If she was willing to joke about it, and if he could do the same, then maybe things weren’t so broken after all. He took a moment to turn and was a bit startled by how much the others had managed to accomplish. The first four pillars were connected by a bamboo frame now, a simple square, with a series of bamboo lengths cutting across from one side to the other, close enough together that the palm leaves they had intended to use for a ceiling could be easily placed.

Haiko was atop the ladder, starting to connect the square to the next set of pillars. Two of her arms held onto the pillar to keep herself steady while Rittan held the other end of the bamboo above his head, reducing the weight of it enough for her to secure it in place. He watched as she gave it a final tug and then descended again, bringing the ladder with her to the other side—two people definitely made the job easier, that much was clear. The fact that they had above-human strength, stamina, and overall physique only added to that.

Boko was on the side closest to the lake, the bamboo wall already about a quarter of the way up. He’d placed a series of five bamboo guides into the ground, spaced less than a foot away from the pillars. Now he seemed to be moving back and forth between the massive pile August had left for him this morning and stacking each piece horizontally between the guides and the pillars, the iteration increasing the height of the wall with each trip. At the speed it was going, he’d be done before Haiko and Rittan had finished making the second ceiling square.

“Maybe we should plant some bamboo here,” August said, watching them work. “It grows pretty quickly, and having a source nearby might end up being pretty useful.”

Kalter turned to follow his line of sight and scanned the progress for a minute before turning back.

“You’re worried about running out?” Kalter said.

“We will run out, so we’re going to have to do another trip either way,” August admitted before nodding towards the holes for the halted pillar expansion. “I’m just thinking about the longer term, I guess—if we manage to capture an Otrogon, they’ll need some bamboo to eat as well.”

“Wouldn’t want them to eat our buildings,” Kalter said, glancing towards the forest. “You said you saw one eating a tree?”

“Yeah, they can eat wood,” August said. “Bamboo grows a lot faster than wood, though, and it’s probably less valuable as well since we can’t replace the trees as easily.”

August turned his attention back towards their own task and the next steps for actually turning the materials into something useful—Kalter was halfway through making the planks, and he was wasting time watching her work because she didn’t really need him. Instead, he removed the chain length of the Efkini chain from his inventory and sectioned off about three feet of it before using [Etch] to sever it from the rest. He inventoried the pool of chains and kept the smaller off-cut to use as a base for his attempt at making some kind of nails. He pressed his fingertip against the chain and made a series of marks at four-inch intervals before severing the chain at each point.

It left him with a dozen pieces, and he set each of them down except for one. He held up the small section of white-coated metal, pressed the tip of his smallest finger and began carving out a thinner slice of the metal. He repeated the process until he had four small metal bars around as long and thick as a piece of chalk. The shape of the chain left some of them not quite the same length and shape, but it was close enough that he could whittle them down to a more appropriate form. August attempted the first one, leaving a flat section at the top to serve as the head of the nail before tapering down the edge to a point.

Nail Blueprint Unlocked

The knowledge that came with the blueprint told him that while he had the end result roughly correct, the process he’d used to get there was almost entirely divorced from the actual creation of a nail. The standard way seemed to be with creating a long, thin bar of metal through the use of the furnace and anvil before shaping each nail at the end of the bar through additional heat, the use of a hammer and a chisel—considering he hadn’t even attempted to melt the chain down in the first place or use the [Draft Furnace] for anything at all, this was about as good as it was going to get for the moment.

“A nail?” Kalter said, “If you can make those, shouldn’t we be using them for the building?”

“I used up about a tenth of my mana just making this one,” August admitted, “I’ll get faster the more used to the process I get, but I’d never be able to keep up with the amount we need for the ceiling.”

“That thing you’re doing with your finger,” Kalter said, “Can you teach that?”

August glanced down at his hand. The skill had already been cancelled, so he couldn’t really see anything—could he teach something like this? It wasn’t a blueprint, so he couldn’t share it, but maybe he could try to identify how the mana was actually being used and then explain that to them? Kalter wouldn’t be able to do it because she still hadn’t joined the Faction and thus wouldn’t be capable of manipulating mana—unless that was something they got through the summoning process itself—but Rittan and Boko probably could, considering they could use the other skills.

“I’m not exactly sure how it works, and since it’s not a blueprint, I can’t just share it with someone else,” August said, explaining his thought process. “There is a job called [Runecrafter] though, which might have the skill as part of taking the job—I don’t know that for certain, though, and I haven’t unlocked it yet.”

“How did you learn it?” Kalter asked.