It took all of yesterday, and part of today, but I got as much as I reasonably could using a shovel. The floor is quite uneven, so getting all of it is basically impossible, so I'll settle for it being mostly . The idea of repaving the area es to mind, but for now I don't know when or if the goblins will turn up again, so having something obvious like that would worry me.
Speaking of the goblins, I am worried about being prepared for whehey arrive . I don't know the exaumber of days between their st visit and now, but it was more than 30 days. That said, they could e baorrow. So, although I hate to say it, I actually think I should try to make a better on, and a shield. I want a detly sized shield as well. Those fireballs seem like they do a lot of damage, but they don't seem to really do much to rock, so I'd like to make a shield of stone, and if I'm lucky, I intercept a fireball with it. It could save my life. I'm actually quite fident that if I made it into my room, I could seal it off, and live there for a while, but what if they could get in somehow? Plus, it would be o have in case of some other enemy I o fight.
I start tinkering with designs, whifortunately, due to my cws, are limited. As far as a shield goes, I e up with a rge buckler design that I have to move my arm through to wield. As for a on, I'm not actually familiar with any bat styles, and I've found that although I wield a tool by gripping, it's slightly awkward. Ihough, I settle on a bded gauyle of on. It's basically the same as my own cws, but it's designed for even more damage. The long prongs on the gau are desigo puncture as deep as they with the full weight of the stone gau behind it. If it gets stuck, I just let go and slide out of it. While not perfect, I think I could probably one-shot a new goblin with it. If not at least leaving it so wounded as to be able to finish it off.
With my onry pleted, I make a stand to store it ohe room entrance, and then go to sleep.
Today, I think I'll explore a bit outside to try to find a new source of food, be it more roots, or something new. I decide to take my gau with me. I won't be gathering wood while I search, and I'll make a little bit further of a trip. I'll stay close enough that I won't get lost, but I've already searched a lot of the nearby woods, so I feel like expl further would be beneficial to finding new resources.
The first dire for exploration that is obvious to me, is to head downhill. Although the climate up here is alpine, normally as you ded a mountain, the climate shifts, and you get new kinds of pnts, and potentially animals. I've seen some bird like creatures at one point flying above, I haven't seen any other animals up this high, so maybe by desding the mountain, I'll find something.
I travel carefully down the mountain, keeping to ines that I easily navigate back up wheime to return es. As I desd, I do notice the air warming more, and the ground scatter of pnts begins to thi, slowing my travel. Eventually though, I reach a point of urn, a cliff. While the cliff itself isn't massively tall, it stretches quite some distance, and if I go down it, I doubt I'd easily get back up. Maybe on a different trip I'll attempt to navigate around it, but for now, I'll start making my trek back up the mountain.
While going back up, I grab a feles from two pnts that I'm seeing a lot of. One is a long stemmed pnt with many leaves brang off that stands at about my height. The other is a short, fl pnt, that when pulled has a long thick root.
When I get back to the cave, I've only spent a few hours out so far, so I set my pnt samples down by the entrance, and decide to head off in a dire opposite where I found the root clearing before.
As I travel along, the terrain bees more rocky and abrupt, and I am stantly having to slow down to navigate around rock outcroppings. After a while, I do spot something iing though. In the distance, I spot an animal. Only a little taller than me, jumping from rock to rock. It's odd how they jump though. It's not as if it is forcibly jumping, instead it seems to be a sllide through the air from rock to rock. The animal is fairly plump, with a long neck. After it nds on a particur rock, it lowers its neck down to the ground, as some of the ground clutter pnts befliding off to the rock.
It'll take me a little bit, but I want to see nts it was eating, so I navigate my way through the rocky area that I saw the animal, and make my way to where I roughly spotted it, and I eventually see nts it was eating. C the ground is a sprawling vi that crisscrosses itself between all these boulders, but where the animal was, the fl bulbs that sprout out are missing. I decide to pie for myself, and then head back to the cave.
Once I get back to the cave, I decide to start the process of testing the various pnts again before I go to sleep. I still have a few hours left for today, so while I wait to see if my skis to the pnts, I go out to gather more wood. After all, of all the things I use, wood doesn't go bad so the only cost of having more is ste space.
Thankfully, there weren't any adverse reas on my skin, at least for these pnts, by the m so the step is to test them on my mouth, o a time. While I wait on as from that, I figure I'll stay in the room and experiment with the crystals.
The first thing I want to try is to tou empty and full crystal's face to each other. I grab a few of each, and sit down at my desk. First, I try just toug two empty crystals together, as a trol. When nothing happens after a few seds, I move on to toug two full crystals of simir size. Again, nothing. So I finally put ay and a full crystal face to face. Although it doesn't initially seem to do anything, I notice the empty crystal starts to faintly gain light, and the full crystal dims slightly.
I mahem to a different portion of the desk, ahem in tact with each other, while I move on to aest. Before, these were using simir sized crystals, but what about different sizes? I again try ay rge crystal, with a small one. When nothing happens, I move on to a full rge crystal, and a full small crystal. Again, nothing. Then, a small empty crystal, and a full big crystal. Simir to the first test, it seems to very slowly start tain light in the small crystal, although the big crystal doesn't noticeably dim. Then I try a big empty crystal with a small full ohis time, I only really notice the small crystal dim, and don't notiy initial ges in the big crystal.
I set all three of these shifting brightness crystals on the desk where they're toug, to let them run like this while I go and perform my est. For this, I'll be returning to the point in the cave where the one crystal broke. For this experiment, I bring two full, and two empty crystals, one each big and small.
As I asd the cave, I hear a crack, ahe crystals down. The small full crystal begins deg and turning to that bck fky material, along with the gas flying off.
As I sit and wait, the crystal to crack is the full big crystal, although it's very quickly followed by the small empty crystal. Ohing I noticed is that I call the crystals full, but they get a bit brighter before they actually break, so they might be as full as they get in the cave, but they actually have a bit more capacity than that. Either way, it's then quite a long while before the st crystal breaks. Although it's a shame to have lost these crystals, I gained some insight into how they work through this test.
When I return, I check the desk crystals. All three pairs have equalized in brightness with their partner, but the actual light level depends on which size was full. For the rge full crystal with a small empty, it would be hard to tell that they both weren't full, where as the inverse could be said for the opposite pairing.
There will have to be further research done on the subject, but for now, it seems like the small crystals have quite a reduced capacity, but they all seem to have the same mana flux rate through their faces. Ser crystal seems to reach full charge much slower, but holds much more. Some day, I'd like to put actual o it, but for now, the most I do is speak in generalities.