The morning greeted him with fluffy reddish clouds in his windowed sky. The breeze that had blown nearly constantly had slackened, leaving the temperature mild and the canopy, for once, still. Ulric was busying himself hauling water from his pool into the tanning pit. Things were going well, the basket was holding up, only a minor drip from the bottom. He'd need at least twenty trips to get enough water, estimating his basket at around five liters. The "pit" wasn't so deep, more a shallow crack about five meters long by a couple meters wide. But it would be just big enough to hold the hide submerged, once filled.
After completing the water transfer, which had not observably diminished his rock pool, a sign that it was, indeed, a spring, he lunched. Grilled Giga-bear was as good a second time as a first. Smoker was re-smoked. Now he spent a tedious few hours scraping the flesh from the hide. His progress was relatively swift, his athletic form moving easily despite the awkward positions hunched over, working arms and shoulders and core vigorously as he scraped.
Were it not for the lurking knowledge that he was potentially going to have to encounter more creatures like the one he was working on he'd be happy.
"No." Ulric paused as he said it. That was a shit attitude. He was doing well. Things that needed doing were getting done, to the best of his ability. He was full, he was dry, he was warm. He was bare-assed naked in the middle of the most wonderous grove of trees he'd ever laid eyes on and, he was, godsdamnit, happy about it.
Magic might still be a mystery, but it had taught him one thing: Your will was all. If you want happy, be happy. Things didn't have to be perfect to be good enough. He wasn't living his old life, beholden to the opinions or expectations of people he didn't give a damn about and worrying that he'd, somehow, failed at being a person. All that mattered was that he was living as he felt was right. That he was doing as he felt was best.
"Never again. Never will I ever trap myself beneath the weight of another's will again or drive myself into a corner from fear." Ulric swore, the ancient grove witnessed.
Thus fortified, the work continued. The scraped hide was immersed in a fresh brain puree soup. It should soak for another couple of days. Then it would need to be stretched. He wouldn't even need to build a frame, just make some stakes and nail it to the fallen tree trunk to dry.
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Dark saw Ulric returned to his shelter. He'd remembered a documentary on Vietnamese rice farmers, particularly their large baskets hung from opposite ends of a pole. That would be the trick for hauling materials around. It meant a hell of a lot of weaving. Which was fine, he had the time. The low flame crackled while he made larger basket frames. Barrel shaped, half a meter in diameter by a meter deep, these would let him forage even bulky materials without overloading himself.
He worked long into the night, absorbed by the task and feeling none of the exhaustion that had plagued him during the mana sickness. It would seem his body had acclimated, the push of mana through it having stabilized it. The status had said his core was tempered. It sounded about right. He felt reinforced. A quick status check found his core saturated and the slight soul bonus was back. This weaving was a nice way to keep his hands busy, freeing his mind to engage in its favorite activity: wandering, at seeming random, through the various paths in and around the events that had recently occurred. He took up and then, without obvious connection, transitioned between at least five different trains of thought. Magic. Tools to improve his condition. Possible confrontations with the fauna of this land. Clothing design patterns and half-remembered sewing patterns. Climbing down the escarpment. Magic. And on, and on.
Sunrise caught him by absolute surprise. Ulric had woven through the night in near trance. He'd never felt even a hint of tiredness.
"Huh, guess peak human is pretty amazing." he said. He remembered being able to do this in his twenties, just grind through for thirty hours. It had been almost twenty years since he'd been able to do it though, and completely unimaginable in those last few.
The baskets were finished. A vine loop handle tied to the top of the frame would allow the baskets to be supported by a pole. He'd be able to forage hardcore now. Maybe some digging would allow him to find clay. Maybe firing some of the rocks would lead to the potential for a Roman concrete mix. It was probably time to start investigating magic with more emphasis.
Ulric was aware that he was experiencing a strangely accelerated but clear thought process but decided to let it run its course while he completed camp chores, harvesting more wood, removing smoked meat and reloading the smoker meat pile barely diminished-he dismissed immediately thoughts of it spoiling he was doing as much as he could, and the Forest Lord hide was stirred.
He finally stopped for a rest as the suns rose just into his canopy window. Blue skies. Thin whispy clouds. The first of their kind he'd seen since arriving at this place, it heralded weather. The wind had resumed, a stronger bite to it than on previous days. As he chewed on a meal of roasted meat and the various tubers he'd tested previously, wrapped in a leaf and buried in coals, Ulric was nearly certain that this season marked the heart of Autumn. Things were going to get cold. The leaves would drop and that would be a hell of a mess if this forest floor leaf litter was any indication.
Ulric smiled. He felt immense gratitude towards the Watcher that had pulled his dying soul from the embers of its previous life and breathed it to life in this wondrous forest. Finally. He was content with the turning of the world.
Those calm few minutes were not wasted, basking in his presence in this world. But. There were things that needed doing so he rose to resume getting them done.