August rolled the light system over in his hands before tightening his grip on it as he attempted to bring himself out of the mess of thoughts whirling around in his head—he lifted his gaze to where Rittan and Haiko were finishing off the second last ceiling square. Focusing on the fact that their task was growing increasingly close to being finished helped a bit. Boko, Kalter and Melon were just ahead of them, on the outside of the knee-high stack of bamboo, working on the last of the walls. It was the last of the walls between them and the lake itself, which meant they really only had the corner before they were entirely done as well.

The piles of bamboo were starting to look a bit depleted, and his initial estimate of having about half left over when they’d finished was starting to look pretty accurate overall. His eyes found the holes that had been partially dug out for the extension of the undercover area and then to where the remaining logs were stacked up. It wouldn’t be long until they were moving on to those tasks, and that meant they’d be eating through the rest of the bamboo pretty quickly. If he wanted to have any leftovers for the bedframes, they’d need to make another expedition in the next couple of days—probably tomorrow, which meant he’d been gone for most of the day again. He needed to make sure everyone else had the best tools available while he was gone—that was the best use of his time.

“Alright,” August said, “The crazy magic stuff can wait.”

August turned back to the [Workbench] and closed his eyes for a moment, making a tally of all the tools he wanted. Three more axes, half a dozen bone knives of varying sizes, at least one bone chisel, a proper hammer that wouldn’t shatter, crack, or split upon hitting the iron nails, a shovel that could actually deal with the forces the Voithos could bring to bear without turning into splinters in their hands, and a saw that was long enough to actually cut through the thicker logs without turning the whole thing into a massive hassle. It wasn’t really an exhaustive list of all the things they needed, but it would help alleviate some of the frustration the brittle and primitive flint tools were causing.

August flicked through his inventory, finding the size-sorted stacks of Otrogon bones—small, medium, large, and skull, respectively—and then began laying them out on the bench, sorting them based on the length, size, and how easy he thought it would be to carve them down into the correct shape. He started with the knives because they seemed the easiest to find the correct sizes for, a series of increasingly large bones that started at about fifteen centimetres—for the really small stuff—all the way up to something more akin to the size of a machete.

He had a moment of pause when he realised he’d have to put the [Mana Storage System] back down in order to start working on the knives, something which would cut his increased regeneration off—the solution came to him pretty quickly, when he turned the thing over in his hand, and realised he had three blank sides to work with. August carefully swiped his finger over the [Activation] rune, turning the thing off in case it would explode or something, and then used [Etch] to bore a hole straight through two of the blank faces of the wood block. He removed some of the leftover twine from his inventory and then threaded it through the hole before tying it into a loop.

August turned it back on—holding it as far away from his head as he could manage, just in case—and when it didn’t explode, he slipped it down over his head. August twisted it around until he could see the knot and then tightened it until it was hanging comfortably around his neck. Now, with his hands-free, he slid the smallest of the bones over, turning it over in his hands for a minute, working out how he was going to carve it down—it was a bit of an odd realisation that he’d yet to unlock a blueprint for any knife. All of the edges rocks or the shards of flint they’d been using hadn’t been involved enough to pass whatever threshold was required. Still, he had a ton of overlap from other blueprints to work with—the [Basic Spear Blueprint] and the [Basic Arrow Blueprint] alone included a bunch of different methods for sharpening stones into the same kind of shape he was looking for.

One side of the small bone was noticeably thicker, so he’d probably use that as an inbuilt handle with a few grooves to add some grip to it. Once he was sure about the general shape, he used [Etch] to round out the handle, carefully shaving away at it until it was about as cylindrical as he could manage. The [Mana Storage System] must have already had quite a bit inside it because it was refilling his own supply faster than he could actually use it—something which allowed him to slow down a bit and avoid rushing things. Once the handle was pretty much done, he moved onto the blade itself—with far more care and focus—he began to shave down the sides, creating two angular faces that were entirely missing from the more rounded handle.

He turned it over and then attempted to mirror the other side, planning down the faces until he had something of a triangular shape sticking out of the handle—it looked a bit goofy in its unfinished state, almost as if he’d attempted to make some too-thin, proto-kunai. He kept working, holding the knife at a sheer angle so he could see exactly how much distance existed between the pad of his finger and the bone, to make sure he wasn’t taking away too much material with each pass. Before long, it started to actually resemble a knife, although there was a pretty obvious limit to how thin he could make the edges—he’d have to test out some of those sharpening methods to see if they worked on Otrogon bone.

Basic Knife Blueprint Unlocked

“Not quite a standing ovation,” August muttered, adjusting his grip on it. “But I’ll take it.”

It felt awkwardly small in his hand, which meant that each of the Voithos would probably hate it. August couldn’t help the smirk that pulled at his lip when he considered gifting it to Kalter as some great weapon and then playing it off as if it wasn’t the size of a pen—as funny as it would be, he wasn’t quite so willing to risk his neck for a joke.