Day 6
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Part one - Head Sized Stone

Morning came once more and as a morning ritual, Urist did a morning stretch then woke the rest of the dwarfs. Today he would tend to the fire allowing Uria to stretch her legs and go out to explore.

Urork and Urat headed out together along with Uria since she was interested in how the traps were set up. Urist sat back in camp with the dwarfs making more bowls, since you couldn’t have enough bowls and when he grew tired of making them he was going in the cave and making beds along the walls.

“I wonder if they will find a deer today?”, Urist mused as he burned wood to shape.

The trio set out together with ease along the forest path after spending so much time in these neck of the woods they were getting proficient in traveling them. The first thing to do was check the hare trap which had no luck today, on the other hand, they caught five squirrels.

Resetting the traps Uria was the one to carry them along, they would make one more stop to check the deer traps to see if a deer was caught. The three traveled along the path talking about Woozoo tea they had yesterday and wondered how the smoked meat would taste.

Rat caught up in thoughts almost fell on his ass after pushing a branch out of the way when he saw it. A vampire deer who lay they gently heard the movement perked up its ears and started barking at the dwarfs freaking them out.

Startled the ‘hunter’ dwarfs ran away back to camp intent on reporting to Urist. Heavily breathing they came face to face with Urist who was currently butting a frame of a bed together with Urmom. Looking at the fear in their eyes Urist knew something had happened stood up from his seat.

“Did something go wrong?!”

Urist by now was pulling out his stone dagger by his side ready to face off against anything coming through the woods. 

“Everyone get ready we might have company.”

Everyone stopped what they were doing in bewilderment and Urist cursed under his breath seeing no one pull out their weapons. He had to remember that the dwarfs around him were like newborn puppies that knew bare-bones knowledge.

They had this weird common sense. Some things they knew about, while other things left them afraid and frightened. 

Urist shook his head and spoke in a calm tone, “What is wrong? Catch your breath then speak.”

Weezing like fat men sprinting after a donut truck in a one hundred meter dash Rork finally managed to get out words, “Deer *gasp* Caught *gasp* What *gasp* Do?”

Seeing them so out of breath Urist decided from that moment on that there would be mandatory jogging every morning from now on. Even if they were short they should be able to obtain enough stamina to not be out of breath after a mild run.

When he heard about them catching a dear Urist was filled with glee as his mouth started to water thinking about deer meat. He hadn’t had it in months if he counted the time before turning into a dwarf.

Oh, the tenderloins were to die for, spices or not it would be good eating. Smiling wildly Urist gave out commands, “A feast awaits. Ormila, Urmom I want you to fashion a strong noose and meet us over at the fishing area.”

“Got it, boss.”

“Uroa, Uria, and Briana I want you to start the fire burning in the pit and gather about 30-40 large leaves for us to use.”

“Aye aye!”

“Lun and Ariel I want you to expand the smoke rack for us to cook on and manage the smoke while you are doing that!”

“Understood.”

“Rork and Rat you are with me in bringing the deer over to the river to gut.”

“Alright boss.”

With a happy nod, Urist’s party headed out as the rest of the dwarfs got to work in preparation for cooking the deer.

By now Rork and Rat had caught their breath and led the way. But first Urist went over to the beach acquiring a head-sized rock getting Rork and Rat help him carry it over to the deer. Step by step and many switches later carried the rock to the deer.

The deer had noticed them from afar and tried to get away with no avail as the rope held its leg in an iron grip. Urist wasn’t fazed one bit as the deer barked at them with eyes full of fear.

Turning to his fellow dwarfs Urist held the rock in his hands. “Rat, hold it’s head down while Urat holds the body. I’ll try to finish this in one shot.”

Even if they are scared of touching the deer they did as commanded and moved forward. As they gripped the deer It started thrashing and turning as its heart thundered in it’s chest a million miles an hour.

It took a few minutes to get the deer under control but the dwarfs manage to hold it down.

The time was now ripe.

Urist had never killed a deer in such a way in his memories. He always used a gun from a distance to shoot it from afar. Now so close to a living deer watching its eyes looking left and right full of fear Urist didn’t back away.

They needed to eat to survive and this deer would grant them great nourishment. Not letting another moment pass Urist raised the headstone high in the sky. Giving a small prayer before ruthlessly crushing the stone the back of its head with all his strength. As Urist crushing its skull a loud cracking sound resounded through the forest. 

The deer's eyes turned bloodshot as its body stiffened; then blood started to leak out of its mouth and the body slacked in the dwarfs' grip. Still, every once in awhile the deer's body kept twitching even in death this scared the two dwarfs holding it down thinking the beast was still alive, but Urist assured them that it was indeed dead.

With the deed done Urist let out a breath of air, “Come on guys let’s carry this to the River to start cleaning it.”

“Uhhh, ok boss…”

“... Understood.”

 

Part - 2 - Gutting and Cutting

 

To carry the deer more easily Urist used a rope he brought the traps rope to tie up the deer feet to a long stick. Lifting the stick on one shoulder Urist asked Rat to carry the other side, instead of dragging their prey this was much easier.

They made their track to the river where Ormila and Urmom were waiting with Urmom holding a large noose in their hand wondering what they had to do with it. With a slight smile, Urist took it away from Urmom and threw it over a sturdy tree branch. Then he untied the deer from the stick and put the noose over the deer's head.

“So boss what are you doing?”

“Oh? This? I’m hanging the dear to make it easier to cut up. Anyways help me out we need to tie this end to that tree over  there.”

“Ok?”

Using another tree as a counterweight they lifted the deer off the ground. 

With the groundwork done now, it’s time to cut it up. Now son what you do next is... 

A fond memory appeared in his mind of him and his father and mother cutting up a deer together.

Using the brains and eggs to soak the furs into leathers. Turning the tendons into sinew for a bowstring. Making needles out the bone and eating the heart and liver in a nice stew with a side of mouth-watering tenderloins.

Although he couldn’t see their faces he remembered everything else vividly from the strokes of the knife to the smell of the meat came rushing in.

Almost in a trance Urist grabbed the bronze knife and began the mental prep of cutting. Taking the knife to the groin and moving the knife up to the chest.

Remember my little daring to not cut too deep or you’ll nick the guts and ruin the meat. 

Halfway through the cut steamy guts fell with not a hint of stink came from them.

Now, my boy, you take your hands like this and...

He plunged his hands inside and got the gut that was stubbornly stuck inside out. Making sure everything was clean before continuing.

Now my boy, if you're not wearing gloves like me, wash your hands off before you...

Taking his knife once again Urist cut away the forearms and forelegs and handed them off to Rat. 

Ok, you’re doing great son. As expected of my boy. Now you wanna cut here so that you can take the hide off...

Placing his knife at the top of the chest Urist ran his blade down the deer's legs.

Although this part is pretty laborious you need to cut away the hide before you can get to the meat. Here let mother show you...

Entranced in his memories the dwarfs huddled around him and watched intently at how Urist worked on dismembering the deer. In his trance, he made quick work of the hide which he gave to Ormila and Urmom and gave them the job of removing tas much fat as they could from the skin by scraping it off with clams.

Urist lamented a bit that they couldn’t use the hide to make leather. He’d rather not delay in getting more chickens with the eggs they were getting. So the skin was going to be used to make hide glue. 

With a slight snort, Urist lamented inwardly. I can’t even drain the deer's like I would want thanks to the season otherwise it’ll rot an hour at most is what I can do. 

Son, remember that the heart and liver are good eating so make sure not to throw them away.

Listening to his memories Urist placed the edible guts inside a wooden bowl and told Rork to cut up the rest for fishing bait and maggot farming.

Fly maggots were good eating even though other people think it’s sickening to eat, just fry them up in a pan and they make a good snack with some salt. He figured he would do the same for the head later as well letting it sit out to collect maggots for a few days.

For now, he headed back to camp to check the fire pits progress and also have Uria cook up the liver and heart on some of the fireplace rocks. Finished with his delivery Urist headed back to take care of the guts.

The intestines would be used for bait and the stomach, bladder, and the rest would be placed far away from camp and downwind to prevent the smell from reaching them. Using his stone knife after taking care of guts Urist started cutting the intestines into pieces and placed them in a wooden bowl.

With a sulking expression wishing, they could these into sausage casings but didn’t have the manpower and tools to do it. He handed them over to Urork to use for bait for the rest of today, anything they didn’t use would be thrown into the water for the fish to eat.

They waited for a while watching the blood drip down from the deer's body for a bit, and in this time Urist was cutting the tendons away from the body. From the legs and the back after cutting the tenderloins away to reveal the back tendons.

Urist gave Urat the tenderloins to bring back to camp and cook them and also handed him the tendons to bring them back to camp and have them air dry. By now it was time to start cutting up the deer into parts so at camp they could start smoking, stewing, grilling, and cooking it all up.

He also asked Urat to grab the bronze axe and hammer for help removing the ribs, if they had a saw it would be easier to cut apart. When Urat returned it was time to cut the deer into parts and get cutting.

First was the removal of the legs by snapping them off and cutting anything the connected them to the body. Urork was in charge to carry them back to the camp for further processing and putting them into the pit fire.

Next was cutting into the far lower neck were at the base of the spine met and taking out the stew meat to be used in today's meat stew along with taro roots and carrots with today's fish being smoked instead.

Now the hard part not many people eat the ribs since it was a pain to cut, but beggars can’t be choosers with how little food they have. So Urist put down the dismembered deer onto its pelt and cut off the head from the ribs and threw that away. He then started cutting off the ribs with the bronze axe cutting into the bone using the bronze hammer when needed to drive it through.

It took a while but finally, the ribs were removed from the spine and with Urork’s help removing any meat they could find there was added to the stew meat. Now Unto the neck of the deer which would be great for a roast, but Urist decided to cut it into strips and smoke this part of the meat.

Finally, for the head, it would be added with the thrown away guts and used to harvest maggots to eat for later. Now that the cutting was finished it was time to start cooking up the meat.

Just the thought filled Urist’s mouth full of water.

 

Part 3 - Wild Game Cooking

 

With the slabs of meat in hand, the dwarfs were hard at work using their stone knives to cut the meat into small bits to cook. And as the fire in the ground fire pit settled down Uria and Ariel put the deer ribs and legs on the ashes then covered them with large leaves. Then took turns shoveling dirt over and from Urist prediction should be done in a few hours.

The stew meat was placed into the pot with Lun overseeing the cooking, stirring the pot and cutting up taro roots. Urist dealt with cooking the tenderloins on the back of the deer on the nearby camp rocks grilling the meat he seasoned it with some mashed up Woozoo flower petals creating a fruity and mellow scent to linger out as the meat sizzled.

A line of dwarfs was cutting into the neck meat, heart and liver making strips of thin meat with their stone knives. Since this was their first dissection Urist wanted everyone to have a hand on experience cutting up the meat, after showing how it was done once he left them to their own devices.

Before letting them cut though he had everyone wash their hands with some water and used a shirt to dry them off and reduce the dirt on their hands. He didn’t want the meat to have much if any foreign residue that could affect the taste of the meat.

It pained him to use a few bottles for this but it needed to be done, for any fat left on the deer it was thrown into the pot for cooking. Fat had many uses such as waterproofing for example, but they had no need for that method and instead use it for nutritional usage.

In about a half-hour the processing was finished and cooking was in full swing. By now the tenderloins were done so Urist cut it up into pieces after having everyone wash their hands in the river to get rid of the geese and blood.

As they ate and enjoyed the tenderloin Urist was slowly savoring his pieces one at a time letting the flavor sink into his tongue while in thought. Right now with the smoked meat of the fish, squirrel, and deer, they had about two days of preserved food they could eat.

For today they would eat the soup, tenderloins, ribs, and legs which would be enough to feed them today no problem. Although he wanted to wait forty-eight hours before considering the smoked meat to be done because depending on the thickness of the slice it could take a longer or shorter amount of time to cook.

And with their stone knives cutting in question he didn’t want to take the chance and have someone get sick because of him. They had some herbal medicine collected, yet he didn’t want to rely on such a thing in haste.

They had fish they could still catch, they had their squirrel hunting grounds, the mushrooms which were growing, and if push came to shove they could eat the hares as an emergency food source. If there was no way out he would eat the dogs as the final straw, even if he named them Goldie and Wicker sometimes a guys got to eat.

Sure they could keep hunting for their food, but what of when winter comes around and they have nothing to eat since they have no storage? They had no farms to speak of as well except for some taro plants they would harvest could that sustain them throughout such a time?

No! They would starve in the cave if they didn’t plan. The question is how they could store food items throughout the winter to eat. They also needed new clothing to use in the winter meaning they needed to get their hands on salt.

So many things to prepare made Urist frown at what an uphill battle he would have to face from now on. After all, he did not know if there was any civilization nearby to trade with, they knew nothing of their surroundings except salt that might be down at the river's end.

How far was it?! Just the thought made Urist feel helpless what could he do.

“You ok boss? Did you not like meat? It’s so tasty.”, The bulky Urat replied with a cheer using his fork to stab another piece of meat into his mouth in glee.

Urist woke up from his thoughts and looked Urat in the face and turned to the rest seeing their cheerful smiles made his heart feel light at the sight. He knew that he had to do better for their survival and keep thinking of new sources of food to make sure they lived rather than surviving.

Enjoying their small snack everyone got back to work while Urist tended to the fire and soup stirring it with a carved wooden spoon every so often to make sure nothing got stuck to the bottom which would make it a pain to clean.

While cooking he multi-tasked in burning come more bowls as they couldn’t have enough of them for eating and storage. A plan was forming in his brain of the next step to take in this wilderness creating and discarding plans as they came out of his brain.

Until he decided on one thing that was one of the most important things in civilization before the modern world created machines to do it for them.

A forge.

 

Part 4 - Plans on top of plans

 

In his past life, Urist had come across many hairbrained designs for a forge thanks to his second uncle. For spring vacation he and his uncle would drive around the states to see exciting forges and how they were made. To the crude to the advance from charcoal to coal to gas, and even electrical forge designs. Throughout their trips, they had visited hundreds of forges and watch their work in process.

Learning about new and interesting methods of how metal was forged and crafted from swords to the furniture he had some basic idea should be made. Alas, the best metal they could mess around with, with their current technology would be making a bloomery.

A bloomery is a simple forge that consists of a pit or chimney with heat-resistant walls made of earth, clay, or stone. And at the bottom, it had pipes that would be made of clay or metal that came out of the sidewalls.

These pipes main function is to allow air to enter the furnace, either by natural flow or forced with bellows. The simple forge would also have a hole at the bottom so bloom could be removed.

Of the main materials, he'd required for the forge would be clay, rock, charcoal, and bellows.

In the items, he had clay, rock, and charcoal that was simple to make. The bellows would be the hard part to take care of.

Since they couldn't treat leather they would need to make pumps out of bamboo to pump air in and later move onto river power.

But one step at a time with the idea planned out in his head after dinner he would give out jobs.

And dinner was a sight for sore eyes. Digging up the cooked ribs and legs when the time was right to see golden meat.

The dwarfs were already salivating thanks to the stew. Now with the leg meat revealed they dwarfs were getting rowdy as Urist washed the ash off.

With the food now finished, Urist took a bite of the leg and passed it to Urat then took another bite out of another leg and passed it to Uria.

The dwarfs started picking up on what Urist was doing taking a bite and passing it on.

Strew also got served in the bowls they made and eaten with bamboo spoons. It filled them with warmth drinking in the fatty stew spiced with woozoo flower petals.

Despite the lack of spices used the stew was pretty good in Urists opinion. It didn't taste gamey despite the short amount of bloodletting still it wasn't a prime piece of meat. Though how could he complain about filling his stomach, those that complain about what they are given should be beheaded.

The dwarfs sat around the fire chanting and cheering eating their fill, since coming to this world this was the tastiest thing they have ever eaten. Thanks to the bosses knowledge they could fill their bellies and stay warm in the night.

Although staying on watch annoyed them a little it was a necessary evil when they didn’t know what dangers lurked in the darkness. When the dwarfs were relaxing by the fire using toothpicks made out of bamboo Urist began talking.

“So I’ve decided on the next plan we should tackle and that will be getting a forge up and running. Meaning we need to start on brick production tomorrow it’ll be hard work, but when we can craft metal tool it’ll be worth I promise.”

“What do we need boss?

“Yah let's make a forge! Um… what’s a forge?”

Urist smiled at how excited the dwarfs quickly explaining what a forge was, “A forge is a place that allows us to bend metal to our will. You can make knives, swords, axes, armor, and many other things with it.”

“So we can make more bronze items?”

“Yes.”

““““OHHHH!””””

The dwarf's eyes lit up like candlelight thinking about owning their very own bronze knife. They had seen how well the bosses knife cut into flesh and wished to exchange their rock knives for the shiny instrument.

“We need Clay and sand a fair amount of it and also any open ore we find on the topsoil. We might start digging in the cave with the pickaxe we have to find some. Though I’m pretty sure on this mountain range there should be some metal sticking out we just have to find it.

Other than that we need to make a shifter, and a bellows which I’ll make by hand tomorrow with some help with the rope making team now the jobs are as follows…”

One Day Left

After giving out his orders Urist decided to call it early tonight he would rest in his bed checking the internal clock ticking down in the back of his mind.

Time: 1 Day 5 hours 47 minutes until Market opens

Points Gained: 5538

The points had risen once again and the time had shortened. By now after thinking it over for a week he had a pretty good idea of what this Market it would be. And the thoughts that filled his mind made him terrified of what's to come if his thoughts were only half true.

The market wasn’t his concern, it was after the market was activated that made him scared him out of his mind. Since he had one-timer now what's to say there wouldn’t be other timers foretelling of other more sinister events.

His felt confident that they would occur afterward since they haven’t once seen a dangerous animal cross their paths or their droppings. No poisonous animals or plants, he knew deep down after tomorrow things wouldn’t be the same.

He was the leader, he was responsible for all these dwarfs. No by now he thought of the little guys as a family not as dwarfs. They all listened to his every word, the went along with his hair-brained ideas without much thought except Uria.

What happens if he failed, what if someone he knew died in front of him how would he live with himself? Urist didn’t get much sleep that night worrying about useless things, waking up in a cold sweat more than three times.

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