Chapter 28

  With their water situation solved, the girls changed course. They now needed to locate food. Their food thankfully would last them a while longer, thanks to them being so high in stats, but Wes still needed to eat semi-regularly. Dozel explained that she did not truly start feeling the benefit of level until she hit level 100. Phony explained that her training was quite hard when she was younger, so she was able to tell the difference at about level 50.

  Food being the highest priority now, they had a couple of choices. They could wander around like they had been in search of the clans. Stealing whatever food they had gathered would be risky, but the easiest path to securing resources. The other option was doing what they had been doing up until that point, and continuing their search for water. Just like them, everything else that called this planet home would need water too.

  Wes expected them to vote on what to do, but Phony overruled that thinking. She reminded Wes that they still had not set up a stronghold or fallback point. Phony explained that if they were lucky, they had months of work ahead of them. But they were now on a timer, with the light of day beginning to descend toward the horizon.

  In agreement that they had a little less than two weeks of time remaining, they decided to hunt for a secure place to hunker down. Wes would be in charge of the day-to-day in the camp while the girls ran security and scouting. Wes made sure to warn about how dark his awakening got, but Phony waved off that concern. She explained that even if there was no moon, there still would be some light from the night sky. Reminding him that there were no clouds to block out the sky.

  Dozel also added that even though they could not locate a moon right now, it didn’t mean that there wasn’t one. Their host system’s star was quite bright.

  After turning up no good locations to fortify in the ensuing days, Phony warned them in the morning that she would need to do something drastic that might give away their general location.

  Wes asked, “What do you mean?

  “We’ve been going in a general direction following scattered remnants of old campsites. But we now need somewhere that is away from old campsites. The forest is already getting darker, and we still need to find our optimal spot to wait out the long night. I have an idea on how we will fortify our location, but half the battle is location. Ideally, a mountain would be a good spot, of course, but I will settle for anything that helps to shield us from one side.” Phony explained.

  Dozel asked, “What are you thinking?”

  Phony held up three fingers on her left hand. “ Obviously, we can dig down, but that will leave us as sitting ducks if anyone were to come and look down our hidey hole. Another option is we throw our useless fiance over our shoulder and sprint all out back to where we came. I don’t think we will make it back before nightfall, but we would have the advantage of knowing that there are no major factions that way.” Phony looked over Wes, adding, “I don’t know about you, but that would be a turn off for me. It’s already bad enough that we are having to babysit him.”

  “Thanks.” Wes spat.

  “You're most Welcome, hubby,” Phony replied.

  “And option three?” Dozel asked.

  “I go out and try to find something myself.” Phony pointed up. “I would of course first jump up to the tree tops and see if I can see any mountains. That would be the least risky part of this plan, but if I still couldn’t find anything by looking from the tree tops, I would have to jump as high as I could, which very well may give away our general location. There is a reason I haven’t done that. The smarter clans know they are hunted, and they have learned to station members in the tree tops looking for anyone careless enough to print themselves in the sky. But if that didn’t work, I would have to go all out running in one or two directions, maybe.”

  “I am a lot quicker than you, so why shouldn’t I be the one to do this?” Dozel asked.

  “Simple, you don’t hit as hard as I do. We have been lucky not to find any packs of clan members. There is a reason why everyone on this side of the gap knows of them. It is said that even a level 600 can’t escape one of their hunting parties without a flying ability.” Phony’s jovial attitude was gone as she gave her reasoning to Dozel.

  Dozel looked at Wes, “If that’s the case, we should just head back to the mountain we came from.”

  “Yeah, I am mostly with you, but you are forgetting that eventually we will have to be out in the open if we are here long enough. We still don’t even know what we are searching for. Our path will take us out into the open eventually. Might as well get used to it.”

  “I understand your reluctance, Dozel, and I also understand your thinking as well, Phony. Can I offer another option?” Wes asked.

  “Go ahead,” Phony replied.

  “What if we were able to bring the hunting parties and lone wanderers to us?” The girls gave Wes a look as if he were stupid, so he continued. “You remember how much water my new ability made? That had to be enough to fill a hundred of the pools back in my new house.”

  “And what’s your point?” Phony Asked.

  “I don’t know if you have ever smelled a large body of water when you are thirsty. You can taste it in the air, smell it from miles away. It draws in all the animals from every direction. If we can build a place that hides us, we can hide in plain sight. All the local clans and hopefully animals will be too distracted by the large body of water. We have been moving for weeks, and I have not smelled any water in the air, salt or fresh.”

  Dozel said, “You are thinking of using your experience, won’t that be a huge waste?”

  “Only partially. If I keep it above two million, I will still get twenty thousand every level. If I don’t waste anymore right now, I will only get four thousand more a level. Do I want to miss out on that? No. But I’m hoping that even I will be able to find something to take out myself. If I can do that then maybe I can earn experience like you too.” Finishing his Explanation, Wes waited for their response.

  The girls looked at each other and conferred while Wes looked over his status.

  Name: Wesley of 29744C

  Race: Human

  Age: 27

  Unique abilities: Imperial over Metric, Back in My Day

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Abilities: Deposit, Eternal Spark, Cleanse, Stopwatch,

  Vigilant, Deviant, Symbiosis, H20

  Skills: N/A

  Achievement(s): Bloody Soul, Pragmatic Savant

  Trait(s): 3

  Current Status: Blessed

  Level 7

  Savings: 2,407,984

  Next Level: 10,160.64

  Level 7 Exp Per Sec: .0168

  Current Exp: 7,497.6

  Thinking to himself, If we can figure out a way of making a huge bowl of water and keep the ground from absorbing it. It could funnel everything to it, We would just need to have a way of watching over it. But I’ll leave that to the girls. How much would I need to use if we had a leaky pool? I really would rather not have to fill it every day.

  Wes was so deep in thought that he missed when Phony walked up to him. She had to snap her fingers across his face to get his attention.

  Snapping out of it, he asked, “So?”

  Dozel spoke first, “We think it's a good idea, but we have some conditions you will have to follow.”

  “Okay…”

  “You must never allow yourself to be seen. We will devise a way to hide you, and even if it turns out to be a hole covered up with some dirt, you will stay there unless we tell you otherwise.” Dozel said.

  “Willing prisoner, huh?” Shrugging, Wes added. “Not really any different than now.”

  “That is not all, I am assuming we will have to do a lot of digging. So you have to use cleanse on us every day we have to dig.” Phony added.

  “I see not too concerned with my experience usage. But I don’t think that will be possible. I got a little less than two days left until my next level, and I am hoping to get another before I fill whatever pool we dig.” Wes answered.

  “Then in that case, you will owe us for the days we dig.” Dozel followed.

  She caught Wes and Phony by surprise with her statement. Enough for them to give her a look of shock. Realizing how she must have sounded, Dozel quickly added. “If that is amenable, Master Wesley.”

  Phony and Wes looked at each other, breaking out into a laugh.

  Wes answered, “Sure, if that is what you want, then I am good with owing you.”

  __________

  The last nine days flew by for the three. After they came to an agreement on Wes’s plan. They quickly divided duties. Wes was to focus on whatever he wanted for his next abilities. Phony wanted him to focus on a fighting ability, while Dozel wanted him to focus on a healing ability.

  Phony went out for a day by herself before finding them a suitable location, where they could make a lot of noise while digging. Phony had to do most of the digging while Dozel patrolled a wide perimeter to warn them of any danger. Wes settled on focusing on what he had up until that point. After discovering he could influence his ability like others influence their skills, he decided to focus on something that would increase his utility for the girls. As it was already, his build was leaning in the direction of being a master of none. Which is what their little group needed. Phony was the damage dealer of the three, and Dozel was the scout. That left Wes with having to fill in the gaps between the two. And the one that stood out most to Wes was that the girls always had to stay close to protect him. Which meant their fighting strength was hampered. He first thought of some shielding ability, and if he were alone, that is probably what he would focus on. But he kept thinking back to his role as a utility, so he settled on one thing over the others.

  Wes let his mind wander over and over in different ways, all with the same thought in mind. Even after their conversation, deciding that they would go with his plan, he tried keeping his thoughts consistent while the girls shepherded him.

  By the time his level-up came, he was relieved. His brain hurt, and he was well past exhausted from always thinking of one thing, never allowing his mind to wander.

  The girls were stunned and excited to be able to stretch metaphorical legs after he told them he had leveled again through his newest ability. Party Chat was a welcome addition to the girls. They didn’t like that they couldn’t activate it on their end, but overall, they were relieved.

  His newest abilities had a few different quirks. Just activating it cost Wes ten thousand experience, but once it was activated, it didn’t draw any more experience unless they tried to communicate. The cost wasn’t exorbitant, only one experience for every word uttered either way, but it cost scaled drastically the further away the girls went. He paced out the distance and found that it cost twice as much after two miles and three times after three. He didn’t know if it kept scaling more after that, but he suspected it would. Not being able to test for longer due to him having to start saving for level 9. That was how most of the week went.

  After the initial testing with its new ability, the girls learned that they must use conscious thought to talk to Wes to use it. He forbade the use of it while he sat thinking of his next ability. He was so happy with his current ability that he decided to forgo what he initially thought he was going to do and decided to work toward developing a mapping ability. Keeping his theme of being the utility. With him being on the planet for possibly hundreds of years to come, Wes wanted to make sure that he and the girls could always know where they were going. After asking the girls what a good map should have, he set about thinking about it. He would also draw in the dirt with his hand. Even went as far as drawing a map in his head while tracing over all the work that Phony had been doing. But above all else, he focused on one thing over the others. Always knowing where the girls were at a given moment. He wanted this ability to be useful for the rest of his life, so he set that as his priority.

  The girls had been great about luring any Clan member they came across away from where they were working before killing them. This was important because Phony had first dug a deep hole fifteen feet deep. Then she dug smaller shafts heading in different directions. She gathered the trees that she snapped like twigs with her tremendous strength, which had populated the area she was to dig. And stacked them in the hole that was fifteen feet deep and half as wide.

  Using one of her skills, she got a small fire going in under thirty seconds and tossed it down the hole. Quickly covering the whole by laying trees across the large shaft and covering it with all the dirt she had dug out.

  At first, Wes had been concerned that she would be setting the forest on fire, but quickly found that all the dirt she used suffocated the fire coming up. The mound of dirt began to steam, but that was not what concerned Dozel. What concerned her was the other shafts wafting smoke into the air. She explained the other shafts were meant to disperse the smoke as much as possible.

  They were after the ash and charcoal; they would mix it with all the soil they dug out, and mix some of Wes’s water to hopefully make a sort of clay. Anything to limit the loss of water and reduce the experience expenditure on Wes.

  The only times Wes allowed his mind to wander was when he wanted to know what Phony was doing and when he couldn’t help but admire both girls' work ethic. Neither of them had strayed from their tasks at all over those nine days.

  By the time Wes was close to his last level, Phony had already lined most of the pool she had dug with a thin layer of clay. She hoped that she would be able to line another layer, but they decided to make the pool long instead of deeper. This would allow them to hide in the other project that Phony would focus on as she waited for more ash and charcoal.

  Phony had knocked over dozens of trees and stacked them to make it look like a battle had taken place near the watering hole. She pushed the trees together, only enough not to look suspicious, while gradually decreasing the grade going away from it. She meant for a small ramp leading down toward their makeshift pool. Her last order of business was to stuff dirt and branches into the crevices of their broken roof. That in conjunction with damp dirt, helped to cover any lingering holes that led down into their chamber.

  Over the last several days, Dozel would come back on short trips with as much foliage as she could gather without defacing an entire section of the forest. They used this material to make several other similar mounds of debris and trees to help hide them. None of them were quite as big, and they lacked any dirt filling the wholes, but they were more meant as a distraction tool. Phony’s last order of business was to use one of her skills to make a lattice out of the thinner branches that Dozel had brought to make a door that they both could look out of, and would help camouflage their hideout's opening.

  She finished around the same time that the last wisps of light ducked over the horizon, with that being the sign for Dozel to return. They all ended up inside the snug hideout waiting for Wes to get his level next level up.

  After only a day of waiting in the darkness, Wes got the notification they had all been waiting for.