Chapter 186

The rest of the escort mission was just as long and annoying as they had expected. Their caravan had encountered a lost group midway through the challenge, which added a number of people who had to walk or ride the wagons. The extra passengers only added to the danger and difficulty of the mission.

They didn’t let that stop, or even hinder them, and they were able to successfully bring everyone safely to the next city, earning them a fifteen times multiplier to their spent Genesis Energy and a set of Muffle Cloaks.

The magical cloaks, like the pressure gauge rings they had previously earned, only worked in Minkalla, but they sharply reduced the range at which their Genesis Energy could be sensed at.

With more and more teams approaching them, the cloaks would become invaluable for avoiding fights on deeper floors.

While they would be able to win, they might need to expend resources, and Liz might be forced to show off some undisguised blood skills, which meant that their fights would need to end decisively.

Their bounty of Genesis Energy meant that they didn’t need to worry about finding a boss. With their cultivation fully restored and newly tweaked for their current fighting styles, the floor’s final boss, a massive wyvern, never stood a chance. It was almost a shame how much Genesis Energy costs and rewards scaled between floors; with all their cultivation back, nothing on this floor could stand in their way.

Without a moment of hesitation, they accepted the floor challenge. Its reward of enabling even external Concepts to empower the body was simply too good to pass up.

It didn’t make the challenge itself any less annoying, however.

They needed to survive for at least six months in uncharted wilderness. For someone of their Tier, that was a trivial challenge, and someone at Tier 14 could just sit around and meditate the whole time if they so chose.

Naturally, it wasn’t so easy.

Instead, they had to do so at Tier 0, with Minkalla shoving them into bodies that weren’t their own. They would have to survive with no cultivation, no mana, and no Talents. The world they found themselves in also didn’t have any essence, any people… or anything at all.

Also, he was naked.

If you died in the first six months, you’d just be dead. After that, you could choose to leave the challenge whenever you wanted, or were ejected automatically if you died. The longer you lasted after that point, the better your reward would be. Of course, that was easier said than done. While the first year would have a generally normal cycle of seasons, the following years were anything but normal. Predators would start to appear in larger and larger amounts, and would become more aggressive as the seasons became more extreme.

Summers were hotter, winters colder with more snow, fall would become a windy nightmare where a tornado could appear at any moment, and spring would become a wet season with no relief.

The reward also depended on how you survived. Surviving at all gave a small and general boost, but by tailoring your actions, you could get more of a bonus in targeted areas. Various tactics would lead to the resulting physical empowerment manifesting more in specific areas. Overcoming ‘tremendous odds’ resulted in an increase in strength, making it the most common reward. Meanwhile, turtling up and hunkering down through the extreme weather would increase someone's durability.

If he decided to leave a single place and roam around, Matt could get a boost to his flexibility. If he hunted predators directly, he would see an increase to his proprioception. Regeneration empowerment was possibly the most dangerous to earn, as you needed to repeatedly get injured and heal from said wounds. With no mana or essence, and a Tier 0 body, that was a substantially riskier proposition than Matt was used to.

All of those rewards were useful, but not what Matt most wanted. He wanted to increase his mind and senses. Doing so required development of the basic trappings of civilization; making tools, growing crops, building advanced shelters. His goal was to get all the way to the iron age before he left, which certainly sounded ludicrous, but Minkalla always provided the required resources if you knew what to look for.

As they’d encountered Back to Basics on the third floor, one year of survival translated to empowerment roughly equivalent to an eighth of a Concept, which if they somehow directed it all into a single attribute, would empower it about as much as an average internal Concept would. Of course, it would be spread out across all aspects in practice, but you could still somewhat direct the progression by tailoring your actions.

Two years would double the reward, giving them up to two nearly-full strength aspects if they could focus their reward that much, and so forth. Given the scaling the theme reward had at lower levels, anyone who survived a full three years would develop some unique Concept ability, but it hadn’t been confirmed. It wasn’t anything nefarious, even. It was just that the few people who had survived that long hadn’t gotten the challenge on the third floor.

It all just meant that Matt had a busy few years in front of him.

In truth, the largest test would be how he handled the loneliness. There wasn’t much he could do about that, so he just had to rely on his training and willpower to push through. Even in another body, without his cultivation, without his talents, he was Endless.

First, he needed to set up a temporary camp.

The world always started in the first few weeks of true spring, with buds starting to appear on the trees and plants. While it shouldn't freeze, it could get cold, and he needed to ensure that he didn't succumb to the elements in the first night and just straight-up die.

Checking the sun, Matt saw that it was either a little before noon or just after, judging by the sun sitting slightly off its peak, and casting a shadow with the trees.

Finding a nearby hill, Matt climbed to the top, but it provided a very uncomfortable reminder that bare feet and no cultivation meant that he could feel every stick and rock he stepped on. At least his feet were tough and calloused, so it wasn’t painful. Still, making shoes had just become a secondary priority. The last thing he needed was an infection on his foot.

The hill wasn’t massive, but it gave him a boost on tree height, and he was able to climb a tree and see beyond the canopy to get a view of the area around him.

To his left, he saw a small lake or large pond a few hours' hike away, and in the opposite direction, the ground rose in the tell tale markings of a mountainous region in the distance.

Shimmying around the tree, he looked in the remaining two directions and saw nothing but more trees in an endless view to the horizon.

Or at least, as far as his uncultivated eyes could see.

His vision wasn't bad, but it was a far cry from what he was used to, and not having his spiritual sense was like losing a limb. He was so used to being able to sense what was going on around him, the loss of the extra sense was jarring. Still, at least this new body came with some of its own muscle memory, so he didn’t need to readjust to walking quite so much as to the fact that he could no longer jump between branches as easily as walking down the street.

Carefully climbing down the tree and only receiving a few scrapes, Matt set off in a slow jog to where he found the lake.

Water was a top priority without [Create Water], and being near the source would make things easier as he set up a temporary camp.

At least it was only early afternoon, so he still had a good amount of daylight left.

After finding a nice spot a short five minute walk from the lake, he started to clear an area and gathered wood for a fire. Once the pile was big enough that he thought it would last the night, he tripled it. Without his normal magical assistance, the only fuel he would have would be the wood.

Having set up his heat source for the evening, Matt went back to the lake.

He needed to inspect that before he did anything else, as it would determine what he did in the coming days.

The water was cold and bordering on freezing despite the warmth in the air, so Matt only dipped his hand in long enough to wash it, then brought a handful of the liquid to his mouth for a taste.

It wasn’t salty, and he didn’t taste any heavy metals, but Matt still didn’t want to drink water from the relatively still water of the lake without boiling it.

He would probably be fine, but that was still too large of a risk that he wasn’t willing to take.

After spitting out the water, he took the time to look at his reflection. Luna had said this test wouldn’t be in their body, but it was disorienting to see a reflection that didn’t belong to him.

The hair and eyes were dark brown, and his skin, despite being baby smooth, was a nutty brown.

After inspecting himself for a while, he stood up, pushing the issue to the back of his mind. There was no reason to worry about what was ultimately a temporary body. It wasn’t even real in any meaningful sense, it was just a very lifelike illusion that his mind was puppeting, while his real body and spirit remained in Minkalla.

Despite his thirst, Matt didn’t drink any of the water, and instead stood up to start searching for vines that he could make into a rope.

The area that this floor challenge dropped him on had a lot of variance, despite it always being a temperate forest. The trees around him were a mix of evergreens and seasonals, which was a good sign, as it was the type of forest he was most familiar with. Further south, the weather would be warmer and have more tropical-type plants, whereas going north would be cooler with more evergreens.

Minkalla always dropped them in the center of this simulation world, with the most central climate, flora, and fauna.

Not finding an easily adaptable vine which he could turn into a rope, Matt started looking along the lake bank for suitable rocks.

Finding ones he could work with, he started trying to knap the stones. They weren't flint, but general river rocks would do for his purposes.

It took a few failed and shattered rocks, but he finally got one that made for a half decent hand axe, and a second smaller knife that he could use for more detailed work.

Checking the sun, he saw that he still had a few hours of daylight, and spent a good hour looking for anything he could use to make a rope and clay but found neither.

Returning to his camp before the sun started to set, he reinforced his fire pit with stones from the edge of the lake.

It wasn't ideal to use wet stones for a fire break, but he didn't want to burn down his forest on day one. There was the chance of a stone having water in a hairline crack, causing the stone to crack or possibly explode, however. After having the thought, he couldn't get the idea of an exploding rock hitting him in the gut and killing him out of his head. So, Matt used some of the dirt he had pulled out of the small pit he initially dug, and covered the outside of the stones to slow any thermal exchange.

Having to make a fire wasn’t easy without magic, let alone without so much as flint and steel, but Matt had practiced with a variety of methods. After setting up a rudimentary fire drill by sharpening a straight stick and gathering some thick pieces of bark, he was ready to give it a first attempt.

Spinning the stick between his hands by rubbing them back and forth, he built up heat until a single ember flaked off the wood. Carefully blowing on it while gently placing the tinder he gathered on top, he cursed as the ember went out without doing more than making the tinder smoke.

Looking up, he saw that the sun was setting, but his hands were already raw from the previous attempt at making fire.

Picking up his axe stone, he walked around his camp until he found a thinner sapling with smoother bark.

Cutting it down, he debarked the fibrous tree and carefully pulled the bark apart into long strips.

After doing so, he started to braid the bark into a rudimentary rope.

It wasn't great, and the threads threatened to pull apart if he pulled too hard, but it was more than sufficient for what Matt needed it to do.

Cutting a notch in the top of his spinning stick, Matt wrapped the stick with the rope and pulled before letting the spinning force rewrap the rope around the stick. Repeatedly bringing his hands back and forth, Matt was able to quickly and easily make himself another ember without hurting his hands.

It still took two more attempts, but he managed to get a fire going, and let his body relax as he slowly built up the fire to a small but steady roar.

With nothing but the sound of the fire and insects to lull him to sleep, Matt thought about how the others were doing. Liz and Susanne would be fine, but Aster worried him.

His bond had only been able to watch during most of their practice, after all.

Before he fell asleep, despite his hunger and thirst, his last thought was of his bond and hoping she was well.

***

Aster looked at her hands.

She stared at them for a long few minutes, not really comprehending what she was seeing, before slowly wiggling her fingers.

It all felt oddly natural, despite her never having had a human form before.

She ran her hands up and down her body, inspecting each and every inch of her new form.

Overall, she was not impressed.

Her senses were dull and lacking. Her height was what she suspected to be short. She didn’t have any good teeth for ripping and tearing meat apart. And last, but certainly not least, she had no tail!

It was a travesty of a human form.

The best thing she could say about this body was that it at least had thumbs!

She had wanted thumbs since the day she could properly think, and now she had them.

Aster spent a good ten minutes with a fallen stick and rolling it around her fingers, learning how to adjust to her new body.

Luna had warned her about what this floor would mean, but it was one thing to know and another thing to experience it herself.

Standing up, she looked around and listened.

Without her fox bloodline, she didn't have any control over the elements or enhanced senses, but she had spent the first decade of her life completely relying on her instincts.

While Matt and Liz might have learned more about survival, she had it ingrained into her bones from the moment she crawled out of the egg.

Picking a direction based on the slope of the ground and the way the trees grew, she sauntered along, only stumbling a little, reveling in the difference between bodies. It didn’t take her long to find a lake, and she paused to inspect herself in the reflection.

Maybe she looked as she envisioned herself in her idle musings?

Except, what she found was horrible.

She had brown hair and brown eyes.

It wasn’t her beautiful and silken coat of white fur! No, that had been stolen from her! She had worked hard on her hide, keeping it pristine and spotless. The least Minkalla could have done was keep the color for her.

Shaking her fist, she tried to yowl at the sky but stopped as her vocal cords weren't quite built in the same way, and the sound was off.

That gave her a new thought, and she could speak with human words without having to rely on her AI or people knowing the beast language.

“Minkalla, you owe me an ice cream ruin for this!” For dramatic effect, Aster shook her fist at the sky.

It was new and exciting to be able to emote in human form. She understood why Mara and Leon were always so dramatic.

Leaving the lake after drinking her fill, she walked around, looking for something to eat.

She was hungry, and knew that there would be prey in this forest. Her fox instincts had already seen and categorized the various animal tracks.

It only took her a few minutes to find a rabbit's burrow, and armed with a rock, she waited for the prey to arrive or leave. An hour later, a fat rabbit hopped out, and she bludgeoned it with one quick strike.

With the best dinner caught, she set out to find a den of her own with a smile on her face.

Having a human body was kinda fun.

***

Matt woke up hungry, thirsty, and cold, as the sun started to peek over the horizon.

Getting up, he checked his fire. It was low, but it only took a minute to rekindle it from the still red coals.

After warming up a little, he set to work.

He needed to get a safe source of potable water working sooner rather than later, and the easiest one would be a simple boiling pot. He just needed to find some clay to make a pot that could survive the heat.

With nothing to keep him at the campsite, Matt swept the area clean of anything that might catch a floating ember and then put a few of the larger pieces of wood he had on the fire, hoping they would still be hot when he returned.

Setting off, he searched for moving water. A creek or river would be the most likely spot.

It took him until a little after noon, but he eventually found a creek entering the lake. After tracing the wandering path of the water, he found a place where the flowing water had eaten away at the ground, exposing a deposit of clay on the surface.

Taking a stick, he chopped a good portion of the material out of the ground. He was preparing to leave when he decided that he would rather not make multiple trips, and started weaving a small basket together from branches and a few saplings.

It wasn't much better than a net, but the makeshift basket allowed him to carry more clay back to his camp. It was right as he was about to step off when he paused and considered why he should return to that camp at all.

His fire was already probably out, and he could remake the fire easily enough.

Thinking of just remaking camp here, he stopped for a second time. He had no material gathered here for a fire, and that would take hours to gather enough for his clay experiments.

Cursing himself for his poor planning, he decided to return to his original camp for the night before relocating after he used the wood he already gathered to fire his clay.

Because of the curving, irregular nature of the shoreline, and his need to follow it when searching for a creek, it was actually a fairly short walk back to his campsite. Now he had found his source of clay and could walk straight back.

Maybe Minkalla doesn't hate me after all.

Still, it was a mistake he intended to only make once. This wasn’t a place where any errors could be allowed. Every minute and calorie burned on wasted efforts like this hurt his chances of long term survival.

One long walk to his camp later, he spent the rest of his daylight crafting a series of cups and larger bowls that he could cook in.

Firing clay in an open fire wasn’t the easiest or most reliable method, but he knew the basics, and ensured that the clay got red hot.

As he watched the sun set on his second day, and let the clay cups slowly cool down in the heat of the dying fire, he tightened his willpower. The thirst and hunger grew with each passing moment, but Matt calmed himself, knowing things would change in the coming days.

He just needed to take things one step at a time.

Pulling apart his basket, he used local materials to make a tighter weave, and made something he could properly use going forward.

There was no such thing as downtime when he only had himself to rely on.

***

Susanne watched the deer stalk past her hiding position with bated breath, not wanting to give away her mud covered position.

The makeshift spear she had made was no better than a stick with a rock tied to it, but she didn’t need anything else right now.

There were no predators yet, but there was an abundance of prey animals.

It had taken her most of the first day to create her spear, and then find a deer's tracks, but she had done it all for this moment.

As the deer was only a step away from her still form, she lunged.

Except, her body was weak, and standing perfectly still had caused her legs to go numb without her notice.

Still, the deer had been only a foot away from her, and her spear took it in the neck. Blood sprayed out in an arc as the deer turned and ran.

Scrambling to her knees, Susanne tried to run after the deer, forcing her legs to function despite the almost painful feeling of blood rushing back into her legs.

The deer was going to bleed out, and she needed to track it down before it got too far away.

The meat would be nearly inedible after her failed attack, but nearly inedible was still edible. The adrenaline her assault caused would make the meat taste worse and cause more pain for the animal. Two things she would have rather avoided if given the chance.

As the deer stumbled, she threw herself at the animal and brought her spear’s blade across the animal's neck, finishing the job. It struggled, but without its antlers, it only had its physical size and strength to struggle, and those were in short supply after running with a slashed carotid artery.

Grabbing the deer's legs, she cut its neck wider. Afterwards, she wrapped rope around its legs and hoisted the animal into the air to let it finish bleeding out while she gathered wood for a fire.

She would only be able to cure the hide with the most primitive of methods, which would make a subpar final product, but it would give her clothes and food for the next few weeks as she ate her fill and smoked the remainder.

Step one was done, and now she could start making her way north. She had a year to get ready for a push to the three year mark, which would test everything she knew and had learned.

She planned to stay on the move, but to do that, she would need to have a temporary residence to make some essentials.

Susanne smiled as she got about her work.

This challenge was one that would push her, but the reward was tailor made for her. She now had her growth armor that would let her focus her Concept inward, but with Back to Basics making her Domain itself work on empowering her, the effect would compound.

When she left this challenge, she would be a new woman.

As Carol and Luna had said. Minkalla was a forge.

Her forge.

***

Matt looked around at his new hut.

After his pot making adventures, he had taken the one good cup he had and used it to slowly boil some water. He then drank his fill while using most of the next day to repurpose the clay items that cracked, and get more clay to work with.

From there, he started fishing.

Not the relaxing fishing where catching something was more a trophy than survival. No, he created a basket, and after putting some bugs in it, set the entire contraption in the water a few feet into the lake.

It took two revisions, but he now had a working set up that netted him a few small fish that he couldn't identify beyond a type of bitterling. They were small, but they worked well enough as part of a soup.

He was already planning bigger nets and baskets for later, as he had seen largemouth bass eating the bitterlings.

If he could catch them, he would be able to eat well.

Having secured a safe way to drink the water and a food source, he started building a more permanent residence.

It wasn’t going to last him more than a few weeks, but the rope bed and rough clay roofing tiles protected him from the cold ground and infrequent rain, making his time in the forest almost nice.

Today, his goal was setting up a trap network with the rope he had been making.

He had noticed small paw prints in the ground and mud, and wanted to add some meat to his diet.

This body wasn’t strong enough for what he wanted it to do. Despite his workout regime of running with the new bark shoes and bodyweight exercises, he needed more calories and protein if he wanted to be in the proper shape to push for the three year mark.

And he wasn't confident in hunting a deer or larger game yet.

Before he did that, he wanted to find a permanent place to set up camp, and this wasn't it.

Being near the lake was nice, but he needed the flowing water if he wanted to enact some of his more ambitious plans, which meant finding a larger river or stream than his initial creek. It would be both a power source and a resource gold mine.

Clay was just the start. Matt wanted and needed to make iron tools to really push towards a mental empowerment from his Concept.

Iron bacteria was generally possible to find near small rivers and creeks, but he hadn’t seen any from the single creek he had found. The water was too fast flowing for any of that bacteria to take hold from what he had seen of it, which meant that he needed to explore more, and further from this camp. If he was able to find an iron deposit, he could easily turn that into small iron tools, but its absence so far ruined that plan.

Thankfully, that wasn't the only way to get iron without raw iron ore. The sand he found in the river seemed high in metal content, which meant he could filter it out then smelt it down.

It was just more work for smaller returns.

Matt pushed those plans to the back of his mind as he moved to start setting his traps.

He had a few more things he needed to work on before making a more permanent move to his final housing location.

***

Liz looked at her hut and the small garden she had gathered and planted from wild crops she had found.

Yams weren’t her favorite, but she could make do easily enough with them and the blueberry bush she had transplanted.

She wanted both the regeneration and durability increases from this challenge, and knew that it wouldn’t be easy to get either.

Hunkering down meant that she needed stores of food and seeds to replant as the seasons grew shorter and more vicious. It also meant that she needed to protect her crops from both the prey animals and predators alike.

The rabbits that came to nibble at her delicate tomato plant sprouts were her major source of food, and were useful in more ways than one.

She had been turning the fur into bandages that kept her wounds covered.

Without her Talent and cultivation, she had to heal the slow way, but she knew it would be worth it, as long as she kept it up and avoided any infections.

That was easier said than done, but she was determined to do exactly that.

Liz wrapped her feet in her shoes and went for a walk through the forest, looking for anything that she could grow herself.

She had plans of growing crops through the winter, but it would take some work to set up properly without her magic. It felt just… wrong, being severed from her bloodline and Talent. She missed the sensation of knowing exactly how her blood was flowing through her, and to be cut off from her fire affinity so wholly reminded her all too much of her Awakening.

Liz caught herself getting distracted, and refocused on her survival plans.

In any case, even if agriculture didn’t pan out, she just needed to start storing food in both fat and dried storage.

The season was just turning into summer proper, and everything was so alive and in bloom.

The perfect time to gather all the plants she needed.

Liz was an alchemist, and the lack of cultivation didn’t change that. It limited her, but didn’t stop her.

***

Matt let the water hammer slam down on his bar of iron, and as the heavy rock he had on the weighted end rose back up, he twisted the bar of metal.

It wasn’t proper steel, but he had been able to create a half decent imitation.

After making his first proper iron tool from river sand, he had taken that knife and built more. First, the knife, then a small axe. It was all the iron he could gather and forge with his limited tools from the sand in the creek bed, but having tools better than stone made his life a million times easier.

With those initial tools, he started building a proper house made out of clay bricks, timber, and copper, which was fairly abundant in the foothills of the mountains to his west.

With a decent base that was dug into a hill for insulation and made from clay, Matt was able to start on making things that would count for his quota of ‘civilization’, as Minkalla defined it.

The water hammer was his latest invention, and was his most important one yet.

Without his cultivation, hammering the rough iron he had found in an exposed vein into something more useful was harder work than he could reasonably keep up. To make matters worse, fall was almost over, further limiting his time with shorter days, since he lacked an adequate light source.

With winter coming, he needed proper weapons to defend himself from the predators that would start to appear. His life wasn’t in danger if he died anymore, but he still needed to be careful and properly plan for the future.

So, taking the rough, half-rusted iron ore, Matt smelted it down in a massive furnace. Using the water wheel that powered his water hammer, he created an automated bellows from a deer skin, using it to get the furnace to near the temperature he needed, and started forging.

The finished product wouldn't be considered steel in the Empire proper with all the impurities he had left in, but after folding it a couple dozen times, it would be strong enough to make a spearhead out of that wouldn't break on the first animal rib he hit.

Even better than the weapon, making a proper steel item would ensure that he met the criteria for increasing his mind reward.

The crop outside of his house was a wild type of pea ancestor that he had managed to breed into something that resembled the pea plant he was familiar with. He was pretty sure that Minkalla was making that process a million times faster, as the three generations he’d been able to cultivate had gotten him far further than it should have in such limited time.

He wasn’t entirely sure if it counted as of yet, as the peas still had some other seed offsprings that he thought might be lentils, but he couldn’t be sure either way.

Most of his practice before coming to Minkalla had been with wild corn, but he hadn’t been able to find that plant in all of his trips away from his house.

Working right up to the end of the night, Matt forged his first weapon.

Quenching it in saved animal fats, he started polishing it by the light of the cooling forge.

It was almost time.

***

Aster sat in her winter hut and reveled in the cold. The first winter wasn't so bad, even to her mortal, human, body.

Playing in the snow wasn't half as fun as it was when she could control it, but she still enjoyed it.

Hearing a howl, her smile turned feral.

The wolves had smelled the strip of deer she was cooking.

Dinner was going to be delivery today, it seemed.

***

Matt used the small amount of spare time he had in the second year's spring to head back to the copper mines. By the time summer rolled around, he’d brought out thousands of pounds of the metal with his cart.

Even now, at the start of the second year, things were getting worse by the day. Rain fell in heavy torrents that threatened to wash away anything not rooted or properly drained.

The only good thing was that it was sunny at the same time, which allowed him to work in the rain without worry of hypothermia.

Matt intended to try and push to the fourth year, and knew from Luna and Kurt's training that the seasons would be untenable for mundane production methods.

He needed magic.

Magic that as a Tier 0, he had no way to create.

All living life might make mana in small amounts, but without an active spirit, he couldn’t control it, or even create the runes in an item's spirit. Tier 0 items didn’t even have spirits to carve into.

It made his plans hard, but not impossible.

He needed copper… many tons of the stuff.

Matt knew what was coming, and he had a plan to exploit the very monsters Minkalla would send at him.

***

Susanne pulled her tepee behind her as she trudged through the tall grass.

It was summer, and the weather was hot, but she had been on the move from day one. Always traveling from the day she created her tepee and sled.

The sled and tepee's light construction allowed her to use the fabric of the tepee as a bed by stretching it over the sled’s frame. She had built the sled to to carry her gear along with her, and the extra functionality only worked to her benefit.

She was glad that she had started migrating in the first year, as this body was not used to the physical punishment she put it through on a daily basis. If she had been sedentary during that time, the physical exertion would have killed her already, but her body was as firm as her will after a year of hard work.

It was a good thing, as the summer was brutally hot, with not a drop of water falling from the sky.

She had wintered in the south, where the weather was warmer, if not comfortable. She intended to do the opposite for the summer.

With even just two weeks of travel, she already noticed a difference in temperature, and the grass was greener, meaning more water.

Averaging eighteen miles a day was brutal, but she endured.

You don't forge anything without pain.

Two weeks later, when she reached a small pond, she smiled.

The perfect spot to resupply while she roamed the surrounding areas for food and resources.

***

Matt cursed as he broke a part of the clay mold, and saw the copper rune inside was misshapen.

His entire plan to survive into the fourth year depended on magic.

This body might be Tier 0, but Matt was still a skilled enchanter.

It was just that his tools were lacking.

Smashing the copper into a ball, he put it with the other bits to be remelted.

With a glance over to the side, he looked at the runes he had successfully created.

He was only halfway through what he needed at best, and he was already wanting another copper vein.

***

Liz looked out at the windy destruction that the fall was causing.

Any of the trees that had survived the summer were now being tossed around like matchsticks.

She was just glad that she had built her house into a large hill, as it was well stocked on food and water.

The time of rationing had come. The predators would return when the winds died down for the brutal winter, and they would then become her food.

***

Matt cursed as he checked his well.

The damn thing was drying out, which meant he needed to dig it deeper. Except with the winds roaring overhead, he was stuck inside. He really needed to be outside making sure that everything was tied down, but water was a more immediate concern.

Deciding that he could fill in one of his now partially empty store rooms, he could salvage the situation with a little hard work. The dirt would even come in handy when the next winter came, if his plan was to come to fruition.

While dirt would never be in short supply, he didn't want to waste it by just letting the wind take it.

***

Aster laughed in her head. Her second winter was ending, and the weather was growing worse by the day, despite it warming up.

From heavy snow, it was now raining every day, washing away her element and making things a uniform brown.

But she had succeeded.

That was all that mattered.

Even with a broken leg, she had survived the last three months. She couldn’t help but laugh at the futile efforts of the wolves that tried to eat her, and the weather that tried to kill her from exposure.

But it was now the spring of the third year, and that was all that mattered. She had, without a doubt, made it long enough to ensure that her reward was doubled.

In the end, it had been a stupid mistake that cost her the leg, and almost the trial.

Who decided that the wind should change when she was just feet away from lunging?

Well, Minkalla obviously. But still! That was beyond dumb, and her weeks of accumulated scent had caught the attention of the wolf she had been stalking.

Forced to move early, she had a less than perfect strike, but still won her fight despite that. In the end it was the beast's final, desperate lunge that snapped her leg at the knee.

The damage was irreversible and unhealable, forcing her to spend her last weeks carefully managing her food and searching for roots like some kind of rabbit.

But the rain had come; signifying the start of the third year.

She had succeeded in her trial, and could leave with both the doubled reward, which would empower her body with her Concept, and the bonuses to strength and proprioception from her actions in the last two plus years.

While they didn’t really help her as much as the more mental stats would have, she wasn’t planning to remain a backpack fox forever. The human body had been fun to test things out with, but now having tried it, she wanted one of her own.

With the knowledge that she had completed her task, Aster let her body succumb to the damage it had taken.

Just like that, she vanished.

***

Susanne stalked through the blistering heat and cursed.

She now knew why no one succeeded in making it past the third year.

The lake she had been hiking to had turned out to be dry. She had hoped that, like the second summer, it would be a watering hole, but it seemed like she would need to travel even further north.

Not a single drop remained, and the remains of the animals that had once lived in its depths were only bones.

Still, she wouldn’t just sit down and die.

Walking into dry forest, she trudged on, trying to find anything she could drink.

It had been days since she killed her last animal, and its blood had turned rancid the day before she could get here.

She was thirsty and her water was low, so she decided to abandon her sled and tepee for the time being. It was dead weight, and she needed to move faster if she was going to get far enough north before she ran completely out of her remaining water. She might be able to cover thirty miles for a few days if she traveled light, and pushed herself through most of the cooler night.

With her spear in one hand and gourd of water in the other, she started to lope forward.

Surrender was never an option.

***

Matt looked out at the falling snow with gaunt eyes.

He was nearly out of food, only had two pots of water left, and had no fuel to run his oven to even melt the snow that hadn’t stopped falling the last few days.

He had thought he would be able to survive until the fourth year, but the summer had been worse than he could have anticipated. Without the ability to grow crops or hunt anything, he had been forced to dip into his stores to survive, leaving him nothing for the winter.

He had thought with all of his preparation, he would be able to survive, but his Tier 0 body was failing.

Seeing movement, he gripped his spear and got to his feet.

If an animal came, he had a chance to make it if he could kill it and eat it.

He just needed to survive the fight.

Not that he had a good chance with how weak he was, but he refused to sit there if there was even the smallest chance.

As the snow moved again, Matt smiled.

It was no petty animal attacking him.

It was an ice elemental.

Minkalla wasn’t content with just making the weather swing between extremes, but also threw monsters at anyone who made it to the third winter, and it looked like Matt was facing elementals.

But this was exactly what Matt was hoping for, preparing for. A single monster was only good for a little food. This elemental was so much more.

Throwing himself at the creature, Matt refused to go down without a fight, without making all his preparations worthwhile.

His spear flashed and cut into the monster, but did little to hurt it, not that injuries were even what he was after.

Everything came down to this.

If his plan worked, he would have short bursts of mana absorbed by his formation to power his house, and more importantly, his garden.

Heat and light provided, one monster at a time.

As the wound on the monster healed and he retreated in a circle, Matt laughed, seeing the small light rune he created glowing with a weak light.

It flickered, but that told him everything he needed to know.

His formation had worked. His copper runes, hand-wrought and scraped together over months, functioned as they should despite no chance to test them. Runes could be made out of physical items instead of being carved into the spirit of an item but without mana of his own to test them he had to hope his runes were accurate enough to channel mana.

His preparations were sufficient, and everything worked.

Now, he just needed to whittle down the ice elemental and drain it of all the mana he could.

It was a shame that he couldn’t use the elemental as a battery, but that was accounted for.

Thrusting his spear forward once more, the steel bit into its glowing body and more mana came out. Over and over, Matt thrust and dodged.

It was a dance of life and death.

If he got injured, he was dead. Either his wounds would become infected, or he wouldn't be able to power his garden. If he failed to kill the ice elemental, and was killed in turn, he would be dead anyway, and it wouldn't matter. If his runes weren’t working properly inside his house, he was also dead.

Everything rested on this single moment, and Matt felt alive.

His body was tired and weak from the rations he had been forcing it to endure, but despite that, his heart pumped with vigor and his muscles thrummed with energy.

When the ice elemental fell for the final time, Matt thrust his spear through it in triumph.

He paused, hoping for the rush of essence to enter his body and start him on the path of cultivation, but nothing happened.

Nothing at all.

Luna had said that he wouldn’t get any cultivation no matter what, but he could still dream.

Cursing Minkalla and its stupid tests and rules, he went inside and checked on his garden. The runes were emitting a slow glow as the mana in the copper cables were finally used up, but he had proven his plan viable.

He could survive this winter.

***

Susanne trudged forward. Each step was excruciating, but she endured it all.

She missed her sword, but she had grown attached to the spear.

This far south, the ice wolves were weaker, but she wasn’t able to eat them, which severely limited how long she could last.

The final few rabbits she had wouldn't last her much longer, but she refused to give up despite her body failing her, even if her will was strong.

She had just wanted to see what monster spring would bring, but now that was a forlorn hope.

***

Liz laughed through cracked lips as the hurricane bore down on her, sending a wave of water down on her house.

The winter and its ice plants had been survivable with her hunkering down and avoiding their patrols, but the spring had broken her.

Well, it had broken her shelter, which was more important.

The Spring rains on their own would have been survivable, but the spring monsters were giant trees that acted like ravenous wolves, and hadn’t stopped sniffing her out.

That problem was compounded by the fact that the stronger winds had destroyed her retaining wall, and now her small surviving garden was flooded. With its destruction came the end of the last of her food.

Still, she succeeded in her mission, and that was all that mattered.

Now it was just about lasting as long as possible.

***

Matt smiled as the snow finally began to abate.

With his setup perfected as best he could, he wondered just how long he could last.