Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Don’t lose your tools, please!

After loading Bob with the heaviest cargo, Hiraku grabbed some stones himself, the rest of us only carried some silver flowers, plant samples and the things we brought on this trip. We need to make some space to gather as many fruits as we can from the strange vines. It looks amazing and I’m sure it will be pretty useful for later, sadly I didn’t even get the chance to analyze it since Hiraku was the one to gather them and I still want to keep my analyze skill a secret from everyone.

The way back was quite short, mainly because Hiraku was constantly quickening his pace with the excuse that he was worried about Ayumi, he’s not really fooling anyone though. Midway we stopped at the marked spot to fetch the fruits and we also took the chance to rest.

As soon as the cabin came into view, Hiraku shot out like an arrow, running wildly and screaming

“ayumi! I’m back my darling”

“ah, welcome”

“I’m so sorry for worrying you, you must’ve endured a lot while I was away” Hiraku says as he hugs Ayumi who uncomfortably tries to keep walking.

“Actually, I’m busy so...”

.....

*sigh*

She finally gives in to her husband’s hug and rubs his back. The whole scene is touching, I wonder if someday I’ll have that kind of relationship with someone. I inadvertently looked at Helena who was also absorbed looking at the merry couple.

“We brought some good loot!” Bob exclaims happily.

Luke walks over eagerly to see what’s he talking about.

“Oh! that’s a lot of skins! with this we can make clothes!”

“I don’t know, jackals are quite small. Only one of them was a decent size and that’s Ryu’s. If I had a sewing kit I could probably make clothes for the winter”

“What are you saying? just put the furs on and that’s it” Bob replies cheerfully

“For some reason, it’s too easy to imagine you dressed like the barbarians of old, with a skin on your shoulders and a necklace made of wolf fangs” Luke jokes

“Ayumi, I’d like you to check the resources we have at our disposal and count them. I’ll be dedicating myself to making tools and, perhaps, with some luck for tomorrow we can start building”

Everyone’s face lights up at the possibility of getting a new place to live, they probably imagine that it’ll be something easy, but in reality it requires a lot of effort and patience. Even to create something small like the one I did.

I’m a little tired from the trip, especially because of Hiraku who rushed us too much, but I immediately go to the lake to continue my task of filing the imperial stones. Now I must carefully choose which tools to make with each of the stones, they are quite varied in shapes and sizes so this may be a difficult task. After choosing what kind of tool I can make out of each stone, I start filing them, it’s so repetitive but the concentration needed is not much and this allows me to think about what we should do next.

The first thing is to make a chisel, it doesn’t have to be big, I just have to make sure it’s sharp and flat at one end and blunt at the opposite end. Since there are also large rocks near the lake, I sit on one of them and use the water to gradually file down the shape of the chisel.

chisel (good) 960/960

To be honest the durability doesn’t impress me, as far as I can tell a tool can only take a limited number of hits. each hit reduces one point of tool or weapon resistance, this may not seem like much, however with repeated use the impact is significant. But, since it’s made out of imperial stone, it should have physical resistance

At first the sticks I crafted had such a low durability that I could barely use them and they broke very quickly, the same with weapons. If I have to point out something good, it is that when durability reaches 0 the tool does not actually always break. As I was able to verify with some pointed sticks, some would break in half making them useless, while others simply turned blunt and could no longer be called pointed sticks.

Why is this a good thing? Well, you just need to sharpen them again and you can use them again. Materials are not lost and the only cost is that the maximum durability is reduced.

I continue scraping a stone, this one is much larger than the previous one and I think it would work well as an ax head, problem is that due to its large size, it’ll most likely take several hours to finish it.

Afternoon is quite calm, this place is soothing, who’d say that at this same time yesterday we were having a death match against wildlife. After reminiscing yesterday’s events, the memory of Helena spontaneously arises in my mind. Although I did my best to suppress my darkest thoughts, at that moment I couldn’t help but notice her naked body. Now that I’m alone I allow the image to spin in my head but the guilt quickly overcomes me and I shake my head and complete my task without further interruption.

tool crafting II 1%

After returning to camp I devoted all my effort and wits to making tools. Sure, getting materials is essential, discovering the imperial stone was a great help, but what to do with them is the real challenge. We need all sorts of tools, from wooden mallets to household implements. I crafted a ton of tools and barely made 10% progress in Tool Crafting II.

Despite all the effort I invested in the manufacture, if it weren’t for the invaluable help of Ayumi, who helped me carry out multiple experiments with the type of handle that the ax should have, among other things, it would most likely have taken much more to complete the axe.

The end result is admirable, even if I do say so myself. The ax is ideally proportioned to be used by both Bob, who is huge, and Ayumi, who is small in stature, although the latter has rarely used it so far.

Imperial stone is grayish-green in color, opaque, and quite heavy compared to other stones. Although the weight could be considered a critical disadvantage, it is not so much since they are heroes summoned from another world. This is why they can make full use of the two advantages of the imperial stone axe, the first is its hardness and the second is that its edge is very easy to maintain.

The damage it causes to trees is enormous, previously it took us a full day to prepare a single log to use in the future construction of the cabin. With Bob’s new tool, he was able to fell and prepare five logs in one day.

Although the felled trees are of moderate thickness, that does not detract from their merit at all. The trees I used for the construction of my cabin were smaller and I got them with sweat and blood.

Days went by as I kept on crafting tools, so focused to even notice that a whole week went by. And that’s when things started to get complicated. The axe has been lost.

“What do you mean you don’t have it Ryu?” Anne yells in exasperation

“Why should I have it? wasn’t Bob the last one to use it”

“Hey! don’t look at me, after using the axe I left it in the same place as always”

“Don’t worry bob, it’s not your fault”

“what do you want the axe for anyway?” Hiraku tells Anne in the softest tone he can use.

“That’s my business, if you don’t have anything to do with it, don’t get involved” Anne replies impatiently

“Well, I don’t have anything to do with it either, so I can go too... no, wait a minute. If the axe doesn’t appear it’s a serious problem for all of us. We don’t have the materials to craft a new one, and this may put our building to a halt. There’s no choice but to look for it!”

“Young Ryu, before rushing to conclusions, it’d be best to wait until everyone is gathered and we can discuss things. Until then, let’s stay nearby until Ayumi and Luke come back”

“Agreed, let’s stay close for now”

Since I can’t get far from the settlement, I start to go over the pending tasks. The first thing is to check warehouses. Using sticks we make small shelters with a bark roof for various resources. If possible we store each resource in a basket. Ayumi has done a good job inventorying everything we have, although we don’t have paper to write on, we created a whole system to keep track in real time. The first thing was to quantify everything in units, obviously it is an approximation, but so far it looks like it quite well.

It’s important to keep food and medicine dry so we store them inside the house, but that’s not the case with the elven wheat fruit, it doesn’t seem to spoil even when left outside which is a good thing.

The case of wood and stone is different, instead of measuring in baskets, we use the volume they occupy after being stored. this was a bit more complex, but Ayumi’s math skills are pretty good and that made our job a lot easier.

Coal is the easiest to measure in units, we simply ask Helena to craft several baskets of a similar size, that way we know that there’s a similar amount of coal in each basket, therefore each full basket is a unit. We didn’t do this with food as we don’t have enough to measure it by basket, plus one or two pieces of fish can make a big difference.

To know exactly how many resources we have in each storage, we place a small basket next to the store. For each unit that we deposit in the warehouse we put a small stone inside and for each unit that we withdraw we take a stone out of the basket.

It can not be any easier!

Seriously though, it can’t, we cracked our heads just to try and find something more simple but without paper it’s just not realistic.

After verifying that the resource units present in the storage are correct by comparing them with the units indicated by the number of stones located in the basket, I move on to my next task.

The next thing will be to check the fire stones, for a long time I have kept them hidden inside a charcoal basket since I want to avoid accidents, but as time goes by they will be more and more difficult to hide.

Every time I make charcoal I get at least one fire attribute stone. At first it was a surprise, I even got a new ability called transmutation. currently my transmutation skill has about 30% progress.

If I go by how things have been so far, I’d say as soon as I hit 100% I’ll unlock a new skill and also possibly get fire attribute stones on a regular basis. Something similar to what happened with tool manufacturing, as soon as I reached 100% I started to get better quality tools.

At first, following the progress of each skill was quite entertaining and I kept an eye on each one. Now, however, since the progress is usually so slow and repetitive, I hardly pay attention to it. when I want to know how I am doing in a certain skill, I simply practice it until I receive a message.

Since there’s not much else to do, I sit down for a moment to think about my next step. There’s a mystery that has been with me for a long time, the fruits of elven wheat.

We got them when we went to get the medicine for Anne and the imperial stones, at first we brought a lot thinking they will be useful. They’re yellow and shiny, Luke said they look like a gemstone called amber. I don’t know if they look appetizing, but they certainly look beautiful.

The main advantage of this fruit is that it doesn’t spoil, since we brought them in they’ve been carelessly stored in a basket outside for a week, unlike the rest of the food found inside the cabin. Despite this, it has not presented any changes at all, it maintains its characteristics perfectly.

Even so, no matter what we try, it is impossible to eat. so far we try to peel them, cook them, dissolve them in water, cook them in water, split them. when I analyze it, it tells me that it is edible, but it does not give me a clue as to how to do it.

The main problem is that they’re very hard. The closest thing to a success we got was when Bob lost his temper and broke one into several pieces. Ayumi picked up one of the pieces and put it to cook on the pot. the smell that came out was incredible, but even so, eating it was impossible. we only managed to scrape the surface of each piece while its center remained hard as a rock.

Thinking about that, after scraping it if we could get something edible, although little of it.

Maybe there is a way to eat this fruit after all!

I’m going to get a big rock from our rock pile, obviously there’s no roof over the pile since it doesn’t matter if the stones get wet. it’s heavy and difficult to carry, I hold it with both hands and the weight prevents me from walking properly. I drop it heavily near the kitchen and go for a smaller, oval-shaped rock, small enough to manipulate easily with both hands.

With the imperial stone chisel and using a wooden mallet, one that was fairly easy to create, I start tapping the edges of the large rock to give it a round shape. with a bowl of water I clean the surface of the rock and place on it an elven wheat fruit.

I start by hitting the fruit gently with the medium egg-shaped stone, the blows are not hard but they are repetitive and the fruit ends up yielding to the pressure and breaks into several smaller pieces. It’s a success, so I continue hitting the smaller pieces.

Curious at the sound, the two-tailed cat approaches me with both tails raised. Is it my idea or is he getting fatter?

Anyway, this is a boring task that just requires patience and so I’ll let you play to your heart’s content. It climbs up my back, rubs against my arm, bounces around. How weird, he had never treated me this way before.

moon cat 60/60

taming: friendly

hey! that’s good! Maybe it’s time to give it a name.

I continue my work much happier, grinding the elven wheat fruit little by little until I finally achieve my goal, with the ground fruit hitting the rock would be inefficient. instead I move the egg-shaped rock back and forth over the crushed fruit until a soft yellowish powder forms. I haven’t seen this before, even so I know its name, it’s flour.

I take some water from the pot on the stove, wait for it to cool down, and then pour a small amount onto the stone. As the warm water comes into contact with the fine powder of the elven Wheat Fruit it begins to absorb it rapidly.

The amount of water it can hold is impressive, only after the second bowl of water I pour over the mix does it begin to saturate and become malleable. it is quite comfortable to knead, I dedicate myself to it for a while until I get a smooth texture and let it rest for a moment on the stone.

I don’t have many possibilities to cook the mixture, I can only boil or roast it. Since this is an experiment, I split the mixture in two and decide to try both methods. Although the first thing is to see if it tastes good, I take a small raw portion and put it in my mouth.

It has almost no flavor and it dries my mouth a lot, it’s an unpleasant sensation. I turn to drink a glass of water and as soon as I am distracted, a mischievous figure leans out to sniff the dough. The lunar cat seems especially attracted to it, although it hasn’t made an attempt to eat it.

“Oh, I see you like it, wait until it’s cooked and it will surely taste better”

To roast the dough I cover it with ashes and throw it directly into the fire, although I don’t know how long it will take to be ready, or even if it will really be edible later, I have no other way to do it at the moment. It’s somewhat similar to the method of cooking the tubers, in order for them to be eaten normally they must spend the whole night on the campfire.

On the other hand, boiling the dough is much easier. Taking advantage of the fact that there is already a pot on the stove with hot water, I make some balls of dough of various sizes and throw them directly into the water. In this case it will be easy to know when they are ready since I will be able to see them directly.

To get the water up to its boiling point it will be necessary to add more fuel to the stove, I go to the woodshed for dry branches, I sit in front of the stove and start to break them into small pieces to feed the fire.

It doesn’t take long for the water to start boiling. Satisfied with the result, I set out to find a comfortable place to rest for a while.

.....

In the distance I can see Anne concentrating on her target practice. Ever since the confrontation with the jackals in the forest, she has been somewhat worried that she may not be able to defend herself.

Hiraku, who has become our best fisherman, returns from the lake with today’s bounty. Although he’s not very reliable in combat, he has a lot of talent for manual labor and is also able to control the rest of the group a bit. Both he and Ayumi are the oldest and, even though neither of them is interested in the position of leader, both have been indispensable in keeping the peace in the group.

Every time a problem arises, Hiraku tries to mediate situations to prevent them from escalating. If he is unsuccessful, Ayumi intervenes, she never fails to get a good laugh out of us, thus attenuating the group’s discontent. Bob says that they’re like the parents of the group, although it is rare coming from a guy of his size, anyway every time he says something like that, Ayumi jumps to slap him on the back of his head, scolding him for treating her like an old woman.

By the way, Bob is at his regular magic practice. Every day, without fail, he spends a good portion of his morning shouting incantations with his hands outstretched in all directions. Sometimes he draws strange symbols on the ground saying that they are ancient mysterious formulas that have immeasurable power.

“Yuck! what’s this, why are there some things floating in the water?” Luke exclaims in disgust with a glass of water in his hand.

“Oh, I’m sorry, it was my fault” I say in a regretful tone. I didn’t even realize when he appeared behind me, when did he come back? I hardly ever see luke and rarely notice his presence before he shows up out of nowhere. We’re all used to it by now, but it doesn’t make it any less worrying.

“We’re back!” Ayumi says casually

“how did it go?”

“It was okay, we’ve already demarcated the area, now all that’s left is for Bob to cut down the trees”

“That’s not going to be possible dear” Hiraku says as he walks up to us “the axe is lost, we wanted to ask you if you took it by any chance , but it seems not to be the case”

“What!? How is it possible!? that Helena is going to see what’s what once I finish up with her!”

“Helena!?” several voices say in unison.