The Longing-ist Playthrough: Day 10 – 10/01/22 – 378 Days, 17 Hours, 57 Minutes and 4 Seconds to go…

My work day and more sports (in person rather than TV sports this time… Great win lads, well done!) meant that I had another short play session for Day 10, but I’m pleased that I’m sticking to my plan of at least a playing little bit every day. Day 10 was a day with plenty of progress, but not a lot of a pazazz – Monty was getting on and we were moving forwards, but updates from yesterday aren’t likely to knock your socks off. That’s alright though, as we’re still moving in the right direction 😊.

I launched the game and found Monty asleep; propped up on his elbow and eyes closed at the bottom of a brand new set of stairs extending down from the back wall of [our room]! You’ve made some good progress there, little man! Bravo! I woke him up and gave him a proverbial pat on the back before thinking about what I could look to accomplish in the few minutes I had spare. Oh, I know…! 😬

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🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵

🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵

🎵—– 🎵—– 🎵—–

Right, with mandatory horn practice completed, I had come to the decision that I’d loop back to the place I started my exploration and head back to the first place I remember needing the mattock – the gemstone buried in the wall down in the [creepy cave mouth], near the [Hall of Eternity]. I think I found the thing back on Day 1, and in honesty, I still haven’t thought about what it might be or what it’s for.

I pulled up my remembered places and sent Monty on his merry way; into the depths to the west of [our room]. Video games always call left ‘west’ and right ‘east’ when they want to sound fancy and don’t have a compass, so I will too… I’m glad that Monty could find his way back there so easily because I’d have definitely gotten lost again if I had to try and find the room by myself. After an uneventful stroll Monty arrived, and I set him to work chipping away the gemstone which he told me “was missing from his collection.” I guess we’re just going to bling up the room then, huh?

After only a minute – and regular updates on his progress – Monty had broken the black crystal from the wall and was looking forward to hanging it up at home. Again, because I knew I wasn’t going to be playing very long, I thought that I’d try and get another little victory in the bag and sent Monty up to see [The Face in the Wall]. Now, I didn’t really want to see the Face itself (since I couldn’t afford to have him answer any of the new questions yet), but I did want to try and pry one of his blue gemstones off the wall to add to the newly minted crystal collection.

I miscalculated how long this walking back and forth would take and it by the time Monty arrived it was almost time for me to end my session. Oops. Ah well, I’m here now – might as well go for it. Monty got to work pick-axing the blue crystal to the east (😅) of the Face and worked on it for maybe five minutes before I had to ask him to set off home. The last time he gave me any update, Monty told me that he wasn’t “even halfway there”… No living on a prayer for you…, so I guessed it would perhaps take another 15 minutes of hard labour before we’d have a blue gemstone in our possession.

On the way back Monty passed through the [treasure room], reminding me that at some point we’d need to go to work on that crystal glass to get at all the gold and goodies enshrined behind it. Monty didn’t seem too optimistic about his chances of getting through the glass with the mattock but I was sure he could get there with enough time. I guess it’s easy to be confident in that when you’re not the one doing the digging…

Arriving back home, I ushered Monty down the new stairway and asked him to continue burrowing away. It looked like he wanted to double-back on himself, so I guess he must be trying to carve out a floor directly below the one we currently have. Two floor apartment works for me; just don’t collapse the place. I sat and watched him work for a few minutes before shutting down the Switch and it was pretty fulfilling to see the small progress each swing of the mattock was having on the black rock. Good luck with the digging, my man – hopefully there’s room for a bed for you to rest in when you’re done.

Continue reading: Day 11