DE Vol. 1 pt. 70

Year 1, Day 27

Thanks to claiming those Living Forest tiles, we had access to the Living Wood material which was acquired by building a Gathering Camp on top of one of the tiles. All we had to do then was assigned one of Mount Hound’s population units to the camp and they got right to work bringing in a small amount of Living Wood every day. Due to just how valuable the resource was, though, it was only a very small amount. It would take several days of stockpiling the resource with just one Gathering Camp over there to get enough wood to make something like a bow using it.

Not that it really mattered.

The only units we could produce were Volcano Hounds. Volcano Hounds were unable to use anything else as weapons aside from their personal claws, and we weren’t able to make armor using the Living Wood as far as I could tell, so there wasn’t actually any way for us to make use of the wood yet.

Not that that mattered, either.

After all, we wanted to claim those tiles to keep them away from the Viking Elves. We accomplished that, and that was what mattered. Besides, I had full confidence in us getting to use the wood sometime in the future. I knew that shipbuilding would eventually be a thing, as would building defenses, so we could probably use it during those times. I wasn’t sure if we would ever have a use for it as far as weapons went, since that depended entirely on when we could get a new race as population and what other materials we’d have unlocked by then, but it was alright.

That aside, I wanted to actually take a visit over to the new land that we fought for and won.

And as it would turn out, I was able to teleport between the different settlements whenever I wanted. The bad news was that nobody else could. If I wanted to visit Mount Hound, it was as easy as opening up a menu, selecting it, and transferring myself to over there. But if anybody wanted to go with me, they were going to have to walk there themselves. Not even holding onto one of them while teleporting worked.

Only two people actually wanted to go with me, though, and they were Kaila and Thad. The rest were busy. Really, I was surprised that either of them wanted to go. I knew Kaila was bored, but bored enough to go on a nature walk? And then there was Thad. He was… somebody who I didn’t think would be interested, but he was.

So, they had to walk over to Mount Hound themselves. The trip could be made in a single day when walking outside of the system, but their movement wouldn’t be officially recognized or anything like that.

The system was strange like that sometimes. Then again, that was probably to be expected when forcing real people and a real world to obey by the logic of a video game, especially a 4X game.

Buildings got built even if nobody actually worked on them.

Research got research even if nobody was experimenting to figure it out.

Units could only move a set amount of distance in a day, but, if they wanted to, the people in the units were actually allowed to travel even farther. They just wouldn’t be allowed to scout or engage with anything beyond where their unit was officially marked on the map.

And for those of us who weren’t parts of units at all, we could just walk around and do whatever we wanted wherever we wanted, really.

A part of me was really curious about whether or not that could be exploited. For example, what if I wanted to walk over to the Viking Elves’ capital? Would I be able to just… walk right into their territory, or would something stop me?

Well, I was sure that there were countermeasures put into place to prevent something like that from happening. If that was possible, everybody would probably just be sending their workers out to walk in every direction to discover everything and spy on everybody before officially being able to do so.

It was already confirmed, though, that we could travel beyond our territory into tiles that were already discovered.

And that gave me an idea.

Once I was done with my nature walk, it would be a good idea for me to go on an extended trip of sorts to explore as much of the surrounding land as possible. I needed to familiarize myself with all of the different terrain available to us if I wanted our troops to fight at the highest possible level of efficiency. Intelligence could never be underestimated in matters of war.

The only time I ever got to see the surrounding terrain was during battles. I could zoom in on the map during those to get a good look around the place, but there was no way for me to really look around and get a close look at everything outside of that. If, however, I went on a tour to every single tile that we discovered—and that was safe enough for me to visit—then I would be able to think of strategies ahead of time for any potential battles in the future. Rather than have to analyze the terrain and adapt my strategy to it on the fly, I could memorize all the terrain ahead of time.

That sounded like a good idea to me.

But back to my nature walk idea. Kaila and Thad were going to walk over to Mount Hound, and then I was going to teleport over to meet them there. That was their proposal.

And it was a stupid proposal.

As if I would take the easy way out while they walked! Not only was I not going to make them do the long walk themselves while I took the easy way out, but I would get a good chance to begin gathering information on all of the surrounding terrain.

And so, we took a northern route. It was the fastest way to get to the Living Forest tiles and would also get us out of the volcanic region sooner. As much as I might have gotten used to the natural heat of it, I preferred a more temperate or even cold climate.

Our route was going to take us from the ash fields, across the basalt plains, into the savanna, over the grasslands and shrublands, and then we’d finally reach the forest before entering the Living Forest. I also figured that we’d check out Mount Hound afterward since Thad was curious about how things were there given their high labor output.

Unfortunately, the region immediately to our north wasn’t exactly much cooler than the volcanic region was. The savanna was… well, a savanna. I had to admit that it wasn’t exactly all that appealing to me. It was beautiful, yes, but sparse and devoid of pretty much any apparent life. I couldn’t help but to feel that it felt… unnaturally barren. The savannas of Earth were typically stereotyped as being full of roaming life. Elephants, giraffes, lions, zebras—but here? Nothing. I didn’t see a single animal.

So, despite how realistic the scenery might have been, it felt extremely unrealistic at the same time just from the lack of life. Then again, we could only see a small part of it. Perhaps the area beyond what we could see would have more life. After all, all those animals I mentioned were roaming herd animals. They didn’t just stick around in one place. So, maybe they were somewhere else.

Unfortunately, the grasslands and shrublands were just as barren when it came to actual animals. I really expected to see some there, but… there were none. Not even for flavor.

Did that mean the only animals in the world were those which spawned from tile features and hunting? If so, that was… incredibly boring, but also somewhat of a relief.

While I wasn’t somebody who would ever want to destroy nature, I would feel far better about destroying uninhabited nature than destroying inhabited nature. If there weren’t a bunch of animals running around living in nature, then once we inevitably progressed to the point of firing rockets and dropping bombs, I wouldn’t feel bad about killing a bunch of animals in the process and destroying their homes.

The less realistic the world was, the better for my mental health.

Then, upon reaching the normal forest, we actually encountered some life. Only audibly, though. It sounded like there were birds and insects somewhere in hiding making noise. I had Kaila try to find them, but her hunting attempt turned up nothing to report. So, that made me believe those noises might have only been there to make the place more immersive. A completely quiet forest would have been pretty eerie and have a completely different feeling to it.

And then we finally reaching the Living Forest.

While the forest was beautiful on its own, it was nothing compared to the Living Forest. The trees of the Living Forest reached far above all the others to the point where they reminded me of the massive trees belonging to California’s Redwoods, but they were much closer to each other while also having massive, twisting roots spreading out over the ground.

That wasn’t all, either.

The forest truly was alive.

Well, it could be argued that every forest was alive seeing as how plants and trees were technically living things, but they didn’t exactly behave like living things with a will of their own. The Living Forest’s trees, however, very much felt alive. Some of those roots on the ground reacted to our presence and either curiously checked us out or backed away to make a path for us.

Aside from the roots, all of the trees’ branches seemed to be intertwined with one another. It kind of made me feel like they were all holding hands. At the same time, that resulted in basically creating an entire upper level in the forest that could be traversed via branch bridges. The branches were undoubtedly thick enough to be walked across, too.

And sometimes when those branches moved and grinded against each other, small pieces of wood would break off and fall to the ground below.

As it would turn out by visiting the Gathering Camp some of the Volcano Hounds were working at, that was what they collected to gather Living Wood. The Volcano Hounds basically spent all day on a scavenger hunt in the forest hunting for sticks to find and bring back. It… was really endearing to learn that. They were a bunch of canine people running around in the forest chasing sticks all day.

That was adorable.

I thought they might have been chopping the trees down for wood, but no. They only gathered what the trees naturally shed themselves.

How ethical.

I preferred it that way. While sustainable logging practices were also perfectly fine, I much preferred not having to chop down nature at all.

There was something I was curious about, though. It was a question that I figured I would keep to myself until we eventually made it to the forest.

“Hey, Thad,” I spoke up.

Thad took a few seconds to reply, his eyes focused on the trees around us. “Yeah?”

“I figure that Kaila just wanted something to do, but what about you? What brought you out here?”

“Ah. Well… I wanted to see what it’s like. A forest, I mean. Ever since I saw a glimpse of it during that battle, I thought it would be interesting to come over here and see it myself. And… damn. I didn’t expect a sight like this.”

“Do you have any forests in Hell?”

“Not like these, and the only forests we do have are more like that savanna. A few black trees of charcoal dotted across a landscape with nothing else around. Replace all the colors of that savanna with black and red, and you would have what a ‘forest’ in Hell looks like. But this? I never thought I’d see anything like this in my lifetime. Not in person, anyways.”

“It really is beautiful.”

“Does your home have any places like this?”

“We have a few forests with giant trees, but nothing like this.”

“I see.”

“That’s one of the great things about America, actually. We’re massive. A lot bigger than most people are really aware of. It can be hard to grasp the real scale. With fifty different states all part of the same country spread out over a huge amount of land, you can visit dozens of unique looking places without ever leaving the country. Arctic tundra, rolling hills covered in forests, tall and vast mountain ranges, deserts and badlands, swamps and wetlands, grasslands and beaches—we have it all. And one of the only objectively good things the government ever did was implement a program to protect our land’s natural beauty via national parks.”

“What are those?”

“A designated area of land where the government basically says, ‘this place is either so beautiful or culturally important that nobody is allowed to mess with it.’ Land that exists all on its own to continue living as it always has. I always wanted to go around and visit every single national park, but I never got around to that.”

“Hah. I can’t imagine Hell ever having anything like that. No matter what protections you might place on land in Hell… they’d just get thrown out or ignored. If the land isn’t being exploited, then it’s worthless in the eyes of most demons.”

“I’m afraid that’s what my home’s government feels as well. Go figure that one of the only good things the government ever accomplished is something that they want to reduce or get rid of.”

“Well, good thing you’re in charge here and not them. I wouldn’t mind seeing a place like this protected.”

“Then let’s go for it. The Volcano Hounds are only picking up what the trees themselves drop, and they’re not doing any harm, so we can go ahead and call this place a national park while still benefiting from it. And if we ever do reach a point where we’d benefit from chopping all the trees down… then fuck that. We’ll figure something else out. Trees as beautiful as these deserve to live even in an artificial world like this.”

“I can agree to that.”

“So, I’ll give you the honor of naming this first national park of ours.”

Thad finally looked at me and blinked a few times. “Huh?”

“You heard me. Think up a name. You know that I’m probably going to name it stupid if you rely on me for a name, so I’ll leave it up to you.”

“I—uh, I’ve got to say, I’m not sure what to name it.”

“There’s no rush. Think of a name in your own time and just let me know when you’ve got one figured out.”

“I… well, if that’s your decision, I won’t fight it. But are you sure somebody like me deserves to name it?”

“Come on, Thad. We’re equals. If somebody like you doesn’t deserve to name it, nobody does.”

Thad smiled and gave me a pat on my back. He looked like he was about to say something else, but then Kaila grabbed our attention by letting out a surprised yelp. She looked fine, though, when we actually looked at her.

“Did something happen?” I asked.

Kaila nodded and pointed down at the root on the ground retreating away from her. “That slapped me.”

“Why?”

“Tried eating it.”

“Please don’t eat the trees. This is a national park now, so now abusing the trees here.”

“National park?”

“You weren’t listening to our conversation at all, were you?”

She shook her head from side to side. “Was I supposed to?”

“Well, no, but…”

I wasn’t sure whether it was a good or a bad thing that an entire conversation could be had within Kaila’s presence without her listening to even a single word of it. That was great for privacy, but it made me a bit worried about her sometimes.