Waking up once again, I go through my new morning routine - Cleaning myself, having breakfast, and changing clothes - before heading back outside. After the scare with the lair yesterday, I am thouroughly motivated to do whatever is needed to raise my strength high enough to resist it's threat. I suppose the first port of call is to make the shelter relatively resistant to attacks, so that it will be safe to sleep in when the dimensional shelter closes. I already have some ideas to help, however most are quite over-the-top and time consuming. However, before I can execute any of those ideas in the first place, the structure must be finished.

   I head back out into the forest and gather some more wood and vines, taking around 20 minutes. Not much wood is needed to finish the shelter now anyway, but I should have everything I need for it now. I quickly start assembling the last few parts, and secure it a bit more using the remaining vines. The next most important part is waterproofing, which luckily shouldn't be too hard in this forest. As it is a cross between a rainforest and a desiduous forest, there are plenty of trees with large, waxy leaves, like you would find in a rainforest. As a temporary measure, these should help stop water from leaking straight through and into the shelter, and so I start to try and collect those.

   After looking around for such a tree, I begin to climb it - one of the skills I had back on Earth. not only did I climb trees when I was younger, but I had been an avid climber for many years, at least until all this shit started. Once I reach the leafy parts of the tree, I use a dagger to cut down leaves, letting them fall to the ground. I spend a while up there, cutting down the lower layers of leaves, but before long I climb back down, gather them up, and take them back to the shelter. After all, I don't want to neccasairily kill the tree, just use it to waterproof my shelter. After all that, I had a stack of over a hundred leaves, each being around a square foot in area. Before collecting more, I decide to put these in place first, and so I slide the leaves between the vines and sticks, forming a lattice of leaves across the structure. Soon, I manage to cover one side of the shelter, but after that I only have a few leaves remaining.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

   I repeat the process, until I have covered the shelter. About halfway through I took a break for lunch, and now it is approximately 4pm. The shelter is pretty much finished now, all I need to do is try and make it less easy to destroy. With a good few hours left to work, I decide to attempt to do something to help. I cut down a thicker branch, cut a foot-long section from it using my daggers, then split it lengthwise. I use my daggers to flesh out the shovel-head shape with their extremely sharp edges, and carve out a crude hole for another stick to slot into, I cut one off a tree, and whittle it to shape, and withing half an hour I have made myself an incredibly shitty wooden shovel!

   I begin to dig a trench just outside the edge of the clearing, where underbrush will still conceal it. It is slow work with the crappy shovel and my utter lack of skill, but it is still much better than using my daggers or hands for such a job. I toss the excavated dirt into the clearing, and after a few hours of work I have a foot-deep trench about three-quarters around the clearing, and a large pile of dirt. I left the side facing away from the lair undug, as I after all want a safe place to walk once I finish digging out the trench for any upcoming attack.

   Thinking about the lair as well as the trench,  I decide to attempt to use the dirt to reinforce the walls of the shelter. After all, if it works for the monsters, why can't it work for me? I pile up the dirt around the base, and pack it tight, before building up the dirt around the shelter to almost form a mound. Of course, I don't have nearly enough to cover the shelter yet, but already it would be harder to dislodge the structure of the shelter than before. I also try and build it so that the dirt does not rest on the shelter itself, but more on the dirt beneath it, so it does not strain and break the structure under it's own weight. 

   By now, it's getting dark, so I head inside. Tomorrow I will probably distribute my remaining stat points, and also should finish the shelter. After that, all I can do is raise my own personal strength to try and resist any attack the lair throws at me, but who knows if what I've done will even be enough? I suppose faith is all we have when it comes to this. 

   And so, after a quick meal of cold, badly grilled meat, I go to sleep, ready for the next day.