Exploring The Cave

May 4th, 0001:

There were two main things to happen yesterday, with by far the most important one being that one of the Rhynchophorus palmarum had visibly tiny larva in its box, meaning that unknowingly the eggs it had laid hatched. Hence, as planned, I killed all of the Rhynchophorus palmarum while taking away the boxes and letting the larva and other eggs that might not have hatched yet free into their designated area.

And now that they were larva, they would probably be ready to eat in about five weeks, meaning that we basically only needed to hunt until then as the number of Suri on the farm would easily be enough to feed the entire settlement until the next batch was ready for consumption.

As for the other major change, it was regarding the development of the new settlement, as thanks to the help of the new members, we were able to stop having to construct thing and transport them to where the new settlement was being built since we now had enough extra workforce to set up a wood carving station right there.

As for why I didn't do that in the first place, it was because the people in the original settlement had already begun to grow accustomed to their daily life, which was what I was aiming for, so making them have to temporarily change where they lived for what would have probably been a week would have certainly set back my progress by bit.

Currently, we had actually managed to set up 5 more houses bringing the total to 10. As for what I was doing, apart from spending half of the day starting to clear a path from the settlement over to the cave (only managing to make it halfway), I also managed to make a somewhat functional stone pickaxe.

Basically, I looked for a somewhat flat and rectangular rock and sharpened both edges, creating a double sharp-ended pickaxe. When one end eventually broke off, the other could also be used; after all, these were only supposed to be temporary.

From there, I just began using other rocks to slowly cave a hole into the pickaxe head rock that went all the way through before putting it through the best fitting branch I could find and fill in the tiny open spaces with very easily bendable leaves so that they would fit as much of the space as possible.

As for today, I had noticed that after feeding them, the larva seemed to have grown slightly, considering their lifespan was understandable. Still, compared to the growth rate of every other animal I had ever seen grow up from infancy, it was certainly sort of freaky.

After making sure that they were free, I made Omar, Fransisco, Cabriel, and Jose follow me to the new settlement, and more specifically, all the way to where the cave was, armed, of course, as the area was still not completely safe.

Once we got there, I pretty much just relit the campfire that I had set up nearing the almost completely dark part of the cave, lighting it up, and, with everyone else staying behind me, made my way deeper into the cave.

However, I was temporarily stopped from continuing after setting up a second campfire. Once the light was no longer enough, I could see a pretty tight gap in front of us. However, it wasn't so tight that one couldn't easily make their way through by shifting sideways.

Before making my way through though, I decided to collect the material I would need to make a third campfire on the other side, and they lit a piece of wood-like touch to but me enough seeing time to set up another campfire.

And while at first I just expected to be presented with more tunnel, once the third campfire was put in place though, I was greeted by what appeared to be a somewhat open cave in the sense that there was a giant open area still inside the cave with no exits in sight.

Even better, after seeing an oddly dark rock near the walls, I ran up to see and finally confirm that the cave had a tin deposit, meaning that I could jump immediately from the copper to the bronze age.

Before I could get too excited though, I began to feel weird and slightly disorientated. Although I was no doctor, I knew that it was probably not good for your lungs to be breathing in a cave with fires nearby constantly releasing smoke, so after making my way back with everybody, we took a while to get back to normal.

Regardless of the slight temporary lack of good oxygen though, at the very least, I had confirmed that there was a tin reserve inside of the cave. Plus, regarding how it would be lit to get everyone to be able to mine inside, while it was true that my only way to produce fire at the moment was through wood burning, that didn't mean that the smoke couldn't be guided out of the cave.

And if all else failed, I could simply go looking for olives to begin planting in mass and make lamp oil so that the smoke produced would be kept at a minimum. But, of course, the first option would still be preferred though, eliminating smoke from the equation would always be better than just lowering its quantity.

That would be for tomorrow though, as although I certainly could just try to brute force it and get a small amount of tin today, I still not only had to begin work on the smoke guiding system but also in making more pickaxes, as it was best to have people be in the mines for as little amount of time as possible to try and minimize the damage done to their lungs.

Plus, I hadn't even finished clearing the path over here so there was still that to do, at the very least though, now that I had a clear path forward instead of just sort of wasting my time trying to improve life in the settlement even if it was only slightly, I could truly begin to accelerate the rate at which technology was integrated into the settlements.