Tabitha had a long, busy day of waking up in a world she knew nothing about, almost getting killed by a slime, killing said slime, turning part of its corpse into a spear, spearfishing, walking through the forest, making a splint for somebody with an injured leg, and then walking through the forest some more to find a village.

She needed to rest and relax.

So, what did she do in order to rest and relax?

She went on a quest given to her by a blacksmith to collect the glowing, parasitic eggs of some kind of worm. And she wanted to chop down a tree and mine a rock while she was at it.

Fortunately, she was much more well equipped than she was before. Joseph also lent her his backpack which looked far too large for her considering that it was bigger than her entire torso, and it also had a pickaxe, a normal axe, and a sickle all shoved into it. She also had her spear with her, of course, in case she came across any aggressive beasts seeing as how she was going out at dusk. It wouldn’t be long before it was night and the worms came out. That was also why she had a lit lantern hanging from the backpack.

“Alright,” Tabitha said to herself, standing at the edge of the forest. “Now that I’m givin’ them a better look… these trees look like the kind that would be in a winter wonderland or somethin’. If I remember right, these sorts of trees only grow in cold places. And Runa mentioned winter earlier.” Looking down, there were needles and pinecones all over the forest floor. She reached down to pick one of the pinecones up and gave it a sniff. “Ah… now that’s a nice smell. More importantly…”

Item Information

Name

Pinecone

A cone from a pine tree.

Rarity

E

Quality

21

Element

Earth

“Huh. So. From what I gather, it looks like basic items don’t really specify which specific type of tree or whatever they might be from, assumin’ there’s more to this tree’s name than just bein’ a ‘pine tree.’ But I wonder if different ones can have different effects on an item even if they’re named the same. Maybe pinecones from one tree might have different potential tags than pinecones from another tree? I’ll have to ask the old man about it when I get back.”

Tabitha looked up at the tree and got an idea. She placed her hand against its trunk and focused her attention on it… only for no window to pop up.

“Alright. So, I can’t use Analyze on a tree. Speakin’ of trees, while I’m waitin’ for it to get dark, I guess I should chop one down. Lemme go a bit deeper into the forest before I do that though. Don’t want to worry the folk in the village by choppin’ one down that’s right here at the edge.”

And so, Tabitha threw the pinecone she picked up into her backpack and then—

“Wait. I wonder.”

—she got distracted by something else. That something else just so happened to include picking up a single needle from the tree and trying to use Analyze on it. When nothing happened, she picked up more and more needles until she had a pile of them in her hand.

Item Information

Name

Pine Needles

Needles from a pine tree.

Rarity

E

Quality

6

Element

Earth

“Well, ain’t you just the saddest item I’ve seen yet. Don’t worry, I’ll find somethin’ to do with ya.”

And so, Tabitha threw the pine needles into her backpack with the pinecone and actually went off into the forest like she wanted to.

Her first order of business was to find a good tree to chop down.

Now, she could have just chopped down the first, thin tree she saw. Something nice and easy. But where would the satisfaction be in chopping down a tree like that? She wanted a nice, big tree to chop down. Plus she figured that a big tree would probably give higher quality wood than a small tree. So, she roamed around the forest as it got darker by the minute until she came across a tree with the thickest trunk she’d seen yet. It was a tree that was, probably, much too large for her to attempt chopping down as a newcomer who never cut a tree down before.

But that didn’t stop her from trying.

Setting the backpack down and pulling the axe out of it, she walked around the tree until she figured out how she wanted to approach chopping it down. “Now… if I remember correctly from watchin’ Gramps do it, I want to cut a triangle into one side, then cut the backside a bit higher than it. Think all I have to do after that is give it a push.”

With a plan set, she got to work chopping into the side of the tree without any other trees nearby in front of it so that it would have room to fall.

She was only slightly worried about getting crushed by it.

She also severely underestimated just how long it would take to chop the tree down. By the time that she was done chopping the notch cut into the front of it, she already felt exhausted, was sweating all over, and her arms felt like they were on fire.

“Al-alright… this… maybe I should’ve started with a smaller tree,” Tabitha said, wiping the sweat from her brow with her arm. “Probably pullin’ every muscle I’ve got right now… but I ain’t stoppin’ here. Just gotta keep on goin’ until my muscles feel numb. Just like when I had to move all my furniture myself. Huh. Now that I think about it, I wonder what’s gonna happen to my apartment. They’ll probably just do whatever they do when they evict somebody, huh? Well, good thing my fish died. I’d feel bad about them starvin’ without me there.”

After finding the silver lining in accidentally electrocuting her fish, Tabitha got back to work in the dark of the forest. Her lantern was the only thing providing any light at that point as barely any of the moonlight made it through the forest’s canopy. Fortunately, the dark was never something that scared her.

The only thing that scared her was the thought of how sore her body was going to be the next day after she finished cutting a slice into the back of the tree.

“Alright… alright. C’mon, Tabitha. You’ve almost… you’ve almost got this.” Needless to say, chopping down hundreds and hundreds of trees in the games she played when she was younger was far easier. Something that only took a few seconds and a scripted animation ended up taking her over an hour of hard labor. Then, when it came time for her to push from the back… the tree was far too heavy for her to push even with the cuts. “Alright… so, that’s how ya wanna play. Let’s… let’s play then.”

Tabitha was well aware of just how dangerous what she was about to do was.

She didn’t care.

The tree dared to challenge her by being too heavy for her to push, so she chopped back into the notch to decrease the width of the hinge little by little until she heard the tree creak.

That tree was going to fall whether it wanted to or not.

It was also going to fall directly over Tabitha rather than in the direction that she wanted it to fall seeing as how she wasn’t nearly as precise with the cuts as she thought she was.

“Ah. Crap,” was all that Tabitha managed to say before having to dive to the side for her life. Trees, however, had a habit of not always falling straight down. Because of the way she cut it, the tree twisted around while falling just enough to redirect itself to land on top of her. As soon as Tabitha noticed that, she rolled away as quickly as she could to get out of the way. It was only when the tree landed on the ground right next to her that she let out a relieved sigh.

She didn’t notice yet that the tree she felled crashed into a smaller, weaker tree and snapped straight through some of its upper branches. Those upper branches, larger than Tabitha, were now falling all around her.

Tabitha probably would have made an entertaining sight to any observers as she dove, rolled, and scrambled around to avoid everything trying to crush her. From Tabitha’s perspective, though, she was in a life-or-death situation doing everything she could with her incredibly sore and tired body to survive. She was only able to relax when she was sure that nothing else was falling her way. More importantly, she got her achievement.

System Menu

Congratulations, you have acquired a new Achievement!

Rookie Tree Feller

Awarded for felling your first tree.

Reward: 5 Strength

“Heh... well, wasn’t that excitin’,” Tabitha said, right before a small branch smacked her in the face. At that point, she was fairly sure the trees were alive and purposely waited until she felt like it was over to drop their final branch onto her. “I’m turnin’ this entire forest into chairs.”

Then she noticed something just as she was about to get up.

There was a glowing light next to her.

In fact, there were quite a few glowing lights right next to her on the branch that smacked her in the face. And they were moving. As soon as Tabitha could focus her eyes on the lights, she saw a bunch of fat, white worms with bloated bodies that hosted glowing eggs within them shining through their translucent skin.

“You’d almost be cute if I didn’t know that you’re a parasite,” Tabitha said, flicking away the nearest worm to her face.

Finally standing up, Tabitha looked around to see that there were dozens upon dozens of those glowing worms within her sight. Almost every tree she saw had at least one worm on it, including the one she felled. Speaking of which, she still needed to chop the tree into a few, smaller pieces if she wanted to actually take any of it back for crafting purposes.

“So, I’ve gotta decide between gettin’ it over with while my muscles are numb, or givin’ my body a break to collect these worms first. Considerin’ that my arms are probably turnin’ to jelly as soon as I give them a break… I should probably chop the tree up first.”

Tabitha was utterly exhausted at that point.

But she wasn’t going to let that stop her from her mission.

So, picking the axe back up, she got to work chopping once more. She wanted at least a couple of logs to take back with her.

“Maybe if I never sleep again… I’ll never have to wake up to a body full of pulled muscles.”