Still, humans can’t live on their own. If I got sick or badly injured, that’d be checkmate for me. I didn’t have much choice but to go looking for the natives.
In the meantime, I cooked the meat. I wasn’t strictly okay eating some unfamiliar animal’s meat, but a guy’s gotta eat.
“Omph! Nom omph! Nom!” The lizaf meat tasted kinda like chicken. Definitely didn’t have the flavor of pork or beef. It was pretty mild and fibrous—more like chicken than anything. But it tasted pretty good. All I did was get it cooked through over the fire. The fat had a sweetness to it. I found that a little concerning, but the meat was tender and tasty. I was sure it’d taste even better salted, but I had no idea how I’d possibly get salt. Maybe if I were close to the ocean.
Does the crafting menu have anything? I thought. Hmm, wait a minute. My crafting recipe list didn’t increase until I put the applicable materials into my inventory first. If I put whatever the materials for salt would be into my inventory, would salt be added? It’s essentially dirt. I had seen a show on TV one time about how kangaroos would lick dirt that had sodium in it. It was a reddish-brown kind of dirt. Was there anything like that around here? I had no idea, so it might be worth it to just dig up some dirt and stick it in my inventory.
Crafting bricks and concrete by combining stuff like clay, dirt, stones, and gravel was a staple in survival games and sandbox games. Things like limestone, clay, and gravel actually required processing and stuff to be made, but most games didn’t bother being accurate about manufacturing processes.
“Maybe I could even consider making a base?” Having a safe shelter made of concrete or brick was appealing. If I made a base, it’d be best to be near a source of water—a lake or river if possible, or a spring at the very least. It might also have been possible to dig a well, but I didn’t have the technology for that.
I might have been able to finagle it if I used my ability, but I didn’t think it was necessary to go to the effort at the moment. I’d give it a try if I found there was no civilization around and decided to finally settle down somewhere.
“At any rate, I need something to dig up dirt with.”
Luckily, my search for food and water had only taken the morning; I still had lots of time left in the day for other things. It was also important that I continue testing my ability to be sure I had an accurate grasp of it.
I opened the crafting menu and looked to see if I could find something like a shovel. I found a shovel with a stone edge further down the list, so I tried crafting it.
“Hmm, it’s not very easy to use.” It didn’t work as well as a shovel with a steel end. However, it was dozens of times better than trying to dig with my bare hands. I exuberantly dug using the heavy stone shovel. As I dug, combining command inputs in time with my own digging, the dirt went into my inventory.
“Am I digging twice as fast as usual doing this?” The “Dig” command was usually one action comprised of thrusting your shovel into the dirt, raising your shovel, and then discarding it. However, it was also possible to store the dirt in my inventory immediately after picking it up. I didn’t need to discard the heavy dirt first, so it wasn’t really tiring work. By combining that with the command, I was able to do something like double shoveling, so I was able to dig up dirt at incredible speed. I hummed as I dug along relentlessly. Despite my situation, I was keeping pretty calm. Sure, I was constantly on edge, but there was a part of me that was enjoying this.
“This should be about enough.” I dug up all around the area where I was planning to spend the night. Most of it felt like mulch, but some seemed clay-like, so I was a bit hopeful about my efforts.
I opened my inventory expectantly to find a reasonable amount of “Fertile Forest Soil” and “Clay.” However, there was far more “Fertile Forest Soil” than “Clay.” Maybe a 7:3 ratio.
“Let’s see, do I have more things I can craft now?”
A composite bow had been added to weapons, which was a bow made of wood and reinforced by animal tendons, bones, or metal plates. It required the bones and other materials from the lizaf; I didn’t know any other use for them, so I went ahead and got one made.
Next, I checked recipes I could craft using the dirt, which was what I really wanted to know. There was a long list of farmland blocks and other building blocks—adobe, for one thing—I could make now. If I combined stones and clay, then I could even make cobblestone walls. However, I didn’t have that many stones, so I probably couldn’t make a great number of them at the moment.
However, the farmland blocks… At the very least, I now knew that my ability had assumed I would be producing food via agriculture. The fact that I could make building blocks meant that they had considered the possibility of me building a base for myself. But who was the entity who’d given me this power? I had no idea if such a being even existed, but if they did, they had some pretty particular ideas about how I was supposed to get by.
Well, let’s just put those thoughts aside for now. Back to the matter at hand; is there anything else I can make? Like salt. That’d be nice. I desire salt.
“Of course things can’t be that easy.” Salt was nowhere to be found in the crafting menu, much to my chagrin. However, I did find something interesting. “I can craft a furnace, huh?”
The recipe required clay, stone, animal pelt, and wood. This definitely meant that I could potentially craft things with iron. Metal tools… I felt excited at the prospect. But where was I going to find iron ore? And what did I use for fuel? Maybe charcoal would work? As for iron, I’d probably have to mine or collect it from somewhere.
In a certain block game, you’d find it eventually if you just dug deep enough. Would that work in this world too? I’d have to try to find out, but I doubted it would yield any results. I didn’t know if it was the case for this world, but back on Earth, ores with lots of iron in them were usually found at the bottom of ponds and springs. I had heard that sand and stones in rivers contained iron as well. Also, reddish-colored rocks were actually colored that way because they contained oxidized iron, so presumably you could get iron from those too. At least, I was pretty sure I had heard something like that before.
Should I head back to the spring? Looking at the sky, I had a feeling that the sun would start to set soon. The clock on my smartphone said it was 3:47 p.m. I didn’t know if this was the actual time or not, since I didn’t have a clock to compare it to, but I had woken up just past six according to my phone, so I didn’t think it was too off.
I looked up once more at the giant planet and moon-looking thing. Every time I saw them, it reminded me all over again how I was in a foreign land. What was I going to do from here on out? I could feel the panic starting to creep in; I doubted that someone who could send me back to my world would actually aid me. After all, I had never heard of other worlds outside of novels and games that were meant for entertainment.
Maybe I’d have a chance if there was a secret rescue task force that the government put together to protect the civil liberties of the Japanese people from the secret epidemic of otherworldly kidnappings? Yeah, right. Like something like that actually existed. I had to face the facts.
“Guess I’ll call it a day.” It was important to get proper rest so that I didn’t burn myself out both physically and mentally. Surely. Probably. Maybe. I had to also control how much food and water I consumed.
Searching for food is going to be my main goal for tomorrow; searching for iron and salt can be side goals. At the same time, I also need to run a bunch of tests to see what stuff I can put in my inventory to increase my crafting repertoire. I’ve got to master my ability if I’m gonna keep on living. The more things I can craft, the more things I can do. I’ll do my best.
Today, I gathered lumber and grass—or rather, I cut the grass and then collected it—to use for kindling and crafting materials, and then I placed my hammock up in a tree. I made a fire, ate lizaf meat, and then went to sleep. I’d tossed some green wood on the fire, so it’d thrown up a bit of smoke; it was uncomfortable, but maybe someone from civilization would spot it and come looking—or so I hoped. In the short term, it made good insect repellent. Damn all of those bugs.