Day 33:
I dug out all the ore in the area I mentioned yesterday and almost plummeted to my death. It appears the ore was on the edge of a great underground cavern, and I was digging into its ceiling.
Welp, this is why I use rope. I’d also use steel anchors, helmets, carabiners, and lifelines if I wasn’t here stranded with no supplies but instead, I do what I can with a rope harness and the ability to tie myself to secure parts of the cave, where such opportunities exist.
Note: they don’t exist very often in these caves. I’ve never seen so many underground lacking in stalactites and stalagmites but hey, maybe water doesn’t seem through the surface the same way.
Sure is flocking damp anyway.
The good news is that I did not plummet to my death.
The bad news is that the cavern held a nest of exploding giraffe-corgis, who were so happy to see me tunnel into their roof that they attempted to blow it off. Couple of scratches, no major harm… wish I had eye protection.
***
I’ve been thinking about what my plan is once I have enough iron ore to make some proper tools. There’s a mountain blocking my view of the horizon to the… south? we’ll call it south since we’re assuming the sun sets to the west. For all I know the natives here call it the Blargleboop. Right now the only ones I have to talk to are the zombies and their language consists of Grrr! Arrrgh! and Ow! so that’s not much help.
Anyway. Mountain. I want to head to the top of it and see if I can spot any settlements, but I’m pretty sure I can’t make a round trip to it in the daylight. As we have learned, dear notebook, traveling at night is a good recipe for being strangled by a zombie, shot at by a skeleton thing, blown up by a giraffe corgi, or beaten up by a land squid, so I’m not thinking that’s a good idea.
I thought about taking one of my horses (they let me ride them now! Well, mostly.) but a) horses aren’t fully trained, b) mountain will still take tons of time to climb, and c) if anything happens, I’m back to being stranded in the dark.
But I’m a miner! And these caverns I keep finding are in the same general direction as the mountain.
So this week’s plan is to tunnel in the direction of the mountain. It’ll be slower work than just running to it, but if I extend this tunnel that direction, fewer local fauna will be able to kill me at any one time than if I try an overland route.
Then again, if I hit multiple caverns of camoflage death corgis, I might not need to worry about it.
