After leaving that place—whatever you'd call it—I'm not even going to try thinking about it again; it'd just give me an aneurysm. On a brighter note, I found a pretty efficient way of farming XP: there's this massive cave filled with goblins and Nigels. It's one of the best XP farms ever. I just go in, take down hundreds of them, and leave with a ton of levels. After three or four waves, I did come across some decent armor, though nothing too spectacular—a pair of gloves (level six), a pretty rusty old knife (level three), and a chest plate (level one). But hey, it's better than nothing. I still have my level five shin guards from my old set and a dagger, so I'm doing alright.
Honestly, I kind of wish I had the rest of my armor set, but you know, with a horde of… whatever those things were chasing me, I didn't have time to pack everything. Not calling them humans—they acted more like savage animals.
The last three runs I did in the cave haven't given me as much XP as before, but I've managed to get a temporary base going so far. It turns out "temporary" might be as good as it gets because every time I try to build an actual base, it either disappears or gets stolen. So for now, it's just a place to stash my stuff. I have two options: stay here or explore, and honestly, I think I'm going to explore. I'm not sure what my goal is here, though—maybe it's to escape or maybe to uncover some forgotten mystery of this place. I feel like I'll figure it out on my adventure. I mean, I've always wanted to go on one of these survival journeys, or whatever you'd call this.
A cave base would be cool. I don't have a design in mind yet, but clearing out this entire cave and building a little hideout in it could be awesome. That's step one, I guess. After one more XP run, I'll start setting up the basics.
Dinner was, unfortunately, more Nigel meat. When I say "delicious," I mean I'm about to throw up if I have to eat another bite of this garbage. If I don't find some kind of seasoning or even just a pinch of salt, I'm going to go insane. You'd think salt was currency around here. When I mentioned it to some wandering traders, they practically went ballistic, like salt was more valuable than gold.
Anyway, I tried to sell some of the Nigel pelts and meat I had, plus a bunch of random goblin trinkets. When I mentioned I had salt, they immediately stole it right from me. This place is a nightmare.
After eating, I lay down on my makeshift bed, hoping tomorrow will be better. Actually, scratch that. Every time I hope for a better day, something bad happens. So… let's just say, I have a feeling something terrible will happen tomorrow.
Author's Note: I had to create a few backup files and save my other books just in case. Whether I get hacked or this story gets taken down, at least it won't be gone for good. It took a few days and I had a ton of other things to do, but now I'll probably get back to a steady schedule of writing chapters until I hit chapter 25 or 30—I haven't decided yet.