I spend half of the day making trays and loading them up with charcoal, until after 7 trays, I've finally got all the charcoal loaded up. Tomorrow, I'll be getting more food, and removing a rge amount of the charcoal. I've also started to amass a det sized pile of used crystals. While I still have plenty of them, if I keep going at this rate, I'll o sider taking more crystals from around the cave here.
I checked the first batch of test roots, and sadly, it seems that some of them have started to go bad. They've lost their rigidity, and have gained a bad smell. I throw them onto a tray of charcoal, to dispose of outside tomorrow. To try to reduce waste iure, I'll only gather 15 days worth of food I think.
For the rest of today though, I spend my time near my campfire. I'm also getting low on fuel for it, so tomorrow is going to be quite the long day outside. As I go to sleep today, I check my stats.
The day, I eat the st of my roots, put the st of the wood on the campfire, grab the first of the 7 trays, and head out to where I harvest the roots. On the way, I check the bucket for water, and am disappoio see that I haven't gathered a. It's still dark outside, although not quite as dark as the cave with the rge moon refleg a lot of light. When I reach the clearing with the harvestable roots, I begin spreading the charcoal, and carefully pulling up the rooted pnts, leaving some to seed and regrow, if that even is how they reproduce.
I haul back what I estimate is about 15 days worth of roots with me, and judging from the remaining pnts in the clearing, I only probably harvest from here one more time, so I'll o try to find somewhere else to harvest from, or find a new food source. One problem at a time though. For now I o haul the rest of this charcoal out of the cave.
With each tray of charcoal that I haul out of the cave, I be sure to pile the tray back up with any loose wood on my way back from the clearing, in this way I end up with a det amount of wood again by the time the charcoal is removed. I still want to gather more, but at least I felt like I roductive this way.
Now I grab my axe and head back outside. What I'd like is if I could cut down a tree. That would provide me with plenty of wood. Obviously though, a rge tree would be impossible. I'm just an imp after all. I might be bigger than a normal imp, but I'm still pretty small. I'd estimate between two and three feet tall. So instead, I'm going to look for a smaller tree. Maybe a few years old, that I could hopefully chop down and break down into wood without the size being so overwhelming that I 't utilize it.
As I look for a suitable tree, I also take the opportunity to look for a new source of either the root pnts, or potentially a new food source. Unfortunately, I don't find any new pnts that would be useful. I remember from Earth that alpine climates teo have pretty nt growth though, so I guess it's not that surprising. Maybe instead I should be surprised that I found any substantial pnts at all.
I do find a suitable tree after a little while, shortly after the sun rises, and prepare myself to begin the process of cutting it down. I swing my axe up against it, and chip off some of the bark, revealing the wood beh, and cutting into it a little. I bring my axe bad swing into it again, but this time, it feels like I hit something much harder than wood, and part of the axe head cracks. Damn. What happehis time. The first thing I do is spend some mana fixing the axe head. I only have to use 8 mana to fix it.
I ihe wood. It looks normal. I feel it. It feels like regur wood. I go over ter tree, and swing my axe into it. Much like the smaller tree, the first swing knocks away some bark and cuts into the wood a little. I swing with a little less for the sed hit, to hopefully prevent the axe crag, and again, it feels like hitting a hard wall. I go back to the small tree, and try another swing. Still hard.
Why could I get a first swing into the tree, but not a sed one? Is it some kind of defense meism? By what meism though? Magic maybe? If it's magic, then why aren't the trees always that hard? Wouldn't that be better than only having it on sometimes? Maybe there is a restri on it. If I run out of mana, maybe trees use it too? If that's the case, maybe I wait it out? How long am I willing to wait it out though? I'll give it a little time to wait and see, but if after about 30 minutes I 't do anything, I o just go collect twigs like I'm used to.
Without anything else to do, I check my stats, and am surprised to see my mana has refilled. I'm a little fused, I thought it took about ten miee 1 mana, and it's only been about twenty minutes, and all eight mana has regeed. I grab a nearby rock, and use half my mana stone shaping, and begin ting. it only takes 41 seds tee a mana. That's signifitly faster than it took before. Is it because I'm on the surface, or because I've gained levels?
I wait around 30 minutes, and try cutting the tree again, and am disappointed, it's still too hard to chop. I relutly head back to the cave to return the axe, but before I go in, I spend some mana, then onside, I check my mana regen rate at various distances from the surface.
As I go deeper into the cave, I notice that my mana regen rate goes down. The question would be is it being underground in particur that slows my mana regeion, or is it a peculiarity of this particur cave. Potentially the crystals found lower down? I decide t up two crystals with me on my way back up after leaving my axe in my cave. I bring both ay, and a full crystal.
As I get close to the surface, the full crystal cracks. I stop to look at it, and as I observe it, the crystal hasn't just cracked. The crack isn't just spreading, but seemingly rapidly vaporizing the crystal. Thin bck fkes form and are blown out of the crack by the esg gas. I quickly drop the crystal, and observe it as it deteriorates into nothing. I check my status, and am gd to see I haven't lost any HP. So whatever gas was being released isn't very poisonous, toxic, or corrosive, if at all.
I check the empty crystal, or I should probably say the previously empty crystal. It now has a det glow to it. Not quite what would be sidered full yet, but close. I decide to retreat back down into the cave and leave the almost full crystal here for now. I don't want it to break too, at least not without a pn.
For the rest of today though, I feel like I've had enough surprises, so I just focus on gathering sticks and small branches, and bringing the bundles into the cave. Thankfully, there is no she of wood within this forest. By the end of the day, I've gathered enough wood to hopefully st me until my outing to gather roots. I'm doubly thankful as well as I return, because on the horizon I see a storm approag. Hopefully that means I'll get some water in my bucket soon.