Defiance of the Fall

He sat down at the small dinner-area , and while slowly eating his beans he started mentally browsing through the shop . Zac noticed that the prices were denominated in Nexus coins , which he had 10100 of now . He had gained 5000 coins during the day , likely from creating the outpost .

If he was going to survive in this new world , it seemed the first step was getting the most out of this outpost of his .

Chapter 10 - Preparation

Zac woke up the next morning feeling sore , but his wounds had obviously healed even further . It no longer pained him overly to put weight on his wounded leg , and he could actually turn his midriff without a blazing pain erupting .

The smell in the camper was getting pretty bad though , and he knew he had to do something about it if this was going to be his base for the foreseeable future . He gathered the bloody bed sheets he had fallen asleep on when he passed out from his wounds and put them in a garbage bag . He didn’t dare throw it outside yet though , afraid the smell of blood would attract beasts . With some detergent he spent another 30 minutes cleaning most of the blood away , making the trailer go from looking like the site of a vampire orgy to a serial killer hideout . The blood had badly stained multiple places , especially around the dining area , and it wasn’t something he’d be able to fix in the short run . At least it smelled a lot better now .

Finally , he decided to waste some water for a quick shower in the trailer bathroom , even though the water was limited . After some intensive scrubbing away the blood caked all over him , the filth was mostly rinsed away . He stepped out of the shower and donned another set of clothes , feeling like a new man . When showering he had also noticed that he seemed to have actually gotten more in shape , with most of this gut gone and his muscles seeming , if not bigger , then harder and more compact than before . It seemed that the stats had some effect on his physical appearance as well . Hopefully , an increase in intelligence wouldn’t make his head larger and larger though .

After a quick breakfast , he was finally ready to head out according to plans he had made yesterday after browsing through the shop . There were a dizzying array of possibilities to choose from when building an outpost , even when most of the options were disabled .

Many of them he could understand or at least somewhat intuit the purpose for using a lifetime of playing video games . There were buildings such as an inn , blacksmith , different types of stores , bank and so on . Most of these required a town though . There was also something he was extremely keen on getting , the teleporter . If he built that he might be able to actually teleport to his hometown in one go .

There was one confusing aspect of the buildings though , which was that there were often hundreds of versions of most of the buildings , especially the commercial ones . Even though they seemed to fill the same function they were of different design and some minor differences in the description . After a while he could only surmise that the different choices represented different factions or planets . It seemed that creating a store wouldn’t actually create some NPC-style beings , but rather move people here from other planets or intergalactic corporations .

There was also a huge amount of supporting buildings that could improve the offense , defense or improve the town in other manners . There seemed to even be some sort of training facility that seemed to be able to slowly improve stat points without leveling . If possible Zac would have gone on a shopping spree , but he quickly realized the harsh reality that roughly 10 000 Nexus Coins would only be able to buy a few of the most basic buildings .

He had formulated a plan yesterday after browsing through his options for hours but needed to explore some more before actually spending the few coins he had .

Zac had seen a hill the day he had been forced to go out to gather firewood , and he planned to scale it to get a better lay of the land . Donned in a fresh set of clothing and his trusty hatchet he once again set out into the woods .

Soon he had walked up the hill , hunkered over to not be spotted by any potential threats . Luckily the hill was filled with lush bushes and even a tall tree at the top , making for some simple protection . Unfortunately the hill wasn’t tall enough to give a complete overview of the surroundings as it turned out , with the crowns of larger trees still obscured the distance inland . Still , he could see his trailer and further on the ocean .

Still , he wanted to see whether he was actually on an island , or if the system had teleported any type of civilization in the vicinity . It would be a bit insane if he lived as a transient mountain man in the trailer if a town was just a few kilometers away .