The general structure of the bloomery wasn’t too difficult to build, and after an hour Nik had managed to raise the cylinder up to half a meter with two air intakes sixty degrees apart from each other and a foot by foot large door. The door was for now supported by 3 large flat rocks and due to their varying sizes not completely symmetrical nor round - an issue for later. While the structure was by no definition of the word done, it wouldn’t be built further today. Digging around in dirt was all fun and games until you actually had to do it and it wasn’t a fun project anymore and Nik had to build the bloomery in his opinion. The last couple of days hadn’t been dangerous, as contact with the local wildlife had been basically non-existent, but Nik had had dangerous encounters and he was going to use any chance he got to increase his chances of survival.

In addition to leaves mixed into the clay, Nik had used sticks and long reed leaves to create a sort of scaffolding to stop the clay from spreading too far outwards. It was the reason why Nik excused himself from continuing to work. Both the inside and outside of the bloomery had this scaffolding. From his early moments of building the structure, he had noticed that something of the sort would be necessary as the clay he started spreading easily.

However important it would be to build the bloomery, something else was on his mind. The last couple of nights had been really uncomfortable, showing Nik that his situation had to be improved. He was eying the creation of a bed frame with a woven mattress quite a bit, but this was far off. He would need to have a proper shelter before he would even think about creating something of the sort. This was an especially stark contrast to his dream of a grand, multiple trees spanning treehouse. So for now he would try to upgrade the tree he had been sleeping on for the last couple of days.

The “shopping list” included several different tools he would have to fashion from stone, as well as wood, leaves, and hopefully some type of vines. A sort of hammer was the highest item on his list. [Hammer Strike] was the only offensive skill he had, and he knew it could be better with the proper tool. As it was right now it wasn’t actually a pure hammer skill. It was a skill that could be enhanced further through the proper use of a tool, specifically a hammer. This became obvious after using a variety of blunt and not so blunt objects. Furthermore, he had been able to observe the stamina flow of the skill during his use of the skill in conjunction with [Internal Energy Sight] and the corresponding manipulation skill. Lastly, Nik wanted an ax or hatchet to reduce the time it takes to gather wood for charcoal and to get started with his tree house plans.

Other items included an assortment of pottery to help with the keeping of water, berries, and potential improvements to his food situation, and maybe even for fermentation, depending on if resin would be watertight. And finally, the most important items on that list were bellows and whatever approximation of a hammock he could fashion.

The plan was simple for now though. Get something approaching a hammock. With a desire of a restful night - not that the recent nights hadn’t been decent, but they could have been a lot better too - Nik went further away from the cave. Weighing his options he decided against an expedition further into the forest - for whatever reason, he was mostly left alone on his now semi-regular pathways and he had no need to change that. The main ingredient would be vines, ivy more specifically. Nik had come into contact with them multiple times and while they would only be a tentative solution to the bed problem they would hopefully suffice for now.

One basket in hand he marched outwards, this time only using his movements skills until he reached the treeline a couple hundred meters away. The path, connecting the lake and his coal-making pit, was easily visible - a benefit of either his slowly developing but not leveling tracking skill or the pathfinder buff - another hundred meters further into the woods, so Nik moved with open eyes towards that direction. His sight flowed over the various types of trees around him, inspecting each for ivy large and thick enough to fulfill his requirements. Most were only individual strands reaching towards the sky, gripping the bark with their rootlike substructures. Occasionally he found larger and thicker ivy patches and even rarer he found vines which he promptly removed as carefully as he could, and tried to fit into the basket.

It didn’t take too long to gather enough ivy to fill the basket up with coils of rolled-up ivy. As he found more he placed some over his shoulder, but eventually, he stopped and moved towards the lake. Meanwhile, he also felled a larger dead tree and dragged it with him.

The whole process of weaving a hammock turned out to be somewhat of a poor decision, while Nik managed to weave a working fabric that was able to support his weight, the same was not true for the strings that were supposed to hold onto the trees. A conclusion he would have preferred not to reach. To work around that issue Nik somewhat redesigned the hammock to span between two branches. This resulted in him having to weave further strands into the structure while on the tree already. Surprising Nik once again how much easier things had gotten due to his increased stats, he climbed up and wound individual de-leafed-ivy strains around two branches - relatively parallel to the ground - each around 4 meters high.

This of course didn’t take place in the actual redwood forest he had been primarily staying in as those trees were too high for him to trust into his own knot-making skills. Not really worried about a 4-meter drop, but 20 meters would most likely result in him dying, even with his stats. This was ignoring that there wasn’t a suitable location for him to properly build a similar structure in the first place. The number of redundant vines and ivy strains also reducing his worries.

Quite luckily Nik managed to finish in the early evening. Leaving him some time to relax some at the gravel beach, eat and just consider the future as well as the new skill he had gained access to.

You have fulfilled a requirement for one (crafting-type) race skill

You qualify for obtaining the following Race skills [1 slots available].

[Woodworking] - enhances crafting with wooden parts and woodworking capabilities, a poor substitute for the carpenter class

...

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For now, Nik didn’t really want to get the new skill, however, he told himself he was going to remember it in the future once he would actually start building tools and such. A wooden handle would most likely involve the [Woodworking] skill and maybe improve the overall craft.

Some musing later he landed on the idea of general item stat screens. Would that be a thing, could you have an inventory if you had the proper tools and inspect them through that, or how did identify work on them. The coal he had produced gave him some ideas of what to expect but the information he had gained was meager, to say the least, though better than for most other stuff he identified.

Reminded of coal he got up again, ran back to the coal pit to generate more and store what he had made today.

Once he got back he cleaned himself somewhat and put on the clothes he had left out to dry. On his way back he considered his situation once again. Life had been fine on earth, for the most part, especially the last couple of years, however, it was also nothing special, it had been fun sometimes, boring other times, but it was never vibrant. What he was experiencing now was mostly exciting, interesting and it felt real. It had substance. Back home he life had felt like a movie. Things kept happening without him really having a real effect on stuff. Climate change would continue happening, no matter what he would do. People would harm each other, politicians would do whatever they wanted without any real checks and balances, though they proclaimed otherwise. Here, life was good, he was - well not the king of the jungle - his own man. Maybe that would change if there were other sapient beings around here though he doubted it.

Before climbing up his replacement tree he gathered the leftover reed leaves he earlier collected and carefully went up the tree. He spread those as tentative isolation evenly over the installation and lowered himself on the ivy matt.

“This is not as uncomfortable as I expected it to be. It is definitely better than sleeping on branches, I bet I will feel a lot less stiff in the mornings now, as long as this thing doesn’t break. And more importantly, my nights will be a lot less stressful now, I hope at least. Maybe I will sleep without waking up for once,” was his last thought before falling asleep.

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As Nik awoke next his hope was unfulfilled. It was in the middle of the night, the night sky was only occasionally visible occluded by branches and frequent large clouds. The stars were only barely giving enough light to see silhouettes of the surrounding undergrowth and trees though his skill helped. Initially, Nik was confused about why he had awoken, ready to go back to sleep again. For a moment he joked about his body being irritated by not having to worry about falling down, though he quickly stopped jinxing it. His sleep had been really good though far, though nothing compared to how it was back home.

As he was about to fall asleep he heard it again, a loud screech, not far off in the distance away from the mountains, vastly different from all the sounds he had heard previously. Different from screeches to birds in the distance usually gave off. This one was all-permeating, it not only hurt his ears, no he could also feel it in his bones and joints. They hurt! The screech so loud and low that he actually felt the vibrations in his bones. Like at a festival where the treble and bass ratio was utterly screwed in favor of the latter. Mentally pressing [Stealthy Movement] as hard and frequently as he could, though the effect was vastly reduced as no real movement was happening. He tried to switch on the transparency feature he had developed but it wasn’t too successful as he was rather stressed. With [Unobstructed Optics] he tried to make out what was causing the sound.

His brain not entirely ready to deal with such a situation Nik slowly, trying to make as little sound as possible, huddled closer to the tree trunk ready to embrace it should something approach to tear him from his little space.

Nothing came. Not close enough to be a danger at least. At some point, a large creature flew overhead towards the mountain. Nik was only able to notice that due to the heavy wing beating causing vast amounts of leaves to rustle in the distance. At some point, he fell asleep again, dreaming of ninja dragons and giant eagles.

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Waking up the next time around Nik let out a huge and overemphasized breath. He had fallen asleep somehow, probably because his body had expended a whole lot of adrenaline and he came down from that high at one point.

Only after a lot of careful observation of his surroundings did he let himself calm down again. He would have probably been dead if whatever flew overhead would have had an interest in him, but he lucked out.

Legendary Deed: [Lethal Encounter] - Do not get killed by a predator far more powerful.

Nik Thems: {(Evolving) Extraterrestrial Human} 2 x Level up! You have accomplished the Legendary Deed [Lethal Encounter].

25 Stat points have been awarded. Three General Skill Slots unlocked.

Well, my Race is really starting to out level my class again, at least that is good. Some more free stat points will be nice. This was actually insane. I was getting levels left and right for easy stuff, though some of the deed notifications had been kind of worrisome. Happy with the current state of things Nik moved further to inspect the other notifications he had received, forgoing the investment of stat points for now.

[ Stealthy Movement has reached its maximum level, advanced upgrade at level 25 possible.]

Nik just stared off in to the distance, trying to figure out what exactly had happened, until he slowly realized in how much danger he had actually been. He did eventually look at his status, utterly shocked.

How is this possible, many of his skills had improved quite a bit overnight. Even Internal Energy Sight and the manipulation skill had increased. He was somewhat surprised by Tracking leveling up too, three levels were quite a bit for what exactly he wasn’t sure, that he spotted the large creature flying overhead? It was hard to not notice.

The day progressed just like the previous. The first thing Nik did was gather more wood for the charcoal generation, he stored the previously produced coal and made a new fire with the dried wood from the cave. The first matt was now completely filled with charcoal something that had made Nik quite happy.

The wood he collected was split up in three different heaps this time. Each heap consisted of wood from similar-looking trees. The reasoning behind that was Nik’s wish for categorization. Order was good and important, the identificator “Mixed Charcoal” on all of his previous creations gave him the idea that maybe wood type changed the coal attributes, which left much to be desired right now.

This time the coal actually gave more experience than the last time, though not by much. By one point to be precise, but due to a lack of information, Nik could not deduce why that was until he used [identify]. The purity had presumably gone up to minor, so his new technique of lighting the fire from the top had to be somewhat better. This also seemed to bump up the general quality minor.

After setting up another batch the same way as the last he went to the cave, to build further on his bloomery.