[Grave injury detected]
[Injury:
- Damage: Moderate
- Effects: Hemorrhage
- Effects: Moderate Blood Loss]
[Cost to heal: 3 ability points]
"Ugh…"
A pained groan escaped from Theo's lips.
His arm… no, his entire shoulder felt as if it was on fire.
Opening his eyes… Theo quickly realized the futility of doing so, given the complete lack of light in his hole.
Even breathing appeared to be a heck of a lot harder than it should, as if Theo had to suddenly put a lot more effort into doing something as simple as taking a single breath, with such breath lasting only a fraction of the norm.
'Oh right, if I'm buried like that, it's a miracle I didn't run out of air yet.'
Theo shook his head, slowly pushing himself to come awake and chase away the drowsiness of the unintended sleep he fell prey to.
The pain, while unpleasant, quickly turned into a crutch for Theo's will to rest on, using it as the only sensation he could actually rely on.
It became his anchor to reality.
And so, before Theo would start to seriously suffocate in his earthen coffin… he started to dig again.
Block after block, he dug.
Swing of his shovel after swing, he dug.
And soon enough…
The stack of earth blocks in his inventory reached its capacity of sixty-four, only for another stack to appear right beside it.
[Approaching the limit of the inventory: 9/10]
Yet, it was also right as this prompt appeared when Theo's mindlessly pressed shovel struck something its blade could not unearth.
'Huh?'
Barely awake, Theo looked down at a small angle, already forgetting his brain had yet to recover from the period of oxygen deprivation from before. Thankfully, whenever Theo dug out a block of earth… he could feel the air in his hole growing fresher and fresher, as if the space occupied by the mined-out block wouldn't turn into a void but be replaced with perfectly fresh air instead.
Still, with his brain operating on a low amount of oxygen for only heavens knew how long, it was no surprise how Theo's thoughts remained sluggish, drowsy.
'This pain…' Theo thought, gritting his teeth.
The more his head refreshed, the more vivid the pain in his shoulder grew. And at some point, the constant weakening from the loss of blood limited how far the young man could recover.
'Should I waste the ability points for something as simple… as a heal?' Theo groaned at the mere thought of doing so. But…
'You are in a damp cave of your own making. You already nearly died just because you were too slow to avoid the falling tree. Is it really a good idea to hoard those points when this place is so full of risks?'
Gritting his teeth, Theo took a deep breath… and confirmed the prompt flashing before his eyes from even since he woke up.
And pretty much as soon as he did so, it felt as if a surge of energy shot into his flesh, burning away at his wound with heat so impossibly great, it smoldered and killed off the ends of Theo's nerves in the affected areas before they could transmit the pain signals to his brain.
With such a level of torture, Theo's ability to feel pain ended up overflowing and just failing to process the signals, leaving Theo in a state of a pleasant – addicting even – bliss.
Yet, as much as he would love to just… enjoy the moment, Theo had work to do.
And it started with something as simple as checking out all the elements of his interface.
The hunger and thirst indicators took a considerable drop, yet were still some ways off from reaching the first checkpoint.
His levels didn't rise at all.
His equipment filled up with the earth blocks.
But what Theo really cared about was how the two most important indicators had now returned to their former state.
[Threat level: No threats detected]
[Forest Outskirts - Safe Zone (fake)(Miyazaki's Snicker) - Within Range of Oilrat (level 147) patrol route!]
"Uff…"
As much of a loss as it was for Theo to lose the chance to time out just how long the Oilrat would remain in an alerted state after the encounter, it was but an irrelevant detail.
"I've survived…"
Feeling as if a great weight dropped off his shoulders, Theo took a deep breath before taking his time to exhale it.
"Okay then, what do I do now?"
As… exciting as the meeting with the local fauna could be, the hunger and thirst meters stuck to the left bottom corner of Theo's vision constantly reminded him about the one currency he couldn't really afford to waste – time.
"If I recall correctly, I couldn't dig any further down, right?" Muttering to himself, Theo dropped down to his knees and touched his footing, quickly confirming his theory.
Although located much deeper than he expected, he finally reached the layer of the stone.
The second most important material for his advancement.
And a realm where he could finally think about building a somewhat safe shelter for himself, given the small risk of a cave-in, as compared to trying to hole up directly in the ground.
'Even if I will later try to move a base closer to the surface, for now… For now, this place has to suffice.'
With the basic plan for his future set, Theo took but a moment to unearth several blocks of dirt around himself. With just enough room for his purpose, he stashed the shovel away and exchanged it for his pickaxe, only to grab it with both of his hands… and just gently tilt it down towards the stone just ahead of him.
[Mining: 15%]
…
[Mining: Completed!]
[Obtained: 1 stone block]
'Now, for the hard part,' Theo thought, stashing his pick in his inventory before dropping down to his knees again and then slowly crawling around, marking the ground's layout with his bare hands.
'I guess healing that wound of mine was a good idea, regardless of the cost,' Theo thought as he worked away, hoping to gain some amount of room before even attempting to come up with a way to illuminate the place. 'I can't imagine trying to touch my way around like that with my right arm only half-usable. Not to bring up the risks of infection, poor natural healing, complications…'
Before long, Theo found the spot he dug out before sliding his feet into it and finally, for the first time since he left the ancient gateway's approach, stood down on smooth, solid ground.
'Now, to turn it into a basic room,' Theo thought, before gritting his teeth and then getting to work.
Digging out enough stone to create the room he envisioned in his mind, however, was the first slightly tougher task that actually took Theo a considerable chunk of time.
With each block only measuring fifty by fifty centimeters, he had to dig four layers of it to create enough room to stand comfortably in. Then, by digging two blocks out in all four cardinal directions from where he stood, he laid the groundwork of a five-by-five grid room.
A task that Theo imagined to take him at most a few minutes, ended up taking nearly an hour… or however long had actually passed, given the lack of any time-measuring devices for Theo to track its flow. Such was the cost of trying to keep his work area to follow his mind-design while working without even a single spark of light.
"Finally… done…"
Despite doing nothing but gently swinging his pick for about an hour, Theo couldn't help but collapse down to the ground pretty much the moment he confirmed the task was completed.
After all, what was the point of standing if the very next step involved him doing nothing but testing the limits of his system with a simple goal in mind?
'Right, even if there's a recipe for it, I don't recall what it could be in that game,' Theo thought back to the system that started everything, only to then take a glance at his inventory.
"Even then, it's not like I can go a long way with but a single unit of wood, can I?" he chuckled a little, only to turn his eyes to the other type of wood, one that refused to conform to the idea of existing as mere blocks.
'If it's with that kind of wood…' Theo thought, before quickly messing with all sorts of arrangements for the quadro-circular pieces of the wood within his three-by-three crafting window.
And soon enough, Theo ended up discarding the second stack of dirt out of his inventory, all to make space for his very first fireplace, one that he wasted no time placing down.
'Now, just to fire it up…' Theo thought, grinning from ear to ear as he found a certain sense of fulfillment from going from one step of his development plan to the next…
Only to then freeze as he stared into the darkness, facing the brutal obvious.
"But how the hell do I start a fire when I have nothing to start it with?"