Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

I got little to no sleep again last night, and again I didn't notice the lizard leave the cave.  So today I'm going to slowly creep down to see what I can see.  I make my way down the tree I slept in, and begin a quiet descent into the cave.  When I peek into the cavern portion, the lizard is still there.  Just a little ways away from where the pile of corpses was before, it has curled up into a ball and appears to be asleep.  I just watch it for a while, waiting to see if it does anything.

It just seems to be sleeping quietly, and somewhat bloated from all the corpses it ate.  I watch for what seems like forever, but in actuality was likely only around ten minutes before deciding I'll have to do something.  Either I can give up on my cave for a while, or attempt to sneak back into my room.  There are a lot of risks either way.  The biggest threat for sneaking back in is that if the lizard has made the cavern its permanent nest, then I'm trapped with no way out.  The risks of giving up the cavern though is that I'll be starting over from almost square one, losing everything I worked on so far, and I'm already really hungry.

My hunger wins out the day, and I decide that I'll try to sneak back into my room.  Before I do that though, I go back to grab some of my lion root I gathered before.  I don't want to try to carry all of it, since it is a little encumbering, but some should be fine.  When I return to the cavern section, the lizard still hasn't moved, and thankfully, the corpse pile was on the further side of the cavern from my room.

I slowly inch my way towards my room, being careful not to make any noise while I go.  When I get to my room entrance, I put the lion roots down to stone shape open the door before slowly entering with the lion root and closing it back up behind me.  I let out my breath, and sit down for a moment and just breathe.  The break only lasts a minute though, as I hurry into my room, and check my fire.

Yup, it's out.  There are some slightly warm embers, but it's mostly extinguished now.  Well, I had made a pretty big pit for the fireplace so that ash buildup wouldn't be an issue before, so I might as well take this opportunity to clean it out.  I'll have to make another bucket for it though, because the only buckets I have in the room right now are my water-filled ones.  I'll also want to make a small shovel for cleaning the fireplace out with.  I decide the best place to actually get these materials is from right next to the fireplace itself, making a space to rest the shovel afterwards. 

I snack on some dried imp as I work, but decide to not eat until I'm full.  Even if I have plenty of food right now, who knows how long that lizard will stay here, and I doubt that even at level 100 with a bunch of tools I could handle that thing.  I do have one idea that would maybe work, namely, collapsing a huge chunk of ceiling on it, but that invites all sorts of questions from the goblins, so I'd like to avoid it if I can.  Maybe the goblins will kill it later?  Either way, I feel like I'll be in a holding pattern for quite a long time, so starting rationing now seems like a good idea.

By the time the fireplace is all cleaned out, I'm already ready to sleep, so I climb into my bed.  It feels good to sleep somewhere familiar again.

It took around half a day to finally get my fire going again, but it's finally up and going again, which means I can cook the lion root to eat.  Since the lion root doesn't last as long as the dried imp, I'll be eating it first.  It's a shame too, because I went out to get lion root so that I could have more full meals, but instead I'm sitting here rationing food again.

After eating, I go and make a small hole to peek into the cavern.  The lizard is still where it was yesterday.  Satisfied, I close the hole up again.  I'm really quite glad that I refilled all my crystals before the goblin returned.  I wasn't anticipating this situation, but it worked out that I have a nice stockpile of goods.  The only thing that is a bit of a pain is that I don't have extra wood in here.  I have a few weeks worth, but most of it is in bins in the storage room, which would require me making multiple trips out into the cavern to move back over in order to remain quiet.  I suppose once I've cooked all the lion root, I should ration wood.  If I'm spending all my time in the room anyway, I suppose I can keep the fire smaller, only feeding a little wood in at a time.  It'll require more constant maintenance, but it should make the wood last longer.

Another thing I could consider doing is spreading my drained smaller crystals out so that they can gather mana a little bit.  I normally wouldn't care that much, but it's something to do that doesn't require mana to accomplish, so I'm inclined to give it a go.  What I have in mind is cleaning the slaughterhouse area, and then laying some of the crystals spread out on the floor in there, since I need to clean it anyway.  Other than that, I suppose it's tectonic sense practice, and more stone refining until I get concerned with the remaining mana crystals.

It's been just over three weeks that I've been holed up in my room.  The lizard hasn't moved at all from its spot.  At first I thought maybe it died, but I watched really closely, and I could see it slowly breathe.  At this point my only guess is it is some form of hibernation.  It has now been 30 days since the goblin last arrived, and although I'm still doing alright on food rations, I've deemed it necessary to try to make a trip to the storage room.  Namely to get more wood, but also to transport over there more dark stone.  I've filled quite a few buckets with the stuff, and although I fashioned a few more tectonic sense training cubes, I still have a lot of leftovers.  I also started taking stone from the edges of the hallway to the cavern instead of just expanding my room.  I've started to think that it might be worth having it larger, if only to store things that I intend to move at a later time against the wall.  In this case, buckets of dark stone.  As for the light stone I've refined, I have quite the decent amount now.  Considering how long I've been refining stone, I've amassed nearly 10 cubic feet of the stuff, which is enough that I'm starting to actually consider making some tectonic training cubes after all. 

With a bucket in hand, I slowly sneak out to the cavern, and then into the storage area.  I'm thankful that it seems that the lizard is a heavy sleeper.  Once there, I leave the bucket, and then go gather wood from my plentiful stockpile here.  I'm taking extra long picking and sorting the wood here, so that I can carry as much wood as quietly as possible.  Regardless of how heavy of a sleeper the lizard appears to be, I want to be as quiet as possible.  I also want to limit myself to only one trip a day or less into the cavern.

I feel like an abundance of caution is warranted here.  I have no idea when it will wake up, so being extra careful seems wise.  With that in mind, I pick up all the wood that I can safely carry back, and make my way back to my room.  The new wood should last me another five days at least, and I still have an abundance of dried imp meat from before.  It should be only fifteen days until the goblin comes back, so I'm interested to see what happens between it and the lizard.

For the next few days, I think I'll continue making a once a day trip to the storage room to move things about.  I'm a little more than halfway through my crystal supplies, so taking this extra time doing something that doesn't require mana should help limit my consumption of them.  Something else I could consider doing, although it is a little risky, is going out to a new sub cave with a bucket and gathering some large crystals from there if push comes to shove.

For now though, I'm exhausted, so I mark down my current status before going to bed.

<MYTHIC IMP>
Level: 40
HP: 456/456
MP: 157/157
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Mighty Imp
Magic: Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense