August did a mana-check before removing the piece of bone he’d been working on during the trip. He spent a little while planning out how to use the time and then went ahead, calling up [Etch]. He held the bone by the blade and began carving out where the handle would be, leaving a bit of a curve to keep the grip far away from the blade itself. He could wrap it in twine later, but for now, the long rounded handle would do. Boko wasn’t surprised at the task because he’d already done it about six separate times throughout the day, and each time the bone began to look far more like the saw it was going to become.

He’d left the blade and the teeth alone for now, aiming to get the overall shape down because it took less precision, and he could do it pretty quickly overall. He ran out of mana again and tucked the thing away in his inventory before spending the next ten minutes frantically attempting to catch up with Boko’s massive bamboo pile.

“That’s four hundred and seven lengths of bamboo,” August said once he’d finally managed the task. “We can either keep going for another hour or start heading back now—either way, this is going to last us for a while.”

“How long until we run out of light, do you think?” Boko said, turning to look up at the sky. “Must be one or two right now—two hours back and two hours to play with after that.”

“Sounds about right to me,” August said, “That’s two hours to get started on the ceiling for the undercover area—I doubt we’d get too much done in that time, but it’s a start.”

“You need somewhere to sleep as well,” Boko reminded. “Unless you think you can handle the new range you were talking about.”

“I’d forgotten about that,” August admitted, reaching up to rub at his neck. “Suppose I’ll just make a temporary lean-to out of bamboo near one of the pillars and sleep under that—shouldn’t take more than half an hour to make since I’ve got everything on hand.”

“Then let’s head back now so we don’t waste it,” Boko said, reaching down to pull his two spears out of the ground. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah,” August said, straightening up from his crouch. “Thanks for doing all the hard work there, Boko.”

“We were both working; it wasn’t just me,” Boko said, waving him off. “I’m just happy to get out and have an actual look around—hard to really grasp the situation until you can get a proper lay of the land.”

“Better or worse than you thought?” August asked as they left the bamboo behind. “The island, I mean.”

“Better, I think, it’s not barren or mostly sand,” Boko admitted, “I’d say that we need to clear out all of the experiments first, but after that, we’ve got a decent chance of living here, at least for a while.”

August nodded in agreement.

“I’d like to scout more of the island out because there are enough forests and hills that you can really see everything on this side,” Boko said, before gesturing up to their east, past the crater towards the massive cliff that was towering over everything else. “I really want to know what’s up there, though—but how we actually get over that chasm and up the cliff is another thing entirely.”

“The cliff is lower on the north side of the island, although it’s still way taller,” August said, eyeing where the crater had cut off their line of sight. “We could build a bridge; there’s more than enough bamboo for that.”

“Do you know how to do something like that?” Boko wondered.

“Vaguely, but I could probably build a test bridge between two supports down at our camp and unlock the blueprint for it,” August said, “We might need to get tricky, though, because I’m pretty sure you need access to both sides of the cliff to make something like that, and I’ve got no idea how to get to the other side without actually having the bridge first.”

“Could throw a rock over with a rope attached,” Boko said before humming. “Although anything heavy enough to stay up there under tension is probably too heavy to throw that far.”

“We could make a really long bamboo pole before tipping it over the gap,” August said, “Send one of the Efkini across with a rope, have it circle around a tree and come back?”

“Might work, depending on whether or not we can get the pole to stand up on its end in the first place,” Boko said, “It would have to be what, a hundred meters long? These things were starting to bend at around the fifteen-meter mark.”

“We could tie them together in stacks of three, two on the bottom, one on top, like a little pyramid,” August frowned, “That would give it some structure, but the weight would be three times as heavy.”

“What about using a bunch of guides on our side that get taller the closer to the edge of the cliff,” Boko said, “We put a fork on the top to trap the bamboo inside, and then we could just push it across the gap. The guides would lever it up into the air for us; we might be able to get enough height that way to avoid the bamboo bending downwards before it gets across.”

August considered the idea for a moment, trying to picture the long pole being fed through a series of guides, the entire thing slowly pushing across the length of the chasm—it might actually work, but it wasn’t like they were in a position to test it anytime soon.

“That seems easier than trying to control a flailing bamboo pole that’s a hundred meters tall,” August admitted, “Who knows, by the time we actually get around to something like that, we might have the tools to figure out an easier way.”

“Catapults,” Boko said, clicking his fingers together. “We’ll fling a bunch of Otrogon over the gap with ropes attached to them.”

“It’s foolproof,” August said, amused. “What could possibly go wrong?”