Year One, Winter: Two Residents (2)

Ordinarily, when people left a village like this, the standard move was to go settle down in another one.

But this was End of World we were talking about, and its genre was...

Fantasy apocalypse survival village management, was it?

Right from the base setting, the Demon King's army had already swept through and ravaged the territory once, and as a result, humanity's cities and villages were either rubble or down to a handful of survivors on the run.

What formed the backdrop of End of World was the aftermath of the last counterattack at the human kingdom's capital—the Demon King fell there, and his army came apart with him.

The human kingdom in ruins, the Demon King's forces in ruins. A world mired in chaos.

By humanity's standards, it was a game where the world had already more or less ended once—you barely scraped through before the true annihilation, and then had to go on living in whatever came after.

Anyway, that was the setting—and thanks to it, finding a village still in one piece was extremely difficult.

Even when we did find one, unless we met some special condition they often wouldn't take us in as residents. If anything, they might enslave us or... in the extreme cases, eat us, or offer us up as a sacrifice.

'In the end, the only people you can trust are your own villagers.'

So we left the village perched up in the highlands and came down south, toward warmer weather.

The supplies we'd prepared were too meager to get far, which meant we had no choice but to stake our claim on whatever suitable ground we came across.

Following the road downhill, we found a spot with a comfortably sized clearing, a river running along behind it, trees in abundance, and a rocky mountain within sight a short distance off.

'Backed by mountains, facing water. A place like this is made for living.'

The clearing ran a little small, but for two people surviving together, this much was just right. Any bigger and there'd only be more to keep an eye on, more ground to defend—and with the back blocked off, at that.

"Elena, go ahead and clear-fell some of the trees around here."

"How much?"

"Everything, all the way to that spot over there."

Since I planned to expand the clearing with a generous few days of logging, I gave her a generous boundary to work within.

With the knock of Elena's axe—packed before we left—biting into the trees as my work song, I picked up our lumber and took a hammer in hand.

'So this is how it carries over?'

Lumber in one hand, hammer in the other, and a translucent blueprint-shaped outline took form, just like in the game.

When I pictured the buildings we needed, wooden walls and a wooden door came up—but first, I checked exactly what I was capable of building.

'Handy, this.'

A Construction stat of 3 was plenty for the early buildings.

Going by what was listed, I could throw up simple makeshift walls, and even a roof.

'Anything more complicated, I'll have to recruit a proper architect later, or research blueprints.'

For now, using the rocky mountain as one wall, I started construction—raising walls on the three open sides and getting a roof over the top.

Bang, bang, bang.

If building took months of real-world labor, you'd never survive from day one, so the pace of throwing up temporary structures was blisteringly fast.

Work like this should never have fit inside a single day, but the moment I gripped the hammer and swung, nails sank home in one strike, and the lumber stock swelled before my eyes.

A short, absorbed burst of work later, and I'd raised two decent rooms.

I stuffed the leaves from Elena's felled trees into two beds as well, and since it was winter, decided windows could wait—just an entrance for now.

I considered laying a floor too, but the lumber was too precious to waste, and leaves would cover the dirt for the time being. I let it go.

"What else can I make?"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

I gathered stones, spread them across the ground, and set a pot over them for some simple cooking gear, then dropped in a few pieces of frozen deer meat and put the water on to boil.

A meat soup with no seasoning whatsoever—but at least it beat raw meat.

And while I was at it, I built a workbench inside my room.

"Workbench" was a flattering word for a plank fixed to the wall with two legs in front of it—a built-in table, nothing more.

But the moment I laid the work dagger I'd brought out of the village on it, along with some wood and odds and ends, a handful of craftable items revealed themselves.

"Haaah..."

I'd equipped my resident with an enchanted repeating crossbow as her basic weapon, so suddenly being down to a crude shortbow left me feeling a bit at sea. But if it's what you have, it's what you use—what else could I do?

I whittled the most resilient wood in my stock into a bow stave, and was puzzling over where to find a springy string—when it turned out the material was simply thread.

'I didn't pack any thread, though?'

Come to think of it, it was strange the recipe had come up at all when I had none. Maybe it counted as long as it was nearby—when I looked around, light was leaking from the bag Elena had set down.

I opened it on a hunch, and there inside were several strands of exactly the thread I'd been looking for.

Right—End of World ran on a system where the whole village pooled its property, so apparently even Elena's luggage counted as shared.

I twisted the strands into a single cord, anchored both ends, and a bow that looked flimsier than a toy was complete.

"Can I even shoot this thing?"

I'd made it, all right. It didn't exactly inspire confidence.

I wanted to test it, but arrows couldn't be crafted without feathers.

I was still debating whether to build a bird trap with millet bait when I heard movement in the next room. I went to look, and there was Elena—a leaf still tangled in her hair—sprawled flat on her back on her bed, limbs splayed, resting.

'Worn out, apparently.'

Logging and construction were heavy labor, and the stamina drain was steep.

Me, I'd built the house and then sat at my workbench crafting, so I'd gotten off comparatively easy.

"If you're hungry, take food out and eat on your own."

At that, Elena shot upright and marched outside.

Hunger, it seemed, outweighed exhaustion. Thinking back, we'd split a rough morning meal of flour kneaded with water and baked, and she'd had nothing since—well past lunchtime now. No wonder she was starving.

'Is the stew done through...?'

I stepped outside to check, and the soup had been at a rolling boil for a while now.

Blub.

I prodded the meat with a branch I'd sharpened in advance. A little tough, but it looked properly cooked.

"I'll need to make dishes too, huh."

There was so much to do.

Carrying in more of the lumber Elena had brought, I knocked out a couple of wooden dishes, and when I came back out, she was holding a bright-red lump in her hand.

Crunch.

She was biting straight into it, mouthful after mouthful.

For a second I thought she'd found herself an apple or some other fruit—until I saw the blood running down her hand and realized it was the frozen deer meat we'd been storing between the cold stone walls.

"Why are you eating that?!"

"Hungry."

Crunch.

She took another bite. Just how solidly frozen did that meat have to be for it to crunch like that?

And being emotionless didn't mean she couldn't taste.

Especially not in weather this cold—nobody wants to be chewing through frozen deer meat raw.

'Ah... right...'

It was one of those settings I'd organized at the very start and then blacked out of my memory entirely—which is exactly why it had slipped my mind.

Only when I saw Elena's face screwed up in displeasure as she gnawed away did the defining feature of End of World finally surface.

Unless you locked in firm policies ahead of time, your residents would do something asinine like tearing into whatever raw meat or raw vegetables happened to be within arm's reach and giving themselves food poisoning.

Order a resident to eat, and they would unconditionally eat whatever was closest—so I had to nail down, thoroughly and explicitly, what they were to do and what they were never to do.

"Listen carefully. [Do not eat raw food.] Understood?"

"Even if I'm hungry?"

"Unless you're right on the edge of starving to death, you don't. Got it?"

Elena bobbed her head and set down the frozen deer meat in her hand.

I moved to press a wooden bowl into her hands and ladle out some stew—only then realizing I'd made bowls and forgotten ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a ladle entirely.

So I simply laid the boiled deer meat I'd fished out on the skewer onto a plate for her, and she settled into a seat and ate it just fine.

'By the way, how did she chew through that?'

Clack, clack.

There were tooth marks printed clearly into the frozen meat—meat that bounced off with a clatter even when I hammered at it with my work dagger. How on earth had she bitten into it?

"Is it good?"

Nod, nod.

It was nothing but a chunk of boiled meat with no seasoning to speak of, but watching Elena eat it like it was delicious, I fished out a piece for myself and bit in.

'Ugh. Terrible.'

Still, you eat to survive. What else was there to do?

When the meal was done, Elena shouldered her axe and headed back out ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to keep logging, while I used the lumber she'd brought to build traps for catching birds.

For bait I scattered flowers and tree seeds that humans couldn't eat—no telling whether that would actually work.

And in the spare moments between, I practiced magic, slowly coaxing a chill up into my fingertips.

"Tsk... so this body has no talent for magic either."

The talented ones were firing Ice Missiles the instant their magic stat unlocked; all I'd managed was slightly cool hands.

So I gathered a few pebbles, dropped them into the fire, fished them back out once they were hot, and trained by pooling chill at my fingertips to cool them down—again, and again, and again.

Right in the middle of my intensive practice, Elena—who had hauled back a full load of lumber on her back—watched me for a moment and asked:

"Chief."

"Hm?"

"Poor circulation?"

I couldn't exactly say no.

About a month went by.

Our house now had wooden flooring laid wall to wall, and each of our rooms had stone laid down with a stove installed as well.

All of that work had pushed my Construction stat up to 4, and with the lumber Elena kept bringing in, I built us two proper wooden beds—finally, a comfortable night's sleep.

And with Construction at 4, I could manage simple wooden mechanisms, so I laid traps at points all around the village to shore up our defenses.

As for my resident—Elena—I'd drilled the safety rules into her by pure rote, so there'd be no idiotic incident of her stepping in her own trap and blowing a leg off.

We'd tried to stretch the deer meat, but with the temperature creeping upward it looked ready to spoil, so we roasted the lot in one go.

I'd hoped to smoke it into jerky, but with my Cooking sitting at 2 there was simply no way to manage it; I roasted it as cleanly as I could, and a few days of meals later, it was gone.

As the thaw set in, the wood feeding our bonfire went further, and with Elena still logging away at full passion, the pile of lumber began to grow.

Fweee!

In the meantime, I built a supply warehouse to store it all, and dug deeper into the cave that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had breathed cool air at us before, turning it into a makeshift refrigerator.

Maybe it was the shade, but it stayed nicely cool in there. If I kept practicing my magic and channeling it inside on the regular, it would serve as a proper cold store well enough.

At the moment my magical ability was still too weak, and it was just a slightly chilly room—but with steady practice, surely it could reach the point of keeping food fresh.

And of course, now that I finally had a refrigerator, there was no meat to put in it.

For better or worse, there weren't many animals in the area we'd settled.

A few birds here and there, the occasional rabbit hopping through—that was about the extent of it?

When one did get caught it made a proper meat side dish, but even that was rare. We'd found a grove of banana-like tree fruit nearby and were holding out by roasting those.

Twang!

"This is harder than it looks."

Because in the meantime, I was hard at work practicing my aim with the crude shortbow.

Archery sat at 1 for now, and it didn't leap straight from 1 to 2—proficiency piled up slowly—so numerically I was probably somewhere around 1.9.

Keep at it, and it would tick over to 2 eventually.

The reason I bothered with archery at all: training magic alone would leave my long-range accuracy wanting, so the plan was to drill both and fight at a distance with frost magic.

I had no interest in closing to melee, eating a blade I never saw coming, and dying or ending up crippled for it.

Close combat was Elena's department anyway.

'Come to think of it, her melee stat did seem to be creeping up lately with all that logging.'

Elena's melee stat sat at 4 right now. If it climbed to 5... just how much more of a monster would she turn into?

Anyway, in this stretch of hard-won peace, I threw myself into shooting and growing my abilities.

Fsssh.

My magical ability had hit 1 as of yesterday, and it had advanced past merely chilling my body—I could now conjure a small amount of actual ice.

Pit me against an ice purifier and I'd still lose on sheer output, but at least I could put up a fight now.

Even as my abilities advanced steadily along this track, I never once let my guard down.

A freshly founded village buys you a stretch of peace—but in my judgment, it was about time for some raid, or some other threat, to come calling.

Even setting the game logic aside, the weather was warming, the snow was melting, spring was creeping in—hardly a better moment for something to change, was there?

...For instance, a bear waking from hibernation and going on a rampage.

And of all possible moments, Elena had just left to log, which meant I was the only one in the village right now.

If I stayed hidden inside the house, the bear likely wouldn't bother hunting me down—and if it crossed paths with Elena instead, it would be subdued in no time. I was still weighing whether to just lie low when—

"Guess there's no helping it."

I gave the shortbow's string a single test pull, loosened up my body, and readied myself for the hunt.