Day 13

Funny how constantly wanting to write something is on the front of my mind now. I guess it's my way to cope with the loneliness. In any case, I've a respectable supply of wood and other resources now, as well as some smoked fish from yesterday. Going to go check out the direction I saw those lights last night; might be something interesting.


I think those are houses.


I am not alone in this place.

I had found a legitimate village. A VILLAGE! Couldn't believe my eyes when I saw those houses in the distance, but, for once, I'd gotten lucky.

Because it was occupied! Almost two weeks without any sort of human contact, and the God(s) finally decided to give me a break. Looked like normal, people, nothing out of the ordinary, except for comically large noses every single one seemed to have. Still, though, just ordinary men women and children simply...surviving here, in the taiga.

As excited as I had been upon first spotting them, I was initially really unsure about how to approach them; what if they'd been hostile? What if they saw ME as a hostile? Sure, from a distance they looked unarmed and friendly, but I suppose I learned my lesson not to be fooled by appearances. After some deliberate thinking decided the best course of action was to sheathe my sword, and shout – alert them in advance.

Didn't take too long for them to gather and send their "representatives" – a middle aged man (now that I think about it, there were no elderly people in the village for some reason), and a HUGE moving statue made from what appeared to be iron.

The village rep spoke Valean too, though not without a bit of trouble – seems like their noses make some pronunciations difficult. What surprised me was how…spooked he became once he looked me over, though I had enough common sense to not ask about it. He said that I was "very welcome in their village (without a name), and was free to trade with their craftsmen, as long as I did not assault any of the residents".

(Also he called Valean English for some reason. idk)

So, with the giant statue thing ("Iron Golem") very creepily tracking me, I made my way into the village proper. There weren't a lot of people in total – about 12, kids included. I'm sure back on Remnant this place would have been considered a camp at best – even the smallest frontier villages and outposts had 50 or so residents at least. I can't say that's such a bad thing in this world – fewer mouths to feed, I guess? Anyway, I made my way to a guy in an eyepatch working an iron axe on a grindstone – figured I could ask him about directions and the place itself.

Turns out, the man was a blacksmith.

He hadn't been the nicest at first – giving me the same spooked glance and asking me what could I possibly want. I'd just wanted to ask for directions, but he just rebuked me, saying that "if I wasn't here to trade, I could go bother someone else".

Right. The trading.

While most of the villagers weren't doing much, surprisingly – mostly just small labor like picking berries (took a few of those too), cleaning dirt paths and just chatting – a few of them seemed to have "professions", like this weaponsmith, and a farmer, whom I met later. Turns out, they act as employers of sorts too – "unemployed" villagers help them in one way or another, and then get paid in either food or local currency.

The currency being emeralds. Beautiful, pristinely cut, honest-to-Gods emeralds. To be honest, I have no idea where these folks get them from – none of them look like the miner types, and I haven't seen any open, non-infested mineshafts around.

(The weaponsmith had been tight-lipped regarding this question too, only saying that "they help with produce" and nothing more. This goes for other villagers as well – they've been very helpful in giving me directions, even allowing me to take a couple of things from their chests, but other questions like how they've built their village in the middle of a forest originally, or why there are no walls – those they deflected or outright ignored. And kept giving me these strange, not-so-hidden looks. Weird, but that's their business, I guess.)

Since I am not part of this village, and cannot really "work" here, I was offered some small-time trades instead; in particular, the smith was selling his axe for three emeralds, and buying fifteen lumps of coal for one. Luckily, I had a few on hand. Surprisingly, after trading the craftsman became a lot friendlier, talking about the directions in the village, the aforementioned Iron Golem who was, apparently, the local protector (that's how they get away with having no walls to speak of), and even going as far as asking me to let him take a closer look at the axe sitting in my belt. After a brief inspection he said that it could use a little sharpening. Since he was the one working on a grindstone earlier, I decided to try my luck and ask him some pointers on how to grind it, and how to maintain my gear properly.

It was as if verbal floodgates had been opened. Ruby levels of weapon enthusiasm.

While he'd only touched upon swords and axes (said the rest was beyond his expertise and that I'd have to find an appropriate worker to get feedback), there was a lot of information. Starting with how to "feel" weapons (he procured an iron sword of his own from somewhere for this) for any defects and damage from prolonged use, then moving on how to properly grind, then showing me the "local", much faster way of grinding that, unfortunately, involved two of the same tools (with one being disassembled in the end – it's a rather messy method), going on to show me how this can be done even without the use of a grindstone – with slightly worse results, and, finally, teaching me how to actually maintain my weapon with some raw materials and an anvil; though he didn't have one, so he just improvised on a mount of dirt.

System followed right after, notifying me of my newly unlocked guides on "gear condition assessment", "weapon grinding" – with and without a grindstone - and "anvil weapon maintenance". With this new knowledge, I decided to take a closer look at my own stuff. The axe was in surprisingly good condition, despite the many trees I felled. Sword, on the hand – well, it's a good thing I had listened to this lesson when I had – it wasn't in such great shape. Little things I hadn't noticed before – like the little cracks on the blade, or how loose the crossguard had become – became painfully obvious. The inventory had an "upgrade" too (thanks System!) – visualizing the state of my weapons with a small depleting bar at the bottom, with axe being green ("good"), and sword approaching red ("not good").

After I heard the smith mention having a farm within the village, I knew I absolutely had to check it out; this was my chance at figuring out what was wrong with my own farm. The farmer – a rather pretty (blockness notwithstanding) middle-aged woman – was more than eager to explain everything even without a little emerald "bribe".

She didn't have to explain much. Properly tilling the ground and keeping it hydrated – things I already knew. What I absolutely did not know, and would probably never figure it out by myself, was planting crops in alternating rows; through some mumbo-jumbo BS (a staple in this world, I say), the crops' growth accelerated. Kind lady planted a couple of carrots and potatoes (she later allowed me to take a couple of those from her home for myself), and they just started growing before my eyes. At my unanswered question of wtf, she just shrugged.

You know your world is screwed when even the natives don't know how it works. To be honest, that kind of goes for Remnant too, heh.

Oh and the farmer lady was selling a couple of loaves of bread for an emerald. Those tasted much better than my own sorry attempt at baking, but she refused to share the secret to making them taste better :(

The best thing to come out of all of this (besides finally making contact with somebody who doesn't want to kill me on sight) – my farm is now growing full force forward (upward)! Carrots, potatoes and wheat, planted in rows and growing like muscles on steroids. "Steroids" being "bone meal", actually. That's another tip good-natured farmer woman had told me that I forgot to write down: apparently, if you take bones and grind them down into a few fistfuls of pulverized bone dust (cubical, of course), then spread that around a planted crop, it acts as an extremely potent growth booster; plants quite literally grow before your eyes, even more so than before – it only took me about two to three applications to end up with a fully grown crop.

Even without the bone meal, crops grow two, maybe three times faster than at my old farm. As a matter of fact, I've been periodically checking on the growth process while writing this entry. They just grow so fast, it's incredible. I can finally live on something else besides animal meat and fish (I have nothing against fish, but I can't eat it all the time – I'm not Blake).I feel like the farm will need to be expanded even further, however – I need food to survive, so I'll need lots of food for lots of surviving.

Unfortunately, I've run out of bone meal, so tonight I'll be going on a skeleton hunt. I'd really rather not, but this will definitely help me in the long run – I won't have to move out of these plains, after all.

P.S: Planted some sweet berries too. Even if they're not very nutritious or filling, their taste alone makes up for it, let alone how ridiculously fast new berries seem to grow. Need to think of some way to protect myself against getting pricked though – hurts even with armor.


Okay. The skeleton hunt hadn't gone too badly. I'm swimming in bones as much as my shield and armor were swimming in arrows. I am getting good at this, I think: having to fight the freaks doesn't frighten or disgust me nearly as much as it used to, and the green guy exploding didn't send me into a shock (that is good - I had feared having developed PTD-something). Success leads to confidence and confidence promises even more success.

The famed positive reinforcement cycle. It's a shame I couldn't have figured it out earlier.

Not so good news – my sword broke, the blade literally getting stuck in a zombie. While I had been aware of its' mediocre condition, I didn't expect the thing to break so damn quickly. Without any other options, I had to make do with a shovel – and it didn't disappoint, surprisingly. While the overall form and length of it meant striking properly was difficult, the hits ended up having some real power behind them – not nearly as much as proper weapons, but for a really cheap and easy to make tool (compared to the rest, at least)? I'm going to file this away in case I ever get in a similar pinch.

The freaking rain right now is making it hard to write. Started about halfway through the night – I was soaked in seconds. Not debilitating, but pretty damn annoying.

That's not to say it didn't help me make yet another observation I'll be sure to keep in my mind. While in the rain, saw another one of the tall black things – same type with the one that had nearly lopped my arm off a week ago. It was:

a) Teleporting all over the place at breakneck speed

b) Seemingly getting hurt by rain, and by extension, I assume, water.

I suppose I'd gotten real lucky – finding out about its teleporting capabilities in such a "safe" scenario, as opposed to combat.

Time to wrap this up. Lots of work to be done tomorrow.


Villages and villagers were one of the first concepts I wanted to expand upon while planning this fic, so I took extra time trying to "get it right" (and I'm a lazy as, ofc). I'd like to thing I nailed it, but you can never be sure without a second opinion (and a third, a fourth, etc.).

p.s: as a non-native speaker, I'm always running the risk of pulling an oopsie with incorrect word/phrase usage. If there's no disclaimer stating that any mistakes are intentional, do be sure to point them out in the reviews.

EDIT 2020-12-07: removed mentions of villagers having the blocky shape (like in-game). Only big noses remain now.