Chapter Forty-Five: Good Times (Patreon)

In my state of serenity, I start wandering down the hill towards the stream. I look at my surroundings and notice that they are ever so slightly different from before. The world around me has a myriad facets which I’ve never really paid attention to. I can see the links between different things more easily. I admire how the play of light over the earth not far from my feet is causing the insects to move in a certain pattern. I watch as some pellets left by a small animal, probably last night I note absently, are clearly food for these same insects and are being swiftly taken apart and carried back, presumably to their nest.

I have to focus to see these connections, and they take time to see and decipher...but it’s a difference to the way I viewed the world before, if only a minuscule one. I check my status screen and yep, I’m down by twelve percent Energy storage. It’s changed from before when it used to take fifteen percent to increase a stat, but maybe that’s because it takes more Energy per percentage point rather than taking less Energy to increase the stat itself.

What I do notice is that the Energy debt is finally showing movement: that area on my status screen now shows a gain of one percent towards my Energy debt. One percent, in a day. And my Energy store hasn’t changed except to go down by twelve percent, now sitting at twenty-nine percent.

On the one hand, it’s good news – if I dedicated all my Energy to the debt, I’d be finished with it in less than a hundred days, just based on Energy absorption. Assuming that creatures killed also count towards it, I’d be done in even less time. I’m fairly confident that the Energy gained from kills also counts given that in the letter he left me, Nicholas seemed quite keen for me to go hunting.

If I focused all my Energy towards paying off the debt, though, this little experiment has proven that I wouldn’t make any steps towards improving myself. Sure, I could keep gaining stat points until my Energy store runs out, and then afterwards I could gain even more if I worked hard enough, but… I don’t think that’s the most efficient way of doing things.

If working in the corporate world has taught me nothing else, it’s that money makes money. Those who have money can invest it in places which offer a return on investment with little effort on their parts. Those without money have to leverage their own time and effort for gain, which limits their earning capacity. I’m not saying that this is the same story – I can’t send Energy out to earn more Energy, but the higher level I am, the more powerful creatures I can kill; the more Energy I can earn.

Though actually, that raises the question: can I send Energy out to earn more Energy – through my Bound? I mean, if I Dominated or Tamed five different creatures and sent them out to kill others, would I get any Energy from that? Perhaps something to test later when I have more Bound. More combat-capable Bound, that is.

Another factor of my decision about earning Energy for my passage to Nicholas’s world is the hope that once I’m more powerful and durable, I’ll be able to head into the more Energy-dense areas. That should mean that even my hourly Energy absorption rate will go up. Sure, I’m presuming that the Energy debt is a static quantity, rather than a percentage of my effort. I don’t have any proof for that – won’t, until I can earn enough Energy to raise the Energy accumulated towards my debt at a significantly faster rate than currently – but it makes logical sense to me.

Some evidence I have that supports my thoughts is that the fact that the percentage cost of raising a stat point has dropped since levelling up. Conversely, the amount of Energy required to increase the percentage of my Energy store has risen – relatively easily noticed when calculating how many percentage points I gain just from daily absorption compared to the past. Those two facts put together indicate to me that some things under this system require a static quantity of energy rather than a relative percentage.

So, to summarise, although I could complete the Energy debt in a hundred days as I am now, potentially in the future I could complete it in fifty days, or maybe even less. So, I’ll need to take a balanced approach – not completing it too soon when it will just put a brake on my progress, but not leaving it too late either as that could be a...terminal mistake. It does mean I need to pay a little more attention to how long has passed – maybe making marks on a piece of wood I keep in my Inventory will be the best solution.

Deciding to do my figuring out somewhere safer than just next to the river, I walk back up the hill, picking up a long stick as I spot one on my way. Settling next to the the cave mouth again in the sun, I pull out my knife. Now, how many notches should I make, I ask myself.

I’m pretty sure about two weeks has gone by. Let’s see… The day I arrived and was attacked by the bird. The day after with the crocodile things. The day after and the raptorcat panic-fest. I think the killer-chickens was the next day – oh yeah, that was when I was attacked by that snake-millipede thing, good times...I scratch my head for a moment. What happened next?

Oh, of course – the wolvezard and Kalanthia. Or was that the same day as the chickens? I can’t remember… Then I’ve looked after Lathani twice, and I think there were three days between the baby-sitting days. Oh, and the day I took off. And the day I levelled up… Plus this is the second day since I last looked after Lathani. I count up the days. So...twelve days? Maybe thirteen, maybe twelve? Ah, I’ll go with fourteen – I’d rather risk being a little early with my debt than a little late…

Conclusions reached, plans made, and my first efforts to record how long I’ve survived so far done, I decide to continue with my axe. Looking down at the two halves thoughtfully, I debate with myself on what to do next. With the blade now made, I know how big I need to make the hole. How to do it is a different question.

Looking at the more prepared haft, I thoughtfully consider the quickest and most effective way of making a hole. I don’t have a drill or a chisel. I could use one of the flint flakes from my knapping as a chisel and a rock as a hammer, but I don’t think that would be the most effective, or not at first, anyway. Especially since the flint would be more likely to just chip and break.

In the end, I decide to use fire. It’s easy enough since I’ve already got one burning almost twenty-four/seven in my fireplace. Actually, thinking about that, I ought to go and collect some dead branches to keep it going overnight… I’ll do that after this. I probably should have done that while I was down by the river instead of being mesmerized by the connections of nature, but too late now.

Heading back into my cave, I put the tip of my knife in the fire. I don’t stay holding it as the fire is hot enough to soon burn my hands, but after wrapping my right hand with a cloth, I take the knife out of the fire once it’s glowing a bit.

Pressing the hot metal into the middle of the space where I want to make the hole, I smile when I see a little smoke start to rise. The wood is dense enough that it doesn’t catch light; that’s fortunate as it’s not my intention to send all my work up in smoke. Instead, the smouldering helps me to carve out wood more quickly and easily than otherwise.

Once the knife cools down, I return it to the fire, only to repeat the technique. It’s a slow process still: the burning helps, but isn’t anywhere near as effective as even a crude stone drill, let alone a modern electric drill. Still, I keep at it, taking breaks every so often to stretch my limbs and make some more bark-fibre cord – my current go-to for busy-work.

By the time the sun is almost touching the horizon, I’m making pretty good inroads, but I take a break to go and collect some firewood. I can continue doing this in my cave once darkness falls properly, after all.

Putting thoughts into action, I quickly venture into the forest line to scour it for dead wood. Fortunately, being a forest, there’s plenty of that around. It helps that it doesn’t seem to have rained for a while as everything is very dry. I keep going until almost full dark follows. When something swoops past me, barely seen in the dusk that’s more dark than twilight, I jump and decide to head back.

Knowing all the other things that are around in this forest, I’d rather not chance my arm – or head – by wandering around in the domain of nocturnal creatures. My eyesight has improved a little with my Constitution stat, but not enough to make me an advert for eating carrots and definitely not enough to compete with a creature who makes the night their hunting time.

Hurrying home, I keep a sharp eye – and ear, and every other sense – out for anything that might consider me a little snack to start the evening with. Getting home, I head into the alcove and prod the smouldering embers in the fireplace back into flame. Carefully feeding the fire with fuel and blowing to ensure it gets enough oxygen, I soon have a merry blaze flickering in the centre of the clay chimney.

With its light, I start sorting out the firewood I collected, piling the items into three different categories: light, medium, and heavy. That way, I should be able to easily lay my hands on whatever the fire needs to keep going. Of course, that all takes a fair amount of time and by the point that I’m finished, I don’t really feel like continuing with the axe haft. Instead, I just lie back in my bed after having a dinner of stew and think.

If knowledge stones create new neural links and give access to new memories, would it help to go through those memories? Reinforce the links? Could that actually be a way of increasing Intelligence? Surely yes in that creating and reinforcing neural links is generally an indication of intelligence, and nothing of this System so far indicates to me that it works against what scientists on Earth already know; quite the opposite.

So maybe if I dedicate a bit of time to going through all the information I’ve learned from the knowledge stones, as well as perhaps things I learnt at school and at work that might be relevant to my life now, I could increase my Intelligence stat? It’s worth a try, at least, and so I get to work.

I fall asleep still going through memories, though my cataloging has shifted from just going through useful memories to playing a reel of the highlights in my history. It feels good and means I slip into an easy sleep full of pleasant, if nostalgic, dreams.