Part 1 - New Members
Waking up in a sweat, Urist sat up, short of breath.
A weird dream a nightmare or what?
Wiping the sweat off his brow, he soon took noticed that all the dwarfs were huddled talking lazily to one another. He sighed in relief that they listened and stayed in the base until they could confirm the marketplace. Looking at the timer in his head it displayed 10 A.M. which meant the time was almost at hand.
Urist rustled his hair and asked, “What's the status report. Did anything happen to me while I was out cold?”
Seeing their boss wake up the dwarfs grew excited, “Boss. It’s as you said two new dwarfs came out of that strange room.”
“Boss are you alright? You passed out so suddenly.”
Waving them off Urist smiled, “I’m fine, I’m fine. Tell me who are these new dwarfs?”
The pack of dwarfs moved out of the way to reveal two figures standing. One a short dwarf wearing overalls and the other being a tall male dwarf wearing gambeson armor and a copper sword on his belt.
“And your names are?”
The stoic looking military man spoke first, “I am named Elrish and I am a warrior.”
Behind him, the timid girl replied, “I’m Yri and umm I’m a farmer…”
Standing up Urist went over to them and placed his hands on their shoulders, “Welcome to the mountain home. Your talents are much needed.”
It startled the new dwarfs a bit, but they didn’t shrug off Urist’s hands. Welcoming them Urist turned to the rest of the members, “Ok everyone we have a lot to prepare for and get ready. Everyone follow me back to the room to assign your abilities.”
The pack of confused dwarfs followed after Urist, thanks to the light of the room, it was easy to travel to. Walking to the red crystal in the room Urist put his hand on top of it and a screen appeared in front of him.
Name: Urist
Gender: Male
Race: Minor Dwarf
Position: Civilization Leader
Age: 8 days (Mental age ???)
Exp: 217
Knowledge: Otherworldly(Tier 1) (Tier 5 - locked), Survival(Tier 5), Forging(Tier 3), Planting (Tier 1), Cooking (Tier 4), Fishing (Tier 2), …”
Skill Slots:
Head: [Empty], [Empty], [Empty]
Body: [Dwarven Bloodline(Tier 1)], [Empty]
Legs: [Empty], [Empty]
Available skills: Head: Origin Flame, Head: Map, Legs: Explorer, Head: Swordsmanship, Body: Strengthening, Head: Mana Seed…
Since he was the one to bind the crystal he knew what all this information meant and started to explain to the dwarfs behind him. The two most important things to know is tier, experience, knowledge, and skill slots.
Tier was a simple one to understand that the higher the knowledge the more they understood of that subject. For Skill Slots, it would be showing the person proficiency in invoking the skill or its passive ability.
The experience came from doing certain things in one life such as making things, killing things, and discovering things. The experience could be used to upgrade knowledge or skills to a higher tier level if the Armament Stone was at a higher level.
Knowledge was more of a ranking about how much information a person had about a subject. The knowledge could be increased by life exp points or doing the hard work for yourself.
On the other side of the Coin, Skill Slots was the limit a body could hold that could be expanded. The method he learned of was raising bloodlines, eating special things foods, lucky encounters, or using items.
Urist thought the crystal itself would be pretty bullshit if it didn’t tier soft-lock levels. For example to learn a level one skill you’d have to spend 100 life exp. But if you wanted to upgrade a tier-one to a tier two, the person would have to use 1000 life exp points. And to rank it up to tier 3 it came to a whopping 10000 points.
If it was a tier 2 crystal the points would be reduced to 200 points and tier three would be reduced to 2000 points.
After telling the dwarfs all this information, Urist asked them how many Skill Slots they had in each category and was surprised. Uria had five head, one for body and one for leg Rat and Rork had two head, three body, two leg.
Ormila, Urmom, Ulrn, and Ariel had the same layout Three head, Three-body, and one leg. Uroa and Briana had four head, one body, two legs. Urist concluded that they must have settled in such a way because of how they worked these last seven days.
If not, it would be too much of a coincidence for the skills to take such a layout. I wonder how our new arrivals stack up to us? Urist turned to the new members and them to check their skill layout. He found out that Elrish had two:four: one while Yri had two:two: three.
Urist helped everyone pick out skills except for Elrish and Yri who said they already had skills slotted. One by one he and the dwarfs in question went through the options and they picked out ones fitting for their jobs. Asking them to show the detail of what the skills implied.
It took about a half-hour to set everyone skills before Urist himself decided to do his own. Everyone besides the two newbies sat around as the knowledge of the skills integrated with their bodies.
For Urist he picked out the skills Origin Flame, Map, and Mana Seed for his head skills. For his Body skill, he chose Strengthening.
And finally for legs Explorer and a skill called Forest Feet. When he pressed confirm another wave of information flowed inside his brain making him double over.
New timers started popping in his head telling him that it would take an hour for all the skills to integrate. It didn’t feel that good, but he managed to get some words out to the new dwarfs.
“Elrish, Yri as I told you before keep the fire going and eat bring over some water bottles, smoked fish, and squirrel jerky. We’ll eat together after this passes, sorry to put you through this right in the beginning.”
Elrish gave a hearty chuckle, “No worries boss we are family now right?”
Holding his pounding head, Urist nodded his head with a smile, “Yes, we are.”
Part 2 - Spend Drift
When the skills adjusted to their bodies, the group was able to move again and began to work on various jobs. Urist wanted to test out the skills he acquired only the time wasn't right. He had to check out the marketplace and see if he could do any good shopping.
Going through all the items he wanted to buy Urist brow felt another headache coming on.
What sky-high prices. Heavens a random dwarf summoning is one hundred points and five hundred points for a selected dwarf with a job.
He then compared the prices of items to dwarfs and found out that dwarf lives were considered trash. Although foreboding he couldn’t stop looking as they needed items to increase their chances of survival. After going through most of his ideas and formulating a plan he checked on the price of salt and was relieved to see that it only cost five points a pound. Until they could get their own supply of salt they would have to outsource the material.
As he searched through the lists a lingering thought crawled in the back of his head.
With how fast the population increases will these points be enough to feed us? If we don’t become self-sufficient I’m afraid these expenses will be too much for us to bear.
Onto searching the cheapest food cost, he felt pretty surprised that a simple meal only cost two points. It was by no means of the same quality as the corn dog meal, so he didn't want to buy such crap food. But he did take note of it for later, as he didn’t know what the future held. For the corn dog meal, it cost four points a pop or three if you didn’t buy it in the MRE package form.
When he felt he had a good idea of the food, he went onto the next item on his mental list. Going from small animals such as chickens, pigs and below were 50 points. Large animals such as cows and horses were labeled as tier 2 items and annoyingly marked up by ten times to normally buy that cost 1000 points each.
If they found and captured a similar creature they could reduce the markup cost by half. The same went for created items as he found out from reading the market manually. The only exception to this rule was that owning marketplace items wouldn’t cause the price to be cut in half.
Moving onto tool he found that Copper tools ranged from 30-50 points with bronze being double and iron ten times. And for weapons depending on the size and material, they could cost double of what tools went for.
The last important item he wanted to go over was clothing and found that Flax was the cheapest when pitted against leather and cloth. By square meter, Flax was three times cheaper than leather and ten times cheaper than cloth. Doing a little more searching urist affirmed his buying list and went on a spending spree.
Item List
Food X 12 = 48 Points
Salt X 4 = 20 Points
Pine Oil X 2 = 120 Points
Mixed Spice X 1 = 10 Points
Chickens X 5 = 250 Points
Seeds X 2000 = 1000 Points
Copper Hoe X 4 = 160 Points
Copper Shifter X 1 = 500 Points
Bronze Anvil X 1 = 500 Points
Copper Pot X 4 = 200 Points
Custom Copper Pipe X 1 = 200 Points
Custom Copper Container X 2 = 80 Points
Spear Head Mold 3 by 3 X 1 = 35 Points
Flax Clothes X 12 = 120 Points
Flax Bag X 12 = 60 Points
Clay Pot X 10 = 100 Points
Copper Tong X 2 = 60 Points
Wooden Bucket X 10 = 200 Points
Firing Clay Mold X 1 = 25 Points
Fire Clay Crucible X 1 = 15 Points
Bronze Shovel X 6 = 180 Points
Iron Smith hammer X 1 = 300 Points
Bronze Axe x 2 = 60 Points
Wooden brick Mold 6 slot X 1 = 30 Points
Wet Stones x 3 = 60 Points
Book of farming(Basic) X 1 = 50 Points
Book of forging(Basic) X 1 = 50 Points
Book of combat(Basic) X 1 = 50 Points
Book of wall making (Basic) X 1 = 50 Points
Book of Carpentry(Basic) X 1 = 50 Points
Booby Traps 101 (Basic) X 1 = 50 Points
Land Layout(Basic) X 1 = 1400 Points
----
Total: 6033 Points Spent
661 Points remaining
Having spent most of their points Urist hit the confirm button and watched as boxes appear to cover the room.
Raising his eyebrow Urist wondered how he’d figure out which item was what. Picking one up Urist found noticed that the box was extremely light. As he looked around the box he became shocked when he found the boxes name tag that said salt.
How could this box of salt weigh as light as a feather?!
Urist called for some help to sort all the items out and put them in their respective spots. Every dwarf was given a bag to use and a meal that Urist bought to eat at the fire. He bought meals for today, as thanks to the sudden world changes they hadn’t gone fishing today.
With these items in hand and with an expanding workforce Urist could now accelerate his ideas. Before calling the other dwarfs he stashed the books and map away in a dry place for fear of them getting wet.
He figured that when night came he could go over the information them, for now though, he wanted to put everything he brought to use. Giving a call, the dwarfs entered the room and under his guidance, they started sorting the items. It didn’t take long to sort and when they finished Urist began setting teams up for today.
The dwarfs were split into four parties to complete different objectives. One would be digging out trees near home and be using them to create a wall to keep out wildlife.
Team two was tasked with clearing out around the base to claim it as an area for farming. Team three’s job was to patrol the area in case of animal attack as team one and two were clearing. And team four were put on standby close to the cave to get used to their new powers.
A rotation of jobs would happen every hour to allow everyone a break and a chance to understand their skills. To show by example, Urist joined the first team in charge of cutting down trees and removing stumps. He used new strength skill together with an ax and shovel to work at a quick pace.
In his group, Lun and Rat became amazed at their boss’s strength to rip out stumps with his bare hands. Although it wasn’t without cost, by the twentieth one Urist stomach was growling in hunger which made him realize this power had a cost.
So this strength skill eats at my energy reserves so I must eat more for the energy I lost.
Drawing this conclusion Urist told Rat and Rork about it and then brought another meal to quickly solve his hunger.
His thoughts wandered while he ate. I want to build a wooden wall to face off against the beast stampede at the end of the month. If we don’t, I fear that we will be wiped out with our lacking defenses. And I’ll be damned if I don’t try my hardest for us to survive.
Part 3 - Battle of the Boar
Hours passed by in a blink of an eye.
Urist wiped the sweat off his brow as he scanned the surrounding area. He guessed they had cleared one hundred and seventy square feet of land. As for the rest of the dwarfs, they were filled with a sense of accomplishment at how much land they cleared.
With this section of land cleared they could start planting spring crops tomorrow and could keep expanding it as they claimed more land. Although it was cleared of surface objects they still had to do a few tasks to make greenlight for planting. The first being that the dwarfs dug into the soil layer and removed the large rocks. The second thing they had to do was till the soil with the copper hoes to make some rows and it was off to the races to get some fresh greens.
Of the plants that he could pick on the market Urist decided to plant fast-growing spring plants such as Sunflower Shoots; Garen Cess, Radishes, Wild Green Onions, Lettuce, Spinach, and Kale.
These spring foods grew quickly in the spring well enough and some could be harvested throughout different seasons. To not waste their drinkable water they went to the river and used that to water the field. As a precautionary measure, the water gatherers were escorted by Elrish to face against any dangers.
Urist didn’t wanna take chances now that carnivores had entered the scene. A half-hour into the task his fears were soon answered, just as he sat down for a break a scream rang in the direction of the river.
Not hesitating, he grabbed his woodcutting axe, a nearby spear and rushed straight out of the Dwarven camp towards the scream. The male dwarfs nervously followed after him holding onto their spears readying themselves for a fight.
Crashing through the underbrush Urist came into a small clearing to find Elrish protecting Yri from a Boar making snorting sounds as it circled them. The boar prowled menacingly as it looked for an opening to use its large sharp tusks to rend flesh. Despite being his first fight Elrish was keeping his cool as he readied his sword to fight.
After grasping the area Urist activated his strength skill and rushed at the Boar leaving small foot indents in the ground. Hearing Urist rush from behind the boar squealed full of anger, turned and began charging at him intending to run Urist through.
Not being dumb to take a rushing boar straight on, Urist dodged out of the way stomping to the right. His sudden movement caused the Boar to try and change its charge direction but lost its balance making it flip. By this time other dwarfs had come over ready to fight and saw the boar rolling over to them.
Seeing the chance Urist yelled, “Stab it in the neck and watch out for its tusks!’
Although frightened, the dwarfs did as they were told and threw their spears at the neck of Boar rolling over to them. Of the three spears, only one managed to do any real damage stabbing out one of the boar's eyes.
After throwing their spear the dwarfs stood dumbly which made Urist curse under his breath and rush forth.
“Move. It’s getting back up on its footing and might charge at you.”
His words woke them from their trance and they fanned out in three directions. Angered the pig went for Rat who stabbed its eye out. Seeing this Urist snorted coldly, gritting his teeth he dashed forth intending to tackle the Boar.
By now Elrish was also moving forward right behind Urist intent on ending the Boar's life before it ended one of their own.
Even though the Boar was fast, Urist was faster.
Before it could reach Rat he had tackled the beast and began using his strength to subdue the beast. The two rolled on the ground with the Boar squealing trying to impale Urist with its tusks and Urist trying to use his strength to hold it in check.
As the two struggled for control Urist yelled to Elrish, “Don’t just stand there stab this bastard!”
Urist then wrapped his legs around the beast's torso and grabbed a hold of the tusks trying to stab him. When Urist rolled on his back and exposed the beast's belly Elrish was already in position and pierced the Boars neck with his sword. Blood splashed on his face but he didn’t stop there and used both hands to pierce deeper. Although having a fatal wound, the Boar kept on fighting trying to drag Urist to hell with it.
It took an agonizing minute and a lot of blood splashing on Urist and Elrish before the Boar finally died allowing Urist to let go. Pushing the corpse off himself he stood up to that the rest of the dwarfs had come over with wide eyes.
Seeing Urist drenched in blood one of them asked worryingly. “Boss, are you injured?”
With a reassuring laugh, Urist took off his shirt and used the inside to wipe off the blood on his face.
“I’m fine, no need to worry.” After doing a quick clean Urist continued. “Tonight we shall dine on boar meat. Thank Elrish for his bravery in protecting Yri and giving the finishing blow to the foul creature.
Also Lun, Rork, Rat good job in distracting the beast allowing us to kill it. Come on guys let's tie this sucker up, drain the blood and cook it up.”
Raising the morale with food the dwarfs cheered and those that helped kill the Boar were a little proud of themselves. The farmer Yri just felt glad to be alive and her bosses foresight to have the water gathers be protected.
The only one unhappy about what happen was Uria who was frowning at Urist. Catching that he knew later on he’d get an ear full from her for being so reckless in the battle with the Boar. He gave her a look saying that he’ll explain later before turning to the others with joy as they carried the boar to the river to string it up.
Rork and Rat took this chance to gather the fish from the traps and bring them back home. While they did this Urist got to thinking about how to cook the Boar and how to better their defenses.
They got lucky this fight to get not wounded in that fight, but what about next time? The dwarfs couldn’t keep counting on luck to save their lives. They needed something more to keep them all safe, thinking along with this point he came to a decision.
First, the dwarfs needed to be trained so they were less scared of their enemy and second they needed to make more traps around the camp. This would protect them defensively and allow them to acquire food passively killing two birds with one stone.
That would be for tomorrow. For now, we cook boar.
Part 4 - Origin Flame
As they drained the boar Urist began to give gave out orders. “Head back to the camp and prepare to fire up the ground pit. Elrish, Rork came over here I’ll show you how to prepare boar meat.”
Elrish poked the boar with a spear, “You know how to prepare this beast boss?”
Rork chimed in as he also poked the corpse with his spear. “Where did you learn how to do this?”
Urist snorted, “Of course I know how to prepare this beast I learn how to hunt my family in my world. Now you remember how we cut up the deer? Well, we’re going to do it differently and hang the boar on its back legs. Now first what you do is cut the fur off as the hair might get on the meat.
“First you cut the around here before passing the knees on each leg cutting around in a circle. Then you take the cuts and gather them to the stomach and this next part is important to pay extra attention.”
“Ok boss seems simple enough.”
“Yeah, this seems pretty what next?”
“Glad you’re getting it. Next, you slice open the stomach by running the blade from near the private parts to its neck.”
“The private parts?” Asked Rork.
“You mean the thing wiggling between its legs?”Asked Elrish.
Urist rolled his eyes, “Yes the floppy thing. Now pay attention to how I use the knife. You don’t wanna cut too deep up you’ll cut into the organs and waste the meat.”
Finished explaining the cut Urist ran the blade down in a smooth manner.
“Now that the major cuts are finished we’re going to skin it. Now before I explain how I do it you guys wanna guess how I’m gonna do it?”
“Easy you’re going to use your strength to rip off the skin.” Figured Elrish.
“Nah that doesn’t sound right. If I remember correctly from the deer you’re going to use the knife and cut the fat from the skin.” Retorted Rork.
Urist looked at Rork and nodded his head. “Correct. You see Elrish if I used such a method I might slip and cause the organs to rupture or I could ruin the skin which would be a waste. Now watch how I do it.”
Turning back to the boar he grabbed the skin and began cut it away from the fat and muscles. When he finished he placed the hairy side down under the boar turned back to the entranced dwarfs watching the process.
“Now the next important check is the organs and this something you must pay attention to or you could end up killing us all.”
“Oh? Why is that boss? Isn’t meat just meat?”
“How could something dead kill us when it isn’t rotten?”
Hearing them asks questions with such curiosity made Urist happy. “Ya see, since we don’t have freezers we can’t kill off parasites easy. So we must cook the meat thoroughly like we do the fish to prevent getting sick.
But as long as it’s cooked well, it's not a problem to eat. What’s really worrying is eating infected meat from the carcass could jump to a person, make them sick, then kill them. And such a disease could then spread to the rest and kill the rest of the population. To be on guard against such a thing, it’s best to thoroughly look at the organs. Which if you know how to do it and have a careful eye it's not the mentally demanding. Come closer and I’ll show.”
The two dwarfs moved closer and watched as Urist dug his hands into the boar's guts and pulled out the liver. “You see this liver? This is a good place to check to see if the meat is any good. Ya, see this nice purplish-red color? It’s a good sign that this is a healthy bore.
“The next thing you check is the lungs if they have any spots or discolored. You want a healthy color to ensure that the meat is good. From what I can tell this is a perfectly healthy boar we can eat. So we’re gonna take the heart and liver and use the rest of the organs maggot and fish bait.”
“I get what fish bait is but what's maggots and what use do they have?”
“Good question Rork. Maggots are fly larvae and can be used as bait or fried up to eat. It sounds disgusting but they’re good eaten. We’re going to use the head and useless guts to attract the maggots now I’ll show you how to clean out you the guts and start cutting up the meat.”
With eyes shining, the two watched as Urist systematically cut apart the flesh. As he cut he let his mind wander.
Thanks to having oil and salt we could fry up some meat for some good pork chops. Oh yeah, how could I forget that we can have some amazing bacon? Just thinking about it makes my mouth drool.
While he thought of the different types of meat Urist got to cutting into the front legs and making his way made to the ribs until he reached close to the backstrap. The second part was to remove the shoulder from the foot and since he didn’t want to buy a saw he had to get a little more creative.
Urist cut and kept cutting with his knife until he reached the jointed and popped it off by twisting it. One after the other he handed them off to Rork to place inside the cleaned out food boxes.
He then turned the boar around and began cutting below the ham of the back legs cutting until he reached near the ribs and along the backbone. This gave him some nice slabs of meat from both sides.
Once again he handed these back off to Rork.
“Ok, this next part is a little more forceful. Elrish I’m going to need the sword.”
“Here you go, boss. But Um what are you going to do with it?”
Urist responded with a smiled, “Just watch and you’ll understand.” Gabbing the bronze sword on one hand and the ribs in another Urist began to chop away at the ribs attached to the spine to remove them.
With a few whacks they come off nice and easy, he handed those off to Rork. With the ribs now removed, he could cut off the tenderloins located near the back of the spine.
And finally, it was time to cut off the glorious ham legs. With a slight smile, he began to cut at the area where hind legs and spine were connected. One splice at a time until he finally reached the socket where the bones were attached. Pulling the leg slightly, Urist stuck his knife into the joint and twisted. With a sick popping sound, the leg came off of the spine which he caught and gave to Elrish. He did the same for the other hind leg and passed this one over to Rork.
With all the parts now disassembled it was time for the last bit of cutting. Carrying the meat in containers the dwarfs headed back to camp and began to cut the meat into manageable chunks and put in the smoker.
The others would take care of cutting them to size and trimming the fat off adding it to the stew. Urist decided it was late in the day and called for everyone to take a break as the food got cooked by Uria, Uora, and Uriana.
He had wanted to help cook but was stopped by Uria. “You already did enough dummy. Let us handle the rest.”
“But I wanna use the spices we just got.”
“You already showed us how to do it so just sit there and relax.”
“Ok…”
Under Uria’s stare, Urist meekly walked away and sat down to rest. Seeing Urist rest she turned around and began cooking with the others. Soon, the smell of meat cooking filled the camp making the dwarfs mouth water over fish and pork stew.
Feeling bored Urist decided to test out the weird skill called Origin Flame he picked out. In its description, it was only for people who tended the first fire made by their civilization. They could store the fire in their bodies and use it as another source of mana.
With enough of the fire, they could make a fire seed inside their bodies. He didn’t know what a fire seed meant, but he knew that the power had one fatal flaw. If the Origin flame ever went out and they used all their stored up fire leaving no trace of the fire then the power would be gone.
He already had gathered some fire just before taking his break so he had some to play around with. Just thinking about how crazy the resolve you needed to stick your hand into the fire to gather it made him wonder where he got this fearlessness.
But trusting in himself and the skill description, he forced back his fear and allowed the flame to enter his body. When it entered it didn’t hurt and instead felt warm to the touch. When he opened his eyes the dwarfs were awkwardly staring at him like he was crazy and another look at the fire revealed that the flames had lowered visibly.
Now he sat once again on his bench and it was finally time to test out origin fire. Gazing now at the scarlet red tattoo on his right hand he focused on drawing the flame from it. The Orgain fire responded and the energy began to flow through his tired body making him feel somewhat powerful. He only pulled out one-fifth of the flames as he didn’t want to pull it all out for the test.
Opening his eyes a small golden flame appeared in his hand that shifted in the wind. Entranced by the fire he tried grabbing it with his other hand. Amazingly he managed to pull on the flame by grasping it with his thumb and middle finger. He began to stretch it to see how far it could go and found that the stretchable fire it could go quite far before breaking at the highest stress area. To which the flame split evenly in both of his hands.
How magical. That flame could have such properties. I wonder how useful it can be in a fight? I’ll test it out when I need to fight again. If it does well I’ll need to keep adding wood to the fire to replenish the flame. I’ll also have to make another pit so Uria can gather her own Origin Fire as it seems it needs time to recover.
With a sigh, Urist was handed a piece of hot tenderloin in a bamboo bowl and started taking bites.
Despite doing it there the first time they pulled it off well enough. This meat is top class.
He savored each bite as he knew that they would have another tough day ahead of them tomorrow. So who knows when they would eat boar again? As he ate, the ideas of plans were turning in his head once again as he waited for the main dish to be served. The dwarfs were in a celebrating mood as the main dish of meat stew entered their bamboo bowls. Spooning mouthfuls of soup the dwarfs were in a heated mood boasted over the others in what they did today.
The taste almost brought Urist to tears as the profound flavor of the spices in the stew.
Finally, something that can wash out the taste of corndogs that has haunted me.
When they all finished their meal Urist began to talk about his plans swimming around his head to the other dwarfs. After he was done and the others had expressed their opinions people started to head to the cave and rest. Urist gave a warning to the dwarfs on guard duty to be careful since dangerous animals were lurking in the darkness by keeping the fire bright and lit before he turned in to rest.
Bamboo Seeding timer activated 5 Days 14 Hours 34 Mins
Rat Tide timer activated 12 Days 14 Hours 34 Mins
Beast Swarm timer activated 20 Days 14 Hours 34 Mins
Point Amount: 1149
