The Laptop - Ch.35 - Fun Camping Vacation (Patreon)

"This is wild," Chelsea commented as she casually twirled a razor-sharp throwing knife around between two fingers. "I've never even touched one of these before, now I'm confident I could nail a bulls-eye at five meters. Even just spinning it around feels like I've done it all my life."

I glanced at the bow and quiver leaning against my pack and nodded, "Same. I tried archery in grade ten, but I was only average at it. Didn't even make the high school team. Now I look at my new gear and I know I could probably compete at the international level back home. And have a decent chance of winning, too."

"As much as I'd like to see you do that Lisa, it'd probably be cheating," Chelsea pointed out. Then she slipped the throwing knife back into the scabbard at her hip, and instead pulled out one of the two nasty-looking curved knives hanging from her belt at her lower back.

The weapons all appeared on her when I updated her inventory. Her clothes changed too, so instead of the blue jeans t-shirt and hoodie she was now wearing a pair of skin-tight leggings and a short sleeveless tunic top. And her sneakers had become a pair of soft leather sandals that left her toe claws exposed. The leggings and sandals were both black, while the tunic was a dark mottled brown. As for the weapons, she had four identical throwing knives and the matched pair of curved hook knives all strapped to her body.

Gwyneth's inventory had the mismatch error as well, so I updated hers too. It didn't touch her mage outfit or staff, but her backpack and most of the stuff in it were modified to blend in, same as mine and Chelsea's.

I had one other surprise in the inventory system, when I went back in to double-check after running the updates. My list was suddenly a lot shorter, like it only included the stuff I had with me here on Daearen. Same with my companions' inventories, it only showed the stuff they had with them.

I couldn't remember reading anything about that in the documentation, but I had to assume it was limited by realm and that the house and Chelsea's car would still be there waiting for us when we got back home. And I had no idea what we'd do about the stuff we'd brought with us but had subsequently gone missing. Like all our ID cards, house keys, stuff like that, had all completely vanished.

Either way there wasn't anything I could do about it for now, so I decided to keep that little detail to myself. I figured there wasn't any point worrying the others, since we had a bunch of other more immediate issues to deal with.

"I get why the inventory update changed all your clothes, and the clothes I had in my pack," Gwen commented. "And I get why it changed a lot of our food and the other stuff we brought? Like it makes sense that our stuff would change into the local equivalent so we'd blend in."

Her expression shifted to a frown as she continued, "What I don't get is why some things didn't change. Like why do we still have our phones? We're not going to get a cell signal here. And what about the other stuff? Why'd some of it change, but other stuff didn't?"

"Like the canned food turned into hard rations, that kind of makes sense I guess?" she gestured towards the supplies we had piled up next to our packs. "And the box of tea bags became a pouch of loose leaf tea, and the plastic bottles of spring water turned into skins full of fresh water? That makes sense. But why do we still have a jar of instant coffee, and a dozen bottles of cherry vodka cooler?"

I shook my head, "No idea. Maybe it's just one of those weird little mysteries."

"Why did you even bring the vodka coolers?" I added as I looked to the little catgirl. "I didn't realize you'd stuffed them into your backpack."

Chels shrugged, "We're on a whole new planet. We got chased off our home world by a murderous computer program and now we're hiding out on a completely different world that nobody's ever heard of before. I figured we might need a drink at some point."

"Fair enough," I sighed.

Then I looked back at Gwen again, "Like I said, I don't know what to say about the supplies that changed versus the stuff that didn't. I can guess why we still have our phones though. You asked earlier about this world's tech development, and I said it was complicated? The short version is this is a 'post-tech' realm. By which I mean, they've kind of gone full circle, from low tech to high tech to super-high tech, then back to no or low tech again."

My best friend frowned, "Like some sort of post-apocalyptic thing?"

I shook my head, "I don't know why it happened. Maybe when they figured out magic they decided they didn't need technology anymore? Basically you can think of it as an agrarian pastoral planet with mostly medieval-style tools and gear. So like, they have farming and plows and horses and stuff? Magic isn't universal, but it takes the place of most day to day things we'd be using tech for. However, there's still some old technology around. It's ancient to them, but to us it'd probably be like sci-fi."

"Ok I get it," Gwyneth nodded slowly. "So most of the people we meet are going to be at the 'swords and bows and horses' level. But some percentage of them will probably have access to magic. And very rarely, we might meet someone driving a flying car and carrying a sci-fi laser gun."

I grimaced, "Sort of. Although hopefully not that last thing."

"Anyways my point is we still have our phones because that sort of tech probably exists here too," I explained. "It'll be rare and horribly out-dated, and like you said we won't actually get any signal, but it exists. So we keep our phones."

Chels grinned as she raised hers up, "Good! Because I plan on taking a lot of pictures and selfies. This is an amazing adventure and I want to keep a record of it."

To make her point she snapped a couple pictures of me and Gwen, then got a selfie or two while she showed off her nasty-looking curved knife.

"That's great Chelsea but how are you going to recharge the battery?" I asked. Then I admitted, "I packed my charger, but I doubt we're going to find any power outlets here."

The catgirl's ears folded back and her tail drooped as she pouted, "Crap, that's a good point. Too bad we didn't have more time to prepare, we could have bought some solar chargers."

Gwen frowned at me, "Forget about the phones, how are you going to keep that laptop of yours powered up?"

"Damn," I frowned as well. "That's a way bigger problem than being able to take selfies. Without the laptop I can't contact Annie again. And we won't be able to get home either. Unless..."

My voice trailed off as I fired it up once more, then went back into the inventory system. Since reading the manual I knew how to use it, and Chels just told us what we needed. So it only took me about a minute and a half before a pair of solar charging panels appeared on the ground next to us. One was sized to charge up a smartphone, while the larger one was big enough to power the laptop.

"Oh brilliant!" Chels exclaimed as her ears and tail all stood straight up. Then she tilted her head to one side and asked, "Those can't be from this world though, right? Can you summon stuff from our world to here?"

I nodded, "Yeah. I can use it to summon almost anything from almost anywhere? The main caveats are, I can only access stuff from realms that I've visited. So for now that's just home and here. And I need to know the name of whatever I'm looking for, so I can find it in search."

Gwen was smiling too, but something distracted her before she could comment. The tall sexy elf turned and looked to her left, then Chelsea's ears twisted in the same direction. The catgirl's tail puffed up for a second, then she seemed to relax again.

A moment later I heard Gwyneth's tiny shadow fox announced her return with an adorable little "Kon! Kon!"

Vix was only about the size of a ferret, and even in the bright mid-afternoon sun it was hard to see her when she snuck through the tall grass. She practically ran up Gwen's body then circled around the elf girl's shoulders, before climbing onto the top of her staff and curling up around the black crystal sphere.

As her familiar returned to her original carved ebony form Gwen relayed the small fox's message. "Vix says there's no danger in the area. No people, no large predators. She says there's nothing around here that's bigger than her, apart from the three of us."

"What sort of range?" Chelsea asked. "How far did your little fox go?"

Our mage answered, "It's a two kilometre radius, all the way around this meadow."

The catgirl's eyebrows shot up while her tail hung down between her legs, "Seriously? That's like... twelve square kilometres! She was only gone about an hour, and she's so small. How'd she cover that much ground so fast?"

Gwyneth smirked, "Magic! Obviously."

Then my best friend's shoulders slumped as she admitted, "Except I can't send her out again until tomorrow. I can only do that once a day."

"That's fine Gwen," I spoke up. "And it sounds like good news, right? I mean, now we know there's no threats anywhere within two kilometres of us. So we should be safe to set up camp and get comfortable here."

The catgirl's ears folded back and her tail stayed down low as shrugged, "We're safe here for now. But I'm pretty sure large predators can have an equally large territory. Two kilometres isn't really that far when you think about it."

"There's a bunch of other considerations we need to keep in mind," she continued. "Nothing bigger than a squirrel out there means we're probably not going to find much in the way of food. We don't know yet where we can get more water either. And there's that."

Chels gestured at the clear blue sky over our heads, "This meadow is great while the weather's nice. If we run into rain or a storm we're not going to be very happy out here in the open."

I sighed, "So we need to build a shelter or something? Do you know how to do that?"

"I've only been camping a few times, that doesn't make me Cat Grylls. I know what a makeshift shelter should look like, so I might be able to build one? No idea if it'd actually be waterproof though," she replied.

Gwen pointed out, "Lisa can summon food with her laptop, same way she got the solar panels. So that shouldn't be an issue. Maybe she can get us a tent, or a shelter or something too?"

"Maybe," I frowned. "You're right about the food, Annie said I'd be able to get us mundane supplies here. I guess the real question is, do we want to just hunker down and camp out for however long we need to stay in this realm? Or do we want to explore?"

Then I looked to Chels and added, "You're our camping and hiking expert. What's your expert advice?"

A thoughtful look settled on the cute catgirl's face, while her ears perked up and her tail swished back and forth behind her.

After a few seconds she replied, "So the main thing is you don't want to be wandering around lost in the woods. If that laptop of yours can get us a map of the area, or if we can somehow get our bearings and find out what's around us, then maybe we'll consider travelling. If not, then it's probably safer to stay put and work on coming up with some sort of shelter here. Once we have a shelter, we can work on exploring the immediate area."

Before either Gwen or I could respond to that Chelsea tilted her head to one side as she asked, "You said it might be days or months before we can go back home, right? How will you know when it's safe? Do you have some way of checking on that?"

I grimaced, "I don't know yet. I'm hoping I'll hear from Annie again soon. I didn't have much time to talk with her last night, due to the whole imminent death thing."

"I can get us a map though," I added as I opened the laptop lid yet again. The expeditions program had a mapping function, but it was pretty basic. It used blocky old ASCII graphics, so it wasn't exactly the clearest thing to use.

One I had that up on the screen I showed it to Chelsea and asked, "What do you think?"

Chels frowned at it, "Ok if I'm reading this right that's us in the middle? And that looks like a stream or a river...that leads to a village? What's the scale? Ok got it. So assuming north south east and west work the same here as they do back home, it looks like there's a settlement about sixty kilometres north-by-north-east of us. It's on the bank of a small lake fed by a river that looks to flow north-east. So if we head due north until we find a river then we just follow that and it'll lead us to the lake and the village."

Gwen and I exchanged a look, then my friend asked the question we were both thinking. "How are we supposed to get there? Sixty kilometres is a long way, and we don't have a car. Even if we did, I doubt there's any roads around here."

The little catgirl rolled her eyes and swished her tail, "We walk, silly. It might take us a week, since it's not easy hiking through thick woods like this, but sixty kilometres is entirely doable. Serious long-range hikers would probably cover twice that without a second thought."

"Those are the options anyways," she shrugged. "We can stay here and have a nice fun little camping vacation. Or we can make it an adventure, go on a hike, see some sights, and find civilization."

Both of them looked to me then Chels said, "It's your call Lisa."

I frowned as I thought it over, but it didn't take long to make a decision. "Ok we're staying here for now. Today and tonight at least. I'll try and get in touch with Annie again later, but for now I think we could all use something to eat. Then we should rest. I know you've both only had a couple hours, and I haven't slept at all since yesterday."

Chelsea took charge once again since she knew how to set up camp and make a fire and stuff like that. Me and Gwen gathered firewood, and fortunately there was plenty of it available in the woods all around the meadow. Then my best friend showed off by starting the fire with one of her cantrips.

Just a couple hours later the three of us were sitting together on a bedroll, munching on bacon sandwiches and sipping instant coffee. The food was good, but the coffee was missing something.

"It's too bad we didn't bring any cream," the little catgirl sighed. "I'm really going to miss my double-doubles and my lattes."

Gwen's cheeks started to colour for some reason as she mumbled, "Yeah. Me too. If only there was some way for us to get our hands on some fresh milk."

It only took me a second or two to figure out why my best friend was blushing. I knew what she was into, and while that wasn't specifically listed on her character sheet as one of her kinks it wasn't hard to make the connection. Thinking about that got my cheeks warming up as well, but Gwen hadn't actually said anything specific yet so I didn't either.

Instead I focused on my bacon sandwich, the warm summer sunlight, and the fact that we were enjoying a nice afternoon in our campsite in the woods on a whole new world.