Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

I can't necessarily say it was two weeks well spent, but I did at least make some progress.  What I mean to say is tectonic sense isn't progressing as fast as I'd hoped.  While I've gotten much better at getting the right pattern on my first guess, I've made some more cubes to up the difficulty, and they stump me quite a bit.  Crystals give me very little response, similar to there just being a void in the stone.  So I decided to make a few more testing cubes recently with the new darkstone I've made.  These cubes are almost exact duplicates of existing cubes, with voids and crystals jumbled between them.  So where a crystal is in one, there might be a void in the other.  This has me pretty much stumped.  I only guess the right cube about 55% of the time.

This in itself isn't probably that big of a concern, after all, these crystals all grow in octahedrons as far as I know, so when would this even matter?  Maybe it won't, but I'd like to fine-tune my senses if I can with the hope that by getting better at determining the difference between hard to tell things, I'll be better at the easier stuff.  Well, either way, tomorrow is when the goblin should arrive, so I'll go make sure I've sealed off the storage room, and gotten anything I need from it.  Then I'll seal my room off again.  I made sure to recharge all my crystals that I could yesterday as well.  Wouldn't want another incident like before where I'm crippled, but this time not have any crystals to do magic with.

After doing all the prep work for the day, I check my stats and prepare for tomorrow.

<MYTHIC IMP>
Level: 18
HP: 308/308
MP: 111/111
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Mighty Imp
Magic: Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense

Like clockwork, the goblin is back at it summoning imps again.  I do some tectonic sense training, then check final preparations for imp hunting.  I pause for a moment and reflect on my attitude about this.  A long while ago, I was mortified at eating imp, let alone fighting them.  Now I'm here getting ready to kill as many as I can safely.  They not only provide me food, but also seem to speed up my leveling, so I guess I've just become numb to what human sensibilities I used to have related to the whole matter.

When I go to check the cavern again, it seems like the goblin and his posse have left, so I begin baiting imps in again.  Not even including my tools, any regular imp shouldn't be any issue for me, even at my low level at this point, but I'm still careful none-the-less.  I get individuals' attention, bait them into my tunnel, and quickly kill them, and bleed them in the slaughterhouse.

Maybe I'm getting better at baiting the imps, or maybe I just got lucky, but I took down 10 total imps between yesterday and today.  It's quite the haul if I do say so myself.  I even ended up building an extra drying rack for all the meat.  Honestly though, I'm missing having the occasional spud or lion root.  I think soon I'll consider going outside to harvest more, despite the abundance of meat that I got this time.  I also made some decent leveling progress, which is nice.

<MYTHIC IMP>
Level: 24
HP: 348/348
MP: 124/124
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Mighty Imp
Magic: Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense

I'm only a little more than half the level I was at as a legendary imp when I had this much mana, and my hp isn't that far behind it either.  I was going outside back then as well, so I suppose I can consider myself strong enough to head back outside already for longer excursions.

By tomorrow, the goblins will likely be gone, and all the imps killed, so maybe two days after that I can head back out, as long as I'm careful.

After just waiting in my room doing training for two days, the coast finally seems clear.  With what little remains of today, I think I'll start piling the bodies up to burn again.  I'd like to go get some food, but I think I'll likely have to make the longer trip to get lion root, and with it being close to me going to sleep again, I think I'd rather wait a day more.  I do have enough time though to go and bring the water buckets down to my room, and replace the buckets at the surface with new ones, so I'll do that yet tonight.

When I head outside, it's dark out, but not just due to night time, or at least I assume not.  The large moon is overhead, but one edge of its surface is lit up.  I assume it must be an eclipse.  Interesting.  I suppose I hadn't considered how big the moon is here, nor whether it was in the same plane of orbit as the two stars.  Either way, it's relatively dark out, so I'll have to be careful on my descent down the mountain to get lion root.

As I descend, the only thing that I notice is that there aren't many birds making noise.  When I get lower down, I can usually hear animals, but all it quiet.  I hope it is just due to the eclipse, and not anything more.

Thankfully, I make the round trip with relative ease, and have a nice bunch of lion root to put away.  The surprising thing to me though is that the eclipse is still happening.  It's been quite a while,  and honestly, it's starting to get a little cold outside near the cave.  I begin my trip back down into the cave, when I suddenly stop.

I hear something inside the cave ahead.  I begin to quietly peek into the lit portion of the cavern, and am greeted by quite the terrifying sight.  At the corpse pile, there is a lizard.  Not just any lizard though, it's a massive lizard.  Its mouth is large enough that it eats an entire imp whole from the pile.  It doesn't stop at one though.  Half the pile is already gone, and it looks like it is already starting get a swollen belly from all the food it has eaten.

I'm definitely not confident I could do anything to this thing other than become part of its lunch.  Which means what?  I have to abandon the cave?  Maybe just temporarily.  Hopefully it'll finish eating and leave, that would be nice.  As long as it doesn't leave and spot me.  I suppose that means I should do something like climb a tree outside and wait it out.

I quietly retreat from where I was in the cave, and when I get to the surface, I decide to leave all my lion root in one of the buckets that I'd normally use for collecting water near the entrance.  After that, I find a tree just far enough from the entrance that I can see it, but not so close that the lizard will easily spot me, and attempt to climb a tree.  It isn't easy initially, because I'm not used to climbing in my current form, but after a few failed attempts, I make it part of the way up the tree.  High enough up that I'm confident that even if the lizard reaches on its hind legs, it won't reach me.

Now I just play the waiting game.

An hour passes, and then another.  The eclipse ends, and it's almost sunset.  I'm now not only cold and tired, but hungry as well.  I wait another hour or so before trying to get comfortable enough in the tree to attempt to sleep.

The night was rough for sleep.  I would wake up frequently to any sounds nearby.  I'd gotten so accustomed to sleeping in a quiet space on a bed that I could hardly sleep at all.  So I'm feeling very hungry and tired now.  Worse, I didn't see the lizard leave at all last night.  I'm very afraid to go back down into the cave, in case the lizard comes out soon.  Another part of me though knows that I need food soon.

For the time being, I'll go search for any spuds that I could eat.  If I can't find any, then I'll peek into the cave.

After a few hours of searching, I found one spud plant that I'm willing to eat.  I can always pull up the few that I left to seed from before if I need to, but for now, I'd rather not.  The one spud plant will have to do.  It's only about half of one meal for me, but it's at least enough to stave off the hunger pains for a while.

I climb back up into the tree from before and start waiting again.  It's still a little chilly out, so I'm starting to worry about winter as a season here.  I'll continue watch for the lizard.  Although I think if I don't see it leave by the time I wake up, then I'm going to peek in again, just to see what it's doing.