August considered one of the longer offcuts for a moment and wondered if he could get the blueprint for a plank by simply making a smaller one out of it. He pulled it up onto the half-finished workbench and then aligned it with the top, marking it at the correct length to use as one of the benchtop pieces. Then he collected the [Bone Saw], holding the plank flat against the legs of the bench, and then began sawing through it—immediately, he was reminded that while Kalter could overwhelm the material with her obscene physicality, he couldn’t quite do the same. August breathed out, pacing himself as the saw chewed through the plank, and then when it finally broke through—

Plank Blueprint Unlocked

—the tip of the plank hit the ground, leaving something of a rough patch of wood fibre at the end of it. He spent a moment tidying it up and then glanced up at the second notification that had appeared.

You have levelled up.

A quick check-through of the menu showed that he’d cleared the threshold by about thirty experience points—a narrow gap, but he’d managed it. August tossed the small offcut into the pile and then left the bench plank on top, laying the saw down on top of it. As far as the process of making planks went, he apparently could have done it without a saw at all—the blueprint contained an entire process for splitting logs with a series of wedges and then hewing the final product into a usable board.

That would have taken him about a dozen times as long as it would have to just saw through it, though, and when the Voithos were capable of doing it in a fraction of that time, the splitting process seemed almost entirely obsolete. Rather than sit around and do nothing while waiting for his mana to fully replenish itself, he organised the uncut planks that they’d be using for the benchtop into a single pile and then, after a moment of thought, marked out two lengths to use as a brace to better hold the legs together. That left him with about seven full-length planks to use for something else, and he considered what else they would need.

They couldn’t keep sleeping on the ground forever, so a set of simple bed frames were on that list, although he really wasn’t sure what they could use as a mattress yet. Some bench seats would give them someplace to sit other than the dirt as well—and Haiko had asked for some shelves to keep the pottery somewhere safer. The bench seats seemed easier enough to manage by simply cutting two crosssections out of a thick log to use as the legs and then a pair of planks nailed into them—the weight of the legs would keep it from moving around.

The shelves were a bit harder to envision, given they’d intended to hang them off the bamboo walls somehow, but he could probably figure out a way to do that. Building enough bed frames for each of them was something that would take far more planks than he had available and would end up being an ongoing task, given the population was increasing every three days—still, he’d seen more than enough of them in his life to build something that would unlock the blueprint for that.

“Bench seat it is,” August murmured.

The only thing that was the right size for the legs were the offcuts they had left over from cutting the pillars down to the size—although they were probably a bit too big overall. Maybe he could take out a crosssection of one and then split it into two semi-circular pieces; they should be roughly the right height. He found one of them that was already lying on its side, and made a mark that was about two feet off the edge, then made another two similar marks—that should give him enough for three benches in all.

He checked his mana, noted that it was at about halfway full, and then set the saw in the first mark—August started to regret how ambitious he’d been after about a quarter of the way through the log, and he straightened up for a moment to wipe his forehead clear. The first wall, on the side closest to the lake, was pretty much done now, rows upon rows of bamboo stacked on top of one another and trapped between the pillar and a tall bamboo guide that had been tied off to keep it all in place.

He caught sight of both Boko and Kalter standing behind the two pillars that framed the [Draft Furnace], each with a length of bamboo, and in the process of screwing it down into the holes, they’d dug out—clearly more of the guides they would be using for the next wall. Haiko was once again atop the ladder and was tying off the last piece of the second section, completing the framing for six of the twelve pillars. He’d have to remove all of the palm leaves they’d collected on the last expedition into the forest from his inventory—then again, Haiko may well quit while she was ahead if there was some actual shade.

He did another mana check and found it was at the ninety percent mark before turning his attention back to the log with a sigh. The deeper he got into the log, the more he realised he should have made the saw longer because he couldn’t quite reach the centre of it without the handle getting in the way. He adjusted as best he could by coming at it from another angle, but his arm began to burn from the strain as he got past the halfway mark. By the time he’d managed another quarter beyond that, he was sawing from a position that was almost vertical, and he was forced to switch hands entirely.

After that, his pace slowed dramatically, his offhand fresh and enthusiastic but far too clumsy, and the angle had been a nightmare before that. He yanked the saw free from where he’d wedged it, more than a little annoyed by his lack of forethought. It hadn’t been a problem with the thinner logs, but anything approaching the size of the pillars would require the axe to finish off unless he made a bigger saw—something to deal with after the workbench was finished and he was able to sit down and make the set of better tools. Haiko was descending the ladder now, and August left the saw on the almost sawn-through log before moving for the lake, kneeling down and drinking until he’d washed away the pang of hunger that had been rising up in him—it was far too soon for more Sad Apples.