Part 1 - Vampire Deer

 

Urist opened his eyes to see the rays of sunlight shining through the bamboo door telling him that morning had come. Getting out of the comfy leaf bed, he walked outside and did a light stretch before going back to wake everyone up. As he woke them up, he noticed that Uroa and Briana were currently snuggling together for warmth.

“Mu… More fish eyes…”

“I want more fish cheeks…”

The two were currently talking in their sleep dreaming about food. Urist could even see the drool on their faces. He smiled wryly poking their cheeks, “Come on, we got a lot of work to do. Wake up, you lazy girls.”

Uroa reluctantly broke away from Briana who she treated as a hug pillow and rubbed her eyes with a tired expression, “Eh? What are we doing boss?”

Excitement filled Urist’s eyes, “After we eat breakfast we’ll go out to explore!”

Their dinner was pretty filling with six fish traps giving them a total of fifty good-sized fish that Urist decided to only open up five pre-packaged meals and share them amongst the dwarfs. Urist split the dwarfs into teams while eating; the teams were thus exploring, gathering water, basket making, hare traps, and making a coop for the chickens.

Equipping the bronze sword for protection, Urist walked together with Uroa and Briana through the forest to help him classify the plants they came across. They set out at around 10 AM and headed down the river. He decided that they would travel for about two hours through the forest alongside the river flowing outwards in hopes of reaching the sea.

If they didn’t reach it in time, then they would hack back and be back at the main base at 2 PM or 3 PM at the latest. Urist used an extra shirt as a makeshift backpack to carry any useful items they found along the way.

Traveling along the thicket, Urist picked up a few quirks about Uroa and Briana. Namely, the two liked to associate with different types of plants. Uroa preferred vibrant flowers and plants that might not have the best medical properties. On the other hand, Briana picked out plants not by their looks but by their effects no matter how dull they were. It seemed they would argue if the plant was worth picking or not and usually ends with Uroa sulking at being proven wrong. 

Listening to their argument, Urist laughed, “If you want Uroa, we can plant some flowers near our home if you want.”

“Really?! B-but they are useless… Is that ok?”

“Even if the plant can’t save someone physically, it can save someone's soul. Remember that Uroa, Briana.”

Uroa felt better with Urist sticking up for her and replied, “You see! Pretty flowers aren’t useless! The boss said so!”

Wide-eyed Briana didn’t know what to say for a time. She could only shrug and look away. “That’s pretty nice wisdom Boss.” 

Pointing at himself Urist had a blank face, “Me? Wise? No, it's all just experience.”

And so the three worked in tangent to identify the plants around them, they discovered a trove of walnut trees in their first ten minutes of the walk which made Urist happy at how big and spread out they were.

It would be a good food source if they could harvest them before fall hits, they could also be used for making ink if they wanted to be fancy. To mark the area where the walnut trees grew, Urist and the two girls chipped a faint ‘X’ on nearby rocks at the river line to find this place again later.

While moving the rocks along, he happened to notice some dark rocks along the shore and grew instantly excited, “We’ve found flint!”

Despite the strange looks Uroa and Briana were giving him, Urist felt like he was on cloud nine.

Flint was one of the many hard rocks that could be used to make stonewares such as knives, hand-axes, and was one of the components to make flintlock pistols. It is also a great firestarter as long as you had some steel to strike it on.

He decided to keep this mental note in mind and urged the two to follow him onwards. Twenty minutes later, he spotted a curious creature jumping from tree to tree. It had a fluffy tail and little paws sniffing the branches here and there. Its body was covered with brown fur with a single black streak running along the back from the base of the head to its tail.

Urist knew perfectly well that this was a squirrel. He remembered that he and his mother would make Citatap with the small bodies by chopping the bones and meat together with their knives. They would also eat the brain raw as a treat, it was one of his favorite treats as a kid growing up.

The memory forced its way into his thoughts. A woman with a blurred face. Although her face was obscured, he could see her long black hair that went down her neck covering her fur clothes somewhat. She held a knife in her hands and was currently skinning and cutting up a squirrel. 

‘You see this my cute, little [---]? This is how you make Citatap when I traveled to Japan this nice tribe showed me how to make it. I assure you it's very tasty. Do you want a bite?”

“Eating its brains!? Is it that tasty?! That sounds disgusting mother!” 

He shook off the fond memory and focused on making another ‘X’ to mark the spot and kept moving on. By now, they had taken about an hour in walking yet hadn't found the sea they were searching for. Along the way, they found some edible mushrooms they could bring back to grow thanks to survival book as a reference. They harvested the ones they were sure were entirely poison-free and as well as the moderately aged shrooms.

This spot had a surprising variety of poisonous and nonpoisonous mushrooms. Urist decided that it would be good to take the few they could grow and move them nearby the cave. He can vaguely call to mind bits of details that mushrooms can grow with ease in moist, damp places which perfectly describes the cave.

They lucked into some white cap mushrooms, Hen of the Woods which looked like chicken feathers and another type called wolf’s eye found in the book. It was a strange mushroom that seemed to be out of place in nature. Wolf’s eyes grew in a spider web formation from a center mass along the branches of trees. From the book's description, cutting and boiling them up made them like noodles and they tasted like wolf meat.

He figured they could grow it and once in while having noodle fish stew. They pressed on along the river and no matter how far they went, they couldn’t see or smell the sea anywhere near. At this point, Urist settled on throwing in the towel and headed back along the trail.

When they had more resources, it would be better to find the sea though for now, they had gained a good haul and it shall suffice. With the mushrooms, they will be able to eat some stir-fried with the fish while the squirrels provided a good meat source and maybe they could make some leather out of it. 

However, without salt or borax, producing any leather worth using was but a pipe dream as by then, it would be all rotted. They could try doing the North American Indian method with deer brains and eggs, but that had its problems namely finding a deer, having enough eggs, and having good containers. 

Alas, his only hopes were to find that sea. If they could find the salt, their palate would be tamed (at least his would be) and various other problems could be solved.

Since they hadn’t reached the sea, Urist decided to call it a day. Now that they were not marking stones it would take about an hour to reach home. As they were heading back, he picked up noise and stopped the two behind him. Bewildered, the girls stopped on Urist’s command wondering what was happening. 

No sooner did they open their mouths to ask, a creature’s head peaked out of the forest scaring the living daylights out of the three. Walking out of the bush in a sudden movement, the creature’s white fangs glistened in the sunlight, eyes black and soulless, full of cruelty. The color of its fur boasted shades of various browns with a body as tall as Urist walking on four legs. The creature barked at Urist full of ill-intent before running off into the distance moving its tail left and right.

Briana held a piece of large flint in her hand, her legs trembling, “What a terrifying creature! What was that Urist?! ”

Urist held a solemn expression watching the retreating figure leave them in the dust. “That... was a vampire deer.”

 

Part 2 - Tools

 

The water deer or more commonly known as the vampire deer known to inhabit areas of China and Korean Peninsula was a peculiar creature that he had chanced upon along his travels with his father and mother when they were visiting Asia to study poison and medicine.

It could swim miles through rivers to reach distant islands. The main habitat of the deer was alongside rivers, mountains, swamps, and grasslands. Its appearance made Urist grow quiet. If that was a true water deer then the area might be similar to China and Korea.

On second thought, this area might be in Korea or China. This threw him for a loop as he remembered he lived nowhere near the area since he had spent his time recently in America. But, as luck would have it, even if it had been a long time he remembered the distinct climate, bamboo, and the trees; meaning that his unease of the seasons was now understood.

Winter would be coming meaning they would need to stock up on food or be forced to starve to death. Fortunately, he figured his guess was right about the season being spring with the plants still budding and flowering giving them a window of time to prepare.

Calming the nerves of his fellow dwarfs, they headed back to cave where everyone was at full tilt at getting to work. Urmom was currently working on hare capturing traps to catch them alive with Urat as his assistant teaching him how to set it up. Urmila worked on making baskets together with Ulun using either tree bark or strips of bamboo from what the group had built up these last few days.

Uria didn’t have to keep too much of an eye on the fire with everyone around so she took this chance to make the pen for the chickens using bamboo and rope to make a fence. To work the bamboo into the ground, she used a hammer stone and the shovel to make it have a nice and firm hold.

She had finished the fence when Urist and his group came back. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, she smiled at Urist, “Urist did you find anything when you went exploring?”

At her question, Urist pulled out what he found with a smug smile, “Check it out! See this rock it’s called Flint and we’ll be able to make some fine stone knives and hand axes with it! And these mushrooms we found will be a great food source if we plant them nearby in a damp area that has some dead trees!”

Now that they had flint they wouldn’t need to rely on the bronze knife that had a growing dull edge. With a little shaping and some handles added to the flint, they could prepare more then one fish at a time allowing them to keep up with the demand. Urist made a mental note to keep their tools and weapons from getting dull by finding some good stones near the river later to sharpen them.

“Mushrooms? Are they poisonous?”

Reading through the survival book when it was late in the day, Uria remembered that many types of these things called mushrooms were poisonous that could kill dwarfs and it wasn’t good to eat them unless you were 100% sure they were safe to eat and now they were going to grow them?!

“It’ll be fine Uria. We made sure these were the correct mushrooms. Besides, some mushrooms make a meal a whole lot better y'know?" Urist grinned, giddy at the thought of masking the lingering taste of the corn dogs. "Anyways, on a more pressing note, Uora can you help Urork in fetching water and the fish from the traps? As for Briana, can you help Uria in finishing up the chicken coop? I want to make this flint into knives and plant these mushrooms somewhere nearby. When I’m finished, I’ll help you guys out.”

“Un.”

“Understood boss.”

“Alright, Urist.”

Finished splitting up jobs, Urist headed out of the base to find some dead trees and leaves. He brought them back and looked around for a good spot, it didn’t take him long to find an overhang near the base. Gathering up all the dead trees and leaves under the overhang, he placed about half of the mushrooms inside and some of the soil he brought over near the mushrooms. He hoped they would sprout well and give them a good supply of food.

For the wolf’s eye mushroom, he walked a good distance away from the camp and placed the core of the mushroom in the crotch of a large tree after climbing it up like a monkey. He only kept some of the strands to cook with later inside the fish soup for this afternoon. Then he would check both spots of their progress and see if they would even grow.

Picking up the bronze hammer and he also grabbed hammer stone; just in case the bronze hammer was too cumbersome to use. Next, he set up by a large flat stone forge near the cave’s mouth and placed the flint they gathered in arms reach. Grabbing one of the stones he started carefully eyeing the flint to figure out the best place to hit to get some good knives.

Standing the stone upon the stone forge in an angle where he guessed would be a good spot to hit the flint, Urist took his bronze hammer and smashed downward with enough force to crack the stone into pieces.

His luck was pretty good in somehow gaining two, good, usable pieces for a short knife and a medium-sized knife. The rest of the rock was unfit for a knife so he discarded the rock into a pile. He might be able to make them into a spearhead or arrowheads but that would be for later.

Looking at the dozen flint cores, he hoped he could make about four or five ax heads by chipping their size, and for the others as many knives as he could make so everyone could carry at least one on their person.

Grinding and chipping away at the stone, Urist got better with each stone he worked on making finer knives and stone ax heads with growing proficiency. He ended up with a total amount of five ax heads and eleven blades, he only failed at making his first ax head ruining the flint.

Other than that, he had good luck in making the knife blades. All he had to do was shape the handles for wrapping which would take him around twenty or thirty minutes for doing both. With this, all of the dwarfs would be armed with tools that could be used as weapons in case of some predator decides to maul them.

Now, it was time to start making eating utensils.

 

Part 3 - Utensil plans

 

They couldn’t always rely on using the plastic utensils as they were fragile and brittle and given time, will prove useless as cutlery meaning that they had to prepare alternatives. Unfortunately, the dwarfs didn’t have any metal or an even a basic smith to mold said metal meaning they had no choice but to make it out of wood.

Though that raised a question of how to make said items, tomorrow they could try looking for clay to make simple pottery. Even though he only had made some failed pots in art class, with his survival skills he should somehow come up with the design for the pots.

For the forks and spoons, they would use their knives to whittle the branches of trees making sure that they weren't sap producing. For the bowls, he had two materials and two methods to use.

Of the materials, he could try to find some old deadwood or use bamboo since it was already hallowed in the middle. And the two methods to make the materials into bowls was to burn holes into them with cherries or use their stone knives and chip away at the center and make a big enough hole.

After thinking about it for a while, Urist decided on using dead trees, the reason being since it was already dry, the material would be easier to work with.

Why he didn’t use bamboo was for a few reasons. For one, they were using the bamboo as cook pots. Number two was him venturing on using the burn method to make the bowls making it take a while for it to burn and use bamboo for other projects.

And number three, he wanted to impart the knowledge he gained from using the burn method to make the holes on the handles that would hold the flint ax heads he made. He figured that it would be a good thing to teach the others on how to do it as well once he refreshed his memory.

But this endeavor would come after dinner, which was looking pretty hearty with all the fish they caught today. They wouldn’t need to dip into their pre-packaged food stores. Thanks to the knives he had handed out to everyone, the time to prepare them had shortened. Although with no way to store new fish, they would most likely have to dig into them come tomorrow morning.

Urist headed over to the trio who was currently building the chicken coop out of stone and mud, mixing it with their hands and feet they had gotten pretty dirty.

Taking off his shirt so it wouldn’t get dirty, Urist joined in on the fun in making the coop. Only to realize that around him most of the male dwarfs were going bare-chested. He had forgotten that most of the male dwarfs had started copying him when they saw him take off his shirt to work. Now they started this fad of working without a shirt, walking around bare-chested exposing their bulging muscles.

Only Urmom was different in that he tore off the sleeves of his shirt and wore them as a headband for some unknown reason. Still, his arms were bulging muscles that shined in the sunlight. Urist held back his tears of envy when he compared the toned dwarfs to himself. The only thing that comforted his contrite spirit was the fact that they were the size of children. 

Uria looked up from her work and saw Urist's black mood eliciting a bemused face on hers.“Is something wrong Urist?”

Startled, Urist turned his head away thinking fast of an excuse and found something to latch onto. “Nothing’s wrong! I just wanted to tell you that I made these knives for everyone and wanted to give them to you guys to use. They’re pretty sharp so be careful with them.”

Hearing that the boss made something for them, the dwarfs dropped their work and huddled around him. Being surrounded by everyone made Urist flustered so he told them to get in line to receive their knives. One by one, they picked their knives all entranced to have something to call their own. 

Uroa beamed under the cover of mud, “Giving me a knife boss? I don’t deserve it! But I’ll gladly take it!”

Chuckling, Urist shook his head, “I see that you also have a shameless side Uroa despite your usual quiet demeanor.”

His offhand remark caused Uora to become flustered, making her fumble in her response. “Uh. I-I mean. I-it’s so pretty that I. Um w-what I meant was that-”

Seeing that he made the poor one so flustered, he decided to help out the struggling girl, “I’m just messing with you a bit. Haha! Go enjoy your knife Uroa!”

“Y-yes boss!”

Feeling a weight off her shoulders Uria gave a quick bow and scurried away near the fire to admire her blade. Laughing inwardly he turned back to the line and turned to Briana who stared intently at the knives awaiting hers. 

Briana moved over and took the ebony knife from Urist’s hand, giving it a nice long stare. Holding the knife in the sunlight she became amazed at how the blade absorbed the light, “What a beautiful blade. I shall call it Night.”

Uroa went up next and picked out a small gray knife, “Eh? Are we naming them? Then I shall name mine Morning Dew!”

Urist’s eye twitched at how badly he was dying inside, ‘Why must they all give their knives weird names! I didn’t raise them to be Chuunibyous!’ 

He didn’t know how it started but every dwarf seemed to give the knives he made weird names. For example, Urmom called his ‘Fire Poker’, Urork’s was Black Steel, and Uriel named hers Bamboo Cutter.

Urist wanted to run far away and laugh his insides off at their bad naming sense but kept his composure calm and smiling. If they wanted to name their stone daggers, he would let them. After all, he couldn’t bring himself to take away such a joy from the dwarfs seeing how their eyes sparkled when naming them.

While he was resisting the urge to laugh, Uria walked up and picked up a knife with a strange flower pattern on the blade’s side. Urist didn’t chip it on its side when he broke it, it was naturally made making him curious about how the stone was formed.

In contrast, Uria played with her knife while Urist lost himself in his thoughts. Slowly moving her hand flat she stared in wonder at the flower pattern design. Suddenly she looked away from her knife and turned her gaze at Urist making him slightly blush.

“Wh-What is it Uria?”

Biting her bottom lip, she slightly blushed turning her gaze away, “Thank you Urist I shall name this knife… Flower petal.”

His mind went blank at that moment as if his mind completely shut down. The way she looked at him made his mindset set off alarm bells and his heartbeat like he was on a marathon. He almost jumped at her in a fit of passion, using every ounce of his being to resist.

Urist remembered suddenly that Uria and for an instant, he saw an image of his past girlfriend face before it faded away from memory. Perhaps she was, maybe she was… She said Flower petal, could it be a coincidence? No, it couldn’t be possible unless… ‘Ack! Damn these headaches and memory loss, stop it!’ Sighing, he decided to take some time later tonight to sort through his thoughts.  He didn’t wish to bring up useless things when everyone was in a good mood.                          

Before heading back to work he figured he should say some words. “Alright, those are some pretty good names guys! To celebrate after we finish work today we'll take turns on washing our arms and faces at the river. Then we’ll eat dinner, does that sound good everyone?”

A unified “YES!” came from the women while the men shrugged their shoulders until the mention of food came up.

Uria nodded her head, “Un. We’re almost done we just need to layer the roof with split bamboo. Urist can you handle the splitting?”

Urist hit his chest with confidence, “Leave it to me!”

 

Part 4 - Trapping

 

In no time Urist and Co. finished making the coop and moved the chickens inside, the lazing chickens were startled at first but then quickly relaxed when they settled in. As for the dogs who were big golden retrievers, they would sleep inside the cave together with the dwarfs since they had been fluffy bed warmers. 

There wasn’t any dog food to feed them so they were fed leftovers such as cooked boneless fish or leftovers from the prepackaged food. As for water needs, Urist had found a large watertight log with a deep bowl-shaped hole made from some nest making animal that had fallen over.

Urist made sure to keep them healthy in case they needed emergency food rations, but unless food became a dire thing, he didn’t want to do that. He named the one with blue eyes Goldie and the one with brown eyes Wicker.

With such thoughts on his mind, Urist headed over to the trap making team and found out they had made pretty good progress in making the traps. When he told them that he had seen squirrels and deer, the funny thing was how fired the trap group got when Urist mentioned making some tasty meat stew if they caught some.

The dwarfs immediately got to work making a few deer and squirrel snares. For the squirrel snares, they were pretty easy to set; all they needed to do was to make a small noose and tie them to a large stick. The trap worked pretty easy if you lean a log onto a large tree that the squirrels frequented. They would get lazy and use the large stick to travel up the tree.

For trapping the vampire deer, they would search for animal trails and a suitable sapling to make a leg snare. The principle behind the snare was that as the deer walks along the path, its leg would be caught in the noose. The noose, with it being connected to a wooden mechanism, would then be activated by the unfortunate deer's leg.

As for catching hares alive, the best idea to catch hares alive however was to craft small wooden boxes to trap them with. The nifty thing about these traps was the counterweight closing door mechanism. When a hare pushes against the rope holding the counterweight in place, the weight would fall and close the door.

After doing a trial set up of the trap the dwarfs quickly noticed that the trap was too light and now faced skywards. To fix the slight problem they added rocks at the bottom tied with rope to give the trap more weight. With the problem of how to catch them alive solved, they now faced how to keep the hares from escaping.

A thought struck Urist to create another pen but for the floor to be made out of stones should the hares decide to dig their way out. For the material making up the walls, bamboo was decided upon to be used and later Urist wished to replace them with rocks.

And to keep the hares warm and comfy, grass bedding on top of warm dirt was placed down on the ground granting the hares a place to rest in ease. When they caught some, Urist made it a rule to clean their pen once every week to make sure no strange disease popped up; the same went for the chickens.

All poop, that also included dwarf poop, was gathered away from the camp to be mixed with dead leaves and soil to create a simple fertilizer for planting. With the plans all coming together, Urist talked with the trapper dwarfs and worked out a time to set up all these traps. The schedule was in the morning and when afternoon came, the traps were to be checked to see if they caught anything.

With that all out of the way, Urist set his sights on making a bowl. The concept was easy enough to understand, burn a hole big enough to eat out of. Simple really. He had prepared beforehand taking out some sticks to act like tongs and used the shovel to hold the cherries he used.

Finding a dead tree of heavy wood for the base material, he split it down the middle using the axe. He enlisted the help of Uria, Uroa, and Briana who finished their jobs for today to share the burden of cutting the wood into fair-sized chunks. Afterall, he didn’t want to break his back alone.

They took turns chopping up one of the pieces into chunks to be used as bowls using the charcoal guidelines Urist laid down. While they worked on that, Urist dragged the other log over and started carving entry holes with his stone knife and marking up the guidelines.

Finishing his preparations, Urist got to work placing cherries into two holes and started blowing on them to make the process faster. It was by luck when Urork found some shells when he was fishing that would be perfect for scaping.

Urist chuckled when he remembered how sad Urork had been when he asked for the tool and only gave it up when he said he’ll make something yummy for him later. The process should take a while to finish so Urist asked Uria to help him in the process leaving the wood cutting to Uroa and Briana instead.

Sitting next to her Urist got a bottle of water out and started explaining the process, “It’s really simple Uria all you need to do is watch the coals burn in the spot for a while and breathe on them like this.”

Blowing on the coals to get a small flicker of flame going, Urist continued his explanation, “Next, when the coals have burned enough, we’ll take the shell scraper and remove the ash to make sure the process is going correctly in the way we want it.”

“To make sure we don’t get weird burns we’ll dampen the sides with water to better control the fire’s burning process.” 

“Un I understand! But, um... Why are you making more than nine bowls?”

“Ah, it’s a simple matter of wanting to boil water faster. If we put water inside it and then throw in a hot stone, it’ll boil the water and make it safe to drink. This way we can also carry things inside them other than bamboo and make food and water holders for the hares. I hope to make a few buckets and containers this way and use them until we learn how to make pottery.”

“Throwing rocks into the water to boil it? Would the water even be safe? I mean why did we make filters out of charcoal if we could have done this in the first place? And why do we need bowls when we have bamboo? I think it’s a waste to use fire in such a way.”

Urist took a moment to think and sort through the barrage of questions before answering.

“You see, boiling kills off germs that reside in the water. The rocks shouldn’t have anything on them even with ash to carry with such intense heat. The reason why we made the filters is to to be careful.”

“Careful of what?”

“We don’t know this world and what inhabits it. We might be prone to dying from a certain material in the water so it was me just being cautious. With all the sightings of mammals, I can assume that the water supply should be drinkable with just a boil and decanting. Although I do want to test the water later on the captured hares and see their reaction. For the filters, we can still use filtered water as medical and long storage water.”

“Ok I can kind of get it but why can’t we just use bamboo as bowls? We shouldn’t waste fire.”

Urist made a bitter smile, “Yah we could just use bamboo as bowls, but it’s not the same as a good old round bowl. The volume can be considered bigger and we will be using the bamboo for other things anyway. Does that answer all of your questions Uria?”

Uria put on a thoughtful face before slowly nodding her head, “It’s not what I wanted to hear, but I can understand your line of thought. I’ll go with it for now.”

“That’s fine to be questioning me. Just wait and see I’ll show you the joys of bowls!”

Countdown

Time: 3 Days 5 hours 27 minutes until Market opens

Points Gained: 3462