Chapter 18: Chapter 16: Crafting and Building

If killing that shaman and burning the goblin town to the ground caused anything, that is chaos. A week passed since my victory over that boss, but I am questioning if I did the right thing or not. Stary goblins are running wild for food and equipment all around the forest, I began seeing different types of wolves walking in packs near my territory, and draugrs are slowly expanding their domain. In short, everything and anything capable of killing something started moving towards here, to my shelter.

 

And all of that wasn't enough. An all-out gang war between these four different types of monsters is happening at all corners of the forest. Stray goblins attack lone wolves, and packs hunt the strays and move deeper toward the old goblin territory, which, surprisingly, has my shelter inside too. Meanwhile, draugr groups are slowly moving in, and if their equipment and strength aren't making them a high threat, they are working with skeletons. I even had the chance to watch a battle between a wolf pack led by a black wolf with a size similar to an ox and a small army of draugrs, which was fun to watch from a safe place on top of the trees, but not fun to think about the storm slowly approaching. It is not only me who is acting careful too. I saw a bear, at least twice the size of a brown bear, escaping from a wolf pack. Even animals big as that aren't risking their neck.

 

So, to protect myself from that all-out war approaching me, I made a simple plan with two individual steps. The first step is building myself a door, so I can sleep without the risk of getting killed, and the second is building traps. Monsters might be careless every now and then, but they will ignore my ground after some of them die to my traps. After all, why risk your neck for no reward?

 

Thankfully, I have the tools for both of these jobs. I can break that log I cut some time ago into several long but somewhat thin pieces, then put them over the cave entrance to make a door, which is not big already, then go wild on every young tree I found to supply myself with enough fresh, and bendable wood.

 

Talking about this much tinkering makes me remember the old days, the days before the war, most of my memories about the university are a little blurry, but I at least remember them to be more fun and relaxed compared to the rest of my life. 

 

Now, when it comes to old things, I haven't used my skills in engineering for some time. Back in the days of the war, I had many chances to tinker with the given vehicles and weapons. Also, I worked with mechanics from divisions we worked together, so while my skills got a little rusty after some years of retirement, they are still there, just waiting to be polished by some work to show what they can do.

 

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After some walking, I arrived at the log I left to rot, and thankfully, it is still in good condition. Perhaps cold weather plays a part in this. "Part one of the job, getting myself some limber. I already did it weeks ago. Now, it comes to the tricky part. Making something with the wood." I do not have the proper equipment to process this and get myself planks to build, but a log will do good enough for me, and about splitting this thing into pieces, I once saw construction workers splitting giant rocks into two simply by nailing iron rods inside them. Something similar can work with that as well. Well, I must go back to the cave to grab something.

 

After a short trip, I began carefully cutting spaces into the tree's trunk, enough for me to put the triangle-shaped woods I carved from my spare firewood.

 

Now the process is over, I have four lines of twelve triangles on the tree's trunk, waiting for me to nail them inside. This job would be impossible without a good tool. "Thankfully, I got this thing." I raised my ax, I might not have a hammer, but it has a blunt back and weight suitable for the job. 

 

Time to start actually doing the job. "One!" I shout, "Two!" I followed it with a. "Three and four." I raised my ax to the air and hit the triangles with its back. Again and again, until every triangle except the last one got inside the trunk. "This is the final one!" I wiped the sweat from my forehead and raised my ax. It is time to land the last strike. And with a loud voice, the last triangle nailed it inside the tree's trunk, and the tree trunk popped into five pieces. But the job isn't over with this. I still have something to do. The pieces are too long for me to work on right now. Each one is around a bit longer than three me, which is roughly equal to six meters.

Two meter-long pieces will work perfectly, so I will cut them into three equal parts and get myself fifteen thin logs. That amount would be enough to make a door. I can use nails to connect and bind them with ropes to support them even more. Good, since I have a rough plan in my head, let's do less thinking and more work.

 

One, two, three. With all my strength, I began landing new hits on the pieces. This part is easier to do than the triangle part. But, it doesn't matter if it hurts or if I feel tired. Pain, tiresome, the things that make me remember I am still a human, and those feelings make me feel like a human, awakens my body and shouts this to my head. "You are still alive!" And to feel alive, I am ready to endure hell!

 

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The last piece split out, and it is time for me to carry all these things into my cave. "Work never ends."

                                     

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I threw myself to the ground as I placed the last log in the front of the cave. "Finally, it is over." I am panting like a dog, and my back is burning like hell. It took much more effort than I thought, but a hard-won victory feels better than one that won without a drop of sweat.

 

But I haven't won the war yet. What I achieved was nothing but a mere victory in a battle. Without finishing my entrance door, I haven't done any meaningful thing. Time to work around a bit with the shovel, so I can finally say I am close to victory.

 

Using the shovel, I will put two holes, one to the left and the other on the right side of the cave's entrance. I will put one long piece on each of them. With those placed, I can install hinges for the door and stop cold from flowing inside. My craftsman skills are not very high, but I carved enough wood and worked with enough industrial machines as a mechanical engineering student. I am confident about designing then making simple wooden hinges using what I learned throughout my life. It is now only left for me to do all of that.

 

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And after some mud digging, wood lifting, nail nailing, and finally binding wooden pieces with each other using ropes, my entrance door is ready. It is not the most stylish and certainly not the most durable. Other than that. It can barely fulfill its role as a door, but I am all in for that! I cannot lock it from the outside at the moment, which is a problem, but I think I can solve it later, but aside from that, it is pretty good. It even has a small open part for air to come inside.

 

But I am not done with only making this door. I told myself. "I must do something else." Because I had many spare parts left, but just a spoiler alert, I did. My interior is better than ever! The ground is (mostly) covered with rugs I got from the shaman's hut, and I have a small wooden bed I made using spare wood and nails. Yet, this is not over with just two things. I dug not deep but a wide hole to use as a bath, then another to put a bonfire inside. It will allow me to cook things or boil water for my bath when I want to.

 

Other than that, the interior is the same. I have nothing else. I am free to start working on my traps. I already have three different designs in my head.

 

Feather spear. In short, it is a spear hidden from sight held by a wooden piece stretched to its limit, waiting to be released and kill the one who does it. Perfect for the small hunt, and I can say that based on experience, my grandfather used to make them a lot. Their piercing power is enough to kill, let's say, something small as a goblin in a single shot, and considering it is cheap and repeatable, I am happy to build as many as I can for my security.

 

The second trap is something even less complicated. A big rock, bound with a long rope, was placed somewhere high. Undead triggers it. Rock falls from above and crushes its head, that is. I don't even have a name for it. This one is more expensive, so I only plan to build it if I spot draugrs near my shelter.

 

And last and most deadly trap is a spear wall hidden on the ground. Its mechanism is similar to the Feather spear, and in its core, it is the same thing, for bigger targets, with more things to pierce and a tweak or two to make it more useful against something like deer or a wolf. But those animals might be faster than the speed of my wall rising. So, I thought a bit and designed a two-way trap. It will have a heavier trigger, so a stupid undead or goblin wouldn't trigger it, and a trigger that will also work as a snare. If I can build a couple of them, I can secure my ass against anything bigger than a skeleton and get some meat to my stomach this way.

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