Chapter 32

After having their fill, the two of them divided the tasks: Titus went out to gather materials while Cloudy started working on the wooden house. It didn't take them long to finish Titus's large bed. They also made a very basic wooden frame using sticks and vines, measuring two meters in length and one meter in width, which could be used to store some materials and odds and ends, placed on the left side outside the wooden house.

Titus had already learned how to make wooden frames. In the afternoon, Cloudy asked him to make two smaller ones to place outside the house for storing other things. Now, the issue they both encountered was...

"It's too big," Cloudy crossed her arms, frowning as she looked at the large bed that took up the entire wooden house. "There's only the bed in the room."

"That's great!" The wild man beside her, who was happily unaware of Cloudy's underlying message, crouched down and crawled into the wooden house, lying down on his own bed. This time, he could stretch out his legs and lie down comfortably. "Good, we can rest together now."

Yes, they could rest together, but... the house space had shrunk. After putting Titus's bed in, the remaining usable area inside the house was probably only around ten square meters. Cloudy had initially planned to make a table and a chair for herself, but with these two items inside the wooden house, there wouldn't be much room to move around. And most likely... after Titus saw her chair, he would probably insist on having a similar one.

Was this a sweet dilemma...? Cloudy looked at Titus lying on the bed. "Are you not going back tonight?"

"I don't want to go back, but I have to," he sighed, sitting up from the bed. "After five sunsets, the outer hunting begins. By then, I won't have a chance to see Cloudy."

Five days later? Sooner than she had imagined. "How long will the outer hunting last? Titus, how many of you will go together? Where will you go hunting?" In reality, what Cloudy truly wanted to ask was if she could join them. Since the rainy season was so terrifying, she would definitely need to stock up on a lot of food. But then she thought, the hunting grounds that a hunter of Titus's level ventured into would probably be beyond her imagination...

"The rainforest, over there."

"Which side?"

"... " Titus got up from the bed, took Cloudy's hand, and led her to an open space, starting to draw a map on the ground. He first drew a very large circle. "This whole area is our territory."

Then he drew an even larger circle outside the first one. "This is the rainforest area we've explored."

"Hmm..." The circles were still somewhat vague to Cloudy, as she couldn't quite grasp their actual size, so she asked Titus to mark settlements, caves, and green slopes.

These three locations converged in the southwest direction of the central circle, allowing Cloudy to understand a bit more.
Titus was surprised to find that the punctuation in the map had been scaled down proportionally. She had assumed that the locals didn't have the concept of proportional scaling in their map-making. It seemed she had been too arrogant. Titus was a hunter, so mapping was definitely his expertise.

From the map Titus drew, the rainforest within the central circle appeared to be extremely vast. Cloudy couldn't accurately describe its size, so she could only refer to it as "super big." As for the outer ring rainforest that Titus and his group were heading towards, it was even bigger.

It was quite far away... just the journey there would take several days. Add to that hunting animals, processing the spoils, and transporting them back to the tribe, it would probably take more than a month to complete. Cloudy also needed to prepare enough food for herself during this time.

Besides food, she also had to consider maintaining the fire. Starting a fire wasn't easy; it required many preparations such as drying tinder, preparing dry fire-starting tools, and more, all of which took several days. However, maintaining the fire only required preparing enough firewood. Cloudy planned to conduct an experiment on this: "Can you help me gather things today?" She wouldn't normally ask Titus for help, but today was a special situation; she couldn't leave the fire.

"Of course!" Titus agreed without hesitation. "Cloudy, do you need food or materials? Or do you need both?"

"Both. Wood, I need a lot of wood. To keep the fire going, so I can't leave the cave right now." Cloudy stared at the fire, deep in thought. She wanted to calculate how many sticks of wood could sustain the flame for an hour. "Titus, can you tell me how the settlement's people maintain the fire?"

The answer was simple; they relied on the wheel watch. People stayed by the fire pit from morning till night, responsible for keeping the flames burning. Cloudy naturally didn't have this luxury; she needed to go out during the day to collect materials for the treehouse and sleep at night.

"Are you afraid the fire will go out?" Titus didn't have knowledge in this area and couldn't help Cloudy much; he just scratched his head. "Guardians use animal fat smeared on wood, which seems to make the fire burn longer."

A new term appeared in the conversation, and Cloudy didn't need Titus to explain; it was animal "fat." Coating the wood's surface with a layer of grease could indeed make it burn longer! Cloudy left Titus behind and ran down the slope. A few days ago, she had buried the entrails and other parts of the hunted animals in the soil; she wasn't sure if she could salvage them now...

It was already too late; when she dug up the pit, the contents had been mostly eaten by insects and other creatures. Disappointed, Cloudy returned to the wooden hut. "Can you help me bring some more..."

"Sure!" Titus stood up and raised his hands to the sky. "Whatever Cloudy needs, I'll bring it." And then...
Picking up the weapon Cloudy left outside on the ground, she ran out like the wind.

It was a comforting sight... she stood on the hill watching Titus struggling to crawl out of the hole on the ground, then turned around and picked up a wooden stick about the length of her arm from the pile, splitting it into five equal pieces and stacking them together, then reigniting the pile, starting to record its burning time.

Since she estimated the time by counting in her mind, it might not be very accurate, but a fire made from a wooden stick could burn for about 6-7 minutes. And when it extinguished, more than half of the sticks remained unburned. Should she optimize the way the sticks are stacked? But even with optimization, it could only burn for a maximum of 10 minutes, leaving no time for other tasks.

Cloudy frowned as she spun in place, an idea forming in her mind - if there were animal fats, could they be used for oil lamps? Would choosing the right wick result in a much longer burning time? However, this exceeded her knowledge base, as animal fats solidify, right? All the oil lamps she had seen were clear liquids.

She was clueless about the wick material... should she just give up on maintaining the flame? Perhaps she should focus on strengthening her arm muscles and preparing plenty of fire-starting materials, and when in need of a flame, work hard to rub them together... Cloudy felt a bit disheartened as she looked at the blazing flames in front of her, a sense of impending setback looming over her.

At least she would give it a try today. She added some firewood to the fire pit, and if she couldn't sustain it tomorrow, she would have to resort to rubbing the flames again.

Once the plan was set, Cloudy moved on to other tasks. She took her wooden spear and left the cave, collecting grass and leaves nearby to make fire starters, along with some flat stones. The stones were intended for building a larger stone oven for smoking meat and fruits, although she wasn't sure how long the jerky and dried fruits made with her method could be stored, so she needed to experiment first.

After shuttling back and forth three times with supplies, Titus returned.

"Cloudy, got enough stuff, brought them back."

"... "

Was this a comparison? Cloudy looked at the large bundle of sticks under Titus's left arm, and he was also loaded with small animals on his shoulders and waist... roughly four of them: "So... many."

"I'll go for another trip, you take these in first. There's a bigger one further away." Titus unloaded his belongings at the cave entrance and ran off again after finishing.

Cloudy started feeling a bit guilty. Why did Titus always take her casual remarks seriously? She was just an ordinary woman with very ordinary views on emotions, and situations like Titus's seemed to clearly indicate his affection for her.

She didn't know if there were any men in Titus's settlement...
When it comes to relationships, in their settlement, there is no concept of gender at all, and children are all managed by the mothers. So, what could be the reason for Titus to be so concerned about her? As Cloudy was moving the supplies brought back by Titus, she started reminiscing about the various events that had happened between them from the time they met until now.

No matter how much she thought about it, she hadn't done anything particularly special, and the two of them didn't even look like they belonged to the same race!

Thinking about this, another strange thought popped into Cloudy's mind. Could Titus be a so-called... lover of ugliness? She didn't want to admit that she looked very strange in the eyes of these wild people, but the fact was that from her pupils to her appearance, she definitely did not fit the local people's "aesthetic."

In an environment that highly valued "ability" like this, people like her who couldn't survive on their own would surely be considered a burden, naturally lacking any attractiveness. What's the deal with Titus? The more she thought about it, the stranger these wild people seemed!

From that whole fish to the painstaking effort to steal fire, even if these were gestures of goodwill, Cloudy was starting to look down on Titus a bit. In modern terms, Cloudy felt that the fish was like a car, and the fire was like a house, it was all too serious.

Looking at herself, besides trying to keep herself alive, what had she done for Titus? The big bed in the wooden house felt as feeble and weak as a bouquet bought casually on the street...

The long-lost sense of guilt reappeared. Cloudy deeply regretted asking Titus to go out and collect supplies just now; she shouldn't have done that... she shouldn't have asked Titus to help her.

After moving everything into the cave, Cloudy first sat by the fire pit, feeling guilty for a few minutes, before starting to process the game that Titus had brought. Since they were all small game, it wasn't too difficult to handle. Under Cloudy's rough handling, these strange animals quickly turned into piles of unmentionable things.

Unfortunately, these animals seemed to be too lean, and after separating the skin and meat, the fat she scraped off wasn't much. Perhaps it was because of the tropical region; animals didn't need to store much fat... all the fat from the four animals put together was probably the size of two fists, looking yellowish-green and sticky, appearing very disgusting and with an indescribable smell.

After finishing with these, Cloudy heard Titus shouting outside the cave, asking for help. With a guilty heart, she crawled out of the cave, but upon seeing the game Titus had brought this time, all those complex emotions were instantly forgotten.

Before her eyes was a small dinosaur two meters long... dark green, with skin like a lizard, spikes protruding from its back, and some thorn-like hairs running down its spine like those on a porcupine. The dinosaur's neck was twisted in an unnatural way, seemingly broken by Titus.
The neck was torn, missing a front paw, and both eyes were brutally destroyed, with lacerations at the jaw joint.

"This one can last for several days. And the bones, teeth, are all excellent materials," Titus, covered in bloodstains, said. "This is the largest prey I could find around here."

Cloudy widened his eyes, ran to Titus, grabbed his arm, and shook it frantically to express his excitement. "Amazing!! Titus! Truly a hunter!"

Forget any feelings of guilt, she's having dinosaur meat tonight!