I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up from the storm. I stacked branches so that I would have ready wood to work with. I kept them as long as I could as I wasn't sure if I would need them or want them for a more significant building project.

I found that two of my trees had come down entirely. One of them was a fur tree that took a lighting hit. The trunk had blown out like a grenade had gone off inside of it.

The other tree was torn out by its roots from wind and rain. The whole thing had fallen over. It was one of the larger hardwoods on my landing, so when it came over, it took a bunch of branches from the other trees as well. It also left a sizable hole where the roots had been. This wasn't a project that would be over quickly or even over with just a hatchet.

I hoped to move the tree close enough to the lean-to that the core would want to eat it for wood, and I could level my home. The other thing that I wanted to do was figure out if there was anything that I could make using a stronger branch. Now that I had some better tools, I figured that I might could cut down and make some staves to turn into better equipment.

I also found the weapons and armor of the vanquished were stacked neatly in the storage room. There was even an odd-looking little staff that had a gremlin skull on it.

The stick was about three feet long, and when I tried to, I was able to access the complete description of it.

Gremlins’ fear

This is a poorly crafted magical staff. It is named gremlins’ fear because the goblin that named it wanted gremlins to fear him. Not because it has anything to do with gremlins being afraid. While there is a gremlin skull mounted on the top of the staff it wouldn’t cause any fear to show up in a dumb gremlin.

Damage: None, this is too weak to be used as a weapon

Abilities: fire dart. 1-2 damage burn and magical

Unlike most fire darts this is not a small 4 inch long dart of fire. This dart looks like the improved version of the spell fireball. Also unlike normal fire darts this one has an 80% chance of starting a fire.

By the end of the day, I had gotten the loose debris picked up from my home. I had enough broken limbs that I could have one epic bonfire party. I just would need to add beer and people and some music, all things I didn’t have.

That night I went to sleep tired. I shouldn’t have asked Sam a question. But I kept trying to figure out why the stats said I was dumb, but I could still think fine.

That night I dreamed.

I was back to being in that study again. After a few days off from visiting Sam, some of my resistance to boredom had faded. Then again, it might just be that, once again, I was standing in front of Sam’s desk, watching him fill out papers. The old man was just there in a black and gold brocade shirt, with one of those foppish velvet hats with a huge white feather in it and a quill made from a peacock type feather in his left hand. Of all things, on his desk was an electric lamp with a green glass shade and three mesh metal baskets stacked with papers. Whenever he finished a group of pages, he would neatly stack them and then staple them with a red Swingline stapler. He would then take the stack of papers, reach up behind his right shoulder, and drop them. As soon as he would let go, a white light would flash, and a hand would reach out of a shimmering portal that appeared with the light and snagged the papers as they fell. When the hand would catch the papers, it would pull them back through the portal. About 15 seconds after the hand would disappear, another portal would show up from a different angle, a used staple, and sometimes bits of paper with the staple would come through aimed at Sam. This was just another night watching Sam work while listening to the clock tick.

Sam sighed, looked at me, and said, “Arn, stupid, dumb, Arn… You are broken, that is why.”

With that, I woke back up.

I didn’t know what was worse. Waiting in that man’s office or being told that I was broken. It was something that I had felt on earth all the time. I thought through things in different ways than others. I didn’t have many friends and didn’t like being around people. I always felt like I was broken.

The kicker, I thought as I was slowly getting up, was that I felt bad for the answer he gave me. Not because it wasn’t the answer to the question but because I felt that I had always been broken. It was like he was able to stab right into my heart, answering the question I asked but hitting my nerves as well.

Blink and I had a quick breakfast before it was back to work for me. She was doing the hard work, though, of laying in the sun watching me work and every now and then tripping me up. The life of a pet would be great everything given to you.

I was bummed that Lannah was gone. As much as I hated being around people, it was nice having them nearby. I was working on cleaning up this area because I didn’t have much else to do, and I had been told to build a shrine here.

I stripped the branches off of the fallen tree and topped it off. That was most of the day. Doing axe work with a hatchet sucked. The day was long and hard. By the end of it all my muscles hurt and I was dead on my feet.

The best thing I had going for me was that the hatchet had added damage. The other thing that I did was I fed the hatchet the bronze dagger and a mace. Which filled up the metal requirements and then I charged it up for the mana.

It took me letting my mana recharge twice to get enough in to level it, so that was about four hours of work on the tree before I picked up an extra magical damage point. It also let me pick what path I was taking since it was now level 1.

It gave me the options of speed or power. I went with power since I had so much work to do. The head of the hatchet grew to add a small hammer to the back of it. It now looked much like a roofing hammer, having added metal and weight on the backside. The blade also appeared to get a bit broader as well, not nearly as big as a full-sized axe but also not as small as it was.

The next level up required metal, wood, and mana. I fed it the wood from the downed tree. I tried to have it just take it from the tree, but it wanted a branch. Then I grabbed a couple of the maces that the goblins had dropped and fed the heads to the hatchet.

I got into the zone while working, just moving from one branch to the next, loping them off. It was hard but honest work, and it let my body move. It was also something that was familiar.

I had enough branches that I started to feed them to my house, external frame, and beverage container. Even if I didn’t have the mana right now, I figured that I would give my items what I could so that I would have less mess to move right now.

The work kept my mind off of Lannah being gone. I had only spent a few days with her, but I was already missing her. I wouldn’t say that pining over her, but if I wasn’t thinking about where to place the blade of the hatchet, I was thinking about how I needed to get out of this place.

As the day wore on, I managed to get my house core fully fixed and even got it to level. It went from a lean-to with a bakers awning to an odd mash-up of a wigwam and bakers tent. Parts of it were branches and grass; other parts leather. The only nice thing that it picked up at that time was better temperature control and that I could stand in it. Which truthful was an amazing change.

As I was finishing up dinner, the sky figured it was time for another storm. I settled in and started to put my mind into gear and think about what needed to happen. I wanted to go after Lannah, find people and level. The thing that had me worried was I was told by to goddesses that I needed to build a shrine where I was and that I had everything I needed.

I didn’t have a clue what a shrine should look like or what the requirements of one were. Could I just stack a couple of rocks, and it would be fine, or did I have to make a whole room or something?