Chapter 4 - Dig, Dig, Dig!
[[Alisha] has completed the Achievement: [Survive The First Night Without Dying]!]
She can't help but grin as she watches the sun rise past the mountains. The blazing ball of purple rises into the sky, contrasting against the blues of the morning sky. The night winds have died down, and the air has turned warmer.
She stands on the beach, her toes barely dipped into the crawling waves as she stretches. She feels her bones creak here and there, and she takes a breath of the morning air as she lifts the leather strip from her right eye.
[User: Alisha]
[Condition: 91/100]
[Status: (Refreshed)]
[Path: - ]
[Title: - ]
[Strength: 3]
[Endurance: 2]
[Agility: 2]
[Mind: 2]
[Psionic: 2]
[Body Skills: -Pain Endurance Lv 1-, -Novice Spear Combat Lv 1-]
[Psion Skills: -Identify Lv 1-]
Her eyes crinkle in delight. Honestly, at the moment, everything's just great. All her attributes rose by 1 as a reward for [Surviving her First Night], her increased Endurance made her heal quicker, and she has her new -Novice Spear Combat-. She's beyond pleased at how her first night had ended.
She even has a surplus of meat! Those Galins might look like cats, but what sympathy she had for them died after they tried killing her.
Hey. Those things wanted to eat her. It's only fair play that she returns the favor.
The only thing she needs to do is to get her hands on that -Crafting- Skill she'd been gunning for before she noticed the Galins eyeing her up. All she needs is to make one more Item. Just one more wooden spear.
She'll deal with that later though.
She needs to Cook something using her Personal Kitchen to continue down the chain of Achievements. There's a crucial Reward she needs. Something that'll allow her to begin restoring her broken ship.
She walks back towards the trees. Her feet soon come onto dirt instead of sand, and she comes upon the carnage she'd left behind. A few dozen corpses of Galins lay on the earth, their blood long having been drained and soaked up into the earth. The putrid smell of blood permeates the air.
She kneels down next to one of them, and immediately pulls back at the horrid smell. What meat she could've scavenged has rotted. She comes to another, and again she's sent reeling by the awful smell.
It seems, in her pain-addled delirium, she'd forgotten that meat can only survive without preservation for a few hours before they begin to rot.
She just hadn't considered it. After all, Rotting isn't a mechanic in [Star's Empyrium].
She gives herself a well-deserved slap on the cheek for the mishap. There goes her chance at cooking something. Now she'll need to wait for more Galins to show up before she can-
Or does she?
She considers for a moment. She does have something else. Those coconut-like fruits. She doesn't have the tools needed to do anything fancier, but she doesn't need to. She can drink the liquid, feast on the meat hiding behind the shell, and as for the fibrous shell itself,
She's fairly sure toasted coconut flakes are a thing. She doesn't have the spices, but she does have an ocean she can pull salt from.
She takes a moment to use -Identify- on the ocean waters and nods. There are some minerals she doesn't really want, but there is more than enough edible salt for her to use. She just needs to boil out all the water.
She groans.
She snaps her finger, and in a flash, her Personal Kitchen forms into the real world. A stove forms magically, with a countertop forming to its left. A wooden cutting board appears atop the counter, and another flash follows and reveals the two pans sitting on the stove.
She scoops up a saucepan full of seawater. She brings it back to the stove and lets it do its magic. Well, it isn't magic, really. It's all powered by some quantum technology she doesn't quite understand. She's never been the one to dive headfirst into all the technobabble her other team members like to do.
She stands there for what feels like ages, watching as steam rises into the air, as the water in the saucepan slowly disappears. It's not the most boring thing she's ever done—waiting for the internet to come back online triumphs it—but it comes close.
While that's going on, she got herself another one of those coconut-like fruits. She carves it open with her knife this time—a much easier endeavor—and consumes it dry. She drinks all she can and munches on its meat while she waits for the sea water to fully evaporate.
[A [Unnamed Fruit] has been consumed. Understanding has risen to: 40%]
Her suffering eventually ends. No more steam rises from the saucepan, and she looks over to see a small pile of discolored grain sitting at the bottom of the saucepan. It's certainly salt, her -Identify- tells her, but it's diluted by all sorts of minerals also contained in that seawater.
It is safe to consume though. So she gives it a try.
She winces. It certainly tastes like salt. Very concentrated salt with an odd metallic tang, but salt nonetheless.
She begins chopping up the fibrous shell, cutting them as finely as she can. Her recently increased Strength makes easy work of the tough material, and it isn't long before she tosses the chopped fibers into the frying pan.
It feels a little awkward. She's standing on a beach, with a kitchen set somehow sitting on the sands, toasting finely chopped fiber as she sprinkles in traces of unrefined salt. It definitely sounds like some sort of fever dream she'd get after she watches one too many online videos.
The end result is…something. She doesn't quite know what she's made, but it tastes alright. A little crunchy, a little salty, a little metallic. It almost feels like she's crunching down on blended screws or something.
Thankfully, this thing is considered a success.
[[Alisha] has completed the Achievement: [First Cooking]! Producing rewards…]
She sees space behind in front of her eyes, and she has only a moment to realize that her reward is going to drop right onto her stove if she does nothing. So she quickly pulls her Personal Kitchen back into the simulated pocket space she'd been given, just moments before she hears something sharp fall onto the sand.
She smiles tiredly.
[Iron Pickaxe]
[A primitive tool used to mine through stone. Once used by primitive humans, it has long been relegated as artifacts paraded around by archeologists. Still, a tool is a tool.]
[Durability: 100%]
There it is. Now she can mine stone, and eventually other Ores. It'll be arduous work, but there's little else she can do. If she wants to get off this planet and back to the stars, she'll need to put in her everything.
At least the mountains are fairly close. She can begin digging from there.
She pulls the leather strip back over her eyes, and with a deep breath, she begins walking. She walks past the trees, into the shadows of the canopies and out the other side. What she sees is simply more sand, before shifting to harsh red stone that climbs up towards the mountain's peak.
She comes onto the stone, and with her pickaxe, she begins to dig.
Swing. Swing. Swing. She repeats the action one after another, the muscles in her arms straining and twisting as she digs deeper into the ground. Sparks fly as chunks of rocks fall, and her surroundings grow darker as she descends into the dark.
She feels a prick in her eyes—a sign that she's gotten the next Achievement in the chain. But she ignores it, continuing to dig deeper and using her enhanced Mind to see better in the dark.
She comes across nothing for quite a while. She finds stone and stone only, interspersed by sparks as the Durability of her pickaxe steadily goes down. Many will begin feeling frustrated at this point, defeated even.
Not her. She doesn't slow. She only goes faster, her swings more powerful. She digs and digs, waiting for a similar epiphany to the one she'd experienced just the night before.
She falls into a trance soon enough. Her focus tightens, and she thinks of nothing else but digging. It's nothing she hasn't experienced before—she often goes into her own world once she's found her groove. It usually happens after hours of developing. Her team members once explained that she turned into a cyborg the longer she does something.
Then, hours later, after she's gone meters underground, she feels it.
Something inside her tightens. Information floods her brain. Her form subtly shifts. Her grip on her pickaxe changes. Less strength is put into her movements, but the power contained into her muscle skyrockets.
She takes a breath, and swings.
Boom!
The rocky surface before her practically explodes from the impact, sending rocks and chips of stone flying all over. Some smashes against her skin, but her increased Endurance shrugs them off without issue. The dust slowly settles, and she releases a slow bated breath.
[[Alisha] has gained the Body Skill -Mining Proficiency-!]
She grins. There it is.
She takes a deep breath, and with vigor running through her veins, she continues to dig.