is that the top of the pillar isn't particularly more charred than the rest of the thing. The top would obviously be the entry point, and therefore would theoretically be the most burned, right?

Maybe it wasn't lightning. Maybe it's a geothermal thing? Is it magma underneath the ground that heated this pillar?

I don't know.

This discovery does however show one important conclusion however: There are people here. People that carve geometric designs into rocks for some unknown reason, but people nonetheless.

"This is... good?"

These people might be just as likely string me up for being a different skin color as help me, but at least I'm not alone.

Well, no. I'm still very much alone, but at least there's the possibility of people. Though I've been starved for communication for the past few days, I won't need my own Wilson for a while yet with that hope beating in my chest.

This is good.

"Alright!"

Despite the miserably rainy day, I feel invigorated. I glance back over the piles of bundled brush I left in my haste.

Let's go build myself a roof!

...

I built myself a roof.

I channelled that enthusiasm further and built a rudimentary door by tying some sticks together and pivoting them on a spar. I also assembled a bed using left over shrubbery and sticks. The bed is probably the best thing I've made so far. It's infinitely more comfortable than sleeping on the cold, hard ground.

I also finished some other minor tasks needed to make my house more dry and cozy. My little hut is as complete as I'm willing to make it for now. It actually warms up a bit when I have a fire going, and keeps the worst of the wind and rain out. That occupied the rest of my day.

Right now I'm laying on my new cot and considering the finer points of a nutritionally balanced meal. That is to say, I'm debating whether or not to chew through my stock of moss nuts.

Hmm.

Well, I guess I'll just eat a fernberry. They should be safe; I saw a squirrel munching on some on my way home. Well, a squirrel-like animal anyway. It was green and it was carrying a dead mouse in it's mouth. Earth squirrels aren't omnivorous as far as I remember.

I grab a fernberry and chew it slowly, savoring the flavor.

While the moss nuts don't really have much taste to speak of, this fernberry is delicious. It tastes like a lime with a more tangy bitter flavor and a sweet aftertaste. Perhaps this is what you'd get if you crossed a tangerine with a strawberry?

I'm tempted to eat more.

I spot a juicy looking specimen.

I should wait.

Definitely.

"Sigh."

I guess I'll go to sleep hungry. I've been doing that a worrying amount. I need to find more sources of food. Nothing I can do about it now though, so I'll ignore the issue. I call up my status to distract myself.

General Information Name: Derrick Finigan Species: Human Sex: Male Age: 24 Titles None Stats Name Value Intelligence 106 Perception 103 Dexterity 111.5 Endurance 102.5 Strength 102.5 Agility 101.5 Skills Name Level Value Modifiers Investigation 6 Int +0.5, Per +0.5 None Harvesting 10 Dex +1 Patient Woodworking 2 End +0.5, Str +0.5 None Mathematics 3 Int +1 None Construction 3 End +0.5, Str +0.5 None Stealth 3 Dex +0.5, Agi +0.5 None

There's a column in skills for modifers? That's new. Patient harvesting, huh.

I haven't the faintest what that actually means.

It probably alters how some aspect of harvesting works, considering it's labelled as a modifier. What effect does it have? Assuming it does have some sort demonstrable effect, some testing will have to be done to actually determine what exactly that is.

Speaking of which, I should create a baseline to see how much stats effect me. I'm supposedly 11.5% more dextrous than I was before coming here, but how does that numeric increase translate to the real world? I certainly don't feel more limber or flexible, but that could be because 11.5% isn't enough of an increase to be noticeable, especially since the increase has been gradually spread over the last few days.

I don't really have time to go in depth analysing and testing the effects of the system. Food is priority numero uno. Starving to death is no bueno.

"Sigh."

I'll just go to sleep.

That math thing I tried to do a couple of days ago seems to have actually worked to increase my skill so lets continue that.

9-3/9+2 = 10 2/3

15*5-84 = -9

8*56 = 448

69-45...