Throughout the night, I kept waking up due to the gradual cold that kept creeping up on me because of the dying fire. This led to me needing to feed the fire throughout the night until the first lights of dawn came over the horizon.
There were even a few times that I would need to go out in the middle of the night to collect some of the scrap wood to continue to feed the fire.
Now, with the day coming, I was able to stop feeding the fire and pulled out some rations to fill my empty stomach. Once my meal was over, I set off to the rest of the shipwreck to check how the loot sub-system worked.
The first thing I decided to test the loot sub-system on was one of the crew's skeletons that was lying about the beach. Carefully approaching one of the skeletons in case a similar thing like with the captain happened, I watched as it gained a white outline, and a small screen popped up asking if I wanted to loot it.
Mentally choosing to do so, a new screen popped up that looked like a classic video game inventory.
This screen showed a small scroll, a book with a blank cover, and another blue marble of a fainter color.
Going with the first thing that I saw, I mentally focused on the scroll, and a new window with its name appeared, asking what I wanted to do with it.
Thinking of sending it to the special inventory, the scroll immediately disappeared, leaving a blank space on the screen.
Surprised by this, I mentally closed the looting window and thought of opening my inventory to check and see if it was in there.
Giving the command to the system, I waited for a screen to appear showing everything in my inventory, only for what felt like a part of my vision being pulled to somewhere else that looked like outer space with a lone scroll floating there in the void.
Pulling my mind out of that strange space, I reopened the looting menu and attempted to do the same with the other items. This yielded the same results as the scroll.
After all the items were taken and there was no more loot, the screen closed on its own.
Moving over to another skeleton, the same outline and window appeared, creating a pattern.
Looting this skeleton and moving on to the next, I continued looting until all the skeletons on the beach were looted.
The next thing that I tried was storing the metal on the lower deck of the ship section in the inventory without having to step into the ship again.
Sadly, it did not work, and I had to climb back into the ship and then down to the lower deck where the metal was stored. This time was faster as I already knew the way there from yesterday.
Once down there, I focused on storing the metal in the inventory and watched as the metal disappeared in a small flash of light that looked like someone had quickly turned on and off a flashlight while it was aimed at your face.
After this were the supplies, tools, and weapons in the store room upstairs.
Slowly placing all this in my inventory, expecting there to be a limit, I began to realize that there was no limit on what I could store. This led to me trying to take everything that wasn't nailed down.
When I ran out of everything like that, I then used my axe to pry up some of the things that were.
I especially focused on taking the cast iron wood fire stove in the small makeshift kitchen for later use.
Once I finished looting this deck of the ship, I moved to the top deck through the hole in the side, where I found that I did not even have to remove the rope and netting on the supplies up there to store them in the inventory.
This allowed me to understand that as long as there was not a wall between me and the item I wanted to store, I could put it in my inventory.
Then I took the sails and everything else that looked like it would be even somewhat helpful in the future into my inventory.
Now, with the ship thoroughly cleaned of anything it could offer, I moved to scouring the beach for the remaining debris I could use.
Once finished, I returned to my shelter with half the day left and the urge to explore.
I then decided to grab the fire starter and put it into my backpack along with the hammock and the single remaining piece of metal that I did not use to build my shelter.
With both the shelter and ship now empty, I decided it was time to move on to the forest, which I could see about half a mile away.
Beginning the trek to the forest, I walked for about 20 minutes, watching as the trees kept getting bigger, thinking that I would reach the forest perimeter soon. It was at this point that I realized this forest was much farther away than I thought it was, and my eyesight was better than I gave it credit for.
It was about another 20 minutes later that I managed to reach the start of the forest.
Looking around, I did not see anything like a trail or some marking that would tell me that there was some sort of civilization around here.
This, alongside all the natural debris everywhere, made me think that this place was relatively untouched by man. This fact becoming known to me only brings me some temporary sadness before logic takes hold again.
Pulling out my axe, I start trekking into the untamed forest ahead of me.
Twenty minutes later, I spot a meadow-like clearing to the side of my current path.
Stopping for a moment to think about things, I realized that this place was the better choice for a more permanent base than my current residence on the beach.
This was doubly so when you considered that this was a different world than the one I originated from.
Walking into the meadow, I was able to get a good view of what it looked like. There was a small creek flowing through the center of this little clearing with a wall of sturdy trees surrounding it, acting like a natural barrier to the outside. This was paired alongside a smattering of small, colorful wildflowers, bringing a natural vibrancy to the place.
I then started to move into the meadow to get a better grasp of the land around here when I was startled by a sound chiming in my ears.
[Quest/Task Sub System Activated]
[Quest: Mainline 1: Homesteading]
{Task 1: Clear the meadow of hostiles.}
{Task 2: ???}
{Reward: Inventory unlocked}
After the sound, a window detailing the new quest appeared in my vision without me calling it out.
The contents of the quest, as well as its layout, were interesting as it differed a little from the original details that I gave to the goddess.
It was probably a creative liberty that she took when making it.
Regardless, I was fairly frustrated at the poor timing and, honestly, the dangerous distraction that the sound caused.
The moment after I thought about that complaint, a new window appeared in my vision without any sound.
[Notification Sound: When Out of Danger]
That was no longer a problem, apparently.
With this out of the way, I looked at the quest notification again.
The mention of hostiles reminded me that this world was far more dangerous than the world I came from and also that in the cultivation world, any place that looks peaceful or that you are interested in staying is full of things ready to kill you.
Thankfully, or sadly in my case, the forests on earth were far less populated around where I lived than they were here in this world. They also had far less dangerous creatures.
Knowing that I was not equipped to handle whatever could be in the meadow, I decided to pull back for now and look around the entrance of the forest for some younger trees that I could reasonably chop down in a short amount of time.
Upon finding a few and cutting them down, I started to drag them together into a pile that would be easier for me to work from.
Once I finished with that, I opened the crafting screen to look for a wooden bow and some stone-tipped arrows, which should have been acquired with the primitive range weaponry tech.
Finding the recipes in the menu, I discovered that there were two types of bows I could make: the first was a longbow, and the second was a short bow.
The longbow shown in the crafting menu said that it had a higher strength requirement than what I currently possessed, so I chose to make the short bow. That decision caused the menu to change and show that it would take five minutes to craft.
This was a change from the previous time that I used the crafting system, which prompted me to look at the system version again.
[Survival System: Version 0.1.a1-3]
With the change in system versions noted, I added the arrows to the crafting menu.
This set of around 40 arrows took 20 minutes to craft, giving a total crafting time of around 25 minutes. So I got comfortable, grabbed some rations, and waited.
When the crafting finished, a bow and 42 arrows appeared in front of me. I realized the problem of attempting to carry this many arrows without a quiver, so I looked for one in the crafting menu.
The problem there was that the quiver required leather, and leather required me to kill something, which was why I needed the bow and arrows. I also thought that there was a quiver made of cloth, but I did not question it at the time.
It was at this time that I remembered that I had looted some weapons off the ship.
Attempting to open my temporary inventory, my vision changes to that of the void in space where I am presented with all of the weapons that I had looted lined up neatly for me to be able to see them. It was then that I realized I could not wield them after seeing a window pop up next to them with their requirements listed on the screen.
The only thing I could use, and thus pulled out, is a quiver full of iron arrows. The system listed These arrows as training arrows, but when I checked their sharpness, I found that they were as sharp as a normal arrow.
Not wanting to mix my ammo and definitely not using this as an excuse to ditch my bad ammo, I leave the stone arrows behind and walk back into the meadow.
This time around, I entered while trying to be as quiet and low-profile as possible.
Subconsciously, I end up going downwind from the center and begin my approach.
It is here that I realize I can smell and hear the other party with my enhanced senses.
Aiming where my nose and ears tell me the other party is, I fire an iron arrow in its direction.
At this moment, a small gust of wind hit and blew my arrow from the right, shifting my shot to where I would have missed my target. Then, right before my arrow disappeared from sight, a cougar's head poked out of the brush and into the path of my arrow.
The arrow then hit the target and went right through the eye into its brain, killing it instantly.
[Congratulations {Task 1} of [Quest: Mainline 1: Homesteading] is complete. {Task 2} has been revealed]
[Congratulations, you have killed a forest shadow cougar that was at the mortal limit.]
[You have leveled up.]
[You have received the level-up rewards of +1 skill point and +2 tech points]
[You have completed the hidden quest [Punching Above One's Own Weight] for slaying an opponent that was two or more major realms above you in strength.]
[You have received the quest rewards +1 to (STR) and (END)]
[Quest: Mainline 1: Homesteading]
{Task 1: Cleared}
{Task 2: Build a more permanent structure to serve as your house.}
{Reward: Inventory unlocked}
After I killed the cougar, a flood of windows appeared in my vision, causing me to start blinking rapidly in surprise.
Reading them all, I was able to roughly understand the situation at hand.
It turned out that the cougar had already started the beast equivalent of cultivation and was ready to break through in this meadow. It was also the only hostile creature here, so killing it advanced the quest.
There were also hidden quests that acted like achievements and gave highly valuable rewards.
These hidden quests were something I did not have any hand in designing at all and were all the goddess's handy work.
Choosing to look at the skill page first, I found a point counter in the top right corner that I did not pay attention to earlier. All the skills also now had a plus mark lit up next to them.
Considering what I would need to survive on my own and knowing that I would need medicine in the future, I put my new skill point in there.
Immediately, a lot of medical knowledge entered my head, ranging from the basics of Eastern and Western medicine preparation to the basics of their respective diagnosis methods, but not how to connect the two of them yet.
While that happened, I watched my medicine skill increase by ten points up to a combined total of fifteen.
Afterward, I moved over to the Tech Tree to get the tech needed for building a new house.