I really enjoyed walking through the woods. My growing “Attentiveness” ability made it possible to see many things that I had never noticed before. Observing more closely, I could see insects and all sorts of interesting grasses and flowers. I picked some of them, studying their properties, and I even tried to taste some of them. I didn’t come across anything special until I found the “Little Dark Blue Bloom”, and the Moon Flower exhibited strange behavior: if I understood correctly, it was trying to persuade me not to throw the bloom away. So far the properties of this particular flower were unknown to me, so I trusted in the opinion of my lunar partner and decided to collect more of the Dark Blue Blooms. After putting the blooms in my bag, I had the sensation that I had accomplished something very important.

Your “Intuition” ability has increased: +2% (4%).

That was strange. Last time my Intuition had increased by one percent, but this time it was two. I decided to keep this in mind, and I continued to search for the Blue Blooms.

Today I had decided to take a different approach to my movement through the forest. I decided to absorb what was useful. Simultaneously I combined “Easy step” and “Quiet step”, and every thousand steps I referred to my “Internal Body Clock”. After a little more experimentation, I hung bundles of different colored grasses over my body and camouflaged myself with leaves that gave off a strong scent. All this gave me a permanent bonus of +25% for camouflage, and that’s how I moved through the forest.

The level of my agilities gradually increased, which slightly brightened the monotony of the forest. Suddenly I felt a searing pain, my leg buckled, but miraculously, I managed to catch the trunk of a nearby tree and avoid falling into the bushes. My life points immediately dropped from 110 to 47. At the same time I could see nothing around me that could be responsible for such a powerful blow at a stroke. I looked at my leg: part of my trousers looked like they had been cut with a razor, and there was cut on my leg about 10 centimeters long. Looking back, I saw a plant that looked like a liana, a type of woody tree vine, with a 2-3 cm wide trunk. I tore off a piece, and looked up the name: “Dikovlisiya”. From the description the only properties of the plant that I could ascertain were that it was used in alchemy and herbalism. I bandaged the wound, hoping that the plant would heal and not poison me, or in the worst case it would make no difference to the wound either way. The bleeding stopped, but there was no discernible impact on my health.

To replenish my life points, before looking for the root cause of the problem, my much loved body indicated a desire to be fed. So I ate a whole yellow fruit, which raised my life level to 63 points, and also raised my satisfaction level to 89%. Of course, a standard bonus was added to my level of Fatigue.

“Well, what do we have here?” I carefully parted the leaves of the bushes. Imagine my surprise when I saw a flower, incredibly similar to an iris. Looking closer, I was able to read the name: “Slicing Iris”. The creators of this world shared a strange sense of humor. The leaf resembled the blade of a sword, and my blood still lay upon it, but the plant was sucking in my blood, drop by drop, right before my eyes. The red flower changed its shade to a bright scarlet.

“Oh, you're a bleep, damn, what's going on here! This sign of friendship and chastity has just pumped out more than half my life force for the sake of preserving its color!”

It is not in my nature to leave bloodsuckers unpunished, by the way. Not a single mosquito has escaped my righteous anger. I began to look around in search of a means to educate this beautiful flower. The search took 20-30 minutes, but in the end I found a stone the size of my palm with a rather sharp edge on one side. Not the best option, but, as they say, you have to work with what you’ve got.

My next task was to protect my hands somehow, and using cloth was clearly not an option, as I had already seen what this plant had done to my trousers. Basically, my thought was that if there are plants around that can cut then there must be other plants that are impervious to being cut. So I came up with an idea, and keeping that in mind, I proceeded to systematically study all of the flowers and plants in the surrounding area. As a result, I came across another dozen such plants, but since I knew what exactly what I was looking for and understanding how the plants behaved, it was quite easy to avoid getting cut again. I wandered around for about an hour and a half, or maybe two, and then I discovered an emerald green moss.

“Riccardia” - this species is resistant to piercing-cutting action, and is used in alchemy.

I also stripped down to the last leaf a dwarf tree with the strange name of “Robacha”. To my delight, and to my great regret for the tree, because the leaves of this tree were very pleasant to the touch. However, in its description it was listed as being a plant that “it wasn’t possible to strip the leaves from”. I had just torn off two more leaves from the poor old Dikovlisiya plant.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

My new task was to do something with the plant materials that I had collected, namely, to protect my hands. I covered my left hand with moss, and with my saliva I stuck the leaves from the dwarf tree over it, and, and wrapped all this ugliness with Dikovlisiya leaves. It turned out quite well, although my hand couldn’t grip so well afterwards. Whatever, it would be of little concern when it came to teaching that nasty plant a lesson. I did the same thing with my right hand.

You have created a pair of Cumbersome Forester's Gloves.

You have attained the “Craftsman” agility: +1 (1).

I wondered what kind of gloves had I made?

Cumbersome Forester's Gloves: protection level 15, protection from stabbing injury 15%, protection against cutting injury 15%.

Not what I had expected, but better than nothing. Time to commence my retribution! I parted the bushes, carefully grabbed the leaf that had cut me (it was easy to recognize, as it had a slightly brighter color and there was still a small drip of blood on it). I took out the stone and began to cut it: I did it quickly, trying not to pay attention to the pain in my hand. The flower did not want to part with its leaf, so it tried to twist the leaf in my hand to cause as much damage as possible. My life points depleted with incredible speed, and even the gloves did not help much. At the time that my life points had already fallen into the red sector and showed less than 20 points, I quickly jumped away from the plant and ate some yellow fruit. This time the fruit gave me as much as 57 life points, and I continued cutting the plant as fast as possible.

I had to eat eight more fruits before I finally managed to tear off the leaf at the stalk. I held an 80 centimeter long leaf in my hand on a thick stalk of around 15 centimeters in length, which looked badly damaged, but that didn’t affect my good mood in any way. I could honestly say that it was my first combat trophy in the game. It didn’t matter that my opponent was merely a flower; the damage done to the plant was pretty substantial. So, even if I hadn’t actually destroyed the plant, it was still a trophy. The gloves had withstood the test. They had small cuts here and there, but since the parameters for quality control in this world were nonexistent, they were still serviceable.

“What if I were to ...” The mechanism of data analysis kick started in my mind.

“Why didn’t I think about this before? Any fool could figure things out from such a big hint! Why didn’t I work it out earlier? I practically had a ready-made weapon in my hands. I already had all the technology that I needed to do this again: moss, the stalk, and the leaves stripped from the tree ...”

“Forgive me, honestly, I didn’t do this on purpose,” I prayed mentally. “Well, actually I did mean it, but there was no alternative.”

I felt some emotion inside briefly, but it disappeared in an instant. I didn’t pay any special attention to this, as I fastened a Dikovlisiya leaf around the stem of the new weapon I had made.

You have created a “Leaf Sword” with a cutting damage of 25-40 points, a 10% chance to inflict a bleeding wound of 10-20 points of damage per second for 5 seconds, additional properties (unavailable).

“The Craftsman” ability: +1 (2).

You have received the “Item Identification” agility: +1 (1).

I felt lifted. I did not expect things to work out so well, but why was so much information unavailable to me? Of course, I understood that I had very little knowledge and little agility so far, but I still found this annoying! I felt like I was nothing more than a bewildered hedgehog wandering around in the fog.

I never stay upset for long. My “internal body clock”, which had increased to 14 points today, informed me that it was already evening, which of course I knew myself, because the sun was going down and the forest was very quickly becoming impenetrable. I quickly paid a visit to a clump of my favorite “burdocks” to create a new bed. I still hadn’t found out their official name or purpose, which aroused my curiosity. I collected enough for my needs, and went over to a tree I had already chosen.

After building another rough bed, I received +1% to the “Scout” agility (2%) and, having settled down comfortably in bed, I began to review the increase in my abilities and agilities for the day. My “Herbalist” ability had increased to 68%, my “Intuition” had somehow managed to increase by as much as 3% and now was 7%, “Easy step” and “Silent step” had climbed 10 points and reached 13 points and 10% respectively. The “Camouflage” agility had increased to 7 points, However there was almost no change in my other abilities: “Strength” was 9 points, “Agility” 11points, and “Stamina” had risen to 14 points. All of this was down to sawing off the leaf from that flower. Even my “Attentiveness” had only increased by 2 points, reaching 14 points, and this despite the fact that I had focused on almost everything.

Having decided to get some good rest, and hopefully get up early in the morning, I immediately fell asleep.