An hour or so after midday on her second day in this world, Sylvia returned from her sixth visit to the forest that day. With each trip taking around fifteen minutes to get to and from the forest and some time being spent looking for things each time, the day quickly passed. But now she had collected some more food to last a couple more days, and enough leaves and grass to make a very simple and poor bedding. Some stones, including flint, of varying sizes had also been added to her collection of resources.
The materials for her knife were actually quite simple, just relatively thin, flat stone that thinned even more in one end, and then another couple stones to hit it with. “Time to go then, I’ll need some water for the sharpening. So, it’s time to return to the creek.” Unlike the earlier times where she was just trying her best in doing stuff for the first time based on knowledge from videos, this time she actually knew what to do.
As while she may not have the greatest experience in actually surviving in the wilderness without modern tools, it had always fascinated her, especially the part about toolmaking and weaving with plants, as they were things she could reasonably do as weekend projects and at home. She had of course learned how to make a fire, though that was with a flint and steel, but as she always carried a steel with her back on Earth, she had never practiced making one purely through wood more than a couple of times, which was why it challenged her so much yesterday.
Once she had grabbed a flat stone, she had brought home as one that seemed suitable for sharpening with, she remembered something she had decided yesterday and promptly changed back into Frank again. With everything gathered, he made his way over to the creek.
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Once Frank arrived at the creek, he found place to take a seat and placed the stones before him. To begin with, he placed the knife stone on one of the non-sharpening stones and began to slowly make it taper even more towards the edge by repeatedly striking it with another stone at specific spots, with the aim to knock off small pieces of stone. After somewhere between half an hour and an hour, he was finally satisfied with it, though it wasn’t exactly sharp or had the cleanest edge, it had now come time for the sharpening.
For doing that, he poured some of the creek’s water over the stone to wet it, before placing the knife stone’s edge onto the stone, and with controlled strength he pushed the stone forward. After a couple of strokes, he rotated the stone slightly to account for it not having a completely straight edge. When he had done around 20 strokes for the side, he flipped the stone and repeated the process on the other side, before flipping it again, and so on and so forth.
It took until the sun was approaching the horizon before Frank concluded that it was good enough for him to use. To test it throughout the sharpening, he had been using two pieces of wood he had found, one to cut into and one to use as a hammer to add force to the knife. With a satisfied sigh he took a moment to just look at it and appreciate his work, and granted, while it didn’t look like a normal knife, it was able to cut and would expand his options massively for future things to work on. “Hah… it felt good to make one of these again. And to think that it didn’t take longer to finish it; I would’ve guessed it’d take at least an hour more.” Moments after the words “finish it” had left his mouth, a system box popped up.
Created item: Stone Knife Name: Stone Knife
Rating: Beginner
Quality: Alright Strength: +1 An alright stone knife made by the beginner crafter Frank. It's called a knife despite looking more like a carving tool, and to really use it fully, an object to add power is required.
To say that Frank was surprised would’ve been the biggest understatement of the day; he was already unsure if items were even a thing in a system sense, but to think that even this kind of knife got recognized as an actual item. “Are you serious? Even this counts? I mean, it’s great and all, but… oh. I’m alone here.” The sheer surprise made him forget that he was alone for a couple seconds, but he quickly realized that he was alone and therefore shut up. Remembering that the sun was setting, he quickly got his things together and went back to the cave.
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As he now actually had some flint, he quickly agreed with himself that he’d rather not do the wood turning way of creating fire again. Instead, he took off the bark of one of the larger pieces of firewood to use as insulation from the ground, before putting some collected moss on that. With the prep set up, he grabbed a flint stone and a rock and began striking them against each other, like he would a flint and steel. It took a fair bit of luck to even get a usable spark, and they generally flew off in the wrong direction, so it ended up taking him a couple minutes before the spark lit a couple embers in the moss.
After some very careful blowing, he was able to place it over to a prepared bunch of dry grass, which, with some more careful blowing, was able to begin burning. Before his starter could burn out, he placed it into the prepared campfire setup and watched the slowly catch the wood and spread. Once the fire had caught on fairly well, he placed in some larger pieces of firewood, to make sure the fire would stay on for some time.
“Now that I have light, I should eat and then continue practicing magic” -he looked over at his bedding- “nature magic may be able to help in crafting things, so I think I’ll practice that.” And as such, only a quarter of the final carnip was left mere minutes afterwards. He then turned into Sylvia again, as she had both more MP and a better nature affinity. Unlike the night before where making the plants grow even the smallest amount knocked her out, this time, it took combining the two leaves together along their full edges to bring her to a similar point. Luckily for her, she was also conscious enough to fall asleep on the bedding.
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As she awoke the next morning, Sylvia’s mind wasn’t nearly as groggy and she quickly realized that she wasn’t as cold as yesterday, though the lack of cover still resulted in a fair loss of heat. She quickly got up and practically inhaled the last bit of carnip, before making her way over to the creek for something to drink. When she returned, she took a quick look at her food storage and decided that today was for working on an axe. But before that, she spent 36 of her mana on combining the leaf from yesterday with one of the other ones.
Frank, having already transformed back from Sylvia, grabbed the rock he had delegated as the axe head, the stick chosen to be the handle, his knife, and a rock and stick to use as hammers, and headed outside the cave to sit in the sunlight while working. Taking a seat on the grass, Frank found the spot between two knots that’d make him pick the stick in the first place. There, he used his knife to mark the outline of the axe head at where he wanted it to get stuck.
Then, he placed the knife on the wood and struck it with the hammer stick to begin carving out a hole, a process that continued for the next couple hours. Every once in a while, he used the axe head to see if he was staying inbounds. Normally, he would’ve started by smacking the rock with some other rocks to get the size he wanted, but he figured that he may this time be able to do that through his earth magic.
Once the hole seemed alright, he did one last test fit, which confirmed that it’d probably work out. With that done, he entered the cave and lit a fire, as he needed very hot embers for the next part. That was when he realized that he lacked any actual way to extract said embers safely, so he had to quickly put the next plan on the shelf to instead get something for that.
He ended up with the conclusion that making something similar to chopsticks from pebbles or small rocks would do the job. So, he took a quick look at his mana that had recovered to 31 and decided to remain as Frank. Then he grabbed one of the smaller rocks and placed a finger on it, and with the intent for the trailing rock to be straight and around one by one centimeter, he began pulling his finger away. As the finger moved away, the rock followed suit and maintained the shape he intended, at least for the around twenty centimeters he maintained the magic.
However, a quick look at his mana once this was over quickly informed Frank that setting multiple instructions for the rock to follow took a fair bit more mana, as despite practicing a good bit more since he discovered he could pull the rock, he had still used up 5 MP, which was already a lot faster than when he played around with it. “Guess I just need to practice more, and maybe do it a bit slower.” He sighed in annoyance and continued with the other one.
Less than a minute later, the other stick was extended, so he now had two twentyish cm sticks with clumps of rock at one end. “Time to make the grabby part.” He took a deep breath before continuing, having now changed his intent to push, but don’t change the stick. With that intent, he spent a bit of time to move the rock around, until he had a small disk connected tangentially to the stick. Now all that was left was to push the clump of all the excess rock off and move on to the next one. Once the two where done, he noticed that his MP was down to 6.
He sighed in relief that he could get it all done in one sitting. “Looks like I may need a bit of time to recover my mana before I do work on the head.” Despite that probably extending how long it’d take to get done, he didn’t really mind it all that much, as it’d be close to too late to use the axe for much of anything once it was done anyway. With the wood also needing to burn some more, he ate a couple apple looking things he had come across in the forest.
It was finally time to pull his plan from earlier back down from the shelf, so he went back outside to continue working on the handle, a process that simply making two opposite sides of the handle flat for a better grip, the two sides of course being the sides not touching the hole, as the grip would otherwise make the axe head face the completely wrong direction. Unlike when making the hole where he had to be careful of not breaking the sides of the hole, here it was a lot simpler and a lot faster to trim down the sides.
With that done, he went in to check on the fire, and it seemed ready as well, so he took the handle and the stone tongs and placed a red-hot ember in the hole to heat treat the wood, as this would make it a lot tougher and durable. After blowing on it to give it more oxygen, he threw the ember back into the fire and repeated the process on the other side. Once that was over, he now had a charred and strengthened hole for the axe head.
He then placed the head into the hole loosely, just to be sure of how to shape it. “To save on mana, I think I’ll cut it down with another rock first, then I’ll use magic to do the finishing works afterwards.” After putting some more fuel on the fire so it hopefully wouldn’t die out, he took the handle, axe head, hammer stick, a rock for hitting with, and some rocks of different sizes for sharpening, before heading back to where he made the knife yesterday.
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Through the smacking of stone on stone at specific spots, it didn’t take all that long before he had a good enough shape, as the final and precise parts would be handled with magic. The moving and removal of stone through magic didn’t take all that long, but the majority of his recovered MP was used to finish the shape. Now he just needed to do the sharpening, which he spent the next hour on, leaving him with fairly sharp axe and a setting sun.
With the axe head now done, all that was left was to insert it into the handle. To do that, he sat down, held the handle between his knees and placed the head into the hole, quickly ensuring that there was some free air on the sides of the head before he continued. For the next minute, the sound of him smacking the sharp end with the hammer stick, as the rock would’ve done too much damage on the axe head. After a quick look and test to confirm that there was air between the sides of the head and the stick and that it was firmly secured, he spoke out: “Done” and made a box pop up.
Created item: Stone Axe Name: Stone Axe
Rating: Beginner
Quality: Good Strength: +1
Endurance: +1 A good stone axe made by the crafter Frank. Through magic, the axe head was made to fit better than most beginners would be able to do with just a rock.
“YES!” He raised the axe above his head in joy. “I improved the quality, and it gives more stats.” A quick look at the sun reminded him of the time. “Oh right, I should probably get back home.” And home he went, after some gulps of water now that he was here. Back at home, the fire was still on, so he added some more fuel, ate, and used the rest of his mana on more practice.