--- Kat --- (Evening Day 11)
Kat spent a lot more ti ssing around with the wood from the nearby forest getter better and a consistent rate. Kat was a touch worried about how much damage she might be doing to the forest until she noticed a sapling that had already regrown to around knee height in no more than a few days.
It gave her the confidence to just keep working on things and trust the forest could recover without too many issues. Kat had been a touch worried before that.
It was near the end of day five she saw the sapling, and day six saw her tear down a lot of her previous work and get started on everything once again. This ti intending to go fancier and design a proper log cabin. She'd worked out a whole bunch of tricks and was ready to get started.
The first thing Kat did was secure the foundation. This mostly involved digging down a bit and stomping the ground flat in layers. Sure there were now a few chunks of missing dirt nearby but once again, Kat trusted the forest to recover. Kat even tested in on the seventh day to see just how much it could take and was surprised to see that the dirt actually seem to regrow as well.
Kat had no idea how THAT worked but it seed to.
In the end days six, seven, and eight were spent putting together the cabin. Kat had logs for the walls held in place by large poles stuck at regular intervals but hidden from the outside. The door was made up of end pieces all stacked together with more than a few gaps. Kat had glued them all together and thought it looked pretty cool. Lily was… less impressed but she didn't say anything.
Well except to complain about just how heavy the door was!
The roof took the longest of any one section, and Kat actually spent most of day eight just working on that. Kat wanted to do wooden tiles, thinking it would look really fancy and wouldn't be too hard. That was an overly generous estimate. She might have had super speed and super strength but slicing, sanding, and placing hundreds of tiles took up a lot of ti even for her.
The cabin wasn't too large. It was really just a lounge room and a bedroom separated by a wall with a gap in it. Kat didn't want to have to deal with making another door, especially because of the hinges or lack thereof. The way Kat set up the front door wasn't by making hinges but by adding rails and allowing it to slide upwards into the ceiling.
Probably part of the reason Lily thought it was so heavy.
On day nine Kat managed to make a nice set of chairs as well as a bed fra she and Lily could use if they wanted to, while on day ten Kat added windows because she'd sowhat forgot until Lily pointed it out to her that morning. It took a bit of effort to carve them and set up a similar sliding system with an additional bar to lock things in place.
Kat managed to get that done early in the afternoon and then switched over doing other things mostly for fun. Kat managed to carve a nice clock… that didn't work at all as well as a few flowers. They weren't the prettiest pieces in the world but Kat was happy with them and carved a vase to put them in.
Which was a lot of stuff for just one day, but Kat was working a bit later then perhaps she should've to get it all done.
Which led Kat to day 11 where she kept working on the flowers for a while, focusing on larger ones to stick outside as a sort of fake garden. That got boring before lunchti and afterwards Kat decided to actually practice so of her skills while they had the ti and perhaps try and activate her Rank 4 ability.
No luck on that last thing but as the night ca upon Kat was happy with her practice for now.
Lily did both more and less then Kat. After awakening her space sense… Lily basically put them to the side and focused up on her traps spell. Lily then proceeded to cast and refine it over and over again across the entire break. Kat would occasionally be called in to test it and for the most part there were issues.
Lily did practice a few other spells she knew worked but that was only when Kat was super busy.
On day 11 Lily finally got the spell to a place she was happy leaving it with. It wasn't perfect. It still cost too much mana, and Kat could break out of it quite easily, but for her first real spell created entirely on her own Lily couldn't be happier.
Sure you'd need a swarm of them to stall even a Rank 3 but that was fine when you could set them all up in advance and at least they lasted for a while even without a constant expenditure of mana.
Lily did try a few other things during that ti, but nothing too spectacular. She managed to work out a good shield spell for her shadows… but that was one she'd found in the books rather then one she ca up with herself. It cost a monstrous amount of mana but was able to block one full strength hit from Kat.
Which was great… if a touch disappointing because it cold only block the one and yet it cost essentially all of Lily's mana. Still, it was a very sturdy shield.
Which brought them to late at night, eleven days by themselves. They'd just moved inside because it had started raining. Nothing too serious, just a light drizzle but it was the first change in the weather they'd experienced and neither wanted to get all that wet. "What do you think the other group is up to?" asked Kat.
"I an… I expect we'd have heard sothing from them if there was a problem but I wasn't expecting it to take this long. As evidenced by the fact I completely rebuilt the hut into this cabin. I thought they'd be back before the end of the week…"
"But you started this on like… day six didn't you?" asked Lily.
Kat nodded, "Yeah but that was basically a week wasn't it? I really did think they'd be back before then. Which I guess was a bit silly… but we're closing in on two weeks now. I was expecting at least a 'we got the thing!' ssage you know? It implies they haven't found anything yet and it makes wonder if it was really the correct choice to stay and guard this one,"
"Well g did say it was a pain to re-list a rock once you've filtered it out so we'd need to have destroyed it to go along with them and that was the whole issue. We couldn't easily destroy it without breaking a whole heap of other stuff," said Lily.
"I know, but it just feels like a bit of an excuse now. Don't get wrong, I understand why. If we have two pieces we can just slam them together until one of them cracks and then hopefully break the other afterwards. Just… feels a bit hopeful doesn't it?" asked Kat.
"I think part of the hope was that if g can take a look at another piece she can tell how many need breaking. Perhaps we can just leave this one inside its rock and it will be fine," offered Lily.
"Huh… ok yeah I suppose that makes more sense. If we can't easily get into this one but we can get into the other ones it ans g can hopefully break all of the ones necessary… but it would be an issue if this one went walk-abouts. Do you think they've run into any issues? I an… the forest wasn't too hard to navigate before…" said Kat.
"I don't think so. I an, if they were having any sort of issues wouldn't they have sent us a ssage about it? Perhaps sothing your regeneration would help with? I doubt they'd go to any significant lengths to avoid calling for us you know," answered Lily.
Kat nodded a few tis, "Yeah that makes sense. I can't see g pushing forward when she didn't have to. It would give her an excuse to spend more ti with Hunter so I suppose I could see her forcing everyone to turn back at the first sign of hardship… though I wonder if they're still in the forest? I an it's been eleven days.
I feel like if I was flying I could probably cross the forest in eleven days,"
"Yes but then you'd be skipping all the bubbles. I'm sure they cause a few delays. Or maybe not? I was never exactly clear how the bubbles work or where they spit you at. Like is it one to one or are the bubbles 'smaller' on this side of things?" pondered Lily.
Kat shrugged, "I dunno but seeing as they haven't returned I'm going to guess it's taking them a while to walk through them all," Explore more at empire
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