She also tried digging.
Just yesterday, she put on a pair of thick leather gloves, took her survival axe, and went to a depression overgrown with spruce trees.
She didn't attempt to chop at the iron-hard frozen earth with the axe blade—it would only ruin the axe. Instead, she used the back of the axe, hammering it forcefully against the ground like a hammer.
"Clang! Clang! Clang!"
A dull thud echoed through the woods; each strike numbed her grip, and the result was despairing.
After half a day of effort, all she managed was a shallow pit less than twenty centimeters deep on the ice-and-snow-mixed surface.
She had to stop, looking at the ridiculous shallow pit and her slightly trembling hands, a profound sense of powerlessness and long-lost panic enveloped her.
Now, this coastline had locked all its resources in an ice-sealed vault, and she didn't have the right key—what she needed was a pickaxe, not an axe.
