章 2: Home Base

Jumping to his feet, Loran quickly began looking over the lumber Alexx had gathered. In addition to the five birch logs, each around half a foot wide and 12 feet long, there were dozens of branches of varying sizes and shapes. "Alright, this should be enough to build a decent shelter, let's get started."

"Now?" Alexx asked before turning to look at the sky, "I get that we should finish before night, but will it really take that long?"

"Probably not, but I want to finish this quickly; I just got awarded 600 EXP for making the first Stone Knife."

"Seriously!?" Alexx was stunned. He had just chopped down five trees with his bare hands, and that had only netted him 200 EXP. 'Making one little knife is worth fifteen trees!?'

"Yeah, how much do you think a shelter will give?" Loran was feeling a little excited, this had the potential to give them a massive boost. There were hundreds if not thousands of players who had decided to build a shelter first, but between Alexx having been able to gather so much wood and the crafting benefits of his knife, Loran was positive they still had a chance to be first.

After choosing a nearby maple tree to serve as the main support, Alexx placed four of the birch logs in the forks of the maple branches while also digging them into the ground a bit. Loran used his knife to make notches in the logs, and afterward, he wedged branches into them to hold up the walls, then they set the longest branches against the wall supports and anchored them into the ground between the logs. From there, the two finished by taking the smaller, leafy branches and lacing them into the walls to cover the holes and keep out the wind. Alexx brought up the idea of using mud as well, but Loran shot it down saying that they probably didn't need that much insulation with the current climate.

After a few hours and more than a few mistakes, the two had finished their shelter. It wasn't quite tall enough to stand in but had plenty of space for the two to sit and sleep in. After a moment they both received an alert message.

[YOU HELPED CREATE A BASIC STRUCTURE]

[300 EXP AWARDED FOR CONTRIBUTION]

[YOU HELPED CREATE A BASIC STRUCTURE]

[700 EXP AWARDED FOR CONTRIBUTION]

Alexx ended up being given a larger reward, which made sense considering he had personally gathered the materials and did all the heavy lifting, however, there were no additional messages.

"So... is that it?" Although Alexx was happy with his reward, he had been expecting a lot more from how much Loran got for his knife.

"Someone must have beaten us to it," Loran responded, slightly disappointed himself. Looking up at the sky the sun had begun its descent, it was well past noon, maybe two or three O'clock. "I'm going to try starting a fire."

"Okay, should I get more wood?"

"Does kicking trees still hurt you?" They still had some branches leftover from making the shelter, although they would need more moving forward it wasn't worth more self-harm.

Alexx didn't respond, instead, he walked over to a tree and punched it, leaving a small imprint of his knuckles in the bark. After opening and fiddling with his status screen he punched the tree again. "I'm good now." Creating the shelter had rewarded him enough EXP to reach Lv. 3, giving him 10 Ability Points. He put the first 5 into END which seemed to stop the pain, and with the rest, he put 1 into each stat.

"Alright then," he picked up one of the straighter, thinner remaining branches as Alexx returned to what he had effectively been doing for the entire day. Loran bent the branch to test it, stopping at a slight D shape. It didn't seem to show any signs of snapping which he assumed would be good enough. Using the knife he cut another strip of cloth from his shirt, about 4 feet long, and also made a small notch in both ends of the branch. Catching the center point of the cloth strap in one of the notches, he began twisting the cloth as tightly as he could. With the entire cloth made into a crude rope, he tied the other end to the other notch, making sure to tighten the rope further to give it some decent tension. The newly made bow was far too rough to function as an actual weapon, but it would help plenty with starting a fire.

[ITEM (Crude Bow) HAS BEEN CRAFTED]

[20 EXP AWARDED]

[NAME]: Crude Bow

[DESCRIPTION]

A stick with its ends tied together with rope. Too poorly made to be used as a proper weapon.

'I wasn't first for this either...' Someone had probably beaten him to making fire as well, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to try it out. He continued working, making a small hole in an older piece of wood that didn't come from one of the freshly chopped down trees. After grabbing another straight stick, a flatter piece of wood, and some scraps of birch bark, Loran had everything to start making fire. Endurance would be necessary for the next step so he was about to call Alexx over, but decided against it. They would need the wood he was gathering later, and Loran still had over 900 EXP, it was time to spend some of it. Spending 600 EXP, Loran reached Lv. 3 and now had 20 unspent Ability Points. He spent 6 on END putting it at 10, he also raised STR and AGI to 8, leaving 8 Ability Points in case he managed to create more Skills.

Placing the straight stick in the notch, wrapping the bow's rope around the stick, then applying pressure with his hand and the flat piece of wood, Loran began the long, tedious process of making fire. He vigorously moved the bow back and forth as if playing the violin, focused on keeping up a consistent pace. It took him nearly an hour for the kindling to catch, and it would have taken less time had he not blown too hard on the embers the first time around. After steadily feeding the flames for a few more minutes he finally had a decent fire going. It gave off a lot of smoke since most of their wood was still fresh, but that problem would solve itself eventually. Starting the fire gave him more EXP, but didn't get another bonus so he wasn't overly concerned.

Alexx looked up, "you got the fire going?" By this time he had finished chopping down and stripping two other trees and was in the middle of his third.

"Yeah, we should be good for tonight." Looking up, the sky was just beginning to turn orange at the edge of the horizon. He walked over to Alexx's pile of sticks and picked out the straightest and longest of the bunch, about two meters long. "Alright, we have the shelter and a fire, guess I'll start on making some real defenses."

"What, like weapons? I mean..." he pushed up his sleeves, trying and failing to make the act look casual, "do we really need them?" He asked while moving through a few generic muscle poses. Admittedly, whether it was his stats or just his avatar model, the muscles in his arms and shoulders bulged quite impressively. Between his physique and his tanned skin, he looked like an aspiring bodybuilder; he even had the V-shaped torso that all bodybuilders had, just less extreme.

"Alright enough, not all of us can kick down trees here," he said, rolling his eyes. "Besides, unless you also want to try fishing with your bare hands, a spear or two will be useful."

"Alright, alright" he chuckled, shaking his sleeves back down. After a moment he awkwardly looked around. "So... guess I should get back to..."

"Sorry, but yeah, more wood." Right now, Alexx had a surplus of strength but nowhere to apply it aside from chopping down trees. Sitting down at the campfire, Loran began carving the stick to a sharp point. "Tell you what, when a bear shows up you can punch that instead, alright?"

Hearing that Alexx started looking around again, "you think there are bears out here?" he seemed more curious than nervous.

"I don't know, probably."

Soon the spear had a decent point on it and Loran received 20 EXP for crafting a Wooden Spear. However, he wasn't quite done yet. Holding the tip of the spear over the fire, he waited for the edges and tip to become slightly browned before pulling it out.

[ITEM (Fire-Hardened Spear) HAS BEEN CRAFTED]

[10 EXP AWARDED]

[NAME]: Fire-Hardened Spear

[DESCRIPTION]

A wooden spear with a tip hardened over a fire, making it harder but potentially more brittle.

It was simple, but Loran was satisfied with the weapon. As he began looking for another moderately straight stick, he heard rustling behind him from the edge of the camp.