Settling Into a New Grove

While lying in my bed, awoke by the sunlight and birds, I was deep in thought. "What's the best way to maximize my day so I can train, yet not get exhausted. First things first, water and food is a must. Water is easy to get from the village's natural spring, but as for food, I'm either going to have to hunt, or buy food. 

As of right now I have no money, and no food. If I can trade the pelts like the one from the bunny for money that would give me a steady-ish income if I can catch them consistently. 

Maybe I could pick up chores from the local vendors. If I do delivery jobs, I can attempt to deliver the package as fast as possible to train my endurance, and sprint speed while getting more income. 

If I also hunt for my food, I'll be able to save more and more money for proper training supplies instead of relying on handouts. I can't hit accurately enough to hunt with my kunai, but I could try trapping. That's probably my best bet for now. 

I could start with small game, and work my way up the chain to bigger game, and even eventually predators. I'll have to figure out the best ways to catch the small game though. 

I could use a rockfall trap. It's simple, effective, and cheap, but it crushes the game. I'll get the pelt, but the meat will be ruined. Not the most efficient, but it'll get the job done. 

I should've done more research on trapping in my past life. I did hunting, but I doubt they have guns... I could make a cheap muzzle loader, I did a lot of target shooting and hunting with one of those. I don't know how to make black powder though... 

Eh, no time like the present to learn something new. I know enough knots to make some simple traps. I don't have parachord though... I wonder how well a grass braided rope would work... I'll have to find some long thick peices of grass though. I could try to use thin green branches, but they'll probably snap, and friction especially with knots in the wood would make it difficult to make slipknots... 

I'll just have to find a small pond and use those pieces of grass that grow in the water. They're long, and the fibers are pretty thick too. They're my best bet as of right now. Welp, time to get to work!"

I headed out to the forest with a partial plan in mind. First is to find a good supply of grass by a pond. Next is to find a trail for small game. If I found a group of berry bushes, or even a burrow, I could set up some traps with a high likely hood of success. 

I wandered around the forest for about 30 minutes until I came across an extremely small pond. It had a small patch of tall grass, but some is better than none. I spent the next hour experimenting with the grass to find the best technique for braiding it. 

I found that if you strip it along the fibers, you can get extremely thin strips of grass. Once you have 3 of them you tie an overhand knot on the end of one to act as a stopper. Tie two more strips the same way slid to the top with the other knot, then you have 3 strips of grass to braid. Once you get to the end use another strip to tie it off like a hair band, and you have a thin strip of braided grass. 

If the grass rope needs to be stronger I can simply braid the braids, and rinse and repeat over and over until it's strong enough to support the weight of whatever I'm catching. 

I decided to braid the braids once to be safe, and ended up with a good bit of grass ropes to work with. I once again used an overhand knot, but this time I tied the rope to itself making a crappy slipknot. I wish I learned a proper one, because this one can be slipped out of since the slipknot isn't a one way. Either way it's better than nothing. Now it was time to find myself some trails, burrows, or berry bushes if I'm lucky. 

Trails are nice because I know there's traffic, but burrows are easier to trap. I looked for a while, and actually ended up coming across a large section of berry bushes. 

"Lucky me" I said to myself

I looked around for a while, and found some small trails that I can only assume are just for small game. The trail was too thin to be any medium to large game. 

I went along the trail until I found a thin green tree to act as a spring. I got a small stick to act as the trigger. I stuck it into the ground nearly flat to the ground, so when it's stepped on, it's on a hair trigger. I cut a notch into the tip making the rope slip off even easier. I then tied the rope slipknot to the tree, and hooked it up to the trigger stick so once some small game even nudge it, the rope popps off the end of the trigger stick allowing the green tree to spring up and pull the captured critter into the air, away from any predators, and ensuring escape to be difficult. 

I repeated this as many times as I could with the rope I had. I tried to keep them as close to the berry bushes since it's gonna be a hotspot for small herbivores. 

In the end I got 5 traps set up. I thought about adding a bunch of rockfall traps, but I didn't want to be greedy. 5 traps is plenty, because they're bound to have at least 2 fail. That leaves me with 3 that might work, and they'll be able to catch all day and all night as long as I reset them when needed. 

After I got that done I used my kunai to cut markers into the bark to direct me back to the berry bushes because there was no way I was gonna remember the way back to the bushes by tomorrow morning. 

After I got back to the village I flipped the bunny pelt in the window to make sure it got evenly sun dried. I then went around to the vendors outside the hotel I'm staying in and tried to get some small jobs. Only a small few vendors gave me jobs which is understandable, I am just a kid after all.

I ended up getting 3 delivery jobs, and a job helping an older vendor clean his vegetables. I decided to clean the vegetables first, then I could do the deliveries one after another. 

After cleaning the vegetables I got $5 and yet another delivery job, this time from the old man. I delivered a basket of vegetables to a house across the village. It was definitely a workout getting there, especially with the heavy crate of vegetables. 

A very nice lady opened the door and paid for the vegetables. She thanked me for helping out the old man like this. I wished her a great day, and I was on my way back to the market. I gave the old man the money she paid with, and the old man gave me a 5% cut if the profits which was another $5. 

After that I did the other 3 deliveries netting me another $20. I had made $30 total, and got some running training in. After all of that I headed off into the woods to train. 

I threw my kunai until I couldn't throw no more. I was definitely getting better at it. I haven't gotten to the point where I can throw them in a straight line towards the target yet, but that's an advanced technique and it's only day 2 of training. 

I decided to go check my traps to see if I caught anything because I was getting hungry, and it turns out I wasn't far off with my estimations. 1 trap was triggered, but the loop got broken. Two others haven't tripped yet, and 2 actually caught something. One caught a small rabbit, and the other a decent grey squirrel. Both died quickly and didn't suffer based on how well the knot was around their necks. 

I reset those two traps, and fixed up the broken one by removing the exess broken material, retying the knot, and resetting the trap. I figured based on the disturbed leaves around the trap, and the paw prints in the mud that it was a coyote or some other medium dog. I knew it was wild because the trap was ripped not cut, so at least I didn't hurt someone's dog. 

After fixing and resetting the traps, I grabbed the squirel and rabbit and headed back to the village. I skinned them, cooked them up, and ate all the meat I could. It was the only thing I had eaten all day after all, and I need the protein for all the intensive training. 

After that I headed back to my room where I took down the first bunny pelt, laid it on my table, and hung up the squirrel and rabbit hide in it's place. After that I turned in for the night with a full belly, and some money in my pocket. 

"At least I have some income going, and my food catches itself. I should've started trapping a long time ago." I thought to myself before dosing off on the second day in this new world.