Nik reached the bushes he had plucked earlier after just a short moment with the bundle of branchlets under his arm. Putting them down carefully, and reaching for some more berries to refill the small amount of mana he had just expanded.

After having taking care of his immediate needs he had goals to finish. In the last hour, his priorities had slightly shifted, away from getting some smithing done to stabilizing sustenance.

In an effort to do so he had decided that his previous goal of making a container would be the highest priority. While he was rather inexperienced in the creation of any items with a similar function would not be deterred. It shouldn’t be too hard to weave something approaching a basket together.

The freshly cut off branchlets would do well for a first try and since Nik wasn’t expecting anything amazing or even decent he had tried to prepare himself as best as possible.

The sticks he was going to use were already quite thin, but they would most likely result in larger wholes in the structure of the basket. The nuts he had found would probably not suffer from that, but Nik had also decided that he needed to get berries to the lake to further train his magic and always be topped off. Thus he had torn off the largest leaves he could find, to layer the inside of a potential basket.

While Nik began constructing his basket by placing two sticks perpendicular to each other, on top of each other, he also consumed more of the berries in an effort to further his skill proficiency with [Stealthy Movement], [Energy Veil] was running the entire time already, only needing slight nudges to keep up its performance.

Two more sticks joined the sticks on the ground, placed perpendicular to the upper stick on top of the same. Another two joined perpendicular again to the two most recent to start the first actual act of weaving. And so he went on.

It actually went quite well for some time. The issue Nik had predicted was obvious quite quickly. Most of the berries on the bushes were rather different from the cultured berries on earth and thus would fall through the holes in the structure.

Once he had a structure of 21 by 21 sticks, around 20 cm by 20 cm, he tried to start on the sides of the basket.

Unsure on how to proceed it took him several tries to manage a structure remotely stable. He had placed the middle of the new sticks in the corners and folded in both of the perpendicular weave patterns. It took him the remaining 12 sticks to connect two walls together.

A success in his book. He stood up again to gather more sticks. He only stopped once he had two arms full of sticks to continue weaving. It had turned late afternoon, he wouldn’t stay much longer but wanted to finish at least one basket, if he could two. After all, he would only need ten to fifteen minutes to go back to the giant trees.

As he sat there weaving the last two, not yet connected sides of the basket he witnessed something new. A small, rabbit-sized creature rushed past him in a loose sense. It was still around 30 meters away from him. Confused he followed with his eyes, trying to identify it. For whatever reason, his skill didn’t work. Maybe the animal disappeared and appeared too fast behind the trees.

Just as he was about to get up, he saw why the creature was running. A creature that looked like a Teerox was following further behind. This one just as large as the young specimen he had encountered, the fangs, however, they were something else. [Identify]

Teerox[Lvl. 27] - an adolescent speciman

actually worked. For whatever reason. Instead of getting up he quickly crouched down forcing more mana into [Stealthy Movement] than before. The previously reached equilibrium of spell upkeep and berry regeneration was ignored.

Starting with his head and upper body going down he turned first a fuzzy matt mix of colors and quickly turned his upper body invisible. Scared into stasis he didn’t move. His mana dropping down fast and only his legs visible to him.

The Teerox disappeared just as quick as it had appeared. Trying to calm himself Nik focused back on his weaving.

Once he was done he started paying more attention to what had happened. He was truly limited by his race level, as he had gained the option of learning another two skills

You have fulfilled a requirement for two (crafting-type) race skills

You qualify for obtaining the following Race skills [2 slots available].

[Weaving] - enhanced weaving capabilities and crafting with fabric, a poor substitute for the tailor class

[Nimble control] - actions with body parts are enhanced. control over movement increased

...

Both skills were interesting in their own right, but Nik didn’t really care for either.

[Weaving] was a bad skill, Nik was almost certain about that, the ‘poor’ almost gave that away. [nimble control] was interesting in that it had a potential to synergize rather well with his class, but as Nik had yet to actually use his class for its intended purposes he ignored the skill.

Nik however went on and looked down at his handmade basket. It looked alright, a lot better than he had expected it to look. Sure it was not going to hold very long, he could see that, but it would suffice for now. He couldn’t quite help himself and identified it.

wooden basket - crude and poor quality

That hurt. Nik had been almost proud and now that stupid skill told him it was shitty. Great, just great. Well, it will work. Though now I really want to make another one. That would actually be great, I could have one for berries and one for nuts.

With that in mind, Nik went and proceeded to cut more branchlets, of almost double the length he had before. This time he should be able to make the bottom an area of 40cm by 40cm with the same height. His previous attempt had only been around a handspan tall, with tattered edges on top. Probably the reason for the crude quality.

He progressed quicker than before and took only 20 minutes to collect three arms full of cut-off branches.

During the middle of weaving, he decided that a round base would result in an easier carrying form, as he had no idea on how to craft a handle, and chose to attempt such a thing.

It worked, kind of. It was not perfectly round but when he used a bit of imagination it was. He had created that pattern by having fewer overlaps the further he went away from the middle.

The sun had approached the horizon and Nik was done with his second basket. It went up to around the middle of Niks thighs and had a diameter of a little more than a foot. Elated by his progress Nik ignored the temptation of [Identify]ing the basket and went on to layer the bottom with leaves to fill the holes through which berries could fall. He had come to the conclusion, that having more nuts would be the better option, but he wanted to be able to do more mana practice.

The sun was behind the horizon was Nik was done filling up bis two baskets the smaller with nuts - removed from their hulls - and the larger with mana berries.

The way to the lake proved difficult with two uneven-sized and different weighing baskets. At one point the basket started dripping with the juice of blossom berries, but Nik had stopped caring and only wanted to get to the lake.

He dropped the seeds and berries off next to his pile of iron-rich stones and went looking for the smallest of the large trees in an attempt to climb it.

A tree of a diameter of around a meter was what he found. It was still at least twenty-five meters tall, the first large branches extending from the stem at around fifteen meters high. Climbing up seemed possible and so Nik tried, he was not gonna spend a night on the ground. Anything and anyone could sneak up and just start gnawing on his legs that way.

The path upwards turned out to be doable. He pulled his body close to the tree and gripped with all his might - little as it was - the bark to the side of the tree and pushed with his legs against the tree. It took him a few minutes and some maneuvering to get to a branch he deemed safe enough for sleeping.

The branch he decided on split off in a ‘Y’ shape after around a meter and a half and Nik hoped that it would suffice as a make-shift bed. He had slept on a smaller branch before, if not long and he had been sitting.

With his head just slightly hanging he laid down on the tree, his legs were both on smaller branches on slightly different elevations.

Sleep came fast and Nik dreamt of pizzas and soft drinks.

The next time Nik opened his eyes it was dark again. Not as dark as it had been the previous time he had awakened. After adjusting the light he was slightly baffled. It was a lot brighter than last night. He couldn’t see through the tree crowns and thus slightly confused. Its glow was not bright as sunlight but it was noticeably stronger than the light originating from the moon behind the mountain.

It took some getting used to for Nik, but he managed. At first, he was considering whether he should actually move, then eventually got up. This time climbing was a lot more difficult, as he had to use his sense of feeling to fumble around quite a bit to find crevices in the bark.

It only took him twenty stamina to get down, compared to the five to get up.

Once he touched down he first went to the lake to get the bad taste out of his mouth then looked up. A second moon was in the sky. A lot smaller than the permanent companion but it was there. However, instead of shining in multiple colors, it shone in an olive tone.

Nik decided against taking a bath and went to his bundle of rocks now accompanied by the crude baskets filled with food. He ate some nuts, enough to get saturated, and then moved on to the berries. He had some stuff to do after all and would need plenty of mana.

The first goal was to level up [Haste] somewhat. Technically he would need some stamina berries for that as well, but he knew where to find plenty just fifteen or so minutes away. If he managed to combine using [Haste] and [Running] that period would shrink by a lot.

Thus the activated [Haste] three times in the next ten minutes, each for around thirty mana and fifty stamina. The first two times he just walked around a bit, it felt as though he was pushed around the entire time. As if he had backwind for every step no matter the direction. Once he got used to the sensation he tried jogging around somewhat. That led to him falling down several times and losing seven health points in total. He did manage to level up [Haste] twice, though he didn’t really notice any increase in speed or ability, which he attributed to him not using the spell to its maximum capabilities. The level-ups were both achieved during his third use of the skill while he was running.

Down a hundred and fifty stamina and 90 mana, he went on to work on the next skill. He kind of wanted to level up his [Lesser Hammer Strike] but it had only leveled while he fought so far, and he would rather not fight for now. Though instead of doing that he decided that [Stealthy Movement] was the next best thing, if you can’t hit you better hide.

He had made good progress the day before, first getting to 38% and then going further the next day to get to 55% percent. Due to his progress, the low stamina cost, and the abundance of mana berries he decided that this would be the best way forwards. [Running] too would be essential but he decided that hiding was more important for now.

Every kind of mana manipulation inside his body came tenfolds easier to him after taking [Internal Mana Manipulation] and though he experimented some with the skill and [Stealthy Movement], until it would grow brighter, then he would move to collect more berries and some branches.

[Stealthy Movement]s progress was good. The moment Nik realized that affecting a previously invisible area was a lot easier to make invisible again, his progress skyrocketed. He was now sitting around with [Stealthy Movement][Lvl. 21][100%]. He was confused. Shouldn’t something happen? I mean I am at 100% I can’t go further can I. I even had my whole body invisible for 2 minutes, a process that had completely emptied his mana reserves and had even needed him to consume a whole lot of blossom berries.

It had taken him what he assumed to be several hours of refilling his mana with berries and waiting, and trying to work with the skill, but eventually, he came to the conclusion that nothing was going to happen, just in time when the sun slowly graced the horizon.

He was pretty happy with the rest of his progress, he had manipulated [Energy Veil] to level ten and [Internal Energy Manipulation] was level nine. [Internal Energy Sight] had gone up to level eleven and he had noticed that the exactitude with which he could look at the energy movements inside him had increased somewhat. But now he was gonna get some stamina berries. Moving out he stared in awe at the mountains that were finally illuminated by the sunlight.

Nik ran towards the small creek behind the next mountain, where he had weaved the last two baskets flaring [Running], the skill ate up 4 Stamina and 7 mana per minute, additionally, he was trying out [Haste] in combination with running. The idea was that pain makes you learn faster. And it seemed as though his hypothesis was somewhat correct. In the short run that now took him only 5 minutes, he lost over 50 points of health, in the process of getting there.

He was exalted. Haste went up 3 levels in 2 uses and [Running] was level 13 now with a percentage of 79%. Nik felt as though there was some kind of underlying relationship between the two but was not sure and couldn’t deduce it right now and didn't particularly care as long as it worked well.

Alright, let’s get back to making baskets, I should probably try for two again, I could really use it for carrying wood. Hmm, or maybe I shouldn’t even carry the wood. Would it be smarter if I were to make the charcoal here? I bet transporting charcoal would be the smarter thing to do. It is less dense than wood right, so I could carry more of the final product.

The stick collection went a lot faster this time as he had changed his approach to gathering sticks. He wanted a bigger basket and thus tore the branches off at their bases. After collecting the first arm full he quickly realized that there was gonna be a problem due to the thickness of some of the endings, due to this he trimmed many of the branches to appropriate lengths. Which also made him adapt the previous method for gathering similarly sized sticks.

I should have gone to the river, I bet I could have found a tree similar to a willow, or at least something with thinner branches. But it is actually not that bad and both baskets have worked quite well so far. But I should have thought a bit more about my charcoal plans. I should start with that, because it takes longer and I don’t need to pay attention, once it starts burning.

With the new plan, Nik set out to find as many dry-looking sticks as he could. To accomplish that Nik went further back to the massive boulder he had awoke on the first time on this planet. There had been the highest density of branches laying around and also some of the largest.

As Nik heard a rustle behind him he jumped up and started sprinting away, using all of his skills to get away as fast as possible. His heart was racing. I should have not come back here, obviously, the giant cat would still be here. Only once [Haste] ran out did he dare to look back.

Nothing had followed him, he also couldn’t spot anything following him. Well, that is odd, did I just imagine that? Or did I scare whatever was behind me too. It couldn’t have been the cat, I would have seen or heard it sooner.

Calming his breathing Nik jogged back to figure out what had scared him. He was stuck in the forest, after all, if you didn’t know what you had to watch out for it could get you easily.

He observed and checked out his starting point but couldn’t find anything besides the place where he had started dashing away. The ground was stirred up, by what must have been his first few steps.

I don’t really have a chance of finding out what was behind me, do I? I know next to nothing about tracking or even observing my surroundings. Maybe I should take that tracking skill that I got on my first, no second day here. It could help me with stuff like that, though I would much rather just find other people.

What if there are no people here. Ohh shit I don’t even wanna consider that. What about no humans. I bet there are no humans here at least, why would there be any… Ah, nope, not thinking about that either.

With a brief effort, Nik got out the description for the skill.

[Tracking]: Find your way in familiar territories. Identify tracks and follow them.

I could see this being really useful, and it would also help me quite a bit with finding my path back, if I should ever get lost. I do have 4 skill slots and my other perception-type skills are pretty good. I don’t know, this could also be such a waste. What if I come across someone else and they are my level, I bet they would have something better. No, why would they be hostile, it is fine if they are better and I need all the information I can get now.

Skill Synergy:

[Running] and [Tracking] result in the passive buff [Trailrunning].

[Trailrunning] - Movement along paths increases movement speed and makes traversing distances much easier.

Well shit, this is amazing. Wait no, maybe. What is a path, I guess that is the question here. This would be really good if I were to find an actual road. I wonder how good that actually is, and ‘much easier’ also sounds nice, but how does that work.