I woke up and patted Kirkos, removed his hood and untied his beak, he said "Kik!" I nod my head and tied him to my harness.
Now he's on my chest, so he can join me as I go through my daily routine, boil, drink, eat, washroom, wash, smoke the new prey caught.
Since I didn't have any plans for today. I set out to finish my goal from before. Set up new pit traps further away from home, about 50 to 60 meters away.
I planned to make them wider and deeper. I set out to make 5 new pits. Since they're larger and take more time, sadly I failed to meet the quota.
Since my hands are holding me back. I can only dig 2 before I start sweating from the pain.
My goal is to set up 30 to 40 traps. This will probably be a 2 to 3 week project, maybe sooner if my hands heal faster.
As I'm going through my days I talk to Krikos and feed him from my hand. I think he's starting to like me now. Since I don't need to use the spear so often to scare him anymore.
We're building true friendships!
Days go by then weeks. It took me 4 weeks and 3 days to finish this project. Much longer than I expected. I think Krikos was slowing me down with all the extra weight.
Hey, 7 ounces is a lot of weight!
The next day I got lucky and caught a 500 pound boar. It was so heavy that, if I wanted to haul the meat home I needed to make multiple trips.
Thus I had to carve and slice the boar up into sections. Now that I have stored up boar meat that will last me at least 4 months.
I can now focus on training my body, first of all I need to expand the under home ground so I can fit in a home gym.
I always wanted a home gym in my past life, I guess dreams, really do come true.
First I need to find a long and thin rock to make into a saw blade, I found one near the bank of Fish River.
I used smaller rocks to chip triangles into my saw blade. It was pretty easy work, but it just took a while, about two full days of chipping to finish the blade of my saw.
Then I found a long tree branch and split it in half. I then placed the saw blade in between the newly split tree branch and tied it all together with some wood fibre rope.
"Hey! I'm getting pretty good with my man!" I say to Kirkos.
He replies with "kik?'
I think he was agreeing with me. You have to appreciate my genius.
I tied the saw to my back, with my spear and re-sharpened my knife for good measure. I hype myself up by slapping the cheeks on my face.
Then I set off back into the deep forest with Kirkos still strapped to my chest. With him by my side I feel invincible.
Knowing that the state of Deep Forest is full of dangers. Once I left the general vicinity of my home, I crouched down and sneaked forward.
I paid extra attention to leaves and branches that lay on the ground, making sure not to make any sound. While looking around and moving forward, I noticed the nostrils on Krikos's beak.
This reminded me that the animals within the forest have a really good sense of smell. I quickly looked for some wet spots on the ground, and lathered myself and Krikos with mud, and dirt to cover our scent.
Krikos didn't appreciate the mud and dirt. I had to use my spear to convince him otherwise.
"Kee-eeeee-arr!"
'Poke, poke.' ("Don't worry, I'm not actually poking him, just the motion of the movement is enough to strike fear into him.")
"Shhhh, quiet"
After the spa treatment, I crouched back down in a low position, scanning the area while sneaking forward step-by-step. Having Krikos with me on this expedition was a great comforter.
He also made a great silent alarm. Whenever there was a beast nearby, he would twitch and wiggle.
This gave me a chance to hide and wait for the beast to pass.
After a few hours of trekking through the woods, I found a huge fallen dead tree. I did a search around 20 around the area. To see if there's any beasts nearby.
I even asked Krikos to be sure "Beast, nearby?" and he just shook his head side to side.
Since we're safe, I unstrapped the saw and cut the tree into four actions. I quickly made some rope and tied it to one of the logs. Then I started heading back home.
The way back home was uneventful.
I placed the log near the campfire and untied the rope.
I brought the rope with me and headed back to the other three dead logs.
As I was heading back into the deeper part of the forest Krikos didn't seem to agree to my decision and started screaming at me.
"Kee-eeeee-arr!""Kee-eeeee-arr!!""Kee-eeeee-arr!!!"
I knew he was whining for being lazy, and poked him with my spear a few times to shut him up. For my second trip back, I noticed Krikos's breathing was heavier and more rapid than before.
Just to make sure I didn't hear Krikos whine, I brought out my spear and poked him. Once again I headed off to pick up another dead log.
Once I reached the log and tied it up, I noticed Krikos was asleep, thus I used my hands to slap him, left to right to wake him up..... ("lightly of course, he's my best friend")
After waiting for a while, I realized Krikos was unconscious though I can't understand why.
I started heading back to Fish River. The journey back was a lot more dangerous without Krikos, my silent alarm. I had a lot more close calls with beasts like wild boars, a family of purple poisonous snakes, and a group of feeding wolves.
Luckily the Giant Wolves just finished a hunt, and didn't look too interested in a small 12-year-old skinny boy like me.
After arriving home and dropping off the third log near the campfire.
I washed Krikos and myself to be free from all the dirt and mud. I consumed the smoked boar and a small bit of fish soup for dinner. I placed Krikos near the bed and gave him a good pat, then headed off to bed.
"Good night, Krikos good work today.."
I woke up and restrap Krikos to my chest and started my day.
I found a trapped rabbit in one of my second generation pit traps, and cooked him for breakfast.
(second generation traps meaning the ones I made further away, deeper and bigger too)
Then I took a nice wash in the river and maybe it was because of the cold water, but Krikos finally woke up.
"Good morning, sleepy head"
Krikos looks up at me and says "Kik?"
I told him his timing was perfect, because there was still one log remaining in the Deep Forest.
He sounded so excited about the adventure he wouldn't stop shaking his head and crying out.
"Kee-eeeee-arr!"Kee-eeeee-arr!"Kee-eeeee-arr!
"Kee-eeeee-arr!"Kee-eeeee-arr!"Kee-eeeee-arr!
I had to promise him that this is going to be the last time we head out into the Deep forest. For a while anyways.
I fed him some smoked fish and then headed back into the forest.
It was a much easier trip compared to yesterday.
After I arrived home, I sawed 1 log into 1 foot long sections, now I have 4 sections of 1 foot logs.
I spend the rest of my days carving out these sections so they become hollow so I can fill them with sand. This takes about two weeks since I'm quite experienced with carving out logs at this point.
I then headed out to find thick branches, so I can carve them into squares, to fit them into the hollow buckets.
I make a bench press bar, and a squat bar. For the other buckets I use a thick rope, like adding weights for pull up and dips, holding on to ropes for bicep, tricep, and shoulder exercises.
I realized that I don't have enough space in my underground home to fit all this equipment so I did go another 7 square metres. Now I have expanded my underground home to 12 square meters.
I will call my new home G Base, the G stands for ground, because U Base sounds weird. You know, U for under.
All that's left to finish my home gym is to move the equipment underground. And fill them up with sand
It takes about a day and a half to move the equipment underground and fill up the logs.
After standing there and admiring my work.
I realize I can't use any of my equipment besides the rope for bicep curls.
I need a rack for everything, a pull up rack, dip rack and squat rack and bench press rack.
This project took me about a week, since I underestimated the weight of my equipment and some of my racks failed to hold it together under the pressure of the sand filled logs.
Now that I have proper equipment, and a decent diet. I spend the rest of my days trying to bulk up and get stronger and don't worry, I don't forget my cardio.
Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months.
It's been about 3 months and some days. To be honest I lost track.
I've been in this world for about 230-ish days almost a year.
My body has changed with the added muscle. My muscles are about a half inch larger with more definition and veins. I know my endurance has improved, since I can run longer without feeling out of breath. All this improvement has given me some more reassurance about the deadly place I have settled into.
My relationship with Krikos has improved, quite a bit. When I felt that he started to trust me. I untied him and after a while of freedom I taught him to stand on my shoulder.
This issue with that is he sometimes digs into my skin. My clothes can't handle the powerful talons.
His injured wing has healed, though his flapping is awkward, but he seems to have forgotten that he's a flying hawk, not a land chicken, the reason I call him a chicken is because he's walking all over the place. If you changed his feathers you wouldn't know he was a hawk, from how he's moving.
My guess is that he has trauma from past flying experiences. So I'm trying to re-educate him and make him feel safe about flying. This is all for him to become a good hunting companion.
Every time I feed Krikos I whistle, so he can learn to respond to the whistle.
When training I just place him down on the ground. Then bring out some food and whistle for him to come to my hand. It's a slow agonizing process, but it's working. He's really smart, maybe smarter than me.
At first he would hop over, it was cute but not exactly what I was looking for, I had to teach him to flap his wings and come over. Once I got him used to the whistle and using his wing muscles, I started teaching him how to fly again.
Once he was comfortable, I got him to fly short distances. I started to slowly increase the distance from his placement on the ground, to my hand. His flying range was slowly growing.
. He's learning to flap his wings and fly to my hand for the food.
My hands are also all ripped apart and cut up from all the training as well.
My next set of priorities is getting a change of clothes, upgrading my weapons; possibly making new ones and learning how to really survive in the Deep Forest.