The width of the precipice looked to be consistently 30 meters across, although it seemed to expand up to at least 50 meters high in the few spots where the cliff went down slightly. It looked like I didn't have to worry about dangerous animals, or a surprise attack from enemies inside the ravine, but escape was also impossible.
Before I went to work in the morning, I used the
Aside from conducting experiments with Willpower's restoration rates, I tried using the
Name : Waterdry Tree
Description : A tree that grows in lands of plentiful water. A natural bag is said to be used for storing water inside its trunk, and no moisture is found within its branches. Removing the water results in withering of the tree. Useful for processing as firewood. Reaches maturity quickly. If a branch or seed is planted, it can reach a few meters in height within one week.
Was what I got when I appraised one of the shrubs with thin, twisted trunks near the cabin. Apparently it stored water inside, so it was pretty useful for when you needed clean water, and it could be used for firewood as well.
---But the trunk itself is twisted and thin, so wouldn't it be hard to use for construction?
I gathered up about 30 branches and planted them close to the cabin. With this, I should be able to secure firewood, provided things went well.
Name : Bluelight Moss
Description : Moss which grows in lands of abundantly clear water. Capable of growing in some environments without sunlight so long as there is a supply of water. Can emit a pale light. Will not wither in places without water and will continue to emit its characteristic light, but will not propagate.
The other thing I appraised was this moss. It seemed like the magical view of the whole ravine was due to countless amounts of these growing all over the place. If one put a piece inside a glass container, it would become an easy source of light. I wasn't really mining underground, but if I were to make a labyrinth, then I would plant them at set intervals to provide better lighting than any exhaustible torch would.
Even if the light was a bit on the weak side, it was bright enough to illuminate the area in which it grew. That made it a strong contender as a light source compared to the sort of lightmoss one would find on Earth. Since it wasn't uncommon in the valley, the fact that it was easy to obtain was a real godsend. As for the appraisals, I was expecting that it wouldn't be necessary to reappraise the same type of item if it was done before, but it looked like that wasn't the case. You had to use the skill every single time regardless.
I planted some of the waterdry tree branches I'd picked up earlier around the cabin, and dug out more stone with the time I had left. It was already evening by the time I was done selling them to the delivery box. It was a bit hard to move the wheelbarrow around as the wheels were made of wood, but it sure beat carrying stone pieces back and forth by hand. The usefulness of tools could not be underestimated.
I felt as if the days here went by faster than those on Earth. Although, it may have just seemed that way because I moved around constantly, compelled by the sheer enjoyment of the 'gameplay'.
"Hmm... Farm work sure seems tough..."
After dinner, I took a look at Tundra's catalog. While I sat there in front of the cabin, the sun went down and was replaced by the bluish glow of the moss. I still gnawed away at my jerky and bread, but remembered that relying solely on preserved food was not only bad for the economy, but also for overall health. Tundra sold fresh vegetables, but the price made you think twice, and they sold out fast despite that.
As I calmly perused the eShop, I noticed something. While the actual process of collection and delivery of Tundra was still very much a mystery, the quantity of goods sold through the service was basically updated in real-time as people bought from, and sold goods to, Tundra. I could tell because the stone cubes I sold were in the 'Stone' category.
Black Shadow Stone - Building Stone (10x3 m.) == 1300 DL
Seller : Manager, Labyrinth #228
Rating : ★★★☆☆
Reviewer : Manager, Labyrinth #172
- Good quality stone, although the amount for sale is too low. It's a high quality black shadow stone, so it's suitable for building interiors. You can also give it a good luster with a little bit of polishing. I wanted to make a stone wall, but the amount available for purchase was too little so I gave up. I expect an increase in production output in the future. You could also make stone pavings if they were a little smaller.
In Tundra's system you didn't gain additional remuneration even if your item sold after it was placed in the catalog. But seeing someone had bought the stone I sold, and left a review, made me feel kinda happy. Before I noticed, I was grinning like an idiot.
I resolved to keep that comment about increasing production in mind. I checked up on food ingredients next. I could tell vegetables were a popular product from the reviews. It seemed like they constantly sold out right after being put up in the catalog. And so much demand, meant an increase in price.
I searched for seeds and saplings to see if I could raise the crops myself, but from the outset, proper agriculture still seemed difficult in this world. I tried to find more specific examples of fruits and crop seeds in the catalog.
Ice Fruit Seedling == 800 DL
Seller : Manager, Labyrinth #28
Rating : ★★☆☆☆
Reviewer : Manager, Labyrinth #35
- impossible to use in the desert. I thought it would be okay if I planted it underground deep enough since it's cold, but it withered out by the 10th day, it might have something to do with water quality here
Rating : ★★★★★
Reviewer : Manager, Labyrinth #785
Environment : Permafrost
- Sweet, delicious! - After about 40 days from planting it you can get get about 10 fruits so big they won't fit in your hand, per harvest. The skin is kinda hard, but it's sweet and delicious. The fact it doesn't freeze even in my environment is the best!
Dry Land Rice Seedling == 3000 DL
Brand : ~Devilish Glance~
Seller : Manager, Labyrinth #421
Rating : ★★★★★
Reviewer : Manager's Family, Labyrinth #48
Environment : Savanna...ish?
- Everything excellent besides the brand name - It took 80 days to harvest after planting. I'm happy it's resistant to dryness. The harvest amount wasn't bad and neither was the taste. I shared some of it around the nearby village and it became pretty popular, but couldn't answer when they asked me about the brand's name...
Rating : ★★★☆☆
Reviewer : Manager, Labyrinth #601
Environment : Temperate humid climate - plateau
- It's resistant to dryness but weak against cold? - Harvested after 65 days from planting. I raised them in a prototype field. The fact they don't need much time for watering is a plus. The same day winter started was the same day they became out of season, and some of them froze and withered, so I had to wipe my tears as I harvested while most were still not ripe. The taste was nice but my climate might be too harsh for them.
As you could see, it looked like there was nothing fantasy-esque with regards to the growth of crops. There were lots of games aimed at casual players in which crops could be harvested in about one to five days after planting. But here? It took a while for them to grow. It was useful when the reviewers would put the climate and time to harvest in their comments, though. My training period would be over before I had time to harvest some of these crops with long periods of growth. I didn't really have the luxury to grow
and harvest them with my current time allotment.
Raw meat and fish were cheap, but sold out. Items of luxury and processed goods remained in stock, though... From what I had gathered, managers with labyrinths located in places like meadows or other calmer climates were the ones participating in agriculture. There didn't seem to be any type of greenhouse cultivation, so the seasonal influence affected everyone. We were in the early part of summer right now, so edible wild plants were rather abundant, but most of them were bitter when compared to normal vegetables. And most of all, it took more time and effort to process said plants to remove the astringent tastes.
"Hm? Maybe this one might be good for me, eh?"
My hand stopped upon one of the seasonal items as I checked the catalog.
Lantern Pumpkin Seed == 150 DL
Left in Stock : 3 remaining
Rating : ★★★★★
Reviewer : Manager's Family, Labyrinth #601
- For seasonal interior use. Careful you don't leave anything raw inside! It sprouts as soon as you plant it and you can pluck off a pumpkin big enough to make a lantern in about a day. Their skin is pretty hard so you'll have to have a tool ready to process these. They're also packed full inside so you'll have to take it all out. I repeat, be careful not to leave anything raw inside the lanterns you make, there'll be bugs and mold if you're not!
Rating : ★★★★☆
Reviewer : Manager's Family, Labyrinth #48
- i had a blast making them with my mom but theyre kinda scary when theyre done!!!
Like the ones found during Halloween, right? Those seemed to be in a lot of online games.
---Yeah, the ones they implemented for seasonal events and didn't bother deleting the data so they can use it next year too, hah.
Surely they must have felt lonely being ditched like that. There sure seemed to be a lot of comments suggesting to throw away the insides of pumpkins used for lanterns. They all said it wasn't tasty. Not like it was poisonous or anything, though. They almost seemed like event items. You could even plant them and have it ready the next day.
I ordered the remaining three in stock, and used the light of the moss to help me put the money into the piggy bank.
"Thank you very much!"
---You know... Hearing that voice every time really ruins my immersion.
◇
"Whoa, these sure are big."
When I opened the envelope that was delivered, I found seeds as big as an eraser inside. I figured I should try to plant one for now. I thought that actual soil would be better for this, so I used the
---And that's it.
If this was a dungeon creation game, I could maybe create designated plots of land and switch up the field's soil. But instead, what fell in front of me, like that shovel and pickaxe before, was a simple metal-edged hoe. I didn't mind actually cultivating a big plot of land, but how long would it take to 'improve soil' with a single cheap hoe like this?
I chose a patch of ground near the cabin, used the hoe to till a bit of it, and planted the lantern pumpkin seed inside. I grabbed the remaining water I had from dinner earlier and sprinkled it onto the ground.
---I hope it's actually edible. Not expecting much since it was so cheap, but still, that would be nice.
I patted the soil I planted the seeds in and prayed for a good harvest. With a loud yawn, I headed to bed afterwards. I'd been moving non-stop ever since this morning so I was pretty beat. The next day I woke up to find an enormous pumpkin was born in front of the cabin.
"Nice."
Boring remark, I know. It looked like it was about 50 centimeters across and 25 centimeters tall. I was surprised it grew this much overnight. It looked more and more like a game's seasonal event item with each passing second.
"I have to see if I can eat it or not... Umm... I don't really have a pot to cook it in. Maybe I can just grill it?"
I selected the
I cut down three tree trunks, snapped off the branches, and stuck them in the soil. Although it was just out of consideration to prevent running out of resources, I still felt a level of reverence for what nature had provided me. Very much a Japanese-type thing to feel.
I easily chopped a bunch of pieces of firewood to about 20 centimeters long, then I took one and chopped it into finer pieces. With the smaller pieces surrounded by the longer ones, I lit them both together using matches I had bought from Tundra.
Waterdry trees really were useful, as they were easy to make into firewood without having to dry them first. Normally a tree wouldn't catch fire so easily, let alone start smoking. I remembered one time I played a game where humanity had collapsed due to a zombie outbreak, and if you tried to set a live tree on fire, you would fail pretty quick. Should you have managed to even light one though, the amount of smoke that billowed out would draw the attention of the zombies, and even other players. So me and my friends would carry a bunch of wood into a big church on the map, dry it out, then wait for another player to come by, and then we'd go...
"Welcome, would you like to worship the wood?"
Ah, the memories brought a tear to my eye. Being the crazy heretics we were, we would beat up anyone who wouldn't submit to the sacred wood.
Cooking the pumpkin proved to be very simple. I tossed the whole thing, skin and all, into the open air fire. With a moderate flame, it should be edible if you peeled off the scorched outside bits... I think. It would save time from having to crack it open since I didn't have a frying pan or wire mesh handy. Anyway, I roasted it directly on the fire for about 30 minutes before I peeled off the skin with the hatchet, awaiting the hot yellow-colored insides to come out.
"Welp... Nothing inedible in here, but..."
There was practically no sweetness to it. Maybe a slight amount, but the overwhelming vegetable smell completely drowned it out. The texture and subsequent feeling of it going down your throat was also anything but pleasant. It felt grainy and rough, almost like a sand pear, and it left an awful aftertaste that was reminiscent of sawdust in my mouth. While it was edible, it was also far from tasty.
---I'm glad it's kind of edible... But I think I'll pass.
While every passing meal of consuming this wretched pumpkin might prevent you from starving, you'd slowly edge more and more towards just wanting to be starved.
---Now that I think about it, characters in survival games don't care about the flavor of anything, do they?
Among all the survival games I'd played so far, it was commonplace to eat stuff like canned sardines or cold amoeba cells for every meal. But when you became the affected party, then of course you'd want a change in meal types even if it wasn't lobster or caviar. All that aside, at least there was still a lot to eat... So I guess I didn't have to worry about running out food...
◇
The days went by as I continued to dig out stones, plant more waterdry trees for firewood, and pondered purchases while browsing Tundra.
When I looked at the various reviews, it dawned on me that many of the labyrinth managers were Japanese or lived in Japan. Among the typical things that were manufactured by them, the ones which stood out more conspicuously were things like modern underwear, cat ear accessories, and soft-looking robes. Of course, the fact that they were hand-made meant there was little stock to go around, and what little there was sold out almost immediately.
Strangely enough though, there was still lots of stock for convenient and reasonably priced items. Presumably all of them were provided up by local denizens of the world, which seemed to imply that their level of civilization wasn't all that modern.
Most clothes seemed to be made out of linen, sometimes cotton. There were si
mple dyed shirts, and even some with some sort of detailed designs, too. There was a level of regional disparity; everything looked more like it came out of middle-aged European society, than not. A period of time you'd be all too familiar with if you played a lot of fantasy-themed games before.
Right as I had started to settle into the groove of waking up everyday to gather stones and any other valuable items, and buying food and clothes from Tundra with my profit... an incident occurred. Maybe it was because I had gotten fed up with my newfound lifestyle, but one morning I found myself oversleeping, only to be awoken by the sound of something rolling across the ravine, followed by a big bang.
"Wha... Did some rocks fall, or something?"
I ran out of the cabin while rubbing the drowsiness from my eyes. About three of four meters out were some waterdry trees I had planted. I thought they were about the age to be cut down, but they were now shredded to pieces.
"Well, I guess that saves me the trouble of cutting them down... What the hell happened here?"
I made out what looked to be a person's silhouette among the mess of broken trunks and twigs that were the waterdry trees.
"Is that a person? Don't tell me someone fell all the way down here!"
I looked up, but all I could see was the usual steep cliff and the unreachable sky. I couldn't imagine falling from that high up straight onto the ground would be anything but dangerous to one's life.
---A girl...? Wait a minute. A girl falling from the sky is a game scenario flag for a new character introduction. But what's the point of that if the person died from the fall!?
A young girl with chestnut-colored hair and a dress, covered in dust and soil, was collapsed amongst the wreckage of waterdry trees...
"Ah..."
I was so unexpectedly captivated by the girl that I had forgotten the gravity of the situation for a moment.
Strongest Gamer; Let's Play in Another World Volume 1 Page 4