They did manage to find a handful of magic items for sale the next morning. A few weapons, one or two armor pieces, and for some reason a bracelet that could light up on command. They couldn't afford any of them, or let Ruth study the runes long enough to copy them down—at least without people wondering why they cared about runes so much. They weren't ready to expose their classes yet.
Thankfully, Ruth looked so dejected when they walked away that the merchant sighed and gave them the bracelet. Apparently he'd been trying to sell it for years with no success; it didn't glow brightly enough to even be useful as a light source, much less in combat. Ruth, however, loved it, and the second they got back to their land she copied down its one rune.
The shack they had built last night hadn't fallen over in the meantime, which Josh declared a rousing success. They built the next three shacks in little more than an hour and a half. Then Josh made a blueprint for a wooden door, which was harder than it needed to be. They didn't have metal hinges on hand, and the Woodcrafter class wasn't letting him make a blueprint that required crafting metal that much. Eventually, he gave up and made some hinges out of wood. He got a blueprint for that, then another for making the door. They'd need more replacing than metal hinges, but oh well.
After that, they went back to chopping down trees. More specifically, Josh chopped down trees. Ruth practiced with her runes, especially her new Luxos rune. Mary and Darius helped a little with both, before Mary declared the whole endeavor “boring” and went out to hunt monsters for quests and experience. Darius went with her.
Josh couldn't blame them. They weren't getting any experience chopping trees since they weren't ranking up techniques, and the group needed more money somehow. At least Mary could use her guns more freely, since she could actually buy bullets.
Without their help, it took him almost the entire rest of the day to finish clearing out their land. Ruth helped every once in a while, mostly with smaller jobs. She used her Pyro rune to light fires—though it was still slow and inefficient—so she could spread oil and burn off the new growth that had popped up while they slept. If they left it alone, their little shacks would be consumed in a matter of days.
The Jungle was always hungry.
By the time Josh had finished, his [Chop Tree] technique had reached rank 12. A very respectable rank, even if it was a specialized ability. He was chopping down big trees that looked like they were as old as the mountains as easily as if they were new-growth saplings. He did have to switch between using his spells and using his hands when his mana ran out, though. His hands throbbed, especially the stumps of his missing fingers. He did his best to ignore it.
His experience gain slowed down considerably, though. By the time he was done, he was a level 20 Woodcrafter. Not a bad gain for a day's work, but he needed to accelerate his progress. The faster he leveled, the sooner people would listen to him. He had to outpace everyone else, or they would just attack him on sight.
His goal was to advance his class to Mechanist. As a tech-based [Crafter] class, that would really open up the field. He thought he knew how to advance it from there to one of the magitech [Crafter] classes. If he could make the hibernation pods that let people dodge the reset, the City would buy him three skyscrapers and execute Operative Jonah if he asked.
He just needed to get that far before the dragon escaped its prison.
Ruth managed to reach level 20 Enchanter halfway through the day, which was good. Josh suspected it was her new rune and all the combinations she could make with it that gave her the extra push.
“Not bad,” he said, dropping his hatchet next to her. He grabbed a bucket of water, dumped half of it over his head, and drank a few gulps from a ladle. “Sure you don't want to try for some more brawny experience?” He flexed his free arm.
Ruth, sitting inside a circle of small boards she had been practicing her runes on, laughed. “I got enough exercise today! I'm not sure you're a good role model for a reasonable amount of work, you know?”
Josh grinned. “Yeah, I guess.” He looked her over. “Any chance you got any stat bonuses?” She didn't look more muscular, but she did carry herself better. It would be lucky beyond belief if she got a stat bonus from just two day's exercise, but sometimes the System surprised you on that sort of thing.
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She shook her head. “Nothing. You?”
“Nah.” It took loads of effort to upgrade your stats manually, and more the higher your base stat was. Thankfully, as far as anyone could tell, that effort wasn't reset at the solstice. Of course, the human body didn't just keep bulking up forever, and most exercise was about keeping yourself from losing what you had gained.
The gate opened, and Mary and Darius entered, their arms full of... paper bags.
Josh raised an eyebrow. “Oi! You already went on a spree?”
Mary put her bags next to the fire pit they had dug. “Hey, we needed junk! We completed some quests, got some cash, found what we needed.”
Josh inspected them both quickly. Mary now scanned as [Attacker: Level 20], and Darius as [Defender: Level 18]. Darius was catching up, it seemed. Good for him.
Ruth perked up. “Did you buy that sword I liked?” It seemed she had more long-term concerns on her mind.
Mary snorted. “Didn't get that much cash.”
Ruth pouted.
“We did purchase food and materials for my blueprints, however,” Darius said. “With luck, those will produce the effect we were hoping for.”
Josh grinned. “Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.”
Ruth looked between them, frowning. “What are—”
“And I found a blueprint!” Mary declared, fishing something out of her bag. She handed it to Josh triumphantly. “One single-person bed, with full assembly instructions!”
The small packet of paper looked old and weathered. It was something that had been produced in a printer, not hand-written. Not something from the Old World—there was no way Mary could have afforded an artifact from before the Fall—but definitely at least a few years old.
“You mucker,” Josh said. “That's not a blueprint, it's a bloody assembly manual!” It looked like something out of IKEA. It might be a copy of something out of IKEA, now that he thought of it. “Why would anyone even have something like this?”
She rolled her eyes and waved it at him. “I dunno, maybe because a load of people out here have a bunch of wood on their hands and the free time to build junk themselves? It's better than just mucking around in the dark, innit?”
Josh rolled his eyes and took the packet. A system window immediately popped up.
You have discovered a new blueprint: Bed-frame (single) (wood). Would you like to learn this blueprint?
Eyes wide, Josh mentally tapped “yes.”
CONGRATULATIONS! You have learned the blueprint Bed-frame (single) (wood). Hey, you finally have a blueprint that is actually supposed to be made out of wood!
Josh grinned. He flipped through the packet, though he didn't really need to. Everything he needed was all in his head now. He quickly confirmed what he had suspected: The blueprint required nothing but wooden parts. Rather simple wooden parts, at that. This had clearly been designed with amateurs in mind.
He rushed over to their pile of planks. Josh had been using [Hands-Free Crafting] to saw felled trees into planks all day, off and on. Ruth needed them for her enchanting practice, and they knew their blueprints would need them for something. He scanned over the planks for a few that were of about the right size. Once he found enough, he carried them inside one of the shacks. His friends waited at the door. It would be crowded if everyone piled inside.
Josh made sure he had a hammer, a small saw and file, and a hand-drill. That should be everything he needed, according to the instructions. He placed the planks in the middle of the floor, grinned widely, and said “Instant Crafting.”
Then there was a bed-frame in the middle of the shack.
Josh whooped. “It worked!”
“How?” Mary demanded. She seemed almost offended—which was just her being contrarian, since this was all thanks to her. “Shouldn't it have counted as like six casts of the spell?”
Josh shook his head. “I had all the parts, close enough to the right size to count. We were trying to skip too many steps with the shack.”
“I wonder what the threshold is,” Darius mused. “If we had planted all the posts and then put the parts in the middle of the area, would you have been able to Instant Craft the rest?”
“Time to test, then!” Josh declared.