Thock! Thock! Thock!

With a stone in hand, Yuriko pounded a vine against a rock. After a few twacks, she put the stone aside and picked at the mashed plant, taking the fibrous bits before discarding the rest. Later, she would weave it into a rope.

It’s been a few days since her encounter with the bony bear. She easily found a likely campsite around the largest tree she saw. She didn’t know what kind of tree it was, but it’s branches were spread out and the area around the bottom was relatively clear. She spent a few hours scouting around to find all the potential hazards then she proceeded to make her shelter. Well, home, for now.

“Your plan is for me to stay here and advance to Knight?” she snarked to Damien.

Yes. No other choice. It was a one in a million chance that you managed to reach here alive. The circumstances cannot be duplicated.

“What happened to that Chaos Lord?”

...Dead.

“Oh.”

Yuriko paused. She wasn’t sure if she should feel relieved or disappointed.

Anyway, you’re close to second stage Growth and it shouldn’t take you that long to reach Actualisation.

“Huh?”

Yes. It shouldn’t take you more than a couple of years.

“I’m sorry, what?”

What?

“What are you saying? What do you mean actualisation?”

What you call Knight.

“Why not call it Knight then?” she grumped.

...Because it’s called Actualisation.

Yuriko sighed.

Damien was annoyingly obtuse at times or maybe he just liked to tease her too much. She grabbed another vine and proceeded to pound it until she could separate the fibres. The past few days, she’d been focused on building a little treehouse. She’d cut down some branches and cleaned them. She’d gotten some thinner vines and planned to weave them into a hammock, of sorts.

Of course, she’d need to do her cooking on the ground and for that, she managed to make a rough stove. She stacked a flat river stone that was about half a pace across and seven or so inches wide on top of smaller stones. She made the fire pit under it and carved some runescript around the entire thing to make sure the campfire won’t go out of control.

She managed to catch a few smaller creatures, nothing as cute as a bunny, thank the Ancestors. Actually, they looked like some kind of rodent, actually, about the size of Hunter Kitty. The meat was tough and sinewy but they were tasty enough after she cleaned and roasted them.

The bear wandered nearby once the smell of her spit roast spread but it didn’t come any closer once Yuriko saw it.

“How sure are you that I could reach Knight in a couple of years?” Yuriko asked instead.

Because you have me, of course.

“Figures,” she muttered. “But I don’t want to just stay here that long. I’ll go insane from loneliness.”

Aren’t I enough?

“You?” Yuriko scoffed. “You barely talk to me for ten minutes a day.”

Can’t help it. Not enough Radiant Essence.

“What’s that?”

Nothing you need to be concerned with right now. Nothing you do will help, not yet, anyway.

That was always the case with Damien. He dropped tantalising bits of knowledge but refused to explain. When pressed, the only thing he said was, Foreknowledge isn't always helpful.

‘Whatever that meant,’ she thought in annoyance.

After she’d gone through the pile of vines, she started weaving the fibers into a rope. Her fingers were agile enough that it didn’t take too long, and now she had a coil of rope nearly a dozen paces long.

It had taken her half the morning to weave this set, and she was halfway done with the platform. She scaled the tree, the lowest branch was five paces above the ground, but her chosen nest was nearly a dozen paces up.

The tree had broad leaves, which she used to gather rainwater. She used some of her twines to weave a basket that could hold several canteens worth of water. It rained at least once a week, and when it did, it often lasted for at least a couple of days. It was a dryer spell right now, so she had taken the chance to wash and hang dry all of her clothes. Well, except for her forceweave pants and underwear, anyway.

“Stuck in the wilderness and doing laundry.”

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She grabbed a log and scaled the tree. She had bridged a couple of the tree’s branches with about five logs by now, having lashed them together to form a platform. The broad leaves sheltered her well enough from the rain, though when the winds were too strong, they penetrated the canopy. Well, she’d get to make a roof soon enough.

“Another five logs, I think.”

The rope was only enough to secure a couple of logs, and after she did so, she had to forage for more vines.

The jungle was an unexpected bounty of fruits and other edibles, Yuriko realised. All she had to do was keep an eye on the bear and watch where it went to forage. Well, the bear and a few wild boars.

The pigs looked nothing like Shillogu’s get. They had black fur, a flat snout with wickedly sharp tusks, and pointy quills on their back. Anyway, she figured what the pigs ate would also be edible for her. After a couple of weeks of just meat and fruits, she wanted bread and vegetables.

Well, there was no way she could get bread or any kind of grain, for that matter. She did find some strange sweet tubers from following the pigs.

It took her until the rest of the day to finish the platform, and a couple more days to finish making a roof, a hammock, and some snares. It didn’t rain for several days which meant she had to fetch water from the stream. To be safe, she boiled it and let it cool before she drank. Most of her days were of meditation, hunting, and foraging.

The bear never tried to attack her again though she caught it watching her every now and then. For that reason, her sleep was fitful. More roaring from the west, sometimes howls, for hours on end, left her awake and annoyed, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She could stuff her ears with some cloth to muffle the sound, but she didn’t want to impair her senses. Danger could come from any direction.

Two days after she saw the bear for the first time, she nearly walked into an ambush. It was only because the wild boar she followed was a better target that she was spared the indignity of having an eight-legged giant cat pounce on her.

The creature, aside from having eight legs with paws tipped with razor-sharp claws, had a yellow-brown coat with spots. At one point, she saw its eyes glow with Animus. It visibly sped up and eviscerated the pig before it could take a single step away. It glared at her, but she bared her teeth and flared her Anima. It slunk away, but of course, it took its kill with it. It scaled up a tree in the blink of an eye.

So, yeah. Treetop house wasn’t as safe as she thought. Of course, she didn’t have a better alternative. She found a cave near the bottom of a hill, but it was occupied. By the bony bear.

Once, she even walked into a colony of fist-sized ants. They had caught some animal and picked it to the bone. A few of them noticed her and with antennae waving, pointed their bottoms at her and squirted fire.

Two hazards that could climb and one that was underground.

For that reason, she hadn’t activated her Facet even once. The loss of senses was just too dangerous. She had nothing to practice with either.

Later, she got the idea to make some spears. She initially thought to sharpen some stakes, fire hardening the point, but she found some flint on that same rocky hill. And since she could easily make some rope, she fashioned a crude stone-tipped spear that was about two and a half paces long. There were few branches on such length that were relatively straight, and her attempts to whittle one down ended up turning into kindling.

Either way, at least she had a long weapon now, even if it wasn’t quite what she liked to use.

“Can I summon Fri’Avgi now?”

Nope.

That was always her first question every time Damien first spoke to her for the day. And the answer never changed. Well, she didn’t doubt it. When she envisioned her Anima, she could see a bit of the Chaos poisoning clinging around her core. The sickly green light had receded from a third of her Anima to the space immediately above her core. It had stayed that way for the past week, with minimal changes.

Fri’Avgi is cleansing your Anima. And besides, the pollution helps strain it, as long as you practice Anima Refinement every day, you’ll grow stronger.

“I think having a weapon is more important though.”

Just make your own.

“My knife is damaged,” she complained.

Perhaps it was when she struck the bear’s cheek, or the abuse she put it through while she cut branches and cleaned them, but the steel combat knife had nicks and small cracks along the back. She didn’t notice it at first, but it was impossible to miss now.

She carved a line on the trunk. There were twenty lines on the trunk now. Twenty days since she found herself on that sandbar. Well, given the condition of her knife, maybe she should refrain from using it on hard resinous bark. So what should she use then? Her Animus?

Hmmm. Well, why not? For that matter, if she could form a pen with her Animus, what else could she form with it?

Well, it wasn’t as if she had anything better to do.

Well, water, dinner, and wash up first. She had a stew going the entire afternoon. Jungle critter stew, some of those wild tubers that looked like potatoes but were softer and sweeter, and some safe mushrooms. She cobbled together a wash water container out of woven leaves and rope. She kept them covered now after an incident last week when she found wrigglers inside both of her water baskets.

After a rather pleasant dinner, she climbed up to the treehouse carrying a stick she intended to carve. Except she’ll use her Animus instead of her knife this time.

She began by creating the pattern for her Animus pen. However, when she touched it to the stick, the wood began to smoke and smoulder.

Right, she used heat Intent to make the pen. Well, what should she impart then? Sharpness?

It had to be tough, too, otherwise it might shatter if she put too much pressure on it. So sharp and durable. Yup.

She pulled out a strand from her core, carefully manoeuvring it around the pollution. She led it to her left hand and invested the ideal of sharpness into it.

What was sharp?

A wedge was narrower at one end. A knife or a sword had an edge used to cut. She drew out another strand. What was tough? Something that wouldn’t break.

She wove the two strands together and exuded it out of her fingertip. Then she pressed the tip against the wood. It penetrated the bark, and Yuriko smiled in triumph. Except when she tried to slice it just slipped out of the hole and skidded along the bark.

“Right, it’s just a point. It needs the blade.”

She drew her combat knife and studied the blade. The length, the thickness, and the shape. She looked at the hilt and the guard too. It would probably be easier to copy this than to build a blade from the ground up, right?

She steeped the weapon with Pure Animus to try and get an imprint. Well, she got something though, distilled Chaos. Chuckling to herself, she worked on shaping her Animus into a knife instead.

With her Anima strengthened threefold, it was vastly easier for her to control her Animus. Where before, her limit was seven strands, now she could simultaneously control ten. Well, it didn’t triple in number, but it also meant she could braid ten Intents together.

She worked on shaping a knife blade, but it wasn’t until a week later that she succeeded. Extending out of her forefinger was a three-inch blade. Aside from being pointy, it was sharp on both edges. Not quite lethal and it took nearly a third of her Animus reserves to make it. It also dissipated when she stopped concentrating on it, which meant she couldn’t use it in combat. Not easily anyway.

She was proud to have done something like it. She would take any victory she could. There were scant few otherwise.