Day 58

I made it home in one piece, still dark out thankfully, and held the door for Lupe who barreled in 30 seconds after I got home, almost rolling to a stop inside. I chuckled to myself and closed the door. I barred it shut and grabbed a bowl of pulled meat and dug in, downing a couple of glasses of water and one glass of the broth, chilled in a snow pile. It was a pretty good drink cold and actually tasted like beer. I was happy with the results of my experiment, and knocked back a whole other glass, before saving some for tomorrow. I grabbed some more dragon meat and snake meat, increasing the ratio from 75/25 to 60/40 and filled it to the brim with snow, and with all my daily tasks done, I went to bed, entering a meditative sleep, and felt rather calm.

I slept for a while, sleeping in and waking up bleary-eyed. Lupe was just as tired, and when I got up, hopped back in bed and curled up in the center, clearly still tired from yesterdays romp out. I went through my usual routine, breakfast, cold water, adding logs, and today, cutting down a tree for the fire. It didn't take to long, the hardest part was not trying to quickly cut through everything with the Manaphage, and instead use the magic imbued saw I had made. Sure it might have felt faster to cut with the Manaphage, but I would have removed a bunch more material.

I was done cutting and carving up the wood when Lupe finally got up and pushed open the door with his snout, and looked at me working, before curling up in a sunny spot and lying down. I rubbed his head a little and started bringing all the wood in, the sun a quarter of the way above me when I was done. I nodded to myself and quickly made some jerky preserves from the pulled dragon and snake meat, and shoved that in a clean bag. I placed the poisonous grass plants in the plastic bottle in the little dangerous chemicals shed I had made a while ago. Seeing that the grass had started to wilt and change colors to a more opaque green, I felt interested in what the grass would do, besides the general use of being poisonous to me, and Lupe. I screwed off the top, pointing it away from myself and shoved a finger of the Manaphage in, willing it to dry the rest of the grass, and threw a couple of clean pebbles in, before shaking it up with the rocks.

The grass powderized quickly enough, leaving green dust floating in the bottle, and I stopped shaking after a bit. I shoved some snow in, and soon had a bottle of neon green water, my tongue filled with the taste of bitter almonds and that sickly sweet taste. I found myself scraping my tongue with my teeth, and placed the bottle in containment. I washed my hands off, designating the area around the shed off-limits too, with a couple of sticks and repeatedly pointing no at it with Lupe. Soon enough I entered the forest.

I entered at a light jog, before breaking into a full sprint and Lupe followed close enough behind barking and yipping with joy as we flew. We soon made it to our spot with the hole to several layers deep and passed by. We took a break after an hour or two of running, the sun still only a third above me, and took a break. I climbed a tree and looked out all around me, the treetops swaying in a soft wind mesmerizing for a second before I spotted the sharp decline in the treetops further into the forest. I assumed I was going the right way and climbed back down after marking the proper direction. I noticed Lupe was ready to run and started forward, the sinking tides of trees ahead awaiting us.

We ran for 12ish minutes, eventually coming to the clear delineation between treelines and found that it was because this level of the forest came to a gradual stop, the layer thinning out until it was only an inch thick of loosely packed roots, with a ton of give to them. I placed Lupe in an empty satchel, not wanting him to fall into the many small holes between layers, and soon found a giant pillar of rock sticking out, similar to the one I always used in the clearing and found that it too had a similar path up to it, but much less defined by tracings of horns and more roots intercepting it. I climbed down the path around the rock, finding it clearly lead into the layer below, but stopped, finding that I was now on a decently-lit level, the cracks and spacing above me filtering out not too much light.

I set Lupe down and started forward, Lupe happily following along, and after an hour of walking, we made it to the strangest sight. The whole level above us ended, creating a massive edge that seemed to curve in on itself before disappearing out of sight. We stopped in amazement and found that this level was much livelier, and filled with actual greenery and that the temperature here was a lot milder than the frozen area... around the mountain... which would have higher winds and snowfall because of where it is. I just realized that I might be in a temperate region of this world, and it was just by the mountain that I had snow, since the further I got, the less and less I saw snow, and felt warmer and moister air. It felt muggy and wet here, at least compared to the dry cold mountainside.

I climbed a tree, wanting to get a lay of the land, and found the trees here were leveling out into a uniform height again and continued that way for a while. I climbed back down shaking my head. I was in a more jungley biome now, and I found flourishing plant life, and vegetables I hoped. We weren't tired but Lupe and I seemed to agree that before adventuring out into this new milder zone, we should probably make a small campsite, or at least an outpost of sorts to settle down in for future rendezvous and trips down to here, and I got to work cutting down one of the thicker trees, ready to make a nice little one-room hut or maybe some sort of treehouse, first though, I'd need many planks of wood.