Chapter 37 Setting Up Base (2)

Lucius began scouring the surrounding area, only collecting the more straightly shaped twigs he would come across. After half an hour, he had collected 36 of them, and accumulated 10 points into strength and another 8 into stamina.

His first goal was to build a few sleds so that the leaflings could help him gather materials, so after gathering a sufficient amount of twigs, the next step was grass.

He collected around 50 blades of grass -them being way lighter than the twigs- they only gave him 4 points into strength and 2 into stamina.

By now all the leaflings had woken up and were crowding around Lucius to see what was going on.

"Is this our new home?" one of them asked as it stood on its tip toes trying to get a glimpse of the work Lucius was doing over the other leaflings.

"That's right," Lucius replied as he weaved three blades of grass together for rope.

"Are we going to be collecting stuff again?" another asked excitedly.

"Right again," he responded once more, only giving a small fraction of his attention to the leaflings around him.

After a while, he decided that he had weaved as much rope as he needed, and stacked the remaining blades of grass aside. In total there were 16 lines of rope, all laid out beside the twigs.

~You'd think I'd gain some agility from all this weaving I'm doing,~ he sighed to himself as he took a quick break.

The leaflings scrutinized the rope with their feet while he rested, some of them playing with the remaining blades of grass as well. It was a good distraction from all the sadness that had been floating about earlier on.

After resting for a little longer, he set out to begin building the sleds.

He selected twelve twigs from the pile and divided them into groups of three. He then carefully tied a line of rope around each twig, connecting it to the other twigs within their respective groups, before ensuring that the ropes were properly tightened.

After he had completed the main body, he used the smaller lines of rope to create harnesses at the front for the leaflings to pull on.

By the time he had finished with all 4 sleds, the sun was already beginning to set. So while the leaflings played around with the sleds, he began plucking leaves from the few surrounding shrubs.

After he had collected a good number of leaves, he took a large portion of the remaining twigs and began placing them against the trunk of the stunted tree, almost like a makeshift shed.

He then began covering it with the leaves he had collected, which proved to be a bit of a puzzle as he didn't have any adhesives to make them stick to the twigs.

However after a bit of work on his part, the twigs were completely covered, and the leaflings had a sort of camouflaged tent to sleep in for the night.

"Okay guys, that's enough. It's time to rest," he called out. The leaflings didn't seem too happy about being dragged away from their fun, but they obliged and put the sleds back in their place.

"Where did you learn to make this?" one of the leaflings asked as they walked into the tent.

"That's a secret," Lucius smiled, before saying his goodnight to the leaflings.

"What about you? Aren't you going to rest as well?" Alpha whispered, appearing from the side of the tent. "The rest of the squad and I can take first watch, you must be tired."

"I still have a bit to do, but you guys can take the first shift," Lucius replied, a tad happy to see that Alpha was somewhat back to his old self.

"Very well, Captain," he nodded, before assembling his squad and rotating to their positions.

"How long are you going to follow me around for?" Lucius whispered once Alpha had left.

"I know you're there," he continued, turning to look at a small shrub at least a meter away from him.

"Ahh, how did you know?" a voice groaned, before the shrub began to rustle. Ghost emerged from it a moment later, a defeated look on her face.

"I hadn't seen you the whole day, and I was wondering why the bushes would sometimes breathe while I was collecting twigs," he replied, before walking towards the drooping branch.

"So what are you doing now?" Ghost asked, looking up at the branch.

"Thinking about how I'm going to climb this," he replied, trying to see if he would reach the tip of the branch by jumping. However he could just barely touch it even when he used his full strength.

~I'll need a ladder,~ he thought to himself before heading back to where he had stacked the materials.

"Hey, I wanted to show you my progress. I can stand on one leg longer than I could before," said Ghost, running ahead of him before excitedly standing on one leg.

"That's good Ghost," he replied, taking a moment to look at her. Though she was a bit wobbly, she had indeed improved from this morning.

"Now just work on standing still while you do it," he said, gently nudging her. That was all it took for her to lose her balance and fall to her back.

"Come on Luci, teach me how to do that flying thing," she pleaded, quickly getting to her feet before running in front of him once again.

"It'll be easier once you evolve, just wait till then," he replied, maneuvering around her to pull a few twigs from the remaining stockpile.

"But I wanna learn now," she said, standing in front of the pile of grass as he was about to collect some.

"Sigh. Okay, I'll teach you one move. If you can't even learn that, then you'll have to agree to wait till you've evolved," he replied reluctantly, before walking around her to get to the grass.

He collected a few bundles and quickly wove several short lines of rope. Putting those aside, he placed two long twigs parallel to each other and then broke a few of the remaining into smaller pieces. He then placed the smaller pieces perpendicular to the first and used the rope to bind them.

"So? When are you going to teach me?" Ghost asked after Lucius had finished binding the first half of the ladder.

"You want to learn it right now?" he replied, already working on the second half. He repeated the process he had done earlier but found that he was lacking some rope, so he collected another bundle from the pile

"Yeah, right now," Ghost replied.

"Okay," he sighed in defeat, stopping what he was doing.