With his shelter now eaten to shambles by the rabbit in his stomach, Kiefer slept more comfortably than ever since coming to this new world inside the makeshift bed again. Having had a tight work schedule back on earth, his body was accustomed to waking up after 6 hours of rest.

Opening his eyes from slumber for the 4th time since he arrived, Kiefer looked around puzzled by the low hanging moons in the sky. “I had a rough idea before, but now I have more or less confirmed it. The day/night cycle on this planet is almost twice as long as earth.” Kiefer made a mental note.

He drank plenty of water from his bottle after converting the excess mana, and then finished up the leftovers from last night’s dinner. It was still dark out, but the primary moon provided sufficient light to work around.

“I’m glad most wild animals stay clear of this area because of Shearwood.” Kiefer silently thanked the beast in his heart. “It means I can do most of my daily activities in relative safety.. that is until Shearwood makes an appearance”.

Kiefer thought of the things he needed to survive. He needed tools, weapons and some form of protection, as well as a method to effectively and safely hunt food. He had not seen another animal besides the one in his stomach around the lake, which meant he would have to venture deeper into the forest if he was to catch anything.

First on his agenda was to rebuild a sturdier shelter that wouldn’t be eaten down by a rabbit. To do that, he would need tools such as a hatchet and a knife. Kiefer willed the silver haze inside him into a rod in his hand, slowly forming the axe head at the tip of the rod.

It was a decent sized hatchet made of his mana that felt sturdy. The only set back is that Kiefer needed to supply a constant stream of mana into the hatchet as the mana in the hatchet was continuously being converted into mana in the air.

He swung his mana hatchet at one of the wooden branches he used for his previous shelter to test it out. The results were really surprising. Upon contact with the wood, his hatchet left a slight mark on the branch, and then shattered into a puff of smoke. Kiefer was dumbfounded. He had made a glass hatchet.

“Hahhahaha.. this is even more pathetic than when I tried to conjure a patronus with a twig,” Kiefer couldn’t help but laugh at his own feeble attempt. Having used only 5% of his total mana capacity, Kiefer tried again, using 50% this time, increasing the concentration of mana in his hatchet by 10 times.

This time, the branch cracked without much resistance, but Kiefer was still not satisfied. “Its finally useful to me, but the mana upkeep is really high. At the rate Im going, I can only keep the hatchet up for 10 minutes tops.” Kiefer commented to no one in particular, as he turned the hatchet back into a silver smoke and reabsorbed the mana.

He repeated the same actions with a knife, only this time, the knife formed well on the first try. However, Kiefer met with another roadblock. The knife wasn’t sharp enough. No matter how Kiefer imagined it, his mana knife was blunt and useless.

“That’s no surprise,” He thought. “I’ve never handled an actual knife before, so I have no idea how to form it accurately. Guess I’m stuck with blunt weapons. I’ll have to settle for sharp rocks I can find.”

With his mana hatchet, Kiefer started hacking down trees and branches. Tearing vines with his rock to make ropes. Replenishing his mana pool with water from the lake regularly, he rebuilt his shelter by day break, sturdier and larger than ever. He even made a decent bed inside the shelter along with a fire pit and a stack of firewood outside.

In the early morning sun, Kiefer began making plans to make traps to catch wildlife when yet again he hit a snag. “Fuck, I have no idea what kind of animals are inside the forest. I have yet to see anything besides that darn 3 eyed rabbit. This stupid Shearwood is scaring all my food away.”

Kiefer had no idea how large to make his traps or even what kind of traps to make. “Does this mean I have no other choice but to go hunt them myself? I could make a sword but I have no idea how to handle a sword. I would make a gun if I knew how the internal components worked and even then, what would I use as ammunition?”

Exhausting every other option, Kiefer decided to go with a fail-safe plan. Create armour out of mana for protection and use my hatchet to knock out aggressive animals. He would have to use himself as bait and hope the armour withstands at least one attack from an aggressive animal. Even if it fails, He would just run back to the lake and hopefully the attacker stays clear of Shearwood.

“Hmm.. Let’s see, going by the same particle density as the hatchet, if I pour out all my mana, I can create a circular plate 2cm thick and half a metre wide. What if I shaved it down to 1cm thick and moulded the shape to cover my body. Yes that would seem to work. I would still have barely enough mana to keep the armour from dissipating for about a minute. That should be long enough to determine if I should continue fighting or make a run for it.”

Kiefer did as he planned and yet again hit a snag. Today was definitely not his day. He was getting frustrated and you could almost see the steam rising from his head.

The mana armour he created formed just like he wanted to flawlessly, except he had overlooked the fact that the armour was now his prison and he could not even move his limbs, much less walk or run. As such he reabsorbed his mana and replenished it with more from the lake.

Kiefer decided to take a break. In the 2 days that he’s been here, he’s met more obstacles than he had in 6 years of research. He couldn’t make weapons, nor could he make armour. Zero offensive and defensive capabilities. The one thing he succeeded was making tools, so at least he was fine on the utility side.

Kiefer stared into the dim sky that was slowly lighting up for a while, thinking of any other options he could take. Bored and frustrated, he started doodling with his mana within his shelter, the one thing that proved his existence on this world.

He would send thin threads of mana from the fingertips of his right hand into the palm of his left hand, practicing and fine tuning his control over the mass of silvery particles. He began intertwining them and braiding the threads, eventually forming strings of mana.

It did not take much mana to form the strings and he could immediately reabsorb them to minimise loss. After several cycles of intertwining and braiding, he arrived at a short rope, about half a metre in length and stronger than any vine he had used before.

“That’s it!!” Kiefer yelled as an idea dawned on him. “It will take some practice, but I might be able to make a weapon out of this.”

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