Chương 50: Growth Cycle

Mark showed up to eat breakfast just after dawn. His day yesterday had been interesting; he only partially looked at the marshlands, but already from the excitement from Tom and Dale he knew that it could be a great resource to them. The plan for today was to go back to the cave again. Cora was going to be exploring the marsh, so he wanted to see if he could get a 4th person for the group. Turning to Tom and Dale, he said.

"The plan is the cave today. Cora is out surveying the marshlands, would one of you like to come with us?" Tom spoke first.

"I went yesterday; today the plan is to work more on some simple armor for you guys." Dale responded.

"I would like to go. Just to see what you guys have been doing, but I don't want to fight, so I will let you do all the heavy lifting." Mark replied.

"That works great. Once breakfast is over, grab any gear you want, and we will walk over to the cave together." When the group was ready, they headed over to the cave. The walk was quick and uneventful. On the way over, the group talked about the new feelings they had about safe routes through the area and could sense areas that had things to avoid. They lit their torches and followed Lena into the cave.

[Adaptive Zone Detected] Growth Cycle Active Threat Level: Low Primary Focus: Resource Gathering Mark stopped and focused on the message he received. Growth cycle, focus of gathering.

"Hey, everyone got a new zone message today; it says growth cycle active. Primary focus: resource gathering. Not sure what it means, but it's new." They were standing at the entrance to the first chamber. All four of them started scanning the floors and walls looking for what they might have to fight. The cave was quiet compared to previous visits. No sounds of movement or dragging sounds they had heard before; only the occasional drips of water. Lena moved around the cave searching for a foe.

Bramble went the other direction, with Ava following behind. When they met together on the other side with nothing to fight, they had puzzled looks on their faces. They returned to Mark and looked at him for answers. Mark pulled up the zone message and re-read it. Threat low? Okay.

"Um, the message also read threat low? Not sure what that means. I guess we search this chamber and then move to the next one." Dale did not have to be told twice and started to search the room; the rest seemed to follow his lead. Mark hung back and pulled up his map to see if there was anything on it. It listed the zone name, or rather description, cave, but it was all grayed out with no details. There was a new tab, though, that said Adjacent Zone, so he clicked that. That returned his normal zone map.

He was almost too close to closing it when he noticed it update. The north section of the swamp was slowly having its fog removed. As he watched, he realized that must be Cora exploring. Well, not enough time for that now, so he closed the map to turn and see that everyone else was looking at him. Apparently, they had said something to him, and he had not noticed. Mark said.

"Sorry, I was looking at the map, and I could see where Cora was exploring the area was starting to be more revealed on the map." Dale said.

"Check this out." He walked over and pointed at a sticky pool.

"That resin is not solidified; it is still sticky." He then walked over and showed where he had found insects trapped in the pool.

"Oh, watch your step though, or you might get stuck on the floor."

"So you're saying this is good stuff?" If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"Yes, gather as much as you can; lots of uses for the resin. The more solid resin chunks are easier to gather, so start there." They continued to loot and store all the items Dale pointed out. When he finally ran out of things to pick up or at least store, he finally admitted that he was done in this room. So, as a group, they followed Lena to the next room. Like before, they proceed slowly, looking for anything that might jump out at them. The next chamber they entered was different.

It had fiber growths going in all directions. Bramble went forward and got stuck on the nearest fiber bundle. Turning around, it wrapped all around him. By the time he was done jerking back and forth, he was all tied up. Ava ran over and said it.

"Silly Bramble, if you get stuck to something, don't spin in a circle; it makes it worse." She then pulled out her knife and started pulling the sticky fiber growths off of him. Dale went over and took some of the fibers she had cut off bramble and stretched them. They were strong and pulled but did not break. They were also just a little sticky and wanted to stick to his fingers. He then said.

"Oh, this would be great in so many projects that Tom has been working on. Make sure you gather it all up." It turned out that there were edible fungi in this room along with the various fiber strands. They spent quite a lot of time going through and cutting fibers to make it possible to cross the room. Like the last chamber, there was nothing to fight but lots of crafting materials. While they were searching and gathering items, Mark opened his map again.

He could see that Cora had crossed the marsh a couple times, north and south, while heading in an eastward direction. There were now safe trails marked and a couple of hazardous locations. This will be pretty valuable going forward; he would need her to travel to other locations that are still not identified to fill out his map completely. Once Dale had everything he wanted in this chamber, they moved to the next chamber. This one had huge salt deposits covering every corner of the room.

If Dale seemed happy in the previous two rooms, he was over the moon for this one. This room was wet and slippery; more than one of them slipped and fell in the water. Dale had them gather the huge salt formations that he was happily breaking off in various locations. To Mark, some of it did not look like salt; it was the wrong color, but Dale insisted on gathering as much as they could. Dale let them know about all the things he could dry and preserve.

He was so excited about it, but Mark finally had to tune him out because he was acting like a child in a candy shop. They finally moved to the last chamber. Mark was almost disappointed at this point. Nothing to fight; he had almost looked forward to that today. Dale was happy, though, so all was good. The center of this chamber, like previous runs of the cave, had a heart—not something alive but something solid and difficult to obtain.

There were gas pockets that kept puffing out and sheets of resin that, when touched, shattered to the floor. More than one of them ended up with cuts from the sharp sheet shattering too close to them. The footing was also unstable; sometimes taking a step caused their feet to fall in a hole, so they had to move carefully. Working as a group, they were finally able to get to and remove the core. They each received XP for this, and Mark received a resin core as his loot.

They looted again the items Dale had pointed out and then headed out of the cave. [Adaptive Zone Cleared] Cave Control Increased: +3% Current Cave Control: 10% Mark looked over that information. He was now at 10% control. He could not wait to find out what will happen when it gets higher. [Cave Familiarity Increased] Environmental Variations Logged Cycle Recognition Improved The cave was changing faster than he understood it. They would need to prepare each time for something new, as anything could be found there.

The group continued home to camp, and Dale showed off all the things we had found and bragged that he did not have to fight or defend himself from anything. Tom was quite pleased with all their gains, and the two of them spent the next hours planning out which things they planned to make next. Mark spent the remainder of his evening watching the map. It was fascinating to see the shaded areas go away and the trails and paths appear. He was interested when the ruined boat showed up as a POI. Who made a boat?

Mark finally saw the path and got to the east border of the zone, following a path. Mark just watched. Where had she gone? Wherever it was, it was out of his control zone. A little while later, he saw another revealed path coming back and then stopped. Continuing to watch, she never moved again. Finally, he decided he would have to go to bed and see if she returned in the morning.