Chapter 16: Setting Up a Base

Chapter 16: Setting Up a Base Thankfully, with Xu Tao’s strength, he was able to mine all 100 units of mud he needed. After placing them inside his Storage Ring, he returned to the crafting site without delay. "Now..." he said, dumping all the items right in the middle of the blueprint. "Let’s start building this shit house!" Anticipating what was to come, he was already cracking his knuckles, ready to take out his pent-up anger on the system’s window. But what appeared next wasn’t what he expected. The number displayed was a large "0 / 10,000!" To add, the label was "Hit! ????"—so that meant he couldn’t use his plain fist either! Although disappointed, Xu Tao moved on and decided to channel his anger into the stone hammer instead. He raised it high and swung it down with full force, as if trying to break it! "1 / 10,000" But the progress didn’t really respond to the force. It just added 1 since it was only one strike. A waste of energy! "YOU! FUCKING! SYSTEM...!" But Xu Tao didn’t care. He swung the hammer as if the panel before him was the one who killed his parents. Each blow was powerful enough to push the dust away from where he stood. He thought he could simply continue like that until the end, but on the 100th hammer strike— CRACK! —the hammer broke apart and scattered into dust, blown away by the wind. Item durability. It was the concept that each item could only last for a limited time, depending on wear and tear or intensity of usage. And Xu Tao’s wild swings fell under "rough" usage, causing extreme stress to the hammer and rapidly draining its durability. Reaching the 100th strike was already a miracle. With how powerful each swing had been, it wouldn’t have been surprising if the hammer broke on the fifth or tenth strike. Xu Tao stared at his now empty hand, coming back to his senses. He had wasted one hammer out of frustration... though he should be able to make another easily. He pulled up the main menu, went to Crafting, and noticed that beside the usual "Build" button, there was now an "Instant Build" option. In small digits under the label, the number "100" could be seen. "Quick-building one hammer is equivalent to 100 pulls?!" This fact shook him. "Fuck! I shouldn’t have wasted it!" He wasn’t exactly a penny-pincher, but still, learning that he had just wasted such a "precious" item hurt his pockets. He tapped the "Instant Build" button, paid the price, and the next moment, a new hammer—identical to the first—appeared before him. "This time, let’s be careful." He mused. Instead of hitting as hard as he could, he now tried the opposite. Just how weak could he strike and still have it register in the system? He tested first with a normal hit—passed. A hit with half the swing distance... also passed. He kept experimenting, shortening the hammer swing more and more. Then, he found the limit—one inch. He had to swing the hammer at least that far for the system to recognize it and add 1 point to the 10,000 he needed. After discovering this, his work sped up. Xu Tao focused, swinging the hammer rapidly, like a machine, striking the panel about 10 times per second. His hands seemed to have practiced that very motion—back and forth an inch—with extreme precision for years! The loading bar filled up rapidly, and in less than twenty minutes—including his first 100 slow and heavy strikes, and the trial and error stage for the most efficient swing—the process was complete. A burst of light came from the blueprint before the mud hut materialized right where it had been placed. No matter how many times he saw it, it was still a weird phenomenon to watch. [Congratulations! You have crafted Mud Hut x1! Rating: 80/100! Saving the finished product.] [Product saved! You can now spend System Points to instantly create a Mud Hut!] [ Quest Complete: Let’s Build a Mud Hut! Rewards Gained: Log House Recipe ] Instead of cheering, however, Xu Tao stared at the Rating. "Only 80?" he muttered in shock. He had followed the requirements exactly. Nothing else needed to be done, after all. But still, the less-than-perfect rating ticked him off. In what way did he mess up...? "...Ah." At that moment, he realized. The first 100 hammer strikes he had made were with full strength. That might be the cause, he reasoned. Another possibility was that his hitting consistency wasn’t good. Either way, he could just learn from his mistakes and not repeat them. "But now, I got a log house recipe!" he cheered. Having just unlocked it, he quickly opened the crafting panel to check its requirements. But then, he felt cheated. [ Recipe: Log House Requirements: 1x Hack Saw, 1x Steel Hammer, 5,000x Iron Nails, 200x Logs <Build> <Upgrade> <Dismantle> ] "I’m just at the stone age, and you want me to use steel items?!" he grumbled, annoyed. But thinking about it rationally, it was obvious he’d need at least that much to make a house out of wood. Still, to a cultivator like him, using his sword to carve wood was a dozen times easier. He didn’t need a saw, nor did he need nails if he just "improvised" a little. All he needed was his sword and some wood. But he doubted the System would like that—and he wasn’t confident in his carpentry skills either. He could only sigh and wait for the time he could actually make a Log House... or so he thought. "Wait a minute..." A passing thought returned. A memory from just a few hours ago, still fresh in his mind—the contents of the thousands of loot boxes they had grabbed! With urgency, he turned to look at his Storage Ring—the SSR one with him—and closed his eyes. He let a sliver of his consciousness enter the ring, analyzing its contents—and to his surprise, it was there. "Crafting tools!" Not only were the needed Hack Saw and Steel Hammer present, but there were even various other tools! To add, there’s over a hundred thousand iron nails available! With this, he was already set to build the Log House, as long as he could procure some wood to use! Hope returned to Xu Tao as he smiled, tapping the Build button. "First, let’s set the blueprint, then let’s see where we’ll be getting all that wood!" But just as he excitedly tapped the button, he was in for a surprise. "WOAH!" The Log House... was too big. Roughly, it required about 200 square meters of space! It was so wide that Xu Tao couldn’t find anywhere nearby it could fit—unless he moved farther away or cleared the surrounding area of stones and trees. And of course, not wanting to build the two houses far from each other, he decided to go with the latter. Cutting down trees was easy with his sword, so he didn’t even need to break a sweat. The problem was the large boulder-like stones embedded nearby. He couldn’t just pull them out of the ground—he lacked the strength for that. "...Jehanne." He muttered, glancing afar, where her figure could be seen zipping across the border of the savannah and the desert, flag waving wildly while fighting monsters. Xu Tao contemplated calling her, since she might be strong enough to actually pull it out—but decided against it, for the sake of his mental health. In the end, he went with the normal method—digging the giant stone out, and using his Storage Ring to store it away. This process alone took him 30 minutes and greatly shaved at his pride... but it was well worth it. "Log House Blueprint—Set!" The most uptodate novels are published on free(w)ebnov(e)l.com