Sylvia’s sixth day went quite quickly with nothing particularly special happening, at least besides her injury having recovered. She chopped down multiple trees, though each with a diameter of around seven to eight centimeters instead of the 15 of the previous trees. Not counting the smaller size, the increase in her strength helped out a lot, both in felling and carrying them.
At the end of the day, she had gathered twelve trees to trim and use making stuff, in addition, she had gathered a good chunk of fronds to use for making baskets, multiple tall but thin and flexible cane plants she could split up and use as pseudo rope, along with some other plants she could split up to use for other weaving work. For her magic practice, she made some stone canisters to hold water and went to fill them. Each one could hold around seven liters and when full, each weighed a bit over ten kg, so she filled four of them in two trips.
She also made a simple frame to support a pot for cooking, a cooking pot, a bowl, and two spoons, one for cooking and one for eating, all through her earth magic. The bunniv was then put to use, as she did her best to cut it up and add some of it into the stew, along with some vegetables. While it was far from the best she had ever had, eating an actually cooked meal for the first time in six days felt great. All the crafting and mana training was done as Frank, but as he had some mana left over at the end of the day, he ended the day as Sylvia anyway, to use as much as possible on a couple pathway extensions, of which she finished two, her right thumb and middle finger.
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The seventh day was a Frank day, which meant it was time to trim the thirteen trees, so that the canopies wouldn’t get in the way with crafting. So, while some of the stew was heating back up, he went out and got two trees trimmed. Over the next three hours after breakfast, the eleven other trees got trimmed enough for his uses.
Despite not really wanting to craft things mainly with magic when avoidable, Frank still decided to use mana for the next thing, as he’d otherwise be in need of rope, which he wanted to make even less, and he’d rather save to-be rope substitute plants for the baskets. He began the craft with shortening two of the logs down to around two meters, after which he made two hole on either side of the cave entrance, a meter’s distance outwards. There, he placed one long in the first hole and tilted it, so it hit the wall, where he used earth magic to carve a hole into the cliff for the log to fall down in. He repeated the process on the other side.
Now that he had a general idea on where to place the next part, he quickly made a mark on each log, at the end closest to the entrance. Then, he took the logs back down and began to carve half cylinders into each, the size of which he checked with a third log. When each hole was good, he placed the logs back in place and laid the third log into the grove he’d made, which kept it at around the top point of the entrance.
As the finishing part of the structure, he used nature magic to make the three logs bind together and had the cliffside close back up to hold them in place. With that done, he founds the largest fronds he had and at their base, attached them to the middle log through magic, making them hang down to create a door like effect. The purpose of this construction wasn’t for private life, but instead a small hope that it’d at least make it slightly easier to warm up the room.
With the sun only fairly recently having passed its highpoint, Frank still had the majority of the day left, so he decided to begin making a basket. First of all, he grabbed a good chunk of the canes he had found and split them into multiple thin strands. Then, he took a good amount of fronds and removed their leaves, before roughly sorting them based on length.
Now, he was able to begin the process, so he took a number of longer leaves and bunched them together, which he used as a base to wrap a cane strip around. When he reached the end of the leaves, he coiled the leaves up and connected that end to the point he had started from. From there, he continued wrapping the strip around the frond, with every third wrap reaching into the coil one layer in, which made it possible for it to keep its spiral structure.
Whenever he was reaching the end of the fronds, he’d simply add a new bunch to the end and continue the wrapping. The same was the case whenever the strip ran out, as a simple wrap or two of the old one above the new would keep the new one in place.
By evening, he had made a disk with a diameter close to his shoulder span, and as the sun was close to gone, he had raised the wall by around twenty centimeters. After he had made a couple rounds around, he had switched from leaves to full fronds, which meant less time was spent adding new fronds.
With the last light quickly disappearing, he ended his work for the day and went back inside to get some food. While the day had been moving along, he had really appreciated having a stew he could warm portions off relatively easily. “Tomorrow I’ll finish the basket, and then it’s hunting time. I want to increase my level. Though for now it’s magic time.”
For the day’s practice, he dug out a good couple of sizable rocks, and began to mold them into jars and other stuff for storage. Of the random berries and other small things, he’d collected yesterday, he sorted them into each jar for better storage. At one point while practicing, he tried to make use of the pathway he’d made as Sylvia, but there was nothing.
Slightly concerned that he’d lost it, he quickly turned into Sylvia and confirmed that it was still there before turning back. “Hmm. It appears that the pathways are exclusive to the form I had when making them, so I should probably focus mainly on this form. Though I’ll start with finishing off my project as Sylvia.” After quick turning into Sylvia and making the pathways for her ring and pinkie fingers, she turned back into Frank. Before heading to bed, he worked on a path to his index finger and got halfway across the collarbone.
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The next morning went with first getting the pathway a bit further than the elbow and ended with finishing the basket. To make it easier to carry around, he used quite a few strips to make two shoulder straps, though instead of binding the loops together with other strips, he used magic for added strength. Now it was time for hunting, but just in case he found something good, he put on the basket backpack, turned into Sylvia, grabbed the spear, and went into the forest.
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Unlike all the other times where she had mostly stayed in the outskirts of the forest, this time she followed the creek further in than ever before. As she walked, she saw multiple prey animals, but every single time, they ran away and disappeared into the forest before she could do anything. At one point when she found a smaller patch of carnips, she picked up four of them and placed them in the basket, before continuing her journey.
Finally, after walking for two hours, she spotted something that didn’t immediately run away. Before Sylvia stood some of the ugliest living things she had ever seen; with dark green skin, a hunched back, next to no visible muscles, long and pointed ears that faced away from its head, and vomit green eyes, the creatures she presumed to be a goblin continued their talk.
Armed with the knowledge that the forest housed creatures like this, she swore to herself to always stay on guard in here, as she knew enough stories where an encounter between goblins and humanoid females could end up really traumatizing. However, she also knew that she had to level up, which currently led her to the path of killing living beings, and if she had to choose, she’d rather clean up goblins than animals that just minded their own business.
As stealthily as she could, she sneaked up behind the goblins to surprise them from behind, and to her relief, it worked out quite well. With a couple quick steps, she was behind one and thrusted her spear right into its back, which, despite her absolute lack of training with a spear, was more than enough to make the guy scream out and fall forwards.
Since its companion screamed right by its side, the other one was already in the middle of both turning around and raising its club, by the time Sylvia had pulled her spear out. When she saw what looked like a lecherous look on its face, she immediately stepped towards it and stabbed at the bastard’s chest. This time, her stab went directly into its heart, making its expression twist into fear as it screamed out.
With both goblins now lying on the ground, rapidly dying, she swiftly stabbed her spear down at each of their necks. Though with the much smaller target this time, it took a good couple tries before she hit and broke their necks, due to her nonexistent training.
Killed Goblin lv. 8. Gained exp
Killed Goblin lv. 9. Gained exp
Leveled up Gained: 1 strength, 2 vitality, 2 endurance, 2 mana, 2 wisdom, and 1 perception.
Neither wanting anything to do with the corpses or any potential backup, she quickly headed back up the creek for a bit, before taking a break. “And to think that I had the option of making a goblin form, absolutely vile.” Even though it wasn’t much, the blood on her spear stank a surprising amount. In an effort to try to get it off, she lowered the spearhead into the creek and shook it around, which sadly only lessened the smell.
“Geez, I hope there’s some civilization and that they know how to remove that foul odor. Though now I may as well try to find more to hunt, it does seem fairly beneficial to level up after all.” Thanks to the level up, she had reached 720 MP, which brought her increasingly close to 1000, which seemed like a good thing to her.
The place where she had killed the goblins seemed untouched, so she decided to cautiously venture further in, and at the least sign of major danger, she’d make her way out and go home to train.
Sadly for Sylvia, when the next encounter came, she wasn’t exactly as lucky as with the first one. This time, the three goblins saw her and immediately went on the offensive. Taking a look at the state of their weapons, which seemed to just be clubs, and combining that with how quickly the earlier two fell, she stood her ground, possibly a bit overconfident in her own ability to deal with them.
When the three came within her reach, she made a quick stab at the middle one, which quickly turned out to have been a possible mistake. Granted, the stabbed one fell, but the other two had in the meantime gotten too close for comfort, and relatively in sync, they swung their clubs at her waist. Thankfully, she was able to recognize the danger quickly enough to step back and barely avoid the clubs.
With the goblins more focused on stopping their clubs from hitting each other due to momentum, she took the opportunity to take a stab at the leftmost goblin; a stab that barely hit the side of the goblin’s chest and only left a small wound, though the screech from the creature could make one think it had been killed.
While the attack itself hadn’t done much damage, the spear was now in a position for her to just twist her body as much as possible and just slam it into the goblin, which was enough to make it stumble into its partner. That stumble and following confusion was enough for her to step in and finish the deed. Now that there was only one goblin left, it all seemed a lot more manageable, and thanks to parrying a single of its swings, she gained enough of an opening to go in and end it.
Like before, the notifications popped up, though no level up this time. “Damn, I really hoped for another level up.” She sat the bottom of her spear against the ground and leaned against it. “This is enough hunting for today, even just fighting these were pushing my skills. Time to head back and spend the rest of the day practicing.”
After getting a bit away from the corpses, she realized that the smell was still quite powerful, even compared to after she had killed the first two. A quick look down at herself made it obvious that stepping close had caused some blood to spray unto her. Even though the creek wasn’t more than half an hour away, she tried to think of a way to get it off even quicker; she did not want it to dry out and stain her only clothes.
Then she remembered something she had completely forgotten about. She was an elf, and the status had mentioned a minor water affinity. Despite having not practiced this magic before, she figured that her general magic experience and larger mana pool would make what she wanted possible.
Sylvia held her right hand out with closed eyes and focused, trying to imagine the water scattered in the air gathering at her fingertips. Not long after, she felt her mana move through her pathway and water beginning to form at her fingers. Though it drained her mana quite rapidly, she continued until she estimated there to a deciliter.
Then, she stopped gathering more and instead moved the water over to the stained spots, and with the inspiration of a bubbly whirlpool in a sink full of soap where the plug had just been pulled, she pushed the water into the clothes. As the water swirled around, she noticed the smell slowly decrease, but also that her mana decreased far quicker.
When she had finished with her clothes, she gave her spear a try, which actually seemed to work fairly well. To see if it saved on mana, she tried once without imagining the bubbles and soap effect, and while mana was saved, it was also clear that the effect was far worse, so she ended up using that method anyway.
Getting rid of most of the smell lightened her mood to a degree that surprised herself, but she assumed that the smell had just been subconsciously annoying her. With another good bit of mana, she formed around the same amount of water, but this time it went straight into her mouth, and to her surprise, it tasted better than the creek water. This meant that she now had a way to both practice water magic and getting drinking water at once, granted that drinking magically made water was actually safe in the long run.