Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Once again she’d woken up alone. Giving it a bit of thought, unless Ben was up late into the night working on something he would typically be up before her, out to her uncle’s shop with breakfast waiting on the table. It seemed like it was around noon though, so she got up and dressed before going out of the room to see what everyone else was doing.

It looked like she was the last up, with the others already recruited into work. Sachel and Ralia were tending to the fire, extracting tar from the wood that had been gathered while Skoe was back at the oil press.

She didn’t see Ben immediately, but felt him off to her right and found him at the side of the house, dealing with the most challenging issue of replacing some of the wood it was built with, without damaging the entire structure.

“You look like you’re having fun,” She said, as he was oh-so-carefully wedging a few logs into the wall to act as support for when he started his construction.

“Well, I wanted to put this off a bit longer, but then I inspected the house itself and decided this was a priority.”

“That bad?”

“If I’d known what it was like beforehand I would have insisted we get the shed. Only a couple places are rotten through and need to be replaced, but one is a major bit of support for the entire building, I thought I was going to have a heart attack seeing it.”

Thera winced, the thought of being buried under a collapsed building was far from an appealing prospect. “So how long will it take you to fix?”

“Who do you think I am? I’ll have it done in half an hour tops. Once I get the next bit after replaced, all I’ll have to do for the house is cut away any of the lesser rot and coat the outside with a mixture of the tar and oil to seal the wood.”

“Thankfully no issue. It uses wood shingles and they seem to replace those often enough to keep it functional. I just wish they had a proper craftsman in the village to deal with this. I know a place this small doesn’t need anyone with a dedicated construction skill, but the more I see the more there is to do.”

“You don’t need to do everything you know. No matter how good you are, a single person can’t rebuild an entire village.”

“At this point I’m just going to stick to improving enchantments, fixing fences, weatherproofing, and repairing anything that I think could get somebody killed. It’s probably manageable.”

Is it? She asked herself, thinking of what she’d seen in the village. There were about thirty houses around and none of them were in great states, she was almost certain he’d be working on every one of them if the villagers let him. At the very least he was lucky there weren’t more. It seemed like the dryads still formed family units together, even if there was no relation between them, and multiple generations might live together as well. It was definitely a close community, and thankfully in this one case that worked to their advantage.

“Anyway, now that you’re up, do you think I could trouble you to go with the others to go cut some more trees down for me? I got Skoe to do it before so he should know what to do.”

She grimaced a bit but agreed, not doubting that if they didn’t get everything he’d need he’d spend another night awake making and gathering resources to use, no matter how bad of an idea it was.

There were still hours before they commenced their hunt after all, and she’d have to get used to the most distasteful member of their group eventually if they were going to be working together for the next little bit.

When they got to the forest Skoe immediately took the stone ax Ben had made earlier and started chopping a tree before Thera stopped him.

“Why are you bothering with that?”

“We’re here specifically to gather wood,” He said in an annoyed tone, not that her own had been any better. “What else would I do?”

She could only sigh at the prospect of dealing with this for days. “Sachel, can’t you use your water blade spell to cut them down?”

“Um, I don’t think I can manage something as thick as a tree trunk. Flesh is a lot easier to cut.”

“See, now just let me deal with this.”

“Or stand back and wait a few minutes so I can get this done quickly,” She told them all, shooing them to the side before stretching out her hand towards a section of trees.

After a couple minutes of seemingly nothing happening, the four-armed warrior was getting grumpy. “Can we just get this over with and let me cut one do-”

He couldn’t finish his thought as multiple load cracks filled the air and eight trees crashed to the earth, leaving the three onlookers with mouths agape. With how much her magics had improved, her overall control had as well by a significant amount, letting her power her telekinesis with her overwhelming mana to push the trees down. The skill made a nice addition for her, though its combat potential was less than she’d initially hoped. While it was showing that it could supplement some of the control she lacked when using her earth magic at the cost of increasing the time it took to cast a spell, it wasn’t so easy to use it directly in combat. When she’d experimented with it during her hunts, the creature could always feel the mana slowly taking shape around them and was able to easily escape, making the spell she was setting up useless since it couldn’t follow its target as it was being put together. For a stationary thing like a tree though, it was perfect.

She turned to the three of them, still staring at the destruction she’d caused so easily and let herself feel a little smug. “I’ll knock a few more down to the right, you guys should probably get to work cutting off the branches on those ones.”

Even though they still didn’t seem to be able to accept the situation they got to work on their task as Thera quickly brought down seven more, taking a seat to watch them after she was done.

The waiting was boring, but their stunned reactions to seeing her magic had been worth it. With all the times she’d been told she should quit adventuring because she wasn’t cut out for it, being able to do her job so easily and then lounge around as they rushed to keep up gave her a small vindictive thrill.

She’d half considered pushing down a few more, but she didn’t know how many Ben would even need and she didn’t want to damage the forest any more than she’d have to, even if she could get some entertainment making a bit more work for the other.

Eventually, they managed to finish their work, though left with a different problem.

“When we did this last time, he did something to dry them out,” Skoe told them. “I doubt we could have dragged them back if he didn’t. Sachel, do you think you could-”

“Nope. At my current skill level pulling the water from a plant isn’t possible.”

“So should we go get him, ‘cause otherwise these are staying here.”

“Or I’ll just handle it again,” Thera told them. It wouldn’t be quick but she’d be able to get them back there as long as she got plenty of breaks in between, and with an effort of will she began just that, this time using her staff to direct her spell but slowly gathering them up and moving them until she felt her control start to slip before taking a break and starting again. It wasn’t fast, but it was the best option at the moment as they made their way back.

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