After Su Mo finished his meal, he picked up the shovel and rushed outside. It was around 10 o'clock in the morning in the wasteland and Su Mo the worker had gone to work punctually.

The animals in the wilderness were not so wild at the moment, most likely to make things easier for the novices.

After one round of scanning, Su Mo confirmed that there were no mutant creatures near the base that day.

"What a pity. And I thought I was going to get my express delivery today."

The mutant beasts that others feared were regarded by Su Mo as express deliveries.

He had no choice, after all. In a doomsday world, as long as he could change his perspective on some of these things, he could have a different mental state.

As Su Mo stood on the small earth hill above his shelter, everywhere he looked was still desolate and vast.

The hot sun that had been blazing away for the past few days turned the slightly green land into a scorched yellow color.

As he walked to the thicket that had been deforested around the spot where he encountered the chameleon previously, all traces of it had been wiped off by the hustling wind of the plains. 

Other than a slight mess, it was hard to tell that a battle had broken out there before.

After he pulled out his iron axe, Su Mo began cutting down the trees.

Wood was very cheap in the trading market. 100ml of water could have traded dozens of units of wood.

However, that was not Su Mo's purpose.

It was just like one of the ninja anime from Earth. Even though the ninjas had chakra, they still had to learn the basics like climbing trees before proceeding to high-level things like walking on water, in order to be able to train their chakra to be more effective.

That was what Su Mo was trying to do.

With every chop of his axe, Su Mo was trying to train his movements to get the best precision in his axe control.

By controlling the force with each slash, Su Mo was training to make sure his force was within a range that was neither too great nor too small.

"Even if I have a thermal-scope weapon, in a world like this, it's inevitable that I'll have to engage in close-range combat from time to time."

The more he tried to control, the more Su Mo realized the difficulties involved.

"I don't have the kind of superpowers that main characters in fantasy novels have. That's why I can only improve my speed and precision. The key to a good attack is to be quick, sufficiently enough, and accurate."

When he looked at the second fallen small tree that was half his height, the cut marks were much neater than the first tree and Su Mo had a moment of clarity.

"Blocking is better than dodging, and dodging is better than attacking preemptively. Before making a move, it is the same as cutting trees. I need to know where to cut for maximum efficiency. If I can defeat the enemy before they even make a move, I won't have to worry about not having professional training for my follow-up attacks and not being able to dodge their attacks!"

The more Su Mo thought about this, the more precise he was with the axe.

In just under an hour, he could already control his strength and accuracy significantly. 

At that moment, he had gathered 20 units of wood and 8 units of plant fiber.

Back in the base, after drinking a few mouthfuls of cool water and giving some to Oreo who was patrolling around the area, Su Mo began to make up a design for the drainage.

There was no sewage treatment pipe in the shelter right now, so going to the toilet meant using the grass outside. That was why for the time being, he did not need to think about how to channel the sewage out of the shelter.

When the safe house was placed, there was a slight change in the topography of the hill.

It became a gently sloping terrain.

Logically speaking, there should not be any drainage problems.

However, potholes were likely to form in terrains like that. Therefore, during heavy rainfall, a lake might form underneath the shelter. In the long run, moisture and water pressure would damage the structural stability of the shelter.

There was also the acid rain that could corrode the surrounding landscape. Grass would not be able to grow and it would be detrimental to the subsequent development of the base.

"A simple drainage canal isn't enough, I need to dig out a landform that can lead the water out instantly. Preferably, to somewhere four or five hundred meters away."

After forming a general plan in his head, Su Mo went to work.

The good thing about this world was that the shovel built in the game panel was boosted, so a small amount of force could bring up the earth easily.

With that, a full three or four hours of digging until dusk created the first fifty meters of the drainage canal.

There were three drainage canals that looked like crooked scratch marks. There was no cement or concrete to reinforce it and it looked very sloppy.

However, the effect was guaranteed.

When Su Mo called out the survival system internally, he fixed his gaze on the drains that were dug out.

[Simple Drainage Facility]

First upgrade option: Reinforce the facility and change the material to improve drainage efficiency. Survival points required (150).

Second upgrade option: Use underground drainage pipes. Higher efficiency and better concealment. Harder to destroy. Survival points required (550).

Introduction: Don't even think about using this drain to go around a bend. I can assure you that it'll get stuck!

"Let me try and put in one unit of stone and see what happens."

After Su Mo considered the two options given by the system, he took out one unit of stone and piled it on the drain.

Sure enough, the first upgrade option requirement that the system gave was lowered by 3 points.

The description also changed.

First upgrade option: Reinforcement with stone. Increases drainage efficiency, increases durability, and is less susceptible to corrosion. Survival points required (147).

There were 200 units of stone in his backpack. Since they were cheap, Su Mo did not feel bad about using them.

10 units... 20 units…

After putting down 47 units of stone, the survival points required by the system stopped changing with any further increase of stone.

It was fixed at 9 points.

"I choose the first upgrade option!"

After he said that, a green light shot out from Su Mo's body, fusing more than forty units of stone with the drain.

From Su Mo's feet, traces of building stones began to appear in the originally muddy and soft drainage canal.

Every time the green light swept around, more and more building stones appeared in the mud.

After three or five seconds, the stone drain was complete!

It was done!

The drainage canal made of grayish-black stones looked neat and orderly, like a Great Wall on the barren earth. It was rather mind-blowing.

The stone surface looked as if it was paved by a machine. There were no traces of manually digging and the whole thing looked like a natural formation.

The more Su Mo looked at it, the happier he felt.

"Probability of the player surviving the first natural disaster is detected to be more than 99%. The player is the only one in the world to unlock this achievement.

"Player gets a chance to draw a prize."

Su Mo looked into the distance as he stood at the top of the small hill. He felt that good things really came in pairs and hurriedly opened the game panel to check.

At that moment, behind the azure game panel function, there was a new colorful and shiny function— 

Prize draw.

"I didn't think digging a drain could give me an achievement like this. If I had known that, I would've dug it on the first day."

Su Mo fixed his gaze on the spinning prize wheel in front of him.

The spinning prize wheel was divided into five areas, which were— 

Pets, Blueprints, Tools, Weapons, and Resources.

"I'm surprised there's no page to thank the patrons. This is definitely not a game developed by some random guy."

All five options were extremely useful.

Even with Oreo in tow, he had enough resources. Even if he drew another pet, Su Mo did not mind having about an extra mouth to feed and immediately pressed the draw button.

The spinning prize wheel initially spun rapidly, but eventually, it slowed down as time went on and the pointer finally stopped on the Blueprint slice.

[Record]: Congratulations to Player for drawing a Hunting Composite Crossbow Blueprint.

Just as the game panel prompt disappeared, a red glowing blueprint appeared in his inventory.

[Hunting Composite Crossbow Blueprint: long-range combat tool. Slow loading speed, high initial speed with considerable lethality. Is a must-have tool for wilderness survival.]

"It's actually a long-range weapon!"

Su Mo's eyes lit up.

Long before he went out to fight for the first time, he already had the idea of creating a long-range weapon.

Alas, he was never given a good creation option and due to the scarcity of survival points, he put the idea on hold.

He did not expect to find something more advanced than a regular bow—a crossbow.

The biggest difference between a bow and a crossbow was their accuracy.

One did not need to aim while drawing the string on a crossbow, so it required less expertise from the user. Although the loading time was much longer than a regular bow, generally, the crossbow had a longer range, better lethality, and a higher hit rate, making it a powerful long-range killing weapon.

If a woman was given a bow, she could only shoot at most 20 or 30 meters because of her arm strength.

However, a crossbow was different. After learning how to use a crossbow, the user could basically hit wherever they wanted up to 50 meters with frighteningly high accuracy.

After the blueprint for the crossbow crumbled into pieces, a stream of light shone in the creation function of the game panel.

Su Mo could not wait to open up the creation listing.

He was eager to check the material requirements for making a Hunting Composite Crossbow and crossbow arrows.