Chapter 2: First Outing

[Today's Weather]

Today is a sunny day!

An excellent choice for collecting resources.

Daylight duration: Six hours

Weather: Clear

Temperature: 12--18°C

Climate trend: A cold wave is approaching, pay attention to collecting enough resources for winter, and keep warm!

The temperature during the day has risen quite a bit, about ten to fifteen degrees Celsius higher than at night.

It is daytime now, and about fifteen minutes have passed.

There are five hours and forty-five minutes of daylight remaining.

James didn't rush to go out.

Instead, he took out the 'Fog Survival Handbook' to check if anyone else had already left the shelter.

Meanwhile, he also looked at the information needed to upgrade the shelter, although he had seen it yesterday, it was necessary to confirm again.

Shelter: Level 1 Cabin (Ten square meters)

"An old cabin, barely shielding from wind and rain, upgrade your shelter as soon as possible!"

Level 1 Shelter Facilities: None

Shelter Upgrade: 0/100 Wood

0/50 Stone

Seeing that the Level 1 shelter had no facilities, James shook his head helplessly.

If he couldn't improve the level of the shelter, he would have to live in this broken cabin.

The goal for the next few days was clear: collect wood and stone.

Upgrading the shelter should be the primary issue for everyone.

As James thought, the chat channel became lively again.

"I'm freezing to death in this lousy cabin that even lets the wind through!"

"I'm so hungry! I haven't eaten in two days! Does anyone have food?!"

"Who has food? I'll trade for twenty thousand dollars!"

"The guy above, are you kidding? At this time, everyone has nothing, how can they give you food?"

"Don't talk about twenty thousand dollars, even two hundred thousand dollars are useless! Do you think you can still go back?"

...

"I wanted to make a fire to warm up, but then I found out that Level 1 shelters don't have any facilities!"

"Brother, this is telling us that our first task is to upgrade the cabin level!"

"What else to say? There are only six hours of daylight, hurry up and go out to chop trees."

"Hehe, brothers, I've been chopping for ten minutes already!"

"Really?"

"Brother, thank you! I was always worried about the danger of leaving the cabin, thanks for trying for me. Since there's no danger, I'm going out to chop trees too!"

"Quick, quick, quick, just six hours, everyone rush!!"

...

James didn't look much, just briefly understood the situation in the "World Chat Channel."

Closing the 'Fog Survival Handbook', he kept it on him, tucked into the inner pocket of his clothing to prevent it from falling.

He picked up the beginner's tool on the table: a stone axe.

Picking up the stone axe, its information was displayed:

Name: Common Grade Stone Axe (Item level: Common < Good < Excellent < Rare...)

The most rudimentary axe, barely suitable for chopping wood, time-consuming, energy-consuming, and prone to damage.

James couldn't help but feel helpless, wanting to complain.

This stone axe was as rudimentary as it could get, but at least it was better than nothing.

With the 'Fog Survival Handbook' and stone axe in hand, James locked the cabin door.

The outside environment was good, with lush grassland in sight and a verdant forest not far away.

Further away was a layer of dense white fog, completely obscuring the view.

This was mentioned in the 'Fog Survival Handbook.'

Within a 300-meter radius of the shelter, there's no fog and it's relatively safe.

From 300 to 2000 meters is a thin fog area, where visibility is reduced but still allows for exploration, though the danger level is higher.

Beyond one mile lies the thick fog area.

The thick fog area is full of dense fog, with almost zero visibility, and the danger level is extremely high.

So for most people, the explorable area is only within a 2000-meter range.

Of course, this range is not fixed.

With the upgrade of the shelter, both the fog-free area and the thin fog area will expand.

In summary, everything revolves around upgrading the cabin.

...

James cautiously walked into the lush grassland.

The weeds were about ankle-high, and the dew wet his feet and pants.

Seeing the dew on the ground, James thought of collecting it, as he hadn't drunk water all night.

But considering that collecting dew was too time-consuming, he gave up the idea for the moment.

He walked carefully, the weeds weren't high, but it was his first time walking in the world of fog, so being overly cautious wasn't a bad thing.

The trees were not far away, a few minutes' walk.

Without hesitation, James tried chopping a tree to judge the difficulty of obtaining wood.

The efficiency of resource acquisition was very important.

The dull stone axe left a shallow cut on the tree.

James felt it was very laborious.

At this rate, how long would it take to collect 100 units of wood?

The sound of chopping echoed through the forest.

It took about fifteen minutes to fell one tree.

He collected 6 units of wood from one tree.

Swinging the stone axe continuously for fifteen minutes was difficult for James.

After chopping three trees, nearly an hour had passed.

He had 18 units of wood piled up and planned to rest and take the wood back to the cabin.

At this rate of work, it would be difficult to upgrade the cabin to Level 2 in one day.

Even collecting 100 units of wood, let alone 50 units of stone, seemed impossible.

With only six hours of daylight, there were many things to do, and not all the time could be spent chopping trees.

The most important thing was food and water!

If he couldn't replenish his energy quickly, he would soon starve to death in this world of fog.

The second issue was keeping warm!

He had already experienced the cold weather last night, and this was before the cold wave.

Once the cold wave hit, the temperature would drop to unbelievable levels.

James had to find suitable warm items before the weather got colder.

The initial collection of wood was to assess the time consumed in chopping trees.

If the collection of wood was fast enough, he would upgrade the shelter as soon as possible.

But now, seeing that upgrading the shelter was not a short-term task, he immediately changed his target.

James planned to take this batch of wood back to the cabin and then solve the food and water issue.

...

After taking the wood back to the cabin, James set out again.

The forest where he had been chopping trees was to the east of the cabin, and he had not seen any edible food on the way.

This time James decided to head north.

But just as he left the cabin, he was attracted by a glint of metal in the grass ahead.

If he wasn't mistaken, that was a bronze chest!

A resource box?!!

James was instantly overjoyed, pinching himself hard to make sure he wasn't dreaming.

After confirming there was no danger around, James quickly ran over.

The 'Fog Survival Handbook' had mentioned such resource boxes.

In the world of fog survival, besides manually collecting resources, there was another way to obtain precious resources.

That was the resource box!

Resource boxes randomly appeared, scattered throughout the world of fog.

They also came in different qualities, with higher quality being rarer.

(Resource Box Quality: Wooden < Bronze < Silver < Gold...)

Resource boxes contained various materials needed for survival.

Such as food, water, seeds, tools, wood, stone, blueprint for crafting items, etc...

Items like blueprints could also be found during regular collection, though the chances were very low.

The main source was the resource box.

And the items in the resource box were generally of higher quality and rarity.

Suppressing his excitement, James hurriedly picked up the resource box from the weeds.

The resource box was small, and its pale blue bronze sheen was particularly noticeable.

According to the 'Fog Survival Handbook,' wooden resource boxes were more common.

Higher-level resource boxes had lower chances of appearing.

Originally, James only hoped to find a wooden resource box, which would have been great.

He didn't expect to be so lucky to find a bronze resource box right outside his door.

Especially since this was only the first day of survival.

Currently, only two types of resource boxes appeared in the world of fog: wooden and bronze.

And their numbers were extremely scarce, not necessarily found by someone if they appeared.

Not to mention the rarer bronze resource boxes.

With a nervous heart, James opened the bronze resource box.

A blue light emanated from the box.

James squinted slightly but couldn't bear to look away, staring intently at the contents of the box.

The blue light dissipated, revealing the items inside.

There were three items in total.

The first was an iron pickaxe.

With a thought, the pickaxe's information appeared before his eyes.

Name: Iron Pickaxe (Good)

"A good quality iron pickaxe, with no additional bonuses, used for mining ore."

This iron pickaxe wasn't too good, just one grade higher than the common stone axe.

But that was normal!

Because bronze resource boxes were most likely to yield three qualities of items: Common, Good, Excellent.

Getting a good quality item was normal, excellent quality would be very lucky.

If it contained only common quality items, then it was just bad luck.

Taking the iron pickaxe, James then picked up a light sphere.

It was a transparent glass-like orb.

A small, exquisite item appeared inside the orb.

As he thought, information appeared.

[Name: Garden (Good)

"Used for indoor planting, can increase seed growth rate

Common seeds: Increase by 10%

Good seeds: Increase by 5%"]

This was a flowerpot item, capable of slightly increasing the growth rate of seeds, although the increase was not much.

But for survivors living in a cabin, it was an extremely rare and valuable item.

James was so happy he couldn't stop smiling.

Such an unexpected gain significantly improved James's survival ability.

Even if he didn't use it himself, selling it on the trading platform would fetch a good amount of resources.

However, the iron pickaxe and flowerpot were both needed in the near future, so James naturally wouldn't sell them.

The last item was a scroll.

"Is this the item crafting scroll mentioned in the 'Fog Survival Handbook'?" James murmured to himself.

Unlike the already crafted flowerpot, which would be gone after use.

With a crafting scroll, one would always have the method of making it.

Whether it was a crafted item or a crafting scroll, each had its benefits.

The flowerpot, although useless if damaged, didn't require any effort or time to gather materials.

While crafting scrolls could be used for a long time, collecting materials for crafting was troublesome.

Without hesitation, James opened the last item.

As expected, it was a crafting scroll.

[Name: Healing Potion Crafting Scroll (Good)

Materials: 2 Roots

1 Flesh Essence

50ml Pure Water

Used for treating minor injuries, such as colds, fevers, external wounds, etc. Can be taken orally or applied externally.]

James's face showed surprise!

In wilderness survival, hunger wasn't the scariest thing.

The scariest thing was disease!

A minor cold or a small wound could develop into an incurable illness.

With a population of 7 billion, there would definitely be many accidentally injured people.

Healing potions would surely be in demand.

The only troublesome part was the crafting materials.

Roots were easy to understand, just dig them up while chopping trees.

Pure water was also easy to obtain.

Although no water source had been found yet, obtaining water wouldn't be too difficult, otherwise, most people wouldn't survive.

What troubled James most was "Flesh Essence."

He had never heard of it.

But based on the name, it was probably obtained from animals.

Currently, he didn't even have food to stave off hunger, let alone meat.

Crafting healing potions would have to be postponed.

Finding food and a water source was the most important task now.