Unmotivated Deity

The days following their entry into the new area of the Warping Forest was nothing but a blur to Jien's cohort. The first thing they did was survey their surroundings in all directions for a great distance. They found that their initial location truly was on the edge of the forest facing the Asmus Ocean. The forest itself thinned to nothing, leading to sheer cliff face leading meters below into the swirling, boiling depths of ice cold sea water.

They followed the edge of the cliff for a distance, slowly finding their way down to a beach to the side of the cliffs. On the edge of the cliffs they found several sea caves. Unfortunately using them in the short term did not seem like a great idea. They weren't sure if these caves would fill with seawater at high tide, nor did they know the best way to access them in a quick manner.

They could climb to them with enough time, but it would consume a lot of their much needed time. They could use ropes to do so, but that would give their mentors both a hint as to exactly where they were and a path into their midst to complete their task. They couldn't allow such a thing so they chose a slightly better option, putting the back of their camp to the cliff with the front facing the ocean.

The main concern with this choice of location was the lack of fresh water. While they could solve this issue in the long term with the use of a multilevel formation to boil and then filter the steam from the see water, it would take time to create something so complex and would require planning around it in terms of space to prevent the outer edges from being eroded or sabotaged. In the meantime they would have to find a temporary solution because though they carried an emergency ration of water they did not want to run through it too quickly.

Before the sixth day ended a small fort had been constructed. The back was facing a steep cliff face, the front had a single entrance, small enough that only one person could enter at a time. The fort had walls built of wood from the trees just off the cliff, towering up to twenty feet in the hope that it would be enough to keep their mentors at bay.

The floor of the entire fort was covered in wood as well as they needed a material to build the water filtration formation into, a task that Jien had spent the last four days on using all of his prior experience and recorded knowledge to pull together. The final result couldn't have been considered a quarter as potent as it could have been had he had more time to both study and prepare it. However, though they had found a small spring in the woods not too far, they needed a self-sustaining fort to prepare for their mentor's eventual probes.

Their accommodations for the time being were a few large tents, a fairly large fire pit in the center of the camp blazed as both the focal point of the water filtration formation, their cooking station where a simple stone stove top sat over a section of the flames and a forge sat on the other side, boxing in some of the heat for smelting any ores or heating metals for repair work.

They had learned last year that setting up a camp with functionality in mind was important. Beyond their own tent was one that had been det for alchemy and held a large number of different utensils and rather fragile glassware. They were aware of the risk of having these items in the open, having several smaller batches of similar items in reserve and spread amongst themselves to ensure that they could continue to make what they needed.

They used the sea itself for many food with varying degrees of success by the day. Some days they would be able to catch several fish above their needs and others they would catch none at all. They also put some time into hunting small game in the woods, smoking anything extra to allow for larger supplies as things became harder.

Finally the seventh day arrived and the group was extraordinarily tense. They had all sparred with their mentors in the past as a part of their training. This however was a completely different challenge. This year their mentors was going to act as the aggressors, pushing on them as hard as they could while restraining themselves to what they considered to be the cohorts level at all time. They did not know what this meant, but they knew they were going to find out.

They took turns standing guard in pairs at all times, regardless of whether everyone was awake or not, to ensure while the others were working on different projects they would not be caught off guard. This strategy was simple but found to be effective in most standard cases, at least that was what they had been taught. Vigilance at all times was necessary on the battlefield, any lapse could lead to death.

What they didn't expect was the hardship that would start the seventh night would bring them to the very limits, not letting them rest at all for a full year.