“New stats added to status: +2 Endurance, +1 Strength”
This caused Gar to immediately sit up; he had gained stats when and how? This defiantly hadn’t been there when he went to sleep; well Gar didn’t think it had. Could he gain stats from doing things, it would make some sense he had pushed himself physically yesterday, particularly endurance and strength. He would have to make a study of his status later and see if he could test this theory.
Before all that Gar hadn’t eaten in several days now and he was hungry, so he set to the things that needed doing to prepare some food. First he found a spot near the cliff wall that was clear grass and moss he then set up a circle of stones to contain the fire, when gathering the stones he found a large relatively flat one which he set off to one side from the fire area. He then gathered sticks from the trees, there wasn’t much he could gather but he hoped it would be enough to be able to cook breakfast. Going over to his bag he took the conrex from where they had been stored. They weren’t the freshest now, but he hoped if he cooked them well they would be okay for eating. Taking them over to the flat rock he laid one upon it, using his big knife he cut off one of the claws, using a scrap of leather from his bag he wrapped the back end of the claw giving him a smaller but very sharp knife. Taking his new knife Gar cut a chunk of conrex hair, putting the hair in his pocket as he went back to his bag and started searching through it. He had dropped several flint stones in there from the river bank after crossing. Now they were nowhere to be seen. After several minutes of trying to move things around and find them Gar gave up, undid the big flap and just tipped everything out onto the floor watching to make sure nothing rolled away. He had planned to go through that lot anyway so now it had just been moved up the list, spreading everything out Gar was able to find a couple of fist sized flint stones, with the flint, conrex hair and sticks, he built and started a fire in his fire pit. Letting that get going Gar returned to the conrex on the stone.
Using the claw knife he finished removing the hair of the conrex, setting that to one side, he removed the legs, and the other large claw. He repeated this process with two more of the conrex bodies leaving one, to look at later the six legs where skewered and put over the fire to cook. Gar had been carful but between inexperienced with the task and a set of hands that he wasn’t used to, the relatively simple task of removing the legs had left him in quite a mess. It was only now occurring to him he didn’t have water here, he would have to climb down to get some. For the time being he just wiped his hands on the grass and moss, which got rid of the worst of it. He sat down next to the fire and watched his leg skewers cook. He knew there were things he could be getting on with but he was going to take this time to relax and do the simple task of cooking which in this case just meant watching the meat in the fire.
For something had occurred to him in the back of his mind over the last few days, he had seen no signs of civilisation and no way out, he was probably stuck in this cenote for a while, he couldn’t be going all out, all the time. He needed to take the opportunities like now when doing simple things to relax. So Gar sat and watched the meat in the fire, turning them occasionally as they browned
“New skill acquired Cooking level 1”
That was a pleasant surprise, Gar suspected that focusing on one specific thing was a big help to getting or improving a skill. He didn’t overthink it though and just sat and watched the meat cook; once it was nicely browned he pulled it of the fire, biting it of the skewer. Gar was shortly polishing of all six conrex legs. The meat was a bit greasy and not much flavour but it filled his belly so he was happy. He had to wipe his hands on the moss again to deal with the grease; he really needed some water to wash with and to drink.
He had one task to do though before he could go to the river to get water. So he collected a rope from his pile of stuff. He lowered an end of the rope down to the ground then walked back to the closest tree so the rope reached from the ground below to the tree, then grabbed that spot on the rope put a quick twist and a knot in it to mark the spot. Laying the rope out he doubled it over at the knot so he had double that length, then he added a couple of meters and cut the rope, chucking the excess back on the pile. He took the length undid the knot, laid it out, folded it in half and tied a new knot to mark the middle. He then put the rope round the tree so that knot was round the tree and both ends where laid out coming the same direction away from the tree but on opposite sides of it. Then going along its length he tied a sturdy stick to both sides about every half a meter. Once done Gar dropped it over the edge and saw there was just a bit of excess rope on the floor, he was happy with his new rope ladder.
Grabbing the bucket from the pile, his spear from where he left it, he slung the spear over his back and held the bucket in his hand. When he reached the top of his knew ladder he stopped, he was still scared, he had found an area of somewhat safety and he had to leave it again. He did not want to do that but he knew he must, he needed water. Taking a deep breath to gather himself Gar looked out into the forest bellow. This reminded him there was something he could do that might make things at least a bit safer, he looked out over the forest bellow again but this time with mana site and observe activated. Gar spent the next while slowly looking over everything he could see. Which admittedly wasn’t much the trees where still taller than where he was and the trunks and braces blocked much of the view, mana sight wasn’t much better, he could see lots of new things with it flows and concentrations of different colours of mana but he had not had time to investigate this ability and didn’t know what he was seeing meant. Turning the ability and skill off Gar wasn’t sure if that had made him feel any better or not, but he couldn’t keep putting it off he needed water and the river was the only source he knew of, so with the bucket in hand and spear slung over his back he started to climb down his rope ladder. While certainly easier than climbing the rock face, a rope ladder particularly one with the bottom not fixed was not a simple thing to climb, Gar made a mental note to fix the bottom of the ladder down soon.
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Not letting anything else distract him from his journey Gar set off at a steady pace towards the river, he activated observe as he walked but kept mana site off, the colours where to distracting when not looking for something specific. For the first time since the bear Gar actually was enjoying himself, with observe active as he walked, things seemed cleaner than ever before and things he didn’t think he would notice seemed to just pop out at him, like he saw some nuts in several trees and what looked like some kind of fruit in another. There were also signs of small animals in the trees and underbrush, it surprised him a little that he saw no signs of birds but he figured he probably just didn’t know enough to spot them. Overall it was a rather pleasant walk to the river. The bucket was placed down on the river bank and Gar stood in the shallows and washed himself, getting the grease and blood from his hands before giving the rest of his boy a once over. It was only now with observe left active that he took note of the abundance of fish, they weren’t particularly big but there were quite a lot of them in the shallows, leaving them be and now much cleaner, Gar grabbed the bucket scooped up some water and took a drink. He didn’t hang around any longer; having drunk his fill he refilled the bucket and set off back it was a slower trip back to avoid spills but just as uneventful.
Reaching the ladder Gar knew he was going to have to fix the base or he had no chance of getting this water up he had already splashed himself just carrying it from the river. Putting the bucket down he went and found two Y shaped branches about as thick as his finger, he broke the tail of so they looked more like a V, Cut one side shorter and sharpened the longer end, Then tying loops in the ends of the rope such that the loops where against the floor when the ladder is pulled tight, he turned the V over and putting the sharp end through the loop then into the ground hammering it in with the butt of his knife, they were crude but effective pegs. Standing on the bottom rung of the ladder it felt much better, much more stable, not perfect but better than the climb down, jumping off he grabbed his bucket and started to climb, it was slow going and he did lose a little water but was able to get up with a mostly full bucket. Tipping the water carefully into his two sauce pans Gar then drank the rest, turned around and headed back to the river to refill his bucket; it was a pain but would hopefully mean he was set for water for the rest of the day. The second trip went just as smoothly as the first and it wasn’t long before Gar was back.
Having sufficient water for the day he had two options for what to do next; either it was find some food or organise his equipment. He felt finding food was probably the correct choice, but he rationalised sorting his equipment would let him sort shelter sooner and that was also a priority it also meant he could stay in his place of perceived safety for a while longer. Decision made he started straight away, first he started by laying everything out so he could see what he had;
- Leather backpack, poor condition
- Stick sled
- 2, 100m ropes
- 20m rope
- 5ish m length of rope
- Improvised spear (knife tied to stick)
- Wooden bucket
- Conrex claw knife
- 2, Saucepans
- Frying pan
- 4, Flint stones
- Claw hammer head
- Ball hammer head
- 2, medium sized knives
- Large saw
- Saw
- Axe head
- Pickaxe head
- Shovel head
- 2, different size wood augers
- 10, various wood chisels
- Sledgehammer head
- 2, Stone chisels
- 3, Hacksaw blades
- 5, burlap sacks
- 5m/6m of cloth
- 3, Large leather sheets
- Metal tongs
- Whetstone
- 3, metal wedges
- 3, Files various grades
- 25m Wire
- Snips
- Pliers
- Tin cup
- 5, Needles
- 10 rolls of threads
He had managed to fit a lot in that bag, no wonder it was so heavy, but he hadn’t known what he would need and he wanted as much stuff as possible that might be useful or he could sell as they hadn’t offered any money. To make a lot of this stuff useful they were going to have to be given handles, he had removed them to save weight and space but now it seemed they were going to have to be replaced. He had really hoped to just be able to sell the metal parts. He grabbed his cup and filled it with water from the saucepan and took a drink.
He had no other choice but to explore the forest, both for wood to make handles with and hopefully to gather some food. Dropping his now empty cup he grabbed his bag added the wire, the snips, one of the short lengths of rope, the conrex knife, and the burlap sacks to it. Slung it over his back while picking up his spear and went back down the ladder to the forest. Moving slowly now he was in the forest he activated observe, remembering several trees of interest on his water runs he starts along the same route. He moves slowly to not make too much noise and to let him look over everything picked out by observe as he passed.
He came to a tree that had some kind of hard nuts scattered around the base and he can see green fleshy pods up in the branches. Observe let him see that several of both the nuts and the pods had been chewed on by something. Taking this as a good sign Gar took one of the sacks and started collecting any intact looking nuts on the ground, he had to search quite far because the tree had a large canopy but was able to get a couple of kilos of nuts. Looking up at the fleshy pods Gar decided they were worth a try as well so leaving all but his knife on the ground he climbed the tree to pick, cut, and shake free a number of the pods. It didn’t take long before Gar was back on the ground gathering the pods he had dropped, into the sack he then tied off the sack and put it in his backpack.