[NR] It Shouldn't Do That - Chapter 579 (Patreon)

First order of business for the trio, what should Rosha and Courtney be looking for to improve the clearing? Since the majority of adventuring would be done by them, they’re the ones that need to know. Not that Jason knows exactly what they need.

They will definitely need to play it by ear as they go. A good example is stone. Jason would love to have an unlimited supply of equal sized stone blocks. That would make things so easy.

Except, where are they even supposed to source something like that? Rosha and Courtney can certainly pick up any rocks appropriate for the task. Right up until they fill up their storage space or more likely, reach the limits of their strength. They aren’t quite at the level of being able to lift a mountain or anything of the like.

So, collecting stones meant to be used as general construction material was quite unwise all around. Sure, they would still collect any truly special stones and all the gems they could get their hands on, but a pallet of white marble isn’t going to be showing up with them after their next trip. That means that to get a decent stone supply, they’d have to wait for a decent place to quarry some to show up next to the clearing.

And of course, the same sort of arguments can be made for wood. Though that is obviously a lot simpler for them to gather. While you can find almost any biome in the Deep Wilds, forests are the most common, hands down.

That left the duo the laborious task of finding the rare and mysterious. Not that it is hard to find them in the first place. Rather, the problem is in gathering them in the first place. Rare and mysterious items don’t exactly have clear guidelines on how to harvest and preserve.

There is some general stuff like keeping any plant as whole as possible, with a bit of dirt still on the roots if possible. Except when dealing with mystical nonsense, normal steps don’t always work. Either way, that left Jason with the equally hard task of figuring out what to do with the nonsense.

Though speaking of Jason, the group decides which buildings should be built when. Not just because some things will be needed before others. After all, until they have ore to smelt, making a building for smithing isn’t a priority. But also because those built later will automatically be built better since he just got a skill for it.

Such considerations pushed the blacksmith shop and especially the greenhouse way to the back of the line. A place for blacksmithing, even if they get some ore right now, should be built to the highest standard. If only because their primary building material is wood, which has a tendency to catch fire if you aren’t careful. As for the greenhouse? Well, it uses pre-made glass panes, which in theory makes everything easier.

Except for one little quirk of the System, that in their situation is less than favorable. The glass panes are counted as a finished product by the System in the same way stuff like a bow string is its own item. That means when using his construction skill, the System won’t warp the glass pane to fit better. Everything has to be on the frame’s side. So Jason has to build to tighter tolerances on the greenhouse on a scale beyond anything else he will have done till then.

There is only so much someone who is completely new to woodworking can manage and so those two buildings occupy the end of the line to the point that they’re letting any other buildings that show to go in front of them. Though to be fair, the building for all their smithing needs is more held up because they would prefer to make it out of stone, if possible.

After that is all decided, they get into a more delicate subject. How often will Jason get a chance to go adventuring? In the short term, he certainly doesn’t need to, but eventually he will at least want to go and explore some. More to the point, how long should Courtney and Rosha stay out when exploring? With the way the Deep Wilds works, they could travel in a straight line and end up halfway across the world, in the kingdom on the other side of the one they’re currently dealing with, or literally back where they started.

In fact, going by the stories Courtney had gathered, Jason is pretty sure that at most the trip back to the clearing will only ever take the number of days they were out. Though equally possible, it takes even less days. The endless possibilities of the Deep Wilds shifting them closer to home, with their connection acting like a rubber band connecting them to the clearing. Because that was the one thing that really stood out. The longer the trip and the less people involved, the more likely it was that the trip back would be much shorter than expected.

So Rosha and Courtney have that on their side with one caveat. One nasty little bit of “this shouldn’t be how it works” information that Rosha actually figured out when going over the many stories. If you are out on a long journey and have some critical supply you can’t go without, the more likely it is you’ll need to take the full time to get back, especially if taking that long will have you running out of said supply.

It shouldn’t do that. The Deep Wilds is not sapient, sentient, or even connected enough to be a single thing beyond all being connected by the same warped space. However, as the test to claim land and other such things show, there is something innate to the Deep Wilds that tests and pulls at a person to and beyond the point of breaking them. For instance, while known in NeoRealm proper, the number one place for people to be corrupted by a Wendigo spirit is in the Deep Wilds.