Regaining our humanity

Hiss. The sound of eggs sizzling in a pan awoke Samantha. The frying pan happened to be another courtesy of the bunker. There weren't many other cooking utensils but one of the more useful ones was a sieve. Marcus had begun to fill the cupboards with clay cups, mugs and pots though. All made in the adobe oven/kiln.

Sam yawned before asking, "Are those from the chickens?" Marcus answered with a simple nod before serving her one on top of a slice of foxtail toast. Since there was no butter, Marcus spread a thin layer of mayo on the toast.

He also strained some rapeseed to replace the lack of olive oil for frying the eggs. Everyone else slowly got up to toast their own bread over the fire with sticks while Marcus fried the rest of their eggs.

As part of his new job as leader, Marcus had tried his best to make them tasty breakfasts to show that he really was committed from now on. The last of the dehydrated milk had been used up when he made them all porridge the previous day. The shop levelled up after he bought the cereal bars for oats.

New items unlocked:

Pencil - 2 coins

Tomato seeds x10 - 10 coins

seal skin gloves - 25 coins

The bunker had some pencils for the journals but it was good to know that if they ran out one day they could get more. There weren't any pens but pens were overrated anyway.

The beds were a wonder as they were built into the wall like little woodpecker nests. The group just referred to them as bunks. Each had pillows, sheets and a duvet. Laundry wasn't too hard as they could do it by the waterfall but that wasn't to say it was easy.

The group also discovered the power source for the bunker was geothermal which made sense since the bunker had already been built underground and they were in the mountains.

Maintenance was somehow automated and no one could get into the manual maintenance room without a four digit passcode anyway. Something Marya might have known...

If it hadn't failed for hundreds of years, the chances of it failing now would just be too cliche to worry about. The running water came from the mountains and a water filter worked to make it drinkable. "Wake up James," Marcus gave him a soft punch in the arm.

"Huh? Can I smell fried eggs?" Marcus shoved a plate under his nose and James took it straight away.

"Thank you," smiled Lana. They were using clay plates made by Marcus.

'Maybe I should just become a potter...' he pondered before handing Sam a plate too. Marcus finished his breakfast first and let James do the washing up as he volunteered.

Part of Marcus' morning routine was training. Everyone else had mastered the basics Marya taught them so they came out to join him after breakfast as well. They all went for a run first through the forest. Some kept up but Marcus would eventually leave them behind and run a few extra miles.

Next was conditioning which included an assortment of exercises like press ups, crunches, squats, burpees, planking, tricep dips, wall sits etc.

The running was for endurance while the conditioning was to increase muscle mass. Specifically targeting upper body plus core muscles.

Marcus had no idea how to teach self defence or martial arts but neither did the first warriors of this world until they went out and tried so they would too. Every day doing practice swings with sticks, spear training with quarterstaffs, even hand to hand combat.

Lana complained the most and hated being hit more than the others. Though Marcus knew being a leader meant he'd have to make people do stuff they didn't want to in order to benefit the group as a whole. Thankfully, Lana didn't take it personally and saw the importance of doing it in the end.

Marcus' stats had all surpassed 15 except for his charisma which had only just reached 13 so above average. Much better than before. His agility was now sitting at 20. To him, a simple jog was everyone else's version of a run. Walking beside him nearly became awkward unless he purposely slowed down.

It was almost inhuman like the implants responsible for the system also aided humans in reaching their full potential physically. As his intelligence stat rose, there was more space for new memories.

When the wisdom stat climbed higher, making the right decisions became easier. The best choices were more obvious to him now. Marcus learnt that even if he couldn't find a good option, there was always at least a less bad option.

Like for example, leaving the old dens to fall apart was better than having to maintain them when they had the bunker for shelter instead. That didn't make being a leader easier though. To keep morale high, Marcus had to find an option everyone liked. This was practically impossible though.

Right now, they were digging the rows to plant tomato seeds Marcus had acquired from the shop. The 'guide admin privileges' let him see people on the map now as blue dots. Tapping on them would reveal names.

A key written on the side explained that markers were now white dots, group members were blue dots, monsters were of course red and other people were green but also as the guide, he could put people on a blacklist. This made them appear as black dots. It helped differentiate friend from foe. Green dots couldn't be checked for names according to the system.

It also let Marcus add his own custom colours to create special categories. Hopefully, if they found more people, a hierarchy would emerge of some sort. Marcus could already imagine nobility being purple but he didn't want corruption or too many right wing views.

Neither did communism sound like it would be popular or practical in the future. It would be useful now though so everyone pulled their weight for the group and soon the tomatoes were planted next to the peas.

Marcus' journal was now filling up with sketches and information on all the plants he'd discovered with the botanist skill. Poisonous and edible ones. The skill would always make it easier to find food but with it written down and being able to remember them, the time needed for foraging was greatly reduced.

Another project Marcus worked on was making flour from other wild grasses like wall barley, false oat grass and rye grass. False oat grass was an instant fail but wall barley had some success. However, in the end it was rye grass that won since it was the easiest to grind up and separate.

The flour it produced was more of a light brown in comparison to the green foxtail flour. It kept together more when making dough as well and didn't fall apart nearly as much. As a benefit, the bread tasted less dusty and more fluffy. The group approved too.

Therefore, Marcus decided it was time to do some actual baking. "Eggs... check. Flour... check. butter... nope. Sugar... na ah. Looks like I need to go shopping for wild goats and something else..."

Marcus decided the sugar would be easier to get first so he went on the hunt for burdock. At some point, he thought he had seen wild sugar beets but they were just weeds. Burdock wasn't too hard to find though. Digging it up was the hard part since the tap root was very long and flexible but by using a stick to dig, it was out after some patience was applied.

Taking it back, Marcus chopped up the roots he collected and boiled them in a cooking pot. While he waited, he check the fish trap and transferred the little notes in the back of the survival guide to his journal.

It was in one of the books in the bunker that he found the method of producing sugar in the wild. Now with all this knowledge at his finger tips, Marcus was going to do all he could to apply it. Only, he never guessed that he would need a weed to make a cake.