It was late at night.
After Shinomiya Kaguya finished her bread, the painkillers started kicking in, and her overall condition had improved quite a bit compared to before.
But the high fever still hadn’t broken, and her head felt foggy.
Before long, Shinomiya Kaguya let out a yawn, pillowed her head on Hayasaka Ai’s thigh, and sank into a deep sleep.
Isac, meanwhile, picked up the kerosene lamp and started exploring deeper into the mine.
The lamp was something Hayasaka Ai had found inside the mine itself — there was less than two fingers’ worth of kerosene left in the reservoir, probably enough to last three or four more hours.
This abandoned mine shaft wasn’t all that big.
A lot of the side passages in the middle were blocked off by massive boulders, so the area Isac could actually explore was pretty limited.
Three or four hours of light was more than enough for him to comb every nook and cranny of the accessible zone.
Isac was planning to hang onto this kerosene lamp too.
Sure, there wasn’t much kerosene left in it, but once he got back, he could melt down that half-stick of candle they had at the cabin and pour it in as fuel.
The only downside was that wax didn’t burn as long as kerosene.
Originally, Isac had been saving that half-candle to make a torch out of.
But now that he had this much better kerosene lamp — both served the same purpose, lighting — and the lamp was not only windproof but also burned through resources more slowly, there was zero need to bother making torches anymore.
Once the candle was used up, he could also trap some wild animals and render down their fat to use as lamp oil.
On top of that, there was pine resin from pine trees — those were all natural lamp fuels you could find right in the wild.
For a wick, cattail stalks made a perfectly serviceable substitute.
So as far as Isac was concerned, it was actually a manufactured item like the kerosene lamp itself that was the hard-to-come-by part.
And don’t let the fact that the lamp in his hand looked a bit aged fool you.
Long as he took proper care of it, getting another five or six years of use out of it was no problem at all.
Aside from the very first stretch of the mine, which was open enough that Isac could walk fully upright, a few more steps in and he had to hunch over to keep moving.
And even hunched over, he had to keep an eye on the ceiling the whole time so he didn’t crack his head on something.
All in all, it was a pretty cramped, miserable walk — but cramped or not, he was getting results.
He hadn’t even gone that far in before he’d already picked up seven or eight chunks of coal.
The smallest were palm-sized, and the biggest ones were a struggle to even lift.
Isac was kind of regretting not bringing the cart from home along on this trip.
There was no way he was hauling all this coal back, never mind the fact that he also had Shinomiya Kaguya, his sick patient, to deal with.
“Collect it all and stash it for now.
Next time I come, I’ll figure out a way to drag it back,” Isac muttered to himself.
Out here in this frozen wasteland, something with as much heat value as coal was basically hard currency.
Wet wood did burn longer, sure — but the trade-off was that it gave off way less heat.
It just barely kept a person at the minimum temperature needed to survive the night, and that was assuming you were fully dressed and tucked under a thick blanket.
With coal, though, the whole picture changed.
Not only would he not have to get up in the middle of the night to feed the fire, but the indoor temperature would go up significantly.
At the very least, he could sleep wearing fewer layers, and the quality of his sleep would honestly improve by a huge margin.
Either way, Isac had already made up his mind: he was definitely coming back to this mine again.
Not like that crash site he’d been at before, where he kept saying he’d go back “someday” — but exactly how far off that “someday” was, only Isac himself knew.
After finding a spot to stack up the coal he’d collected, Isac kept hunched over and pushed deeper into the mine.
The inside of the cave was pitch black.
The only light source was the kerosene lamp in his hand.
If he hadn’t known Hayasaka Ai and Shinomiya Kaguya were keeping watch back at the entrance — if it had just been him in here alone — he probably would’ve gotten a little spooked.
All you can really say is, anyone who can survive solo out in the wilderness is built different.
Not only do they have to put up with the lack of supplies, they have to endure the mental loneliness too.
Lucky for him, he wasn’t alone.
He had three drop-dead-gorgeous girls, each with her own kind of charm, right by his side.
Setting the survival situation aside, when it came to his luck with women, things were definitely way better than they’d been before the crash.
If the crash hadn’t happened, where would he ever have gotten the chance to meet girls of the caliber of Yukinoshita Yukino, Hayasaka Ai, and Shinomiya Kaguya?
If he were given the choice all over again… he’d still pick not getting on that helicopter.
Even while Isac’s mind was wandering through all this random stuff, his eyes hadn’t slacked off one bit.
When it came to scraping every last bit of value off the ground, he was a pro.
Sure enough, Isac spotted another good find in a pile of rubble.
A wild iron pickaxe!*
It looked about as old as the kerosene lamp.
The head was a bit rounded down from wear, and there were some obvious nicks in the flat side, but at least it was still usable.
An iron pickaxe head was perfectly fine for knocking stuff loose, and in a pinch it’d serve as a weapon too.
Later on, if he could find a hammer, he could even figure out a way to re-forge it and give it a second life.
Putting everything else aside, there was still plenty of coal in this abandoned mine.
The chunks scattered around on the ground were going to run out sooner or later, and at that point he’d have to start mining the stuff himself.
When that day came, having a proper tool in hand would make digging coal way more efficient.
“A workman who wants to do his job well must first sharpen his tools” — the ancestors weren’t going to steer him wrong on that one, were they?
The iron pickaxe wasn’t all that heavy, so Isac just went ahead and used it as a walking stick, which also saved him from having to push rubble and dirt clumps out of the way with his hand.
Not long after, the passage in front of Isac was blocked off by a few snapped wooden support beams and chunks of rubble.
Looked like there was no exploring further past this point. Find the original chapter at g.com.
But thankfully, his haul from this trip was already plenty.
Besides the pickaxe and the coal, he’d also found a flashlight that didn’t work and a somewhat warped tin bucket.
The bucket was about half as tall as a person.
No way of telling whether it leaked or not.
If it didn’t leak, he could take it back, clean it out, and use it as a water storage bucket.
Get really fancy, and he could even use it to hold water for a bath.
Worst case, it’d still work as a temporary storage container — like a makeshift coal bin or something.
Isac glanced at the kerosene lamp’s reservoir — the kerosene was down to about a finger’s width now.
Counting the time, it had already been a little over an hour since he’d started exploring this abandoned mine.
About time to head back to the entrance and turn in for the night.
Since he’d already walked this route once, it only took Isac ten minutes to make it back from deep in the mine to the campfire, lamp and pickaxe in hand.
Hearing Isac’s footsteps, Hayasaka Ai’s ear twitched.
She turned her head roughly in his direction and said, “You’re back?”
“Yeah, I’m back.
Got a pretty decent haul — found an iron pickaxe in one of the rubble piles, and there’s a ton of coal in there.
Just the chunks lying loose on the ground are enough to last us a good while.
Looks like we’re not going to have to worry about staying warm anytime soon.”
Isac glanced down at Shinomiya Kaguya, who was fast asleep with her head pillowed on Hayasaka Ai’s leg.
After thinking for a second, he asked, “You planning on letting her use your lap as a pillow all night tonight?”
“Mhm.” Hayasaka Ai didn’t see anything weird about that.
“Then how are you going to sleep?”
“I can sleep sitting up.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
Hayasaka Ai considered his words for a beat, then a little hesitantly reached out and patted her right thigh.
The meaning was pretty obvious — she wanted Isac to use that side as a pillow.
…What was he supposed to do about the fact that he was a little tempted?
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Samsara Game: Starting in The Long Dark with My Waifus
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