Time blurred for Blake as the days then weeks passed. With smooth river stones his stone tools jumped forward in quality allowing for sharp edges and more refined surfaces. It was a time consuming processes for each blade and they would dull quickly but it was worth the effort for a man without any pressing deadlines.
Blake glanced around his glade proud of what he had accomplished. It looked nothing like it had when he had first begun experimenting with stone tools. Before it had been a fire pit surrounded by random stones and sticks. It was more disaster site than home base. Now a small log cabin sat in the center of the clearing.
After creating upgraded spears and knives Blake had turned to two other tools he had been missing but unable to make with only wood; a shovel and an axe. He had no need for the shovel at first as his biggest digging project, the defensive trench surrounding the glade, was already done but he predicted it would be useful eventually.
The axe he made was immediately helpful. He was able to cut down trees giving him access to the wood he needed to keep his crafts going. He had run out of suitable wood for his fire in the immediate vicinity and had set to only burning a small fire when going to sleep before he had the axe. Now he had plenty of logs prepared to keep his fire going at all times should he so desire.
The logs also allowed for larger construction projects. When he had been procrastinating going to the creek in search of river stones, Blake had created a couple of small shelters using what leftover sticks and leaves he had left. These were little more than leanto’s unsuitable for habitation.
Had the weather not been perfect all day and night since entering the spirit realm this might have been a problem but instead the enviroment made such experiments just that; experiments. The crappy shelters provided no defensive value and were too exposed to the elements to prevent rain or wind from assaulting him in his sleep had that been a concern.
With proper logs, Blake was able to really get into construction work. While making tools and salves provided a quicker return for his effort there was something about making something bigger and grand that was satisfying to Blake in a way he couldn’t properly express. He would never turn his back on the pursuit of advancing his toolkit but he felt truly passionate about these larger construction projects.
Working to build a log cabin reminded him of working on Old Man Gu’s properties. After his parents had died Old Man Gu had given Blake a job in return for housing and a food stipend. Blake had been in charge of doing maintenance and repairs for the old man’s various properties. The old man had invested heavily in real estate in his youth and retired young living off of the rent of his tenants.
Blake’s first attempt at the cabin had failed. He had taken a pile of logs and stacked them horizontally on top of one another. Between each log, he had applied glue but the adhesive Blake had invented had not been up to the task. He only got three logs high before it broke apart.
On his second attempt, he instead tried to line them up side by side vertically. He had then glued them together to form a solid wall. The wall ended up having many gaps in it allowing the elements through defeating the purpose in Blake’s mind.
While trying to seal up the gaps with glue, leaves, and sticks the wall had fallen on him. He had little trouble escaping as his strength had long surpassed human limits by this point but the pain had been enough of a shock to delay him for a minute resulting in additional damage to his body and a disturbing revelation.
While being crushed under the wooden wall the warmth of supernatural improvement had buried into Blake’s bones and organs reinforcing them. Had he not become more familiar with getting hurt since arriving in the spirit realm he might not have noticed but his body was becoming more physically resilient by the moment.
The improvment was slight, too slight to be of value at the moment, but it showed Blake how much more he needed to learn about the spirit realm. He had already found that food poisoning was also strengthening his body.
He had never considered himself a masochist but was it masochism if it prevented future pain? From that day onward Blake had added intentionally damaging himself to his daily routine. He never took it very far mostly tying it to his exercises. Whenever he lifted something he let it crush his body for a short while before lifting it up.
Only once did Blake trigger a training cooldown for his physical resilience. He had once again been trying to run across the tree branches but had fallen onto one of his spears impaling his leg. The pain had momentarily overwhelmed his mind, the injury being much worse than the, in comparison, tiny pricks from the first rabbicorn attack, but he had quickly settled himself and pushed through.
To provide the substance needed to heal his leg Blake had eaten some rabbicorn meat he had been leaving out to rot. A rabbicorn would attack every once and a while and he had made a habit of letting it go a little bad before eating it.
His physical resilience training had gone into cooldown following his leg injury so he had been surprised to find that the food poisoning still provided improvement. Blake had been getting better at detecting the supernatural warmth and had started dividing the improvements into categories. He had been sure that physical resilience and immune system had been one and the same but apparently, he had been wrong.
It was while progressing his immune system that Blake had his first use of his new shovel. Latrines. He had never dug or even used a latrine before but there was a first time for everything if he didn’t want to keep having to make new beds.
After his second failure to make a log cabin, Blake failed two more times before coming up with the design he used now. The first key advancement that allowed him to finish the cabin was twine.
Blake found that by running a knife along a young sapling he could get a thin enough substance that it could be used as twine for tying things together. By itself, it wasn’t very strong but when combined with glue it made all the difference.
Tying logs together before gluing them made all the difference. He was able to make fully stable walls that didn’t fall apart at the slightest breeze. There were still two problems. One was that the wooden walls still did not provide adequate insulation from the outside.
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Making glue was a time-consuming process and Blake couldn’t justify making enough to fill the plethora of gaps between logs. This let air flow easily through the walls. The other problem with the walls was keeping them upright.
Blake had two ways of lining up the walls. He could do it horizontally where the logs were stacked on top of each other, or vertically where they were side by side. Neither method prevented them from falling over and he found it impossible to attach them together.
The glue would stick to a degree but the angle was all wrong for twine. Without the twine to support the glue the walls did not have a strong enough bond to keep standing when lightly pressed. This was where the next of Blake’s ‘inventions’ came into play.
Blake found that by burying part of each log the walls would stay mostly upright. Any leaning was handled by tying the walls together. Being more steady in the ground meant that tying twine between the walls worked better keeping the whole thing together.
There was still the gaps to take care of, however. To handle this Blake ended up having to take another take to the creek. He only hesitated for a moment before going this time having faced his fears once already. At the creek he refilled his water trough, a much nicer container now that he had a proper knife to carve with, and went in search for clay.
Gathering enough clay to fill in the gaps ended up taking multiple trips but he had decided it was well worth the effort if it meant that he could finally finish the cabin. Blake knew that clay could be easily shaped and made into objects but it required extreme heat. He had no way to apply that heat to his cabin so he was going to have to survive with a not-so-hard substance.
Because it was not heated into a more hardened substance that could stick to the logs well enough to defy gravity Blake ran into the problem of all the clay he applied to the cabin falling soon after application. To stick the logs into the ground and keep them upright he had the walls vertical. This meant there was nothing supporting the clay.
He needed to come up with a design that kept the wall upright while remaining horizontal. In the end that meant setting up four additional logs to act as ‘posts’. These logs remained vertical and were placed on each end to hold the wall between them. The wall was tied to these posts to be held upright while the wall itself was horizontal keeping the clay attached.
Only the posts were dug into the ground. With that the walls were complete and only the ceiling remained. And the door. Blake had forgotten to add a door and had to chop his way in after it was created. He refined the hole he made into a proper doorway after the fact but took note to keep a door in mind for future construction projects.
For the roof, Blake covered the ceiling with large branches. On top of the large branches, he put progressively smaller sticks until topping the whole thing off with a combination of leaves and a thin layer of clay.
Blake was proud of his creation. It had taken weeks of effort and even after it was finished he still had to make adjustments based on the feedback from his Talent but it was worth it. He, alone and without help, had created a building. The start of any civilization.
Between attempts at building the cabin, Blake had made another staple of civilization. Clothes. He had never succeeded in creating a truly flexible adhesive but had gotten something good enough to not snap off if he bent too far.
Using some of the fur from the rabbicorns Blake made a crude belt. He had never realized how much effort went into preparing leather and he still didn’t think he did it right. By comparison, the shaping of the belt was easy.
It had taken days of practice and multiple rabbicorn corpses to become skilled enough to strip the fur from the skin without undue damage and that had only been the start. He had found that some chemical process was needed to prevent it from rotting.
He had created something during his hermalism practice when some urine got into the mixture. It was not only urine and had been an unforgettable night where he learned that moderation of food poisoning was the key. He should not have been pushing it as heavily as he had been.
After that horrible accident he had found that urine in conjugntion with some of his other plants could produce a substance that helped prepare the skin to be used as leather. He had also learned that while he did not need to urinate while in the spirit realm, had he the desire he could it just required him to begin drinking water in normal quantities.
In the end, he was left with a strip of crude leather that he had glued together into a loop that he could use as a belt. He had then glued on more strips of leather around the loop to create a sort of curtain of leather. It hid nothing and was no more than a nuisance but it was key for his inspiration on how to finish it.
To connect the pieces of hanging leather together into a sort of skirt, Blake had glued leaves between them. The leaves were more flexible than any adhesive he had made so far and more easily folded than the leather giving him freedom of movement.
Blake now wore a dress that looked like a patchwork of leather and plant life because that’s exactly what it was. He didn’t have a shirt yet but that was on his short list for future projects.
With clothes, sort of, and housing Blake was starting to feel secure in his new home. His defenses had already proved effective against the local predators and now he had security from the elements if that ever became a problem. Now he just had to figure out where he was.
Blake knew it was only a matter of time before he had to properly explore the realm. So far he had stuck to his glade and the creek, and the creek was only following a rabbicorn attack. Going out in search of civilization and/or a way to advance beyond this realm almost guaranteed conflict.
Because of this Blake had prepared weapons and tools for his excursion. He may have over-prepared to a degree but his strength was beyond human so carrying heavy things was not a concern.
Over the weeks the cooldown between physical training had continued to increase. He could now only work out every two to three days. Blake got the sense that he was nearing the peak of what he could achieve physically while at tier 0.
Blake had continued meditating daily and had drawn a correlation between his theoretical peak physical ability while tier 0 and the mysterious barrier. The more he meditated the more clear that barrier became and he was starting to see it as less of a barrier and more of a chain holding him back. Maybe multiple chains.
As he improved himself these chains loosened. This was the sensation he had previously attributed to the barrier weakening. Why he thought it important that he was being held back from behind rather than ahead he wasn’t sure but it was.
As Blake reached further along his physical potential the more the chains slackened. There was the distinct sense that he was about to reach a tipping point where they would no longer be able to hold him back from whatever was ahead.
The whole thing was strange to Blake and he was almost convinced that he was going crazy from isolation. He had been in the spirit realm for months now without any human contact. The chains kept becoming more clear, however. It wasn’t just the chains but also the supernatural warmth he associated with growth.
Blake was starting to gain a sixth sense of something out there and it reminded him of an article he had read on the powers of the awakened. High-tier people were said to have, what the article called, a spiritual sense.
What tier exactly this sense manifested and how it worked could differ from person to person but it was generally agreed that it started at tier 4 at the earliest and only for those with a magic Talent. Blake was tier 0 and his Talent was not a magic Talent, that is it didn’t use mana. If what he was feeling was indeed a nascent form of spiritual sense then something was either wrong with him or the article misunderstood what spiritual sense was.
Since he wasn’t sure which and wasn’t confident in his mental state until he had confirmation he wasn’t crazy Blake decided to wait until he had reached the tipping point with those mental chains. If it was some unknown spirit realm power he was close to unlocking he wanted it before having to fight monsters.
For now, however, Blake was going to review his preparations to see if there was anything he could improve upon while waiting to reach whatever it was he was waiting for.
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What kind of biome should the tier 1 realm be? (Types of monsters will be influenced by biome)
