Quantum Leap - Vol. 9 Robyn Hode Takes On The World

C016 Making Camp And Meeting Prospectus

"I'm bored. You didn't speak much so I got these to amuse myself. Furthermore, this hike is quite distant from that town right? Is there a town in Featherstone as well?"

"Let me observe in this map...Nope. No town is indicated around here. Do you know how to survey a map and a compass?"

"Of course, you half dim wit dum dum...I'm a Girl Guide, remember. So I memorize how to tie knots, make a fire, build a basha from natural resources and also forage for grub and trap some wild animals."

"If you learn so much, then why did you buy all the groceries from the market? I supposed you can forage all these?"

"Humph...how do you expect to find smoked chicken and fish here, huh? They could be smoking all their lives to end up being smoked till death...! How could you possibly find a chicken that struts in a corner, holding a piece of cigarette?"

"Oh Gawd...is this girl a half dum wit dum dum too...? Does she know what she had bought from the marketplace...and she didn't even return me any change or notify me if there's any change back...!" I reckoned and sighed inwardly to myself and guessed that may be a single child in a family is being spoiled until no end...!

"Be wary and alert if your surroundings. There would be other adventurers around and I would need to mark the maps to show how many mines they have on each location. Come and take a look, there are mines are indicated with colour codes and what we are looking for would be gens of red and green."

"How about other numerals like iron, tin and copper? Do you need all those? Yesterday, I had gathered some rocks and flints. Can you explain what those are meant for?"

"Rock mines will give you rocks for building materials and flint to make weapons and tools. Iron mines will give you iron nuggets to make weapons, tools and armour, rock and coal for heating in the furnace. If you mix iron nuggets and coal with limestone, you could make steel nuggets."

"Tin mines would give you tin nuggets and rock. Copper mines will give you copper nuggets and rock too. As you can see, only iron mines will give you coal or rocks occasionally. By the way, how big is your storage space?"

"Oh...I understand now...my storage bag has 16 slots and the bag itself is stackable. It was my father's and each slot can carry 99 similar items. It's a 4x4 so if I put a pickaxe in it, it would probably use up 2x2 slots. It has unlimited weight to it so I could put in as many items I want."

"Let me know if you have reached 99 items, I would do something to it and saves you more space. I could fusion all those to become 1 piece for every 5 items."

"Oh...you mean I could give you these rocks and you can make 1 single piece of material for every 5 items?"

"Why do you need rocks for? Do you intend to make a house or something?"

"I don't know...I thought these rocks would worth something...don't you think so?"

"It's not even worth a single penny...! If you have flints, I'd buy a whole lot from you. If you intend to build multiple houses in every place we find, rocks would be useful."

"How about trees? Yesterday I fell one and it gave me some logs, sticks and leaves. The leaves can be used as food for the silkworms but would it be worth something to sell? I'm not too fancy with worms...especially those hairy ones."

"Logs can be made into defensive walls, while it also can be turned into planks for making wall panelling, flooring and staircase. The sticks, however, could be made into firewood, handles of weapons or tools. Leaves can be used to trade with other adventurers. It all depends on whether they wanted to buy then from you or not."

"Hii...hii...hii...Now I understand. So whatever resources it drops I just grab it and then once my slots are full, I ask you again for your advice..."

"Then why do you ask me all this for...?!"

"Just to keep the conversation flowing and keep me company...hii...hii...hii...there's too much information and I am not Spongebob Squarepants...where I can afford to much information just by soaking in it...!!"

"By the way, are we there yet? There seem to be people heading to the mines ahead."

"Yes...we are definitely nearing a mine here. Wait...the mounds seemed higher than the miners...is my eyes playing tricks or the mines itself looked like a small hill?"

We hid behind some boulders and the 7 miners who were entering a diamond mine shaft were singing and whistling merrily as they trudged on. This is what we heard them sing:

"Just whistle while you work

Put on that grin and start right in to whistle loud and long

Just hum a merry tune

Just do your best and take a rest and sing yourself a song

When there's too much to do

Don't let it bother you, forget your troubles,

Try to be just like a cheerful chick-a-dee

And whistle while you work

Come on get smart, tune up and start

To whistle while you work."

We got a closer look at those miners and they were childlike but some of them had beards. All wore clothes that were either too big for them and seemed to drag over the ground and everyone had a pickaxe thrown over their shoulders.

"They looked like small people to me...are they mining at the same spot as us?"

"They're dwarfs...and there's 7 of them. None of them was carrying weapons. Hope they do not mine the same spot. Furthermore, these iron mines would respawn every 5 minutes so we wouldn't have to worry so much."

"Robyn...I thought this is not some fancy pants medieval English fantasy game and how could these mines respawn again?"

"This is my novel, lah girl...Anything could happen here...at least we have some originality...look...even our best weapons and tool are made from steel and not some obsidian legendary kind of materials."

"Hii...hii...hii...true true...So what do you suggest we do now?"

"We just sit here and observe first. Let me think of something..."

=*=

After the 7 dwarfs had entered a mine shaft, that implies they would be working deep underground for quite some time. This would give us an opportunity to certainly find a spot suitable for us to make a camp.

There's a body of water marked on the map, and once the 7 dwarfs had entered the mineshaft for a good 10 minutes, we picked ourselves up and walked towards the stream where the 7 dwarfs had come from earlier.

We arrived there and unloaded our things on the ground first after discovering a rather shady part of the forest and set up a sanctuary to place our things underneath. The stream was surging downstream and there were noises on the surface of the water as the fishes leapt and capture the hovering insects.

"Good...! We now possess water and we have fishes too...and this stream is broad enough to have bountiful of fishes and it doesn't look excessively deep too. At most, it is up to our thighs at the deepest point. This would give me the idea that I would implement soon."

"Oh...I've pitched a shelter to put in our stuff underneath it. Would it be useful to hang our perishables in the trees so that it would not be plagued by ants and other bugs?"

"Sure...I help you out...." I answered back and went to our bags and pulled out all the contents. I separated the cooking ware and utensils aside and I took out the perishables and places them aside first. The 2 smoked chicken was then strung high on a low branch and all the vegetables were laid out agreeably on the shawl that I had been using.

"Prepare a fire Matilda, I'm going to cook 10 of these eggs so it would last longer and prevent any unexpected breakages. We could simmer some water and make some tea later."

She bobbed her head and began with the task at hand. We require a table to organise our stuff and I set off a short distance away to split some trees down. I've earned a few logs and I haul one into my Realm of Mind and break it down into 4 planks with the fusion chamber and logged off from my meditative state and returned to the real world.

I then grabbed another log and yanked into the realm of mind and threw it into the fusion chamber and select to make stools and I managed to get 3 stools about the height of my knee. Out of 1 stool, I split it into 4 pieces to make a stand for the low table. At least it's a start if something, rather than nothing at all.

.....

"How's the fire going, Matilda? You may boil some water first and prepare some tea while I create a table for us first." I asked as I returned to the shelter with the planks and 4 legs. I took a few nails and used the back of my axe to hammer those nails into a stick to hold two planks jointly to make a wider table. 3 sticks were being nailed across to construct it sturdier and I overturned it and drove the nails on the other side directly into the table's legs.

The table looked a bit precarious and I used some sticks and fastened it diagonally across the legs and now it's perfect...! I positioned the table aside and positions all the other garnishing onto it. Next, I carried the two tree trunks that were prepared into stools and plops it on the ground.

"Waaahhhh...you're more productive than my Guide Master...you could set up a table in minutes."

"This is nothing, really, as long as you don't sit on it would be just fine. It is just a temporary place for us to park the foodstuff and eat. Furthermore, I wondered if those 7 dwarf miners would be willing to trade with us or not, but it would be worth a try."

"The water for the tea and eggs had been boiled. Do you want the eggs to be boiled for 5 or 8 minutes?"

"Boil them for 5 and let it stand in the pot until the eggs cooled off. What would you be readying for dinner? We yet have daylight and we could mine some iron and coal."

"Our camp looks tidy enough. I haven't think of preparing what for dinner. There's a plank here, could I nail it on the tree and make a kind of holder to hang the pots and pans as well as a stand to put our bowls and utensils?"

"It's a great idea... it is better than leaving them lying around. Our 2 smoked chicken is hanging just above us in a nice, sealed sack so no flies would be hovering and the smoked fish are being kept inside one of the pots here."

I helped Matilda to nail a plank across the tree trunk where our table was and used some nails as hooks for our pots and pans and also used nails as stands to place our utensils on it. The whole setup is very crude, but it serves the purpose very well.

.....

"These protruding mines looked the same to me except for some minerals deposit on it's top here. Other than that, it would be a normal stone mine, right?"

"Yeah...that's right..." I replied as I began to swing my pickaxe on a stone mine to retrieve some flints. I left the rocks aside as I do not seem to have any use for it. After a while, I discovered that the stone mines failed to respawn if the resources were not collected and I asked Matilda to collect them...which she gleefully did.