When Frank finally awoke, the sun had already climbed quite a distance, but he was not particularly refreshed. His attempt to get up soon informed him of why, as pain spiked through his right thigh. “Ugh. For fuck’s sake, why does it hurt so much?” At about the same time as he asked that, his still waking mind finally caught up with him. “Right… I was an overconfident idiot yesterday. Note to self, don’t forget that it’s a forest with wild animals; it isn’t like home.”

  Now reminded of yesterday, he rolled up the pant leg to inspect the bite wounds. The burned areas had vanished yesterday, instead leaving deep, red ulcers in their wake that were now full of granulation tissue. The skin around them had the shine and light pinkish color of fresh skin, and appeared almost taut, as if pulling the entire area to close the wound.

  “Damn… that looks far better than it has any right to this soon,” the smile was audible in his voice as he spoke. “But that does not make it hurt any less.”

  Then he recalled not hearing the System when he fell asleep and the mood dropped as soon as it had risen. “To think I didn’t even get a Level or two in [Survivor] for surviving that ordeal, what an actual scam.”

  Having not noticed how hungry he was, the reminder from his stomach was the motivation he needed. So, he shook his head clear of the absurdity of the situation and pulled himself up using the massive root that had been his backrest.

  To his great surprise, Frank barely needed any effort to get up, at least compared to what he’d expected. It was as if his strength had suddenly increased significantly. Having been unprepared for how fast it went, he was immediately off balance when he got up, and his instincts to support with both legs made pain shoot through his wound.

  Mentally prepared for his leg to buckle and the pain that would follow, he actually found himself a little stunned when it didn’t happen. Instead, he just stood there as the pain slowly receded. “Huh… I think that amount of unexpected pain would’ve usually made me fall. Weird…”

  He shook his head to refocus. “Regardless of that, what the actual fuck just happened?” Frank grabbed the root and tried to pull himself up. Despite not putting in too much effort, he almost stumbled as he had to switch to standing on the balls of his feet. “On second thought, I definitely got something from yesterday,” Looking inward with a focus on his Classes brought up [Survivor] Level 6 and [Warrior] Level 2. “Alrighty, that’s more like it! It must’ve been when the pain knocked me out.”

  Of the Skills, the most immediately interesting ones were [Lesser Strength], [Lesser Constitution], and [Lesser Resistance: Pain]. Inspecting them individually, they all felt most similar to his Basic Skills, but these were active even right now while he wasn’t doing anything.

  “I suppose that’s where the increased strength came from. I’ll have to test the extent of the improvement later. Strength seems pretty self-explanatory, but what constitutes Constitution in this System? And what about Pain Resistance? I certainly felt the pain just before,” The wound continued to thump painfully from all of the movement as if to prove a point. “And now for that matter.

  “But I suppose that my leg didn’t give in before, maybe that’s the effect? But would that be Tolerance or Resistance. Actually, is there even a difference in the System?” His stomach’s growl brought his mind back to the actual matter at hand, food. “Right. No matter how fun pointless speculation is, it does not put food on the table.”

  The trip to the Tree of Life was expectedly painful, but result was well worth it. The wolf carcass was right where he left it yesterday, but he did spot a few worms and other insects in it. “Eh, it could’ve been worse. Besides, with the heat this meat needs, I don’t think parasites from the insects are much of a worry.” With a sigh at the extra bugs added to his plate, he dragged the carcass back.

  It was only while the meat cooked that he remembered the other wound inflicted by the wolf. A quick look beneath his makeshift bandage confirmed his suspicions that the claw marks had mostly healed; he hadn’t felt any pain from them through the trek.

  During the lengthy cooking, he checked on the cups from a few days ago, which should by now have cooled properly. The extra wait proved worth it, as all three cups had survived the firing. Unwilling to repeat yesterday’s rushed mistake with the buried pots, Frank chose to let them cool more.

  Instead, he tied his five cups together with some cordage and brought them down to the creek. The trip was about half the time of yesterday and far less painful. Once there, he gathered what he needed and started a fire with [Spark]. While he finished up the axe head, he intended to boil and drink enough water to get him through today, then he would hopefully bring a pot tomorrow.

  Pulling the axe head out of one of his pouches, his hand slowed. ‘Hold on, I need to test something,’ After putting the rock aside, he freed the pouch from his belt before submerging it in the creek. Low and behold, no water leaked when he pulled it out. His free hand soon found his head in defeat as a low laughter escaped him. “Great job Frank. You made a sketchy as fuck bowl out of bark before thinking to test actual pouches. What a genius.” He couldn’t help but give himself a slow clap at that.

  After giving himself a moment to get over it, he got on with the grinding and boiling; he didn’t feel like beating himself over such an ultimately inconsequential mistake for long. This time around, however, he made sure to keep aware of his surroundings.

  As noon came and went, Frank eventually arrived back at camp with five cups, two pouches of water, and a sharpened axe head. He quickly filled four of the cups with water to avoid accidentally spilling it when taking a seat. Into the empty cup he put a small handful of meat chunks. This and a few larger cuts were then placed on in campfire he’d started it before preparing the meat.

  While the meat got a chance to cook through, he went to gather some berries to add to the soup for more liquid, flavor, vitamins, and some fiber. Since the meat took forever to cook through in direct fire, he decided to give it a long time in the fire before adding the water and berries. Meanwhile, he spent the time dissecting the remaining carcass to the best of his ability. His focus was on separating the tendons, fat, and hide from as much of the meat as possible, the former of which were placed next to the fire to dry out. And until he got some better storage, the hide would have to serve as his way of keeping the meat off the ground.

  “I think that’s good for now, time to eat. This should hopefully be a bit more on the interesting side.” It was with a smile that he used a pair of sticks to extract the cup from the fire and set it to cool.

  While it cooled enough for him to touch it, he used the last bit of water in one of the cups to rinse his hands, before immediately dirtying them by moving a lot of the fat into it. This cup was then placed into the fire for the fat to render, after which he’d make some natural lye soap.

  Since he was waiting on both the soup cooling and fat melting and neither should take too long, he gave himself a chance to relax for the first time today.

  “Ah! That hits the spot.” The soup was by no means great, but compared to just berries or really well-done meat, the extra flavor from the broth made a big difference. The berries also added a nice bit of flavor, though their orangey taste was a little weird to combine with the still chewy and gamey wolf meat, but not bad. Before long, he had finished the soup, interspersed with the plain meat he’d made on the side.

  Sufficiently stuffed, Frank’s break came to an end as there was much more to be done. “Alright, time to get this soap mixed up.” Having rendered the fat and let it cool while he dealt with his food, he now just needed to make the lye solution to get the alkaline part of the end product.

  While he made it, Frank thought back to the ratios in recipes he’d used back on Earth and decided to go a little lower on the alkalinity; caustic burns weren’t something he wanted to risk right now. To make the lye, he first cleaned his soup cup to the best of his abilities before filling it with the water he wouldn’t be needing. In the now much emptier cup, he added as pure wood ash as he’d been able to collect, which he then mixed with a stick.

  After confirming the mixing from the heat of the exothermic reaction, he could proceed to the final step: combining the two liquids. As he poured the solution into the fat, he recalled his Chem teacher explaining the process when they did this for an experiment; that was actually what got him into making soap for fun.

  “When you mix the alkaline lye solution with the rendered fat it starts a process called saponification. It is in short the process of the two parts reacting and turning into soap, which is far less alkaline. Since all of the lye is consumed in the process, the final solidified soap is generally safe to use. If not all of the lye was consumed, then the resulting soap block would be very dangerous to use, which is why you always add less lye than a perfect mix would need.” The explanation had of course taken a more chemical tone shortly thereafter, as they tended to do; he had always appreciated how Maria explained it simply first before diving into the technical - or in this case, chemical – side of things.

  With the soap solution mixed, he now just needed to let it sit for a while to cure. While it did, he started what would probably be the last project for the day, given how little the sun had yet to travel. The project in question was the handle for the axe, for which he had found a suitable stick two days ago. Using a knapped stone thinner than the stick as a chisel and another stick as the mallet, he spent the rest of the evening carving most of the mortise into the stick between two knots. This would help prevent the stick from splitting during use.

  Before going to sleep and after another bite of food, he checked on his wounds. The scratches had fully disappeared, and his femur similarly felt almost fully healed – that is to say that it didn’t hurt when moving. As for the bite, all of the ulcers had grown slightly smaller, but they definitely seemed to have slowed compared to yesterday. “I feel like I’ve been less hungry as the day passed, so it probably slowed after clearing out the cauterized parts. It would make sense to try to conserve the energy a bit more once the immediate threat had passed.”

  With that done, he closed his eyes and hoped for another Level, but for the first time since coming to this world, he was disappointed in that regard. Though it did make sense that it wouldn’t continue like that.

  While he made another stew for breakfast, supplemented by a few handfuls of berries on the side, he finished carving most of the mortise into the handle. Then, similarly to when he made his initial water purifying pits, he used embers to finish the job. Though this time it was to not only save him time and effort with carving, but also to fire harden the mortise. Once he was satisfied with the hardening, he cleaned it up and moved on to the last part.

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  This was doubtlessly the simplest part, making either side of the handle a little more plane and less slippery. It did not take him long to be done with this either, so all that now remained was the final assembly. Placing the head into the mortise, he used his makeshift mallet to hammer it in. As he did, he ensured a little free space between the head and handle on either side of it to avoid splitting the handle. Thanks to regular checks while carving, the small gap was as he wanted.

  To ensure a proper fit, he made his way to a tree he wanted to cut down. He started off with a few careful hits to properly lodge the stone in there. Once he felt comfortable with it, he began going at it. While he did have to hit much closer to a 90° angle than with a modern axe, it was still far leagues beyond his previous hand axe.

  Beyond that, the first few proper swings also cautioned him about his new strength. The kickback from each swing was noticeably stronger compared to the axes he’d made or used back home, but it remained manageable so long as he kept it in mind. “It would also suck to break the handle because I can’t handle my strength.” He joked to himself.

  While chopping, he thought to finally test [Smack], he had until now been too preoccupied yesterday with just getting his axe done. It had been to the point that he hadn’t even considered if working next to the creek without a proper weapon maybe wasn’t the best idea; it’s not like that was how he ended up wounded in the first place. Not even keeping a better eye out was a good excuse for that blunder.

  Regardless, he tried to activate the Skill on the next swing. It sounded more related to bludgeoning hits than anything else, but he hoped it still worked with his axe. It did in fact work. Using it was a sensation quite dissimilar to using [Sparks] or any of the more passive Skills. While both had the feeling of some energy in him doing something, it was not only far more noticeable with [Smack], filling both arms, but he even felt his swing speed up beyond his intent. It was only in retrospect that he’d later notice the similarity in energy used between the Skills.

  When the strike connected, it hit way harder than his gut instinct told him it should. It was still not enough to fell the tree in a single hit, but it sure did a lot of damage; he even heard the wood creak under the force. After inspecting the chop, he tried to use it once more.

  This time around, he tried to focus a bit more on the energy he felt, but as the entire swing barely took a second, he did not have a lot of time to inspect it. “It would seem that the energy, whatever it is, flowed into the axe itself. I wonder if that’s the cause of the increased power earlier. Hold on, what’s that sound?” The sudden creaking of the tree pulled his attention. “Oh shit!” The tree was slowly building up speed roughly in his direction.

  A few side steps and a fallen tree later, Frank was safely able to give himself a bit of a verbal lashing. “Great job me. Yet again you lose focus of everything around you the moment something catches your interest. For everything that doesn’t require immediate attention, be sure that everything is alright before you disregard your surroundings.” It wasn’t the first time he’d done this, not even just the tenth, but unlike back on Earth, the consequences here had a much higher likelihood of being dangerous.

  After downing that first tree, he started a bit of a chopping rampage. If it hadn’t been for [Smack], then he would have probably stopped after five to ten trees, but he couldn’t help but keep exploring it. Besides, it did make chopping trees a whole lot faster. As such, he ended up with well over twenty trees downed in a few hours, making sure to get a mix of greenwood and deadwood.

  The first thing he learned about [Smack], it had a usage limit of two in a row. The second was that each use took about a minute to recharge, and it happened sequentially, not in parallel. This was noticeable distinct from [Sparks], which was single use every few minutes. He was happy to have learned this before discovering it in a fight.

  The third thing was that the force he put behind the swing himself was as impactful as always, if not more so with the Skill active. It felt like somewhat of a mix between a static force increase and a multiplier. Fourth, he couldn’t use an actual “blade” for it, which he learned when he tried to use one of his cutting stones; the edge of his axe was seemingly dull enough to count as blunt, assuming that was the condition.

  The last thing he learned about this Skill specifically was that it seemed to make his weapon and his body resist most of the additional force. This he learned by iteratively swinging a stick with more and more force, alternating between the Skill and regular swings. With his regular swings, he tried to both match the force he put into it himself when using it, and also the velocity. This test alone had taken him close to half an hour but concluding that the weapon only seemed to take damage proportional to the recoil he felt in his arms like usual was worth it.

  He had worried that using the Skill would risk him accidentally breaking the axe, similar to his worry over [Lesser Strength]. But thankfully it seemed like he only needed to account for the increase to the speed of the swing.

  Finishing up with the chopping, he finally felt like it was time to unearth the pottery. “Yes! Both pots survived and the bowl as well, this day can’t get much better.” After his numerous mistakes and fumbles these past few days, it felt great for something to properly go his way. Sure, one of the lids had cracked, but that was a non-issue.

  The afternoon called for another trip down to the clay deposit as he still needed a lot more pottery if he wanted to be properly set up, but not before he got a properly sized stew cooking in one of the new pots. While the trip itself was uneventful, his increased strength continued to prove its usefulness. Beyond making it easy to carry more, it was a lot easier to break it free.

  The rest of the day disappeared in a blur of clay work, ending with three pots and a number of bowls and cups and even a few spoons. As the daylight ran thin, Frank set them up besides a fire before sitting down for his rest. ‘I really need to make a bed, preferably sooner rather than later.’ Drifting off with that thought, he was greeted by a both delightful and disappointing notification.

  [Survivor Level 7]

  It took until he checked his wounds the next morning – they were coming along nicely, but definitely much slower at this point – before he noticed something off. “Wait a second, how come my pants are whole? The wolf literally bit through them and I’m quite certain they were ripped when I cleaned them a few days ago. Actually… they were unreasonably easy to clean despite the dried blood and my lack of soap. This can only be magic imbued into them from the gods like the heat management. In that case, thank you Lydia, Alfred, and or whoever made these.”

  Of course, now that he had noticed it, he couldn’t not check if it was exploitable, so he cut a small piece off one of his cuffs and placed it beneath a stone. He hadn’t noticed anything about repair process, so even if it wasn’t exploitable as a cloth generator, figuring out the limits was important.

  Beyond that, he made four cuts along one sleeve, each one of the four a combination of one of two lengths and two patterns. He wanted to test if the size and complexity of the damage had any impact on how long it took to repair.

  With that underway, he rekindled the fire to dry the pottery faster, as it wasn’t quite dry enough yet. It had in truth not really been it for any of the previous firings either, so he wanted to give it at least until midday. Now that he had a few pots and cups, there was far less of a hurry for more. The fire was also used to reheat some of yesterday’s stew.

  “Alrighty, with all of that underway, it’s time that I get myself a proper weapon.” Having the axe was all well and good, but he had no real training with it as a weapon. His weapon of choice when he was learning kung-fu had been the spear, and he had been practicing the movements over the past few months. Thankfully, that was also one of the easiest weapons to make, especially given his available resources.

  Having found a few possibly spearheads when looking for the axe-head stone, he could immediately start the knapping. Getting the rough shape went by quickly, and the smaller details only took a little longer; this shape was far more familiar to him than the axe-head, since spear and arrow heads and knives were some of the things he had knapped the most. Sadly, he lacked the proper tools for making a good, serrated edge, so he had to make do with a substandard one made by strategically pressing specific small rocks against the edge.

  Once more, [Basic Shaping] helped to make the process smoother and faster. Though he felt that it did little when it came to the serrations. “Are serrations too advanced for it? It behaved similarly when I tried to make one pot a little fancy. It would appear that it only helps with getting the shape and rough details, which makes some sense given the name.”

  Taking one of the denser trees he’d cut down yesterday of about broomstick thickness, he chopped off the top at about his own height. Then, after cleaning up the stick, he cut a groove in the thicker end to fit the spearhead into.

  Before inserting the head, he grabbed some of the mostly dried and now quite hard sinew, which thankfully didn’t smell as bad anymore, though it still stank a bit. Carefully, he struck it between two rocks to split it into much thinner, workable fibers. Some of these he placed in a cup of water to soften up before use.

  With all the prep work done, he fitted the spearhead into the groove. On either side of the head’s bottom, he had knapped a groove to help hold it in place. Lastly, he took his softened sinew and wrapped it around both parts in an X-shaped pattern. Now all that remained was for the sinew to dry and harden once more.

  While it dried, he moved on to the last project on his initial to-do list, a bed. It would be far from anything fancy, but it would at least be relatively quick to make. Of the trees, he chopped nine sections to a bit over 1 meter long to serve as bedposts and framing.

  Six of these posts he inserted into the ground beneath the large root from the Tree of Life he had been using as a back rest when sleeping. It was actually why he had picked this spot to begin with, because the root snaked in and out of the ground, so he would only need to add a little to have a proper cover from the eventual rain. And compared to the multiple other spots where the roots behaved similarly, this one seemed to have the largest gap beneath it.

  The posts were placed in two rows of three, each about a meter from one another. Between each set of two, he used cordage to securely lash one of the remaining cuts at an equal height. This would serve as the foundation of the bed. Then he spent the next while chopping most of the remaining logs to a length of about 2 meters and preparing them.

  They were then lashed to the basic frame he had made, and a very basic bed was thus made. Frank admired his handy work with a small smile. “Doesn’t look particularly comfortable, but damn do I look forward to sleeping lying down once again. A good cover of grass should help with both comfort and insulation, but that can wait for tomorrow.”

  Checking the sky, he noticed a blue moon next to the sun, which was approaching the horizon, so he only had a few more hours of good light. After starting the pottery firing, he went out to pick berries to both eat and test. By the time he got a few bushes in while thinking about food, he recalled having set a few snares before the wolf attack.

  That immediately changed his plans for the remaining sunlight, as it went with tracking down where he had set the snares in question. The wolf attack had forced him to focus quite hard on a few other things, so he had pushed the snares completely out of mind. This made remembering their location quite a challenge, though he did successfully locate both of them.

  Even better, both had caught prey. The first had something like a mixture between a hare and a rabbit and the second had a foxlike creature. When he took down the first to reset it, he could both smell and feel that it had been hanging for quite some time, but he still chose to bring it back. Even if the meat wasn’t in the best condition, there were still other parts worth something; he just had to keep it far away from anything worth keeping. The fox was luckily in a better condition.

  Dinner was more stew, though any remainder was thrown out afterwards. It had definitely started to overstay its welcome, if the remaining wolf-meat was anything to go by. And now there was a fox that at least smelled fresher and hopefully cooked easier.

  With only a little good light left and probably an hour of poor light, there was little he could really do. But little was very different from nothing. Picking up his spear, it was finally time to get some practice in. By now, he felt that the sinew had dried enough for practice, though he still refrained from actually hitting anything.

  While he went through the movements and skills he had been taught years ago, he made an active effort to not move around as much and rapidly as he usually would; he didn’t want to overwork his damaged thigh more than he already did. Still, that did not stop it from constantly pulsing in pain throughout the entire ordeal.

  When he went to sleep that night, for the first time on a bed since arriving here, he finally felt properly relaxed. Not only could he not only lay down while sleeping without worrying too much about the cold, but he also felt physically great from the workout. Within a minute, sleep had taken him.

  [Warrior Level 3]

  [Skill – Basic Spearmanship obtained]