August gave one last shake of his hand in an attempt to fling the pain away from his mind and then took hold of one of the planks. He lifted it up off the stump and then lay it down on the ground before moving to put a second one next to it.

“We need four planks for the frame, two shorter, two longer,” August said, adjusting them on the ground to leave a large enough gap. “Could you place one of those logs we’ll be using for the legs in the corner of those two, so we can get an idea of how wide it will need to be.”

Kalter eyed him for a moment longer, clearly still not over his threat of weaponising Haiko against her, before she moved to place the leg into position. August organised two of the planks against it, making sure they were sitting relatively flush against the log. Kalter moved the next three legs into place without being asked, clearly seeing what he was attempting to do. August flipped all four of the planks up to lean against the log and then stood up, removing a piece of flint from his inventory to use as a marker. He marked one of the two end pieces to be cut down, then both of the longer sides to get rid of the overhang before holding the first one out for Kalter to take.

“Can you cut these on the line, please?” August asked.

Kalter took it from him, laid it across two of the upright legs, and then sawed through it without question. August took the piece she’d cut off and then laid it down on top of the rest of the plank, marking the next board at the exact same length. Kalter cut through it as well and then removed the remaining piece of wood to put back over with the others. August dragged the next two longer pieces up for her to work on, and then once they had four pieces cut to the proper size, he removed the offcuts.

“Okay, we need to nail these together,” August said, lifting two of the pieces up. “I didn’t get around to making a hammer yet—do you think you could use a rock?”

“Yes,” Kalter said, breathing out of her nose. “Just show me what I’m doing already.”

August aligned the two pieces and indicated where the nail would be going. Kalter took it from him, aligned it, and then held out a hand for the nails. August passed two of them over, found a rock in his inventory that was big enough to be used as a makeshift hammer, and then handed that to her as well.

“The wood might split if you hit it too hard,” August said, “You might have to do it softer at first as a test.”

Kalter hesitated for a moment, then carefully hit the nail with the rock—it sunk about a centimetre into the flat of the first plank without splitting it, and then a second slightly harder hit drove it into the end of the next piece. Again the wood remained unsplit, and the third hit left the nail completely buried inside.

“Like that?” Kalter murmured.

“Perfect,” August said, nodding.

He couldn’t use any more mana because it was coming up to the time when he could summon again, which would require a full bar. That also meant they were going to be using up about eight of the eleven nails he’d managed to make on just the frame.

“We should use two nails per side to keep it from coming loose,” August said, indicating where the second one should go. “I’ll make some more nails this afternoon, so we’ll have to wait to finish this off completely.”

August picked up the second plank as she finished hammering in the nail and then trapped it against the leg with his foot as she moved her ‘L’ piece into place. It only took them a couple of minutes to nail all four pieces together, and then they were left with a large rectangular frame.

“Three nails left?” Kalter said, eyeing them on the stump. “Can we do anything more?”

“We can nail it to three of the legs,” August said, “But before we do that, we should check if they are all the same length.”

To do that, they tipped all four of the legs back over onto the ground and lined them up beside each other. Two of them were about an inch too long, so they used the shortest one as a measure to mark the other four. Then Kalter went to work, sawing them down to the same length. August watched his mana crawl upwards as she worked, wondering about Kalter’s question regarding teaching them how to use [Etch]. He could feel the energy within him, as a sort of liquid pressure moving around in his body—it stood out pretty well because he’d never really had anything like it back on earth. But there was also nothing really intuitive to learn about it because he’d pushed, pulled and prodded at it a hundred times since he’d first woken up on Devil’s Nest, but it hadn’t done much of anything in response. [Etch] hadn’t felt much different from the normal way it felt, if perhaps a bit brighter due to its concentration. Whatever process was occurring to turn that liquid pressure into a point of energy capable of cutting through metal was happening somewhere he couldn’t reach or observe—likely the same place where all of the HUD was derived from. The idea of teaching someone else how to use it seemed far beyond him—

“Where does it attach?” Kalter asked.

“At the top,” August said, shaking his head free of the thoughts. “Here—”

August lifted the frame up from his side until the top of the rectangular frame was flush with the flat of the legs. Once she had it in place, she planted one hand on top of the leg to hold it still, two hands against the frame to keep it steady, the nail in a fourth hand, and the rock in a fifth—two strikes buried the nail through the plank and into the leg, securing it in place.

“Ideally, we’d have at least two nails for each leg,” August said, “We’ll have to settle for opposite corners for now.”

Kalter followed his direction, securing the opposite corner with another nail, and then used the final nail to secure a third leg in place. It stayed in place when she let go of it, but that was as far as they could really get without more nails.

“Once I make more, we’ll be covering the top of it with more planks to give it an actual benchtop, maybe four of them, given how wide they are,” August said, ruffling the back of his hair in thought. “We can handle that later one—thanks for doing all of that, Kalter.”

“It’s fine,” Kalter said, “What will you do now?”

August considered the half-finished workbench for a moment—he couldn’t do any more work on it without more nails, and he couldn’t really get started on any of the other tools without [Etch] either.

“I’ll probably make a plank to unlock the blueprint,” August said, “That should get me pretty close to a level up, then I’m going to spend the skill point—after that, the summon cooldown should be about finished.”

“The skill point,” Kalter said, “What are you going to use it on?”

That was the question he’d been thinking about—the proficiency level he’d gained for [Predator] had made it easier to deal with the information he was receiving, so he was tempted to put the point into [Predator I] in the hopes that it help. Then again, there was no way to tell if the skill points manually placed in the skill affected his ability to process the information from the skill or if that was solely a result of levelling proficiency—he might simply increase the range again, with no processing benefit at all, which would be annoying. He was also getting close to unlocking the next tier in [Survival], at least, he thought he was. There had been four skill points placed in [Leadership] before the next tier had appeared, so getting to see if there was anything new and useful was something he wanted to find out.

“I’m kind of hoping there will be some new skills unlocked in the [Survival] tree soon, so it’s either the sensing skill, the skill that makes taming more effective, or the one that makes it easier to hide from monsters.” August admitted, “What are you going to do now?”

“I’ll go help Boko with the walls,” Kalter said. “August, when you have more nails, come find me—I will finish this.”

Kalter turned, already leaving, and August spoke another quick word of thanks before she got out of earshot, causing her to glance back again before she continued on. As far as interactions went, he thought that one had been a bit of a mess—but they’d resolved most of the tension between them and even worked together to make something, even if it wasn’t quite finished yet.