I awoke the next day to sunlight streaming through the curtains and onto my face. I yawned and stretched. A good night’s sleep left me feeling well and truly rested. I dressed and wandered into the kitchen to say goodbye to Max. He was sitting at the table, picking at his food. His face lit up when he saw me. I sat down at his invitation.

  “Good morning!” he said, cheerfully.

  “’Mornin’,” I replied.

  “You look well rested,” he commented.

  “Mhm. Thanks for the comfortable bed—and the talk last night. That helped, I think.”

  “You’re most welcome. I had a good night, too. It seems our conversation last night was good for the two of us. Now, I know you’re in a rush to leave, but please, stay. Have breakfast with me first.”

  “Sure.”

  Max brought me toast and several condiments to go with it. I ended up choosing cream cheese and honey—one of my favorite toast-toppings ever. The sweetness of the honey paired so perfectly with the creaminess of the cream cheese. I had two slices of toast then declined anything further.

  I got my things and went to the door. Max came with me. I turned to him before I walked outside.

  “It was wonderful to meet you,” I told him. “Thanks for having me.”

  “The pleasure was all mine,” he replied. “Have a safe flight, wizard!”

  I shook my head while he laughed. I slung my backpack onto my back before starting off at a run towards the river. When I hit top speed, I cast Flight. I rose steadily into the air, clearing the canopy shortly thereafter. With a wave towards Max, I cast Illusion to better blend in while flying north.

  The farther I went, the more the hills and mountains narrowed in around me. The river began twisting and turning a lot more as well. A meandering course was much more difficult to follow at speed, so I slowed down. It was a good thing, too. I was finally nearing my destination.

  The preserve’s outline was clear from the air. There was a line of settlement that abutted the preserve, giving me a good indication of its boundary. I exited the water highway for that of the unending and undulating green forest. Into the preserve I flew for nearly twenty minutes before my blood began to dip too low and it was time to land.

  I scanned the forest around me for a good landing spot. There was a small pond less than a mile away. I used the opening to punch through the forest canopy. Once low to the water, I slowed until I came to rest on solid ground past the pond’s edge. The marshy land surrounding most of the pond made me glad I had chosen the spot I had—it was firm and dry.

  From the air, I knew that this area wasn’t inhabited by people. It was an old forest, preserved that way for posterity—and for animal welfare. I had a water source nearby—dirty, yes, but it was usable. There was plenty of building material available between the mud, the rocks, and the trees. Animals abounded in the preserve, so I would have plenty of access to food as well. I didn’t know if I’d found the perfect spot, but it was good enough for my plans.

  Building a shelter in a swamp and next to a somewhat stagnant pond struck me as a rather stupid idea. Even the mostly dry and firm land I was on was just too dicey. The mosquitoes would be awful during the summer, and there was a chance flooding would just wipe away anything I built. The general area was a good one, but specifically where I was standing was not.

  I walked around the pond until I found the stream that fed it. It wasn’t large—maybe two paces across—and it was filled with stones. The water was clear and it ran quickly. While not safe to drink without purifying, it would at least not need heavy filtering like the pond would.

  I followed the stream against its flow. I could leap from one bank to the other easily—though Flight made that even better. All the while, I kept my eyes open for a spot away from the stream that was mostly flat. Eventually, I found what I was looking for. There was a small wash that fed into the stream, and about a hundred feet up it and to its right was a slightly-sloping section of ground that looked like what I wanted.

  The flat section was where my permanent hut was going to go. Before I could make that, I needed something temporary to sleep in until the better structure was ready. The suggested skills from my profession gave me several options for both the permanent and for the temporary. As I needed the temporary one first, I purchased that skill right away.

  Due to the temporary nature of the structure, I didn’t feel the need to boost the skill’s level any. All I wanted was something to last me a couple of months until I had something better. The knowledge of the skill filled my mind as I activated it. It was as basic as I had imagined. The skill took into account the materials I had access to, and suggested which of them would be best for the structure I had in mind.

  Just off the edge of the flat area was a group of trees that would work as the back of the lean-to. I found long, straight sticks and buried their ends into the ground. Without good cordage, my options were limited. I used some nearby grasses—from by the pond—to tie the bits of wood together. On top of everything went a large pile of leaves. I also made sure to clear a section by the entrance of leaves so that I could put a firepit there.

  Getting the materials and putting the shelter together had taken several hours. With only an hour or two of daylight left, I found enough medium-sized rocks to create the firepit. I collected firewood—enough for the night—and lit a fire using Spark. As the last rays of light faded, I ate the remainder of the breakfast pastries I’d pilfered from the hotel. Food was going to be a major issue. I’d know that going into this. Tomorrow, I would have to find a sustainable food source.

  I crawled into the lean-to and closed my eyes. The bugs made a racket with the sun having gone to bed. The darkness around me felt oppressive. It reminded me just how alone I was. My only companion now was the fire crackling away nearby. I was very much aware of how it was also my protector against anything that might get curious. They feared fire while I did not.

  I thanked the fire for its protection and fell asleep.

  When I awoke the next morning, I checked out my status as I usually did—if mostly to confirm that my blood was back to full. What I saw surprised me. I had a few points of faith! I was thoroughly confused about the change. For as long as I’d had that resource, it had been empty. I had no idea what had changed.

  Now that I had some points to spend, I wanted to test it. The few I had would be enough for a single cast of one of my spells. Since the fire had gone out overnight, I decided to start there. I built a small house of sticks and twigs in the ashes of the firepit. Using leaves as tinder, I cast Spark using faith rather than blood. The fire caught immediately and grew.

  Using faith was strange. It was different than blood—which gave a deep-seated feeling of disgust and wrongness. Faith was pleasant on the surface, but it also felt wrong—like I was asking someone, or something, to act on my behalf. It was as if blood and faith were two sides of the same coin. One felt wrong because of what it did to me, while the other felt wrong because it made me give up agency.

  Neither were what I wanted to work with in the system. Qi and Mana were much better alternatives. Those two felt must more pure and balanced. The two were similar, even if their internal mechanisms varied slightly. As for which I wanted to pick, I didn’t know. I really needed to try the two side-by-side. The problem was that I couldn’t take either of them now that I had faith and blood. The system wouldn’t let me. I guessed it was some kind of overlapping restriction, but I couldn’t be sure.

  Ultimately, I would just have to pick one at random. I could put that off until I reset things, but I would need to make that choice blindly. And that sucked for the same reason faith disgusted me. The choice was out of my hands, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  I shook my head. I was hungry—something much more important than having a meltdown over things I couldn’t control. The leftovers from the hotel—and the snacks from Max—were warmed and consumed. I threw the trash into the fire when I was done.

  That brought me to the main thing I needed to do: find food. The nearby stream held promise. I hoped there were fish in there. The issue was that I had no idea how to catch them. Well, that wasn’t entirely correct. I knew how to theoretically. But putting that theory into practice was another matter.

  As I saw it, I had a couple options. The first was to spear the fish with a long stick. It was doable, but tricky. The advantage was that—with practice—I could get dinner quickly. The disadvantage was that I didn’t have practice. I would be spending far too long trying—and failing—for little gain if I wasn’t lucky.

  The other option—and the one I went with—was building a fish trap. The benefit of traps were that I could do other things while the traps did their thing. I even knew what the traps should look like. The problem was building them. I needed cordage and a flexible material to make baskets out of. Still, I thought that would be an easier problem to solve than spearing a fish. I’d practiced hand crafts plenty in the past, and hoped that would help with the day’s task.

  The cordage and flexible basket-making material turned out to be the same problem as both had the same solution. The inner bark of saplings was perfect for cordage. The saplings themselves could be split with my knife and used to build the baskets.

  When I had enough saplings, I got to work. The cordage was made by twisting the inner bark to form a crude twine. Further strips were added to extend the length to whatever I needed. The baskets involved bending the supple pieces of wood into shape, with the cordage to connect everything together. The design—one basket inside another—took some fiddling to get right. But after an hour of building and another of tinkering, I was satisfied.

  I brought the trap to the stream. In the stream, I made a small dam past the edge of one of the smaller pools. The dam had an opening for the water to rush though, which is where I placed the trap. I weighed the trap down with stones and added some of the food I still had as bait. The only thing left to do was wait.

  And instead of sitting there and waiting for hours, I decided to keep myself busy with other tasks. Now that I had a temporary shelter, I wanted to get started on the permanent one. Food was running low—so I had to hope the trap worked—but I could get away with it not working. I could always fly somewhere nearby to pick up provisions. I couldn’t magic the shelter into existence, though.