After Noelani answered a few more questions and then everyone began to relax and eat.
The number of trees in the camp had increased after the dome’s size growth. The trees have also become fully grown and sprouted many more leaves and fruits, which allowed the camp members to fill themselves.
The green peaches were great for revitalizing and recovering the exhaustion from the day's work. There was an odd detail about them, they were seedless even though their corrupted counterparts have seeds.
This was something that perplexing at first, but people just accepted it as being part of the “mystical” nature of this place.
“You saw the sea?” Adam asked someone he was sitting close to when everyone was eating. His name is Raj.
“Yeah, we really are on an island. The fog was obscuring my vision, but I could see a faint outline of islands in the distance.” The man confirmed.
Adam remembers that Noelani was propagating information that everyone here was on an island, one piece of evidence for this besides Noelani herself, was in the orb space.
Looking around in the orb space one can tell that there were far-off clusters of orbs, but now there is also an eyewitness to the fact.
“I see, you also brought a number of stones back, right? How many?” Adam wondered.
“Our group got around 8. But it barely made a dent on the camp’s energy consumption, at least that’s how it seems.” Raj sighed.
He’s right, Noelani has been moving energy around, apparently, if you have ownership over several orbs, you can move energy between them.
Noelani has said that they need energy not only for the skill-to-facility conversion but also a need to ensure that, the newly added orbs by the new camp members, don’t turn off.
Even though the orbs are all turned on and are running inside a purifying dome, they could still turn off if their energy hits zero.
Because of the energy movement, it is even harder for people to figure out the whole picture of the camp’s energy situation. Except for Noelani of course.
“We also brought back a few plants that can be of use once they are grown again, it’s just unfortunate we can’t use appraisal facility on other things than the innate orb itself.” Raj continued.
“All our appraisal facilities are level 1, so that may change when it jumps one or two levels.” Adam shared his guess.
“Yeah, that sounds about right, I wonder if Noelani will get a hint about it, it would really be a useful tool,” Raj said.
Hearing what Raj said, Adam could not help but think how everyone was dependent on Noelani’s information.
Thinking about Noelani, Adam has slowly let his guard down in terms of being suspicious of her, one reason is that things have been moving too fast, it is only the second day everyone has been here after all, and things are changing constantly.
Another is that being part of a group, it is less likely for Noelani to try anything against everyone, otherwise, they would unite against her.
But the main reason, which is also the reason why everyone has silently consented for her to take the lead, is that the usefulness brought by her judgment and information has been vital for the entire camp.
Everyone is provided safety and food in this precarious situation which would have been a luxury without Noelani.
But there are still those who have their reservations….
Adam looked at the few domes that have not decided to join with Noelani’s subordinated domes.
Raj noticed where Adam was looking.
“These guys should already just join their orbs with the rest of us. They are taking advantage of our hard work by having the camp’s dome take the brunt of the fog’s corruption.” Raj complained.
Raj has a point; the camp’s dome has almost completely enveloped the individual purification domes after it has grown again from the added domes today.
Adam could guess that the cost of keeping up these domes is close to nothing.
“It can’t be helped; some people still want to keep their innate orb separate,” Adam said.
Truthfully, If Adam had the ability, he would prefer going off on his own, especially after learning about skill orbs and skill-to-facility conversion.
He still has a spare innate orb which gave him a sense of excitement about what he can accomplish with it in the future, there is also the replication ability which gave him more confidence. But for now, he is still learning many things while being in Noelani’s camp, so he has no plans to leave yet.
Who knows? He may even decide to just share that he can duplicate items. He has a few reservations though, one being is that he doesn’t intend to be subordinated to Noelani, especially when he can be independent on his own. Another reason is that he doesn’t trust Noelani all that much.
But right now, he does not have the confidence to go about surviving on his own and would rather leave things up for people that know what they’re doing.
“Now is not the time for that, without Noelani and her abilities, we all would be worse off,” Raj replied.
It is true, Noelani’s ability makes her the most knowledgeable person in the world.
Now that Adam thinks about abilities, his copying ability was also seen in the dream just like Noelani’s ability, or should it be called a skill like the skill orbs?
But anyways, Noelani’s hint skill is much better than his own skill, in fact, Noelani had gotten so much different information so early and quickly that her hint skill is likely a higher level than his own.
‘it’s just … why did she say she awakened an orb?’ Adam thought.
In the dream, Adam’s ability did start off as an orb shape, but what it became is something that could not really be described as a mere orb.
Two weeks passed.
Adam is walking in the forest.
It is morning time and the fog receded because of the bright yellow clouds.
In his left hand is a basket made up of tree bark and other plants which were found and brought back to the camp when others scavenged the island.
The basket had a few of the corrupted green peaches and other plants.
His right hand also had a spear made of a stone edge and tied with rope; the rope was also made from the newly found plants. There is also a water pouch on his waist made of a leaf that was found to be hydrophobic.
The reason he was collecting them is that the green peaches which grow in purification domes don’t have any seeds in them, so the only way to get more trees is through getting the corrupted green peach from the forest.
But if in terms of food, the camp doesn’t lack trees to grow green peaches, instead, the new trees grown are meant to be used for building.
After Noelani’s facility had finally finished conversion, she started to make walls surrounding the camp. However, the skill orb that originated the facility doesn’t create more trees, but it controls and manipulates them. so, to build more walls, the facility needs more trees.
Therefore, there is a big demand now for more seeds to grow more trees.
Noelani even set up a “contribution” system so that people can “buy” things from her, which includes buying their own shed.
Building your own shed would take much more time and effort than just getting it from Noelani who can do it in less than an hour with her facility.
*sigh*
Adam sighed, back on the earth, many struggled with money, and it looks like it will be the same case here.
It’s just …
Adam's thoughts were interrupted when he noticed a light of a purification dome past a few trees.
Adam knew this was one of the few people who had not decided to join Noelani’s camp.
‘Well, aren’t you lucky?’ Adam thought about the owner of the purification dome. He did not know who owned the dome but yearned to have the freedom the person had and wished he could separate from Noelani’s camp.
Adam has only one active innate orb and it is mixed by both his and Noelani’s essences, so the orb can’t shut off without Noelani’s permission.
But…
He did ask to reclaim his innate orb.
The result has been a constant source of trouble for him for the past two weeks.
Adam had a frown on his face, but quickly shook his head trying to forget his problems and focus on his next plans, he avoided the purification dome he spotted and moved in a particular direction.
