Day One

Seemingly displeased at being cornered to talk, he squints at me.

Yeah, yeah I get it. So impatient.

I've thought about it earlier, I realized that my usual approach to dealing with Lucian won't work here. There's nowhere to hide and I'll have to exert more effort just to produce a similar output.

"We both know that's not really your thing." I point my chin towards the "boulder carvings".

"And are you saying that it's yours?" He cocked an eyebrow at me, egging me as if we both don't know that he can't be bothered to make anything like this. Unlike before.

I glance at my wheelbarrow, and back at his creation as if to drive the point.

Swallow the sarcasm or you won't get anywhere. Breathe in and breathe out.

"I propose we collaborate when needed." I cross my arms before continuing, "I know you'd prefer not to breathe the same air as me but I refuse to waste time doing things twice just because we cannot stand each other."

I wasted three years doing that and if I have to live here permanently, this cannot go on.

He's glaring even harder now but I just continue. He's always mad anyway, what's a little more.

"I'll factor you in when I make things, including tools, furniture, and even cooking." I probably sound like I'm negotiating a cease-fire and it's probably because that's what this is.

"And why will I even need you to do that?" Will it kill him to converse like a human? How stingy is his monthly word count allowance?

"I see…I guess you're fine eating grilled or boiled things for the rest of your life, and probably never seeing things like soap again." I shrug, about to add more reasons why his non-domesticated ass needs saving when he says, "Get to the point."

I smile inwardly lest he scraps it all off because of his pride. "I don't plan on living a destitute life here. Survival is key but if I can raise my standard of living, I will do it. We both know that your abilities are crucial in making that more achievable."

I look him in the eyes, not backing down. "What I ask for in return is that you make the designs I show you when possible." He seems very skeptical.

"For example, we need several buckets for the hide tanning. I can make buckets but they will take time to cure. Meanwhile, you're able to make them faster given a design." I point towards the intricate stone weapons that were clearly borne out of combat mastery.

I pull out a tablet from my space, swiftly drawing and assigning dimensions to several stone buckets and tools before showing him what I meant.

He glanced at the sketches, and for a moment I thought he was going to act up, but then he beckoned a boulder and started shaping it accordingly.

As a Plant elemental with access to relatively flexible materials, witnessing extremely hard rocks bend like clay is really something.

It didn't even take him a long time. Now we have different sizes of buckets and a handful of tools to clean the hide. I even managed to get him to make some cookware.

"Can you also make some sort of kiln and an exhaust over there?" I point inside for the hearth and outside for the kiln.

"We'll need to extract tannin and we'll need to smoke both the hide and part of the pig's meat." I point out in case he starts protesting about the number of things to do.

Surprisingly, he just did as he was told. Which to me, was more nerve-wracking.

"With all the work you've made me do, there better be improvement in my life." He threatens me and I arch an eyebrow at him.

"For someone who subsists on MREs and grilled anything, you're very demanding." I retort.

Seeing that he's already about to growl at me, I tap on his chest with a finger and say, "I will even prepare your hide clothes so that you won't have to sew things yourself. So don't go growling at me." I pull back knowing that he detests sewing or mending.

Inspecting the baskets that I've made, I point at one without looking at him, "Clothes go in there, I'll wash them later."

He stopped arranging the firewood and looked at me quizzically, "Are you trying to get me to undress?"

I see a slight smirk forming at the corner of his mouth and that pisses me off. "There's nothing there that I have not seen yet." I deadpanned.

"My goal was to save soap and time. But if that's your kink, who am I to judge?" I smile at him.

"I didn't realize that you were such a fan. Having been able to see it all." He lazily retorts.

"Why of course, given the popularity of our dear Captain, even if I glued my eyes shut, I'd still be subjected to the torture of seeing you in all your glory." I remind him sarcastically.

It's futile trying to escape Lucian, his popularity made it so that everywhere I go, there's always talk about how glorious his abs were. I once heard that there was a fan club dedicated to his eyelashes.

"You are probably unaware, but there had been a lot of talks regarding which of your ab muscles could single-handedly end the war. So don't be too gracious when stripping for us mere mortals. You'll make a lot of girls cry."

He turned back, slightly facing me, "If you wanted me to strip just for you, you could've just said so." Then he stood up to light the fire outside.

I couldn't help but lose my cool, my face cracking at his arrogance. "Why would I even want to see you naked?!" I scream at his back, just as the other three walk in, definitely scaring them shitless.

Then he has the gall to look back, shrugging. "Who knows what goes in that little mind on yours." I must stab him one of these days.

Three heads followed Lucian's departing back like cats focused on a laser pointer.

I mutter curses and words of comfort. Just remember that you got an outdoor kiln, smokehouse, and a hearth out of this.

"What's he up to?" Rina pointed towards the cave entrance and I know that it comes with underlying questions.

"Probably finishing the outdoor kiln and smokehouse." I cross my arms in front of me, annoyance evident in my face.

"Did you guys make these?" Idris pointed toward the various tools and utensils on the ground. He seems impressed and I totally understand.

"Did anyone get hurt?" Rai asked hesitantly, glancing around while looking for signs of a battle taking place.

"I'm not as fragile as you think I am. And if we do fight, I may lose, but there's no way he would be able to strut like that after." I puff my cheeks at him.

"We have these now so we can actually start preparing things. I'll need some help processing the tree resin I got. I don't really want to use a scarf to strain it. We only have a few of those after all." Rina understands and agrees to help.

"A few more things we need to start with today: Extracting tannin from the barks, preparing lard from the pig's fat, and getting wood ash for the initial hide tanning." I remind them and we decide to let the boys handle the lard and wood ash preparations.

"Oh but call me once the fat starts to melt so I can try seasoning it. Let's try to make some cracklings while we're at it, hopefully it tastes similar." I really hope that it'll taste good enough. It would be a waste if we don't get to maximize the hell pig.

Rina likes those and I can see her giddy at the thought of possibly being able to have cracklings here.

We use the cave hearth to process the tree resin. With this, we can waterproof as many things as possible. We'll also be able to create rudimentary soap, salves, and glue. It's times like this that I'm thankful for being a Plant Elemental.

Sure, if you stick me in a room way above the ground with no seeds with me, I'll definitely have a problem. But stick me into the wilderness and suddenly I'll manage.

Normally, it'll be some wait to force the trees into producing resin, most would even have to use chemicals to induce production, but as a Plant Elemental, this doesn't apply to me. I feel like crying with joy.

While waiting for the resin to melt, I decided to start scrapping the fat and the membrane of the hide.

"We'll probably need to take some measurements so that we can make enough clothes. I remember what Sir Tyr showed us and we could probably make a set for the five of us". That hell pig seems to be a gift that keeps giving. I happily muse as I toil.

Sometime later.

I take it back. Why did that pig have to be so big?

I've been scrapping for a while now and my arms have started hurting. If I hadn't been training since young, it probably just wouldn't be sore.

Even Rina has started scrapping with me while she occasionally stops to filter the boiling resin with her abilities.

"I now understand why no one actually describes the process of doing this in the novels, they just magically speed up the process." I angrily scrape at the thick hide, feeling deceived.

"They probably gloss over it because who wants to keep on reading about meticulously scrapping fat and membrane? And this is what, just step 2?" Rina tells me while she diligently scrapes.

"We could rush it, but then we'll be stuck with stinky hides after. If I have to exchange my comfy clothes to wear these, then we're pulling each debris out even if it kills me." I'm fired up, but I mean it. How long will it even be before I manage to find something similar to cotton here?

"We're almost there anyway, it's been about two hours after all." She started a timer when we got here to see how long it would take before nightfall. So far we've been here for about 5 hours now and it's still afternoon here. We still have some time then.

Just as we're close to finishing the scrapping, Rai comes in to call me for the lard.

"We've boiled it as you said and we've collected wood ash for the alkaline solution substitute," Rai reports. It's good that they've been diligent out here.

I come out after getting a bit of salt for the cracklings. I noticed Idris cleaning fish over on a makeshift stone table, while Lucian gathered wood ash from under the boiling fat.

"Would it be okay to use about three of our water containers? We don't have big enough glass containers and the medical cadets only have containers big enough for samples. Those won't be enough for much of the lard here."

Wow, the amount of fat that pig had could probably be enough for about a half-year's worth of oil. I feel bad because we'll have to waste what we can't store.

"If only we could store these…" I mutter while looking at the melted fat with longing eyes.

They all agree to use some water containers, with this we've secured more oil for the coming weeks at least. I suddenly hope that the hell pig is abundant around here.

The lard has been cooking for a while now, it's good that they're watching it because it's highly flammable, a wildfire would not be okay.

It smells great here, I think as I salt the cracklings forming. This reminds me to make them prepare the tannin farther away from here because that would absolutely stink.

Rai comes over while sniffing the air, "That smells really nice!" He continues to sniff the stone pot that we're using.

"Let's hope it tastes great too. If it does, we'll have one more thing to eat."

"We're about done with scrapping the hide, once we have lye we can start soaking the hide in it."

I peek over at Lucian and the wood ash that he's been manually sifting. I find it amusing that he's decided to make a sifter by poking holes into a thin slab of stone with his ability. He's learning, hmmm.

"Can you set aside some wood ash to make soap? It's the perfect time to attempt since we're about to have so much excess lard once this is done." I ask Lucian who looks at me as if he knows that's not the end of the request.

"And can you please make a Lye hopper so we can start filtering the lye?" I smile innocently as I ask for more tools. Be nice Eli.

"We're going to get soap already?" Rai beams and says, "Wow! Normally they'll get access to soap somewhere in the middle of the novel! But we're really going for it on day 1?"

I sigh helplessly at him, "They don't exactly tell you that it takes a while to produce lye. Rina can probably help speed it up, but it will still take time. We still have modern soap now, but what do we do after it runs out?" I look at him questioningly before continuing.

"Also, imagine encountering people or joining a tribe, do you think we can bust out our seemingly modern technology with them watching? How do we even explain all these?"

"Oh! So we'll make as much items as we can before looking at interacting with other humans." He seems to understand.

"We need to fit in, after all, those clothes alone would call attention. But making all these needs time. We have to make them fast or we'll actually be poor if we accidentally encounter people this early." Idris says from his cleaning post.

"It's not like we can't use items in front of them, but we can only use items that we can explain, like the items we're rushing to make now," I say while swinging the makeshift ladle.

We'd made quite the progress by the time we started seeing the sunset. If nothing goes wrong we can start using the things we've had to set aside by tomorrow.

Rina and I decided to wash up and do a bit of laundry after cooking and eating. I don't want to have to trek again after smelling of smoke.

Our modern clothes were actually resilient, it's just that knowing that we haven't had the chance to bathe in almost a week, counting the odd boot camp, I can't help but feel itchy.

The pork cracklings tasted like hope. It was a signal that with the right substitute we could produce familiar products.

I'd like to believe that our first meal here was rather successful. We ate pork chops, fried fish, and of course, more cracklings.

We've decided to cure some bacon that we could smoke tomorrow. Such a large pork belly would be wasted if we don't manage to preserve some of it.

I still feel hesitant to use salt, I've never valued a crystal more than I have now. It's laughable how I carefully worked my way to ensure an even coating on the pork because I was scared of wasting salt, black pepper, and sugar.

"Bacon?" Lucian eyed the pork I've been coating.

I nod back while trying to use a scarf to wrap the meat, well at least it's for food. "They'll probably be ready for smoking by tomorrow. I just don't know if we should cure all this left-over meat." I pointed to the remaining untouched meat.

"It's honestly sizeable. If we had access to other people, we could probably trade that out. At the rate we're going, if I cure everything like this, we'd run out of salt after a month or two." I repeatedly tap my feet on the ground, distressed about each salt granule.

"We'll just find more salt. If we can't find seawater, we'll settle for mining it." He sounded confident as he stared at Rina and Rai who were still snacking on cracklings.

I respond with a small nod, "If you guys are done, go for a bath. And before you get funny ideas, I'm doing this so that we don't leave the cave unattended. You guys go first then Rina and I will go next once I finish this." I hold a hand up shushing his evil thoughts before he can voice them out.

Rolling his eyes at me and pushing off the cave wall he says, "Fine."

And I still remember to add, "clothes on that basket." I'm already washing, I refuse to clean up after scattered clothes. And of course, I get a snort back.

The guys scramble to go out. More like, Rai was scrambling out because he was unceremoniously dragged out by Lucian.