Cultivation Struggles of a Lowly Fox

Aiko picked up some ropes, ladder, more fabric for the roof, and many more things. She was even considering giving the caravan a normal roof, but she didn’t know what it would do if the weight was too much.

After all, she didn’t want it to cave in on her while she was sleeping, so...

’No, maybe I can use furs for that?’ Aiko tilted her head. As far as she knew, furs were waterproof, or rather the skin under the fur was completely waterproof, but the problem was with the seams.

The seams were where the water could flow freely, so she would still get wet if she tried this.

Runes were also very finicky, barely working in this place, so she could just patch it up with Runes and call it a day.

”I will get barrels later...” Aiko tried to figure out what else she needed, but at the same time, she had to be careful about weight.

”A small cart?” Aiko noticed a small cart, which would be perfect for what she was carrying!

’Okay, we can make this work.’ It was worn out pretty badly, but it would survive this trip. The most important part? It was free, since it wouldn’t last all that long.

With everything inside the small cart, Aiko started pulling it once again. It was very light, compared to the caravan, which pleased her greatly.

She would be able to get back to the forest that much quicker~!

...

A day or two passed and Aiko was back next to the caravan. There were some issues along the way, one of which she almost died by cart rolling over her, but fortunately it did only 75 damage out of 80.

’I should raise my health again.’ Aiko nodded her head seriously. If she had enough health, then death from exhaustion shouldn’t be an issue, right? Or was she wrong?

Shaking her head gently, since she now had the sharpening stone, she was able to turn that dull axe into a sharp little thing.

Aiko took that axe to that hateful and tough tree.

*Ding*

It certainly worked, but the edge rolled over, making her even more dull than before.

’Sharpening is an art? You gotta be kidding me.’ Aiko groaned once she realised she couldn’t just rub the axe with the sharpening stone and call it a day.

The angle, the bevel, the length. Everything played a role when it came to sharpness versus durability.

The sharper you would go, the easier it was to break it.

As such, balancing it was truly an art, one of which required patience.

”Dammit!” Aiko yelled out, frustrated as another edge rolled, making it dull once again.

What was worse, she had to take off part of the edge in order to be able to sharpen it again, making it ever so slightly shorter than it was before.

In other words, sharpen it enough, and she would have a stick without an axe head!

Aiko was really trying to do her best with what she was given, but she couldn’t wrap her head around the sharpening thing. Making a sword looked easy, but making a durable one was difficult.

”One-use weapons are nice, no?” Aiko was trying to convince herself that her one-hit wonder was worth it... but it was not.

Even if it was a one-hit wonder, the damage she actually dealt was nowhere near enough to justify the rubbing of the blade against the stony stone.

At some point Aiko even started hitting the stone on the axe, like she was playing with two rocks instead of metal and a rock.

”I need to bring someone over...” Aiko did not have the patience to learn new art right now, since she had to solve those villages in order to progress further.

It was kind of funny, since she rested so much that there were now too many villages, but so far, all the goblins dropped Soul Points, so she prayed that it would stay that way until she finished.

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”This will take ages...” She needed to do a bit more before she could use the saw, but...

”How do you even sharpen a saw...?” Aiko suddenly chuckled, like she just gave up thinking. ”No, maybe the teeth don’t need to be sharpened?” She hoped that was the case, but that was just wishful thinking...

...

After an abysmally long time, Aiko finally made a big enough dent into the tree, so that she could use the saw on it.

It was kind of awkward to use it, since not only was it huge, but it also liked to bend, making it difficult to manage and use at the same time.

Shaking her head gently, she would just do it slowly and see if it would even work.

Worse comes to worst, she would just return to the safe area for a smaller saw!

Fiddling with the saw, Aiko slowly over time built up some experience with it. The bending was not an issue as long as she didn’t allow it to go too low. Thus, if you just ’supported’ the other side and prevented it from bending too much, you could do this alone.

The only inconvenient thing was how rough it was. It took a lot of strength from Aiko to use it, making her worry about her stamina.

The stamina stat was not shown, same with other things. She would have to learn to estimate something that she never had to do before, making this whole thing more dangerous.

What was even worse than that, is that she couldn’t do that in a safe area, since she was never ’tired’ or ’died’ over there. There was probably some kind of powerful healing that not only healed her wounds, but also body conditions.

Shaking her head gently, she turned around. She would rest here and there while trying to chew through that tree!

...

”It’s dull.” About a halfway point through the tree. Aiko noticed how unnaturally slower the whole thing became.

Checking the teeth, they were pretty beat up, but she also had no way to sharpen it with the stone since it would be awkward.

”More tools?” Aiko could just get more of them if she ruined one, but then, how many times would she have to go back and forth? She didn’t want to do it too many times!

Nodding her head gently, she returned once for another saw and back to her caravan.

She then proceeded to cut through most of the tree, but the end could be just ’kicked’ over if you had the leverage, so even if the saw was already gone, she could just finish it with some of her muscles.

”Now wait...” Aiko suddenly had a realisation when the tree was falling down. ”If it was so hard to cut, then how hard will it get to process...?” She wanted to faint since she never considered that.

Normally she could do this easily, but that ’normally’ was not normal here, making her reconsider her life choices.

Aiko sat down inside her caravan, staring at the fallen tree.

She really didn’t want to work on it, but she would have to if she wanted to use it on her caravan.

”Take it from another point. If you can process this, you will have a pretty sturdy caravan...” Aiko nodded her head repeatedly, but that didn’t make her feel any better...

”First, I need new things for my wheels, then the wheels themselves and later the rest.” Aiko drew out what she needed.

The axle or whatever it was called, could be somewhat easily made if she didn’t need to make it round all the way through. Well, in theory, only the parts that would touch the hinges that kept it from moving away would have to be rounded and everything else, in theory, could stay as is.

Aiko was not sure if it would really work, but she didn’t want to go through the whole process of making it round, since that would require some ungodly work and lots of going back and forth because of tools.

”At this point it would be better to throw these tools at the goblins and harass them that way.” Aiko shook her head so many times that she felt a bit dizzy.

”Alright, first is the bark.” Aiko sighed. Fortunately, she had a special tool just for the bark, so she hoped it would end up better than-

”Dull...” Aiko kind of knew this would happen considering the axe, but since the saw was sharp, she had some hope that would not be the case.

How unfortunate for her, since it seems like she will really have to learn the art of sharpening.

”As if! I would rather hunt them head-on than do this all day!” Even Aiko had her limit and even if she blows away her frustration, there will be something new that will make her even more frustrated...

”Whatever...” Aiko snorted unhappily and tried to sharpen it a few times.

”This is...” Aiko felt like this one was a lot more forgiving than the other one.

”Is it because one side is completely flat?” Aiko tilted her head, but that shouldn’t be the case.

Even if one side was flat, wouldn’t that mean you would have to put that much more effort to the other side?

”Everyone would walk around with a sword with such a blade if that was the case.” Aiko was convinced that those lazy fuckers wouldn’t waste so much energy if it could be bypassed like this.

”Well, whatever.” If it worked, it worked. Aiko wouldn’t question it, and Aiko wouldn’t try to improve it.

She wouldn’t even touch it once it was dull, since she worried that everything would go from that point moving forward.

It was better to just throw it away and get a new one.

...

With a lot of work, the back was taken back. There was no sappy liquid on the inside, so she didn’t need to clean anything, as for cutting, she still had to polish it a bit and make it even, but...

”I could make it even when I’m cutting it to pieces, but if I mess something up, I will need another tree for the axles.” Aiko pursed her lips. This was pretty bad since she already worked way too hard just to obtain this, but now it seemed like she would have to work even harder!

”I swear I will get the most hardworking Fox here and delegate all these tasks to her!” Aiko solemnly vowed to do this, because she hated this!

With that in mind, she would have to split the log first, and then split it again. This would give her 4 parts that she could then carve a bit to make it into a long blocky mess.

”Ah...” Aiko realised why they made the whole thing round.

”With roundness you can hide imperfections or anything that goes wrong during this whole process.” Even if she knew this, she still had to do everything by hand, which she was not too happy about.

Shaking her head gently, no matter how she complained, she would still have to do this...