Chapter 21

Lumberjack

I've been out here for about a month, and this morning, it isn't Kyuuga waiting outside my door for me, but Yorin.

I take one look at her and grin. "Time to head back to civilization, eh?"

She smiles warmly back, and I realize I've missed that smile, as simultaneously sincere and untrustworthy as it can be. "Is a third of a season not enough? Did you want the whole thing?"

"Nah, I've just about done all I intended," I reply and step out to join her on the porch.

I'd finally gotten too frustrated with how sloppy my first attempt at a cabin had been and dismantled the entire thing one morning. Then I redid it properly with a raised floor and a thought-out interior. It's furnished, too, with a full set of furniture and this deck-style porch. The fireplace is even inside now, though it required another general skill, Masonry.

Just the fireplace, though, and a couple other things that couldn't be done in wood. As tempted as I was to start redoing the walls, the cabin is still strictly intended to be a temporary structure. As is the adjoined shed. And the cart. I don't know if the well will have to be moved or not. I hope not, that was a lot of digging.

About the only thing that is definitely to remain is the driveway. Well, I think of it as my driveway. It's really like a road back into Dabun, with a couple of switchbacks in it to reduce the erosion a straight shot over that distance would cause.

"I should hope so," she answers with a note of sarcasm. "You disappear into the woods for a month straight without ever coming out until it is to connect a road you built in your free time. Remmi, you said you wanted to build a simple shelter to keep your things safe until you could afford something bigger. When I finally come to check on you, it is to find you have built an entire estate!"

"Aw, this is barely anything," I disagree as I put the plate of potatoes and onions down on a chairless table too short for any humanoid to comfortably use. "I just needed somewhere to stay while I got the essentials done. This cabin will be dismantled when it's time to build the actual house."

The priestess stares at the plate for a moment. "... Is it customary in your homeland to eat breakfast on the ground?"

"Oh, this isn't for me," I assure her, waving the question off as I head down the couple of steps to the actual ground. "I ate inside. I'll give you the tour when I head back in to grab my stuff. In the meantime, I'll show you around the grounds. I've got some chores to knock out, especially if this is the last time I do them for a while."

She follows after me, curious, at least, to see how everything has changed since she last saw it with the mayor. "What sort of chores?"

"Oh, nothing major," I promise. "Just gotta check the traps and shut them down."

"You have been living off of the land to avoid coming back to Dabun?"

I grin over my shoulder at her. "Essentially, but when you say it like that, it's bound to cause misunderstandings."

She gives me the mandatory reprimanding look, and I proceed to show off the edges of what I've cleared. I've even taken out all of the stumps of the trees I've cut down, and made it a point to transplant some grass. In a year, you won't be able to tell it wasn't all yard, I figure.

I make it a special point to show her the nearest oak trees I've made sure to include in that yard and ask after her familiarity with acorn flour. Yorin is actually surprised I'm familiar with it, as it's apparently much more of an elven thing here than a human one.

After that, it's on into the forest. I've laid out a proper walking path to the river, and along the way, we stop at what at first glance looks like a narrow, half-buried cask.

"It's good timing that you came today," I tell her as I pull the lid off. "It just so happens to be harvest day. Any sooner and it'd be a waste. Any later and I'd have already started another batch."

I use Identify as I look down into it. Yup, a whole quivering mass of angry slimes.

Yorin peers over the edge, too. "You built a slime trap?! Remmi, the environmental impact--"

"Farm," I correct her. "It's a slime farm." I pull out my pistol and motion to it for emphasis. "Normally, the first round's a paralysis bullet, stuns the lot of them. I pull a couple out and set them aside to repopulate it. The second bullet's lightning. Kills them all nice and quick. But if I'm not going to be back for a while ..."

I pull the slide back to eject the paralysis round and fire the next one in with practiced familiarity.

She just stares in shock. "Why?"

But I look back at her in confusion. "Because I don't have water purification out here." I pull the inner wooden filter up out of the cask, the incoherent fluids spilling harmlessly out onto the ground.

I continue to explain, "These aren't city slimes, either. They're wild and frankly have a nasty disposition. I can't keep them and I don't generate enough waste by myself to maintain any significant long-term population, anyway. So they do their thing and make sure I'm not polluting my surroundings, and I thin their numbers at regular intervals."

"I am familiar with the concept," Yorin corrects me. "But you are so nonchalant about it."

"Trust me, they're angry jelly balls of fury and rage," I assure her. "I deliberately only used aggressive ones that might have otherwise gone on to hurt somebody. And besides, I originally put this whole assembly together to farm points."

Now, she looks at me with a different kind of shock. "Points? Without trial?"

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I shrug it off. "I needed a lot of general skills to do all of this work, and just started out on the back foot overall since I have a whole life I didn't get credit for. Don't worry, I absolutely understand the importance of practical experience, I promise. In fact, buying skills made that clearer than ever. I just needed a source of points while I worked."

I turn over the filter to dump a small pile of iridescent stones onto a towel I laid out for the purpose. "Speaking of, I don't suppose you can tell me if these are good for anything? All Identify tells me is that they're minor-grade slime cores."

Yorin keeps her focus on me for a long moment, clearly trying to determine if I really understand the importance of not being a horrible heretic or something, but ultimately sighs.

"You think differently from anyone native to this world, Remmi. The way you see things is completely alien to so much that we value. I only wish for you to not fall to shortsightedness because of it, and maybe exercise a little more restraint in constantly reminding everyone of it."

She motions back up the trail, toward what I'm honestly still thinking of as a camp. "You were put into an environment on your own for a month, the whole time with friends within easy reach for anything you needed. Everyone thought you were going to do some amateur ground clearing and come back at least every couple of days for fresh food and companionship. Instead, you disappear completely, and you ... you ..."

I give a wry grin at her struggle to find words, suddenly aware of how it all must look to her. "... go full lumberjack?"

"YES!" Her emphatic response is nearly a shout. "Remmi, you said you wanted a simple shack!"

My grin wilts a little in apology as I scratch at my cheek. "That is a simple shack. Just with a little more in the way of creature comforts since I had to stay in it for so long. There was a lot more work to get this place prepped than I expected."

Yorin's arms are practically hurled back up the trail, only kept from flying off thanks to their physical attachment to her body. "You turned two acres of forest into a homestead, Remmi! In a month!"

I try to double down, but my words sound weak even to me. Did I really do too much? "It's really not that much ..."

"And a road, Remmi!"

"It's going to be necessary for any construction crews ..."

"The emphasis should be on crews," the priestess continues as I flinch away from her scolding. "Not a single level one teenager! This is my point! You have no sense of scale!"

"Sorry, I'm sorry," I plead as I hold my hands up in surrender. "I'll try to pace myself better in the future! It really didn't seem like that much while I was doing it. I just saw things I needed to do, and I did them!"

Yorin gives a few short pants as her rant catches up to her, her cheeks flushed red. Finally, she turns the pants into another long sigh and leans back from me. A moment later, she looks down at the stones and, far more levelly, answers my question.

"Slime cores are used for enchanting, alchemy and jewelry with aquatic themes. Since you have simply been killing them as quickly as they can spawn, however, these have not been given time to properly develop. You can sell them to a refiner, who can condense them down into something usable, but that is about the extent of their usefulness, and you will not get much."

I bundle the stones up in the towel and slip them into my bag. "Would they be worth more if I condensed them, myself?"

She wheels on me like I just swore. "Remmi, no! What did I just finish saying about scale?! There has to be a limit on how much you go around doing!" Another sigh, and she rubs her forehead. "Besides, the process requires specialized equipment that is cumbersome to transport. Unless you are a refiner as a profession, it is not worth the investment."

I shrug the idea off. She's probably right. Being a carpenter, lumberjack, monster farmer, mason, excavator and refiner might come across as a little much.

"Eh, I didn't really want to be a crafter, anyway," I conclude as I turn to make my way on down the trail. "Come on, I still need to get the fish lines in."

I spend the rest of the walk down to the river and back telling her all about my experiences and what I learned in the last month. As we come back onto the porch and I grab the plate back up without really looking at it, I conclude.

"So, yeah, turns out buying skills outright is basically just getting the education, not the experience. Which I'm guessing is why you freaked out about me hitting them so hard."

Yorin eyes the now-empty plate. "Remmi, are you feeding wild animals?"

"Just the one," I admit as I let her into the actual interior of the cabin. "Kyuuga loves it, but doesn't want to look like he appreciates me, so I leave it as a peace offering and he eats it while I'm out working."

The cabin is basically a studio apartment in size, so I laid it out like one. No dividing walls since there's no need for privacy when it's just me, and everything's made of wood or stone. There's a bed (I got the stuffing and blanket from town), a table with two chairs (just in case I did get company), a pantry, a wardrobe, a cooking fireplace, a sink and a tub. The last three are stone and rather stuck in place, and all three vent to the outside. The drains for the sink and tub have trap doors to keep the water in while I'm using them.

I've been pretty much planning to wrap up soon, so I have a good idea of what I'm going to pack, and after I get Yorin a cup of wild herbal tea, I set about doing just that.

"You are essentially correct about the issue with purchased skills," she says as she watches me work. "There are more than a few parables of Heroes who grew overconfident with them and lost to more seasoned warriors." She looks around at the cabin. "Still, the speed with which you seem to integrate that new knowledge is terrifying."

"It's probably because everything I've done, I have at least some basic knowledge about it," I suggest as I dig around in the cabinet. "The nice thing about my world is that it's very easy to end up knowing a little bit about everything, even if you don't necessarily have the training to really use it."

"... Which the System grants you when you purchase a new skill," she infers.

"Exactly. I still need to work at it, but at least I start with some sort of idea of how to get there."

I pull out a contraption and turn back toward her. "Here, check out what I've been fiddling with in my free time!"

Her immediate reaction is a raised eyebrow. "All of this, and you still have free time?"

I grin. "You were right, I don't need nearly as much sleep."

She rolls her eyes, but then they widen as I set the device in front of her. I don't need to tell her what the lettering along the side says. After all, I figured being able to fill out my own paperwork in this world is important enough to pick up the general language skill.

"Noodle Spitter," Yorin reads. "This is a repeating crossbow?" She turns to look at me in disbelief. "You took weapon smithing, too?!"

"Eh, since I knew what I wanted to do, I was honestly already eighty percent of the way there with carpentry. And it's really more of a proof of concept. The magazine uses springs from my own, and the gear assembly is carved from heartwood, so it's probably good for a shot or two, but it really needs steel."

I shrug at that, though. "But I don't have the Blacksmithing skill. No point without a forge. Or, y'know, iron. Or a mine."

Yorin stares at me hard. "You have been thinking a great deal about that."

"I think a lot about a whole bunch of stuff," I admit. "It passes the time, gives me new stuff to do."

"And if you did have access to a forge and the material, you would have purchased Blacksmithing as a general skill?"

"Sure, it would have been handy for a lot of things this last month."

The priestess sighs and sets her cup down. Her words are slow and measured, and I realize she's not nearly as pleased with my projects as I am. "I ... see. Remmi, creativity and youthful exuberance can ... certainly be virtues, and I understand that the Essence System and points and magic are all very new and fantastic to you, full of possibility and wonder.

"However, you risk both alienation and over-extension if you continue pursuing it the way you have this last month. I think it may be best if we cut back on the amount of time you spend ... unsupervised and left to your own devices."

I give an embarrassed grimace at those words, and I translate them to what they'd mean back home.

"I'm grounded ..."