Considering the dust cloud that the simple act of opening the shed produced, it was pretty obvious that it had been a long time since anyone had been in here.

And considering the overall chaos, it had been even longer since anyone had cleaned up. It was not a big surprise after thinking about it. The kind of tools you would need a shed for, are the kind of tools you normally don't need when you live in an apartment.

Already I could see two potential additions to my arsenal.

The first one was a sledgehammer with a long handle. The kind you could only swing with two hands. Lifting it up, I realize that it was actually even heavier than I had first thought, the head weighing at least eight kilograms.

After I got a good feel for the weight, I highly doubted that I could get more than one good swing in. If the first missed, the recovery time would be far too long and my opponent would have more than enough time to get an attack in. If I was unlucky, a single attack would be enough to end me. On the flip side, if I managed to land the hit, I highly doubted that even a defensive skill would be able to completely protect them.

The other weapon I had my eyes on, was an old ax. Or to be more precise an old ax head. It was a little rusty, and probably had long lost its edge, but it shouldn't be hard to sharpen it with the tools in here. The bigger problem was that it was missing its handle, it took me a while to find it in the chaos on the shelf, broken.

In the meantime, I also found an assortment of other potentially useful things that I threw into my pocket dimension. After seeing this place, I highly doubted that anyone would even realize if anything disappeared.

When I left the shed about an hour later, my pocket dimension contained a good number of nails and screws of various different sizes, a hammer, several screwdrivers, a saw, clamps, and an old broomstick.

At this point, the sun had already passed the zenith of its path and I was starting to get hungry. And if I wanted to prepare even further, I would have to visit a hardware store.

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It would hurt my wallet quite a bit if I wanted to get everything I had thought about, but I had quite a bit saved up for harder times, and I didn't even know if I would still be able to use the money if I got "eliminated". If these weren't hard times, I didn't know what was.

Two hours later, I sat in a small forest, materials and tools spread out in front of me. There were quite a few things I wanted to try out, but the only space large enough at home would have been the garden. But there I couldn't use my Skills. I didn't know if it was because someone was looking at the moment I tried it or I was simply too exposed in general, but my Skills were restricted there.

It was the first time that I realized that it can be surprisingly hard to find a large space where you still have privacy. In the end, I had to come to this forest.

For now, there were two things I wanted to build to complete my basic weaponry. A shield and a spear, both easy to make, very effective, and most of all, easy to use. Together with the sledgehammer and the hatchet I bought at the store, they would make for a good combination for most situations.

The shield wasn't very hard to make. Cobbling together some wooden planks and putting a grip on it was enough. It might not look very beautiful nor be in any traditional shield shape, but as long as it could protect me from some dangers, it was enough.

Of course, I didn't make only one. While I made one that was large enough to hide my whole body, it had the disadvantage that it didn't fit through the portal. Either way, I had planned to try and take it with me by holding it when I went to sleep.

The second shield was smaller, small enough at least that it fit through the portal.

To make the spear was a little harder. Of course, I could have just used a sharpened stick, but that wasn't enough in my opinion. If my next opponent prepared themselves as well, that might not be enough.

Taking out one of the knives, I started to work on it. It took some time, but when I finally managed to take the plastic grip coverings off, all that was left was the blade attached to a long piece of metal with two holes along its length. Next, I took out the broomstick. Using a saw to cut a long slit into one end, I inserted the long metal piece at the knife handle and hammered a nail through each of the holes. To finish it off, I wrapped the end in several tight layers of tape until the knife stopped moving.

It was already 5 pm at that point, and I had precious little time left. Barely three hours to get acquainted with my new arsenal before I had to go home and sleep.

Of course, I could have tried to stay awake longer, but to be honest, I was simply too scared. I knew myself good enough to tell that staying awake longer would quickly turn into an allnighter, and who knows, maybe the system would just count that as my loss.

There were simply too many things I didn't know about, and I couldn't even talk about it without looking like I went crazy. After all, I couldn't prove it. Who knows, since there is a restriction that prevents me from using Skills, maybe there is even some kind of penalty if I decided to talk about it.