Chapter 17: Water Mastery

As the feathers and bones dried with the bricks, Rino dug holes in the forest and made primitive spears. The boiled raven meat was used as baits, and Phil approved of Rino's innovation. Ark was slightly frightened of Rino's potential. He knew he found a good candidate, but he didn't think he would find one capable of both magic and survival. The project managing God thought they could control this man's actions with the daily quest system, but they were wrong. No wonder nobody suspected a thing until the last world blew up.

Satisfied with his monster traps, Rino decided to leave it to fate. If his crappy traps caught anything in the future, he would raise them and test dark magic on them to understand a little more about this mysterious art. For now, he had to piece the different rib bone sizes and create his comb. Cotton wasn't the only material he had to use the combs for. Flax and hemp also required combing, even if their other processes were a little more tedious.

Rino fiddled with the bones for a long time and used sticky tree sap as glue to hold the bones together in place. Once he had his bone comb, processing the cotton was easy. Rino presented his spool of roughly made cotton threads in no time at all, and the side quest system updated itself once more.

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Side Quest #3 (50% in progress)

Objective: Prepare the materials for weaving.

Tutorial here.

Reward: Uninterrupted sleep for 8 hours.

===

Now that he finished processing cotton and silk, Rino sighed. Processing flax and hemp were equally troublesome as they had to be soaked and broken down using a complex decomposition method. Rino did not have time controlling magic to speed those processes up. However, he had elemental magic that could help with it. When he was a court magician, Rino experimented a lot with magic and science. He birthed alchemy, and controlling magic on a molecular level was something only Rino could do. Today, that skill finally came in handy.

The Gods were curious to know what Rino was up to when he grabbed some flax to hang them from the hemp trees. According to the tutorial, the first part of flax processing was drying them under the sun in a standing position so that the stalk and fibre will end up straight and long.

Rino wasn't going to wait. Heck no! He had magic to dehydrate the flax. Besides, he did not get along well with the sun, not in his previous life, and not in this life.

Slowly but surely, Rino gathered all the remaining water from within the flax strands as they shrivelled and dried into twig-like structures. The process did not take long at all. It also did not consume much mana, and that shocked the Gods watching him.

"What just happened?" Ark asked, clueless and floored.

Phil's jaw dropped, and even Ace widened his eyes. Only Stephanie knew what Rino did. She saw this process before, but it was usually not used in manufacturing.

"It's a curse type of magic by manipulating water within the target and extracting it. In ancient societies, this magic was often used as a form of execution in deserts. You needed to have complete mastery over water to do this. This lich is a tri-elemental expert now. The only element he has a weakened affinity with is air due to his body's limitations."

Rino was pleased with his results. It might not be time acceleration magic, but this worked very well. The flax was as dry and stiff as it should be. Now, it was time to use his bone comb again and untangle the dried flax stalk before he grabbed his hemp for processing together with the flax.

A huge portion of flax stalks got caught in the bone comb and broke off. Rino was slightly saddened, but according to the tutorial, this was meant to happen. If flax that was too weak were used to create threads, the entire fabric would not hold up.

Eventually, RIno was left with about seventy percent of what he started with on the flax. It was a good idea to get more than he wanted initially. If he didn't, he would have to repeat the process to get a handful of flax to work with by the end of the process.

The next stage was a little confusing as it involved hemp. Thankfully, Rino wove many baskets for the clay before this. All those baskets needed a good wash before they could be repurposed. Although the tutorial mentioned an overly complicated process of allowing bacteria to break down the stalk's inner fibre and separate the inner from outer stalks for both hemp and flax, Rino thought it wasn't really needed. He would simply remove the inner stems using water magic by force.

The Gods watched as Rino filled two baskets full of combed flax and untreated sliced hemp to the lake he thought he wouldn't be revisiting.

There, Rino performed a complicated surgery procedure with the help of water, soaking his basket of hemp first as he steeped the flax. Instead of dehydrating the hemp, Rino chose to use water around the hemp to slice them in vertical strips. After several hundred water slices, the hemp was successfully turned into outer stalks that Rino kept and inner stalks that Rino tossed aside, left to decompose on its own on the forest ground. The strips were so finely cut that they fit in Rino's hand perfectly. He processed a few more hemp cuts and tossed the basket of hemp to one side for the combing process. He then repeated the decortication process with the flax.

The sun was setting by the time Rino combed and dried his flax. There were very few flax fibres left in his hand after processing. However, there was enough to be spun into a spool. Rino saw the side quest window update itself and smiled. Only one more to go.

As he stretched, twisted and spun the hemp fibre onto the spool, the Gods were amazed by Rino's productivity. The sun went down a few hours ago, and Rino hasn't stopped working. His display of control over water magic floored everyone when he performed a plant surgery in the water. That level of precision was something not even Stephanie was ready for. Rino truly was a genius.

Ping!

Rino quickly checked his side quest window, eager to claim the first sleep he would have in days since his arrival to this new world.

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Side Quest #3 (Complete)

Objective: Prepare the materials for weaving.

Tutorial here.

Reward: Uninterrupted sleep for 8 hours.

Claim your reward here.

===

Not one to think twice about the ideal laziness, Rino smashed the option to claim his reward and felt strange dizziness take over his vision before he collapsed to the side unceremoniously in his mud hut.

Sweet sleep, at long last. Goodbye insomnia!