It’s odd. I’ve been going over random options within the construction menu and the buildings give me an image.

At first it didn’t really matter, they change every time I place them down but I think I just figured something out.

I think I did anyway, I think it’s just to represent the scale of the building. Doesn’t really matter, but thought it was something worth remembering.

Oh, that reminds me, I forgot to check if that huge bird dropped anything, I have a long way to go towards greatness. Greater greatness that is. I’ll have to go searching for it later.

Currently I’m walking amongst the many people that are training in the awe inspiring ways of the throwing spear.

They are sadly very inadequate at throwing it. But no matter, if they throw enough of them I’m sure they’ll do fine.

I’ve introduced the meditation ability to everyone, a few already knew of it and fewer still had already learned it.

The student schedule is simple, they read and they throw. They are welcome to rush into close combat like idiots though.

I think the vast majority of the people have learned two or more skills so far. I even found that farming skill I saw in the village Herros leads, actually is he still leading that?

I need to be better informed, do I need to set up a group that aggregates information?.

The farming skill in of itself is not very useful. It’s used on the soil that is being used to plant vegetables. It’s called Rejuv.

I learned it but I’m not sure if I’ll ever use it, I mean the greenhouses are already formidable.

I found a building I want to make, I was filtering stuff for training purposes and found something called an Akelia, it came up when I used the words training and learn.

I can’t make it yet, I need gold but its now the first on the list, I still got my eye on making as many crafting buildings as I can.

And when I say crafting buildings, I mean the more expensive ones, the ones that cost skill-books and decent amounts of gold. I think they are upgraded versions.

I tried to get people excited about the mine operation but they weren’t as enthusiastic about it as I was.

I’m still heavily pushing people towards crafting, I won’t take no for an answer on that one.

I’ve been fiddling around with imbuing things and I’ve got an idea. I’m going to try and carve patterns into things and see if it helps.

Why? Don’t know, I’m very bored these days. Son always sits on my head, a few people have asked me why the top of my head glows constantly, and I’ve declined to answer.

Hua! These people have some spirit, the men and women and fraternizing a little too much in my opinion but that is fine.

Maybe I should organize something like a competition. Let them progress without me having to worry about it, I could give them some kind of reward.

Question is what? A great spear sounds like an idea, maybe a nice house? Hmm. How would they compete?

Accuracy is important, but so is power, then of course there is being agile and stealthy.

You gotta be graceful like me if you want to jump from branch to branch with a spear in hand. I’ll do this sometime later.

There is a constant sound of spears hitting large pieces of wood. They shout everytime they throw, very uncivilized.

Do I have to lead people to the sanctuary or would they manage to get there by themselves? They’ll probably be fine.

I should get back to meditating, I can almost sense the feathers in the way I can sense the trees, clear water and soft dirt.

Was hoping to have some fun with Sera but her group of men have become shockingly large.

I’m really puzzled by this, her sister has still a long way to go but damn they really can tie many men down.

She politely declined my advances with an angry gaze, frankly, I’m not sure what is going on.

I went for a visit to the library, got stared down by a ragged looking old man. Quite a few more books have been added to the racks.

People can still only go into certain areas so some of the books have just been sitting there, it’s strange that I can move them from one side to the other without any issue.

I got absolutely no answers from the old man, his dead fish eyes will stay with me for a long while.

The names of the books are still far away from any proper context of the contents within the books.

|Within and without|

|Tiered songs of yore|

|You don’t walk over the street to see what’s on the other side: Volume four|

|They tremble in their tedious times of tradition: Abridged version|

|Curse the moon, it won’t curse back|

|War, war is…|

I’ve been flicking through these and all of them are just some stories for entertainment from what I can tell.

The last one was about a man and his eternal struggle to overcome his romantic love for his elderly aunt. I was hoping for something related to crafting.

I wonder if sanctuary had any additions to their collection, might be worth checking out, I need stuff for building anyway.

I need to create a glider that can move large quantities of materials at once. Maybe the key is a great wingspan? Something tells me it can’t be too heavy.

I’m going to make a feather spear, not sure how to go about this. There is a good half a meter of non-feathery bit at one end which I plan to carve into a spear-head.

Let's see, the process is taking a while, my knife isn’t cutting very well into it, it’s more like I am grinding it down than carving.

Maybe we have to pour some energy into the knife. Oh, that helped, there is an improvement.

It’s still a whole degree slower than doing it with plain wooden branches. Not hard, just tedious. The Prototype spear-head looks decent enough.

The feather is already fairly straight, I can’t really bend into any other shape so that might be an issue.

There is also the problem with all that soft feathery bit which I’m not sure what to do about. We could cut it all off.

Most of the feathers are brown or black. There are a few white ones and some red but they are in the minority.

I really should go check on that huge bird, I bet his feathers are vastly superior. If these spears go alright I’ll look into it.

The main reason I am even bothering with these feather spears is because I am pretty certain that the materials used in crafting weigh heavily on how much energy you can imbue them with.

I might be able to make some things out of the claws and beaks of our fallen winged friends. Trinkets and weapons maybe.

After cutting out all the feathery bits on the feather I started imbuing with energy, not sure if it helps but I’m picturing sharp things.

When you have no idea how things work, you gotta get creative, right? Well, anyway. There is a slight problem, I can’t seem to imbue very much into the spears at once.

It feels like I’m trying to push something gigantic into a very small opening. See, with books or maybe a recluse but lovable master to guide me, this wouldn’t be so hard.

I’m going to have to put this aside for now, I’m going to gather up some people for a journey towards Sanctuary.

Well I’m going to tell them to get ready for it, we still need to properly stockpile things and find a way to carry them efficiently.

Meanwhile I’m going to meditate and perhaps do some actual physical training, I felt really overwhelmed in the middle-layer.

Fibrous affinity

You have touched upon the natural protection of the world.

The material that naturally protects the miniscule things. Alone we are small, together we are enormous.

As you continue to align yourself with Fibrous materials you will not only increase your mental faculties you also enhance your physical resistances as well as warding off various forms of sickness.

There is a definite difference once you find a new affinity, I already feel like I could possibly eat a little bit more than before.

I’d like to go check to see if the pressure in the middle-layer has become more manageable but at the same time, I really don’t feel like running over there again.

I’m getting comfortable now, just relaxing in my own personal tree, watching my minions down below.

The life-less people still make me uncomfortable but I’m getting used to them. If they ever do something shady, I’ll be the first to initiate a purge.

The stockpile of things hasn’t been going over too well. A bunch of people have died while hunting, I have honestly no idea how they manage this.

So far most deaths have been self-inflicted. They keep falling off the trees. This is really embarrassing, my own tree-troops can’t even climb trees properly.

If this gets out, I’ll be a laughing stock. The king of who? The king of the idiots that keep falling to their deaths.

I’d punish them, but I feel like dying and forgetting parts of who you are is bad enough. Maybe they’ll regress and choose different jobs.

I’ve made a rough schedule, it's more like a quota, everyone that is classified as a hunter has to go on a hunt once every thirty days.

They don’t even need to hunt dangerous things, just hunt something. Anything can sell, I think wood might even sell, I wonder if there is any crafting related to wood. Wait, was there? Let's check.

Turns out wood and craft produced some search results. Not sure what is but it only costs a bit of silver so I planted it near the training area.

It had no name, a lot of them are just numbered. Most of the houses and things are just numbered with letters and general numbers like this one is called 0172s3K52111ZkLLs5.

It is a small tree hut with some devices and tools. Most of the tools look like they can be used to carve with, which is great, a knife only goes so far.

The two devices are strange. One has a peddle and rough paper looking thing strapped to a wheel.

The other is some kind of presser or something, I should be able to strap something down with it instead of holding the wood myself.

I’m carving patterns into a normal wooden spear, it is surprisingly hard. It’s hard to make it look good, I mean, which is the main goal here.

I’ve tried some easy patterns like straight lines all the way from the top to bottom and various variations of circles.

Some of them look alright but most I've imbued and plan on giving to the hunters for training and whatnot.

It’s hard to say whether it made it easier to imbue or generally a better spear but it's fun.

The plan is to make complex patterns on a few then imbue normal ones and complex one, this should at least give me a chance to discover a distinct difference.

The days pass pretty quickly when you’re having fun and busy. Not to the same degree as meditating but boredom is my only true enemy.

Every once in a while I make platforms at a whim, that lead to one of the Naturai trees in the outer layer. I’d do it all in one go but it gets tedious at such long distances.

I’m not sure how to deal with the whole power scenario but we’ll think of something eventually.

I had an idea of making them throw a spear from a platform into a target and count their points for how deep the spear gets embedded.

we’ll have to do some testing, I can’t really throw a spear myself to compare, it is surprisingly hard to control how much strength to use.

Currently I’m making more spears, I’ve been making a large quantity of them. The carving has become a lot easier and detailed with the new tools.

I’m trying to make small winged spears that weave through the wind. I won’t call the ones I’ve made so far failures but they are definitely not ideal.

After imbuing them with energy I give them to the hunters. There is an incredibly large number of hunters, they have to be around half of the entire population.

One third is making crafting related things. Froom wooden swords and spears to various clothing made from leather and fur.

The fur is a particular thing though, none of the beasts have thick fur. Their products are pretty pathetic but I can’t exactly handle the workload by myself.

There are still no children being conceived. Talking about conception, there have been some issues with violent acts.

I’ve had to kill quite a few people and remove their respawn from the rooster of Abraser.

If this continues I’ll have to implement a harsher punishment aching to torture, maybe beast bait? Could be useful.

My Feather spear has been a hassle. I managed to make an acceptable pattern, it's basically sharp straight strokes with triangles or squares overlapping them.

I’ve made two plain feather spears as well, so now I’m about to try and see if there is any major difference between them once they have been imbued. I tried to hollow out a spear as well, that did not go well at all.

It took me over two days to finish imbuing the first plain feather spear, it has lost almost all of its weight, it literally floats down when I drop it.

This is the most dramatic change I’ve seen in anything I've imbued. The materials really do make an incredible difference.

However, I’m not sure if this is useful, the weight probably lessens its overall power. A little disappointing, but maybe I’ll find a use for it.

I’m going to lecture the trainees a bit before continuing with a carved spear. I’ll let them test out the new spear as well.

There are always some people training, even in the dark of night. There are a few outstanding people, outstanding when compared to their peers, that is.

One that shines the brightest is probably that dark haired woman and the bald older looking man.

What were their names again? Plata or something, no? Plate? Whatever, I’ll call them ‘You’ and ‘come here’ that’ll do the trick.

“Hey, you. Baldy, come here.”

“Sir!”

Mm, brimming with a need to show loyalty, I’d be impressed if it wasn’t for the perpetual look of a man trying to figure out the secrets of the universe.

Also, how can a man grow that much eyebrow hair? This is astonishing, note to self, groom facial hair.

“Here, test out this spear for me, tell me your thoughts.”

He starts swinging it and twirling it in circles around himself, something a lot of people have taken up doing. I don’t get it, they call spearmanship but I don’t see it.

I have no idea why they keep doing that, is that some sort of technique? Just throw the spear, damn.

He looks a bit perplexed, probably because it weighs almost nothing, and he always looks like he just saw the love of his life morph into a centipede.

Finally he throws the spear, he has nice form, the spear flies smoothly and digs into the thick wooden target.

“So?”

“It’s light.”

“You are exceptionally perceptive, baldy. Anything else?”

“It’s sharp and flexible but I prefer something heavier.”

Right, it is flexible, really flexible. Kind of missed that when I think about it, it can almost bend to a ninety degree angle before showing signs of breaking.

That has to be a benefit right? I wonder how much weight it could hold without breaking, I’ll do some proper testing later on. The feathers might be better as bows.

“Sleepy, your turn.”

“Yes, sir!”

After she rips out the spear she starts doing the flashy spear twirling everyone seems to love, she does it with far greater effect. According to the crowd's reactions.

Finally after a few jumps and random stabs, which granted, are in great form, she throws the spear with promising accuracy.

It goes exactly into the previous hole made by baldy. The spear continues through the thick log before losing momentum and piercing slightly into the wooden platform.

All in all, the spear shouldn’t be any worse than my previous spears, I still haven’t tried a metal heavy spear so far though so I can’t really properly compare yet.

“And?”

“It's nice, can I have it?”

“Ye, take it, I’m working on a better one, hopefully, might give them as rewards to the race.”

“Race?”

Oh looks like Old man confusion is interested. Did I not mention I was hosting a race? Ah, well that’s what all those bridges I’ve been setting up are for.

“I’m making a race track across Abraser’s outer-layer, help you guys get motivated and bring in some competition, great idea right?

Oh, by the way, I’ll give you something special if you move the stockpiles we’ve been collecting to sanctuary, if you can rally a few people with you.

We don’t really have many animals that can carry all that, we should start taming beasts if we can.

I’ve been told some of them horses are roaming in the wild, so look into that for me as well.”

Ah, they’re just staring at me now, they really lack proper social skills. I can’t be too demanding of these plebeians. It is hard to be such a graceful and impeccable leader.

Time to train a bit, I’ve been trying to focus on my throwing technique without using rapid hand movement.

Not going to lie, I feel a bit scared after my hand shattered in the previous incident. That shockwave still leaves me with cold sweat running down my spine.

I still haven’t tried making anything out of the claws I got from the birds. They are extremely tough and I’m not sure what to do with them.

I was going to go to a sanctuary but I’ll just send some people instead, I wanted to check some stuff out there but it still takes too long to go there.

I’m also planning on a meditation session or heading to scout another Naturai tree in the middle-layer.