Starting a fire wasn’t too difficult for Sento.
Although he had only lived in the countryside until he was about ten years old, that time had provided him with a considerable amount of fire-starting experience.
Sento first reached inside to check and make sure the stove wasn’t blocked anywhere, then he employed the secret fire-starting technique passed down by his grandmother.
Grabbing a roll of newspaper from a broken shelf in the room, Sento crumpled it into several paper balls and placed them at the bottom of the stove.
He then arranged a circle of smaller twigs around the edges and finally stacked heavier pieces of firewood on top.
He ensured there were sufficiently large gaps between these sections to guarantee air circulation.
Sento struck a match and thrust it into the paper balls.
The newspaper ignited instantly, the flames baking the small sticks and quickly setting them ablaze as well.
Seeing this, Sento breathed a small sigh of relief; it seemed his special skill hadn’t grown rusty.
In the game the long dark, there are many skills with a maximum level of 5, and Sento felt that his fire-starting technique could easily pass for level 3 or 4.
Ai looked at Sento with slight surprise and praised him sincerely, “Sento-kun, you’re really amazing.
If it were me, I’m afraid it wouldn’t have gone so smoothly.”
She wasn’t just flattering him.
As a 2D-world maid, Ai excelled in many skills: personal attendant, maid, hacker, bodyguard—she was essentially multiple roles rolled into one.
But unfortunately, starting a fire from scratch was indeed not on her skill list.
It wasn’t that she was completely incapable, but she wasn’t as proficient as Sento.
Sento rubbed his nose and gave a slightly proud chuckle.
Once the small sticks were fully ignited and the baking firewood began to blacken, the temperature started to rise slowly.
After his face and the palms near the flames felt the warmth, Sento suddenly shivered, feeling the bone-chilling cold in his feet and calves.
He clicked his tongue in annoyance.
In the freezing snow just now, the thin pants on his legs offered no protection.
From the knees down, he was basically soaked in ice water, and Hayasaka was much the same.
Seeing the situation, Sento quickly suggested, “This won’t do.
We can’t just let them air dry while they’re wet.
We need to remove the ice-water parts that are lowering our body temperature first.”
Ai, who had already been secretly wringing the water out of her pant legs and was planning to take off her shoes, felt a secret sigh of relief in her heart.
It was good that Sento’s survival knowledge wasn’t lacking.
Since he thought of this himself, Ai didn’t have to find ways to guide his thinking in that direction.
Kicking off the shoes on her feet, Ai quickly pulled off her completely soaked white socks.
She pointed her feet toward the stove and said with a slightly flushed face, “Wow, Sento-kun is really smart.
Warming them like this feels much better, but don’t peek, okay?”
Sento covered his mouth, coughed softly a few times, and turned his head away.
Alright, he indeed had taken a peek just now, but he wouldn’t look anymore.
Ai was very satisfied with Sento’s attitude.
She wrung as much water as possible out of her pant legs and then rolled them up appropriately to prevent the damp parts from sticking completely to her calves.
As for changing her pants…
there were no spare pants here, at least none found yet.
Sento thought of this too.
He mimicked Ai’s actions, roughly wringing the water out of his pant legs, and then stood up.
“You warm yourself by the fire first.
I’ll see what usable items are in this room.”
Gathering resources is an indispensable part of almost all survival games.
Sento remembered seeing when he checked basic information at the Great Light Orb earlier that the difficulty of the worlds they needed to survive in would rise gradually.
The fact that the long dark was chosen as the first world proved its difficulty was low.
Besides the lack of magic and high technology in this world, Sento felt there was another reason: in the lore of the long dark, the place where players perform wilderness survival is a deserted modern town.
Compared to other survival games where you have to collect materials from scratch, build water collectors, and figure out how to drill wood for fire, a game where you can easily find canned food, firearms, tools, and warm clothing is simply too easy.
Sento was experiencing that sense of simplicity right now.
After searching through the room, he successfully found quite a few things.
Putting the rest aside, the priority was to organize all the clothes.
The good news was that the clothing here was quite sufficient: two thick shirts, two pairs of thermal pants (one thin, one thick), and a very heavy mid-length Parka, which would count as a high-tier item in the game.
Dividing these clothes between the two of them was enough to let them move normally outside for a while.
Plus, each having a pair of thermal pants to change into meant they could hang up their currently soaking wet pants to dry.
But the bad news was that they still hadn’t found any shoes; Ai still had to wear her small leather shoes.
Having changed into the new thermal pants and sitting on some rags, Ai sat before the stove rubbing her insteps, her cheek resting against her knee as she sighed helplessly.
“Ugu—my poor feet have never faced such a harsh trial before.
Walking through the snow in leather shoes is just too difficult!”
Before Sento could say anything, Ai put on a smile again.
“But I shouldn’t complain!
Being able to find so many warm clothes is already quite good.
We’ll just have to find a way to deal with the shoe problem and work hard to overcome it!”
Sento blinked.
She really…
it’s enough to make a man cry.
Even though he knew Ai was likely still in a performance mode, she was just so damn considerate that Sento felt a bit moved.
“Don’t worry,” Sento responded casually while looking through the other supplies.
“Shoes are a relatively common type of clothing in this world.
Even if we didn’t find any here, they won’t be hard to find elsewhere.
For now, I think we should take stock of the food.”
“Oh, right!
Food is the most important thing!” Shaking her feet, Ai propped herself up from the floor.
While she had been warming herself by the fire, Sento had already searched most of the room.
Aside from some nooks and crannies or particularly hidden corners he hadn’t checked thoroughly, the items on the surface had mostly been gathered together.
The amount of food currently piled on the floor didn’t look like much.
Ai picked up a tin can.
“Hmm…
Pork and Beans?
That sounds like it would taste pretty good.”