We pressed on south that day. The morning was leisurely, at least for me. Blink stayed busy finishing off the rest of the wolves. They had been humorously trying to stalk me, so Blink was dealing with them. The only way I knew any of this happened was when I felt amusement come from Blink, and then I heard a yip of a wolf. “Bait goods.”

A few minutes later, there was another yip from my other side. This kept up for about thirty minutes before I felt disappointment.

“Whats wrong?” I asked

Blink responded with a hint of melancholy. “Hunts overs, dogs dead.”

I laughed as we kept pushing on. Only Blink would be sad that there wasn’t more to kill. With how much was in this area, however, I was sure that she would find something kind of soon to hunt. Blink seemed to be like a force of chaos for the local power dynamics among the predators. Where she went, things died, and there wasn’t much there that could hurt her.

One of the things, however, that I was starting to get worried about was my lack of food. I hadn’t found as much to eat as I had thought I would, and food goes quick when you are hiking. Blink could hunt for us, but even though she was good at downing things, her bite was something that would mess up food for anyone but her.

I needed a way to both hunt and to work, which meant that I needed to go back to building traps and working that way. Not that I could do a pitfall out here because that would take too much effort, but if I could figure out a way to make hunting simpler, then I would. The best way I could think of that was to try to bait them in. After all, I worked great as bait for things we didn’t want to eat.

I had managed to get the tree growth stakes to draw in animals to help them. So I figured that if I worked hard enough, I could isolate what I was doing to draw them in. Then if I could amplify that, I would be able to have a stake that could be bait. I just needed to take the time to figure it out. Sadly that would have to be a sooner rather than a later.

That afternoon Blink and I found a place that seemed like it would work better than others. We were close to the river, but there were no trees growing close by. So I was able to quickly get my room set up. Then I got to work on figuring out what I could do to attract food for us.

I carved a stake that would attract small game and would also calm whatever came by. I wanted the game to want to stay and not be worried about me. That way, I could put them out and work and then check to see what was there. I was able to get all the carving done that night and was even able to add a core to it. So I set it out to see how it would do and went to sleep.

The following day I woke up and headed out of my cave. Twenty feet away from me was where my hunting stake was, and next to it, I saw a jackalope lying down. Part of what I wanted to do was to figure out how powerful the peace aspect really was. So I made my way down and got about five feet away when the jackalope jumped up, eyed me, and ran.

Since it worked and I was hungry, I figured that I would take the time to work on this room more. There were ideas that I wanted to try, and I just thought that if I could get them to work here, then I could in town. So I set out to work on underground indoor plumbing.

I spent the rest of the day at this location working out how to deal with sewage for my hole. I also built out steps so that I wouldn’t be using a ladder. If I had to return to this location while wounded, I needed to not drop into the hole. Nor did I need to worry too much about it; I had to stay put for a few days. The smoke hole bothered me, so I created a cap that would let the smoke out but keep animals from getting in. Small ones could get in, so I added fear runes to the top of the vent.

My crafting ideas might have gotten the better of me because I built a toilet into the corner of the room going to a 27-foot-deep shaft. I also expanded the space to be 9x9x9; this let me put in some shelves and a bed area. I brought down wood and even assembled a bed just so that I would have a place laid out for me. I wouldn’t be moving that day, so I built a stone table and bench in my cave. I was stuck on the idea that I also needed water in this place, so I started to work on the idea of building a well in here.

I was already sitting nine feet down. I knew that there was likely a relatively high water table as I was near a stream. Water tended to go towards the steam even below ground. So I was betting that even though there was magic, the world would work about the same. So I moved my toilet that I hadn’t used yet and lowered a light down the shaft.

I noticed pretty quickly that I had water in the hole, which was both good and bad. Good that I could get water, bad that I had water. Since there was water in the shaft already, that meant that I needed to figure out a different way to remove waste if I would be in this room for more than a night.

First, however, was the water thing. I built more piping that I connected to a stone basin. The whole system was ugly, but it looked like it should work. I did the piping by wrapping clay around a staff and turning the clay into stone. Then I pulled the staff out of the now stone pipe. I wanted to pull the water up. I also put a limit on it to reduce how much came up and that only water was pulled up. Finally, I worked out making a couple of power stones for the water and set them in place.

Next, for the toilet, I set it near the fireplace and tied the box underneath it to the chimney. I added fire runes to be activated, and to the pipe connecting to the fireplace, I put in the same air runes I did for the dust collector.

The trap door I strengthened and added a fear rune to it. I put the same set of prayer requirements on opening the door as all the rest. Except unlike the reasonable 3-7 prayers to Chaos that the others seemed to have, this one had a range of 19 to 42. Order was even kind of odd as you had to knock three times which, while it never changed, was not the same as the others.

I still wasn’t sure how other people would know how to get into these places. I could read it from the interface when I pulled everything up, but others would need to learn somehow, or the rooms wouldn’t do them any good. However, as it seemed like I was doing what the Sisters wanted me to do, I didn’t question too much how stupid it all seemed.

On the walls around the whole room, I added strengthen rock runes and peace and healing. For my bed, I applied runes to help with rest and to stop illness. Then I started the process of linking everything in the room to the room. I wanted each item to be like an arrow in my quiver.

I then started to drop cores into everything. The toilet, the fireplace, the well, the bed, the table, the chair, the shelves, the trapdoor, and then the room all got a core.

Building core created

Underground room Cluster (house)

Level cap 15

General

Showing up in all gold.

Arn’s Underground room Cluster (house)

Level 8

Type building core

Class Ultra Rare

Durability 1500/1500

This is Arn’s Underground room Cluster. This Underground room Cluster like all Underground room Clusters is a place to rest and live. Also this Underground room Cluster is has a CORE! This core as it feeds will level the Underground room Cluster and provide benefits befitting a Underground room Cluster. Like all core building when this one is fully leveled* it will be able to create new Underground room Cluster cores if provided the correct materials.

>Growth

>Traits

>Inventory

>Creation

>Growth

To level your building core you must provide for it items needed to move to the next level of the building type.

Wood 100% Leather 0% Metal 0% Art 0% Kitchen tools 0% Food Containers 0%

>Traits

These are the abilities or traits that your Underground room Cluster has.

Dry- your home keeps all things in it dry from weather Comfort- your home provides you with a up to a 15 degree change in temperature towards your preferred level Health recovery- Your home aids in speeding your recovery time. 2x recovery speed while inside. Lights- your home now has lights which go out at your command. These lights generate no heat and can not be altered or removed Water- your home has an on demand water source of clean pure water Clean- Your home is clean no stray dust and dirt to be found. (self cleans every 4 hours) Restful- the bed in your home is restful

>Inventory

This is the list of all non-living things inside your Underground room Cluster.

-Table

-Shelves

-Toilet

-Well

-Fireplace

-Bench

>Creation

This is locked until level 15

The fun thing I noticed was that this room started at level 8. My Yurt, which I felt was much more comfortable, was sitting at level 4 because I could not find the colors and the metal. This room, however, jumped a few levels. It was likely because it was a core cluster, and it wouldn’t do much in changing shape.

While this was good in that I now had a much better place to hide out on my hike to find people, it still took me two days which was longer than I wanted. Now granted, much of that time was spent trying to figure things out, so hopefully, I would be able to move faster now that I knew what I would make to fit in the room.

I still needed a better way to create this room shape. Putting everything in would take time, but just getting the room cut out would save me most of a day of work, and then I could just move on the next day. I just had to have a way of doing the work faster and less messy. I liked that I made the whole thing a core, and I was sure that there were benefits from doing that. I just wished I hadn’t gotten so obsessed about making this location a hardened bunker.