Chapter Forty-Two: An Exercise in Frustration (Patreon)

Knapping flint is an exercise in frustration, I decide after the fifth time this morning the stone I’m trying to turn into an axe head splits in the wrong place and completely ruins my progress. On the positive side, I have a number of flint shards which will be useful for creating other tools and weapons later. On the other hand, I’ve made no progress towards my goal and it’s already lunch time. I didn’t make any last night either, since I’d been so tired.

On that note, it was odd to wake up half-smothered in fur because I was being cuddled by an apex predator. Warm, almost too much so, but weird. I’m grateful that Kalanthia was there for me in the middle of the night – I don’t know how much damage I would have ended up doing to myself otherwise, be it physical or mental. But the fact that she was there, that she cared enough to intervene…

All I can say is that I woke in a much better frame of mind than I could have expected after the night I had. At least, I was in a decent mood until the vexation caused by this damn flint knapping started getting to me.

I decide to take a break before I start screaming. I don’t know what’s more frustrating – trying to mediate between a stubborn boss and a stubborn union leader, or this. Honestly, I’d vote for this – I might have felt like cursing at the stubborn assholes who clearly refused to see reason, but I’d never actually done it; I’ve already used more curse words this morning than in the last month. And yes, that includes the day of my arrival in this world. Making an axe is going to take forever at this rate.

I decide to take some time to make – and some of my frustration out on making – the haft for my axe. Being far too long, it needs cutting down to size. Since I have no other tools at the moment, I have to use my knife which is far from ideal. It takes even more wrestling with and I almost chop off a finger a couple of times in the process, but at least I can see myself making progress, unlike with the axe blade-to-be.

After a period of time, I have something that roughly resembles a tool haft. It’s thinner at the end where I will grip it, and I haven’t changed much about the bole-like end since I can’t really think about making the hole before I’ve created the...axe-blade. I sigh.

Hey ho, let’s go, I tell myself, though even my inner voice seems devoid of enthusiasm. I summon up my (super-boosted) willpower which I still can’t believe was a measly ‘4’ when I started. I mean, I’d managed to get through school, and uni, and keep on at my job for years, including awkward meetings where I had to tell someone they’re fired. Or, in one memorable case, that they’re going to be facing disciplinary measures for being caught having sex in a toilet. During work hours. With one of their clients to whom they had been giving favourable rates. I shudder at the memory.

If nothing else, trying to get my mind out of the past motivates me to continue with the devilish knapping – despite the memories in my head saying that I had supposedly created flint tools hundreds of times, my hands definitely disagree, and it takes all my focus to try to achieve my goal.

*****

When I finally finish my axe blade, I can’t help but leap to my feet and cheer. I know this isn’t the end of the job; heck, I’m going to have to make more axe-blades in the future as this one chips and breaks over time. Still, it feels like a massive achievement, and I decide to celebrate that with a good stretch.

Another three or four hours later, it’s heading on for late afternoon, so I’ve spent far more time on this task than I’d anticipated. Really, someone good at flint knapping could probably knock this out in half an hour, an hour tops. Me? I’ve taken probably about seven hours when I consider the time I was actively working it.

My result isn’t pretty, but it’s a chunk of flint with a sharp-ish edge to it, so it’ll do the job. I hope. I’ve taken a couple more breaks to check the drying of my sinew, cook some more meat, and even make a small clay bowl when I really couldn’t take any more of the damn flint knapping. In short, it took a long time and my hands and arms are feeling pretty achy from all this activity I’m not used to. Plus my back from sitting on the ground bent over for elongated periods of time.

Still, I feel proud of my work. I finally beat the dreaded flint-knapping devil and got something I can use. Sure, I went through more flint nodules than I’d like to think about, but I could feel my movements starting to align more and more with my memories. Proof of that is when I check my messages and see that I’ve earned a point in Dexterity which I don’t even have to ‘pay’ for with Energy. I check my stats, feeling proud of what I’ve achieved so far.

Although it’s only been a few days, perhaps more than a week – I’ve lost count, honestly – I’m in a much better state than I was when I arrived. Then, my highest stat, Intelligence, had been at six; now, that’s my almost my lowest stat value, being only one point above Dexterity and Strength. I have double the number of health points, something which is rather relieving, and a significantly better health regeneration rate, mostly thanks to Kalanthia’s gift.

Plus, I’m already more than a third towards my next level, thanks to my daily absorption. OK, I got a few points from that weird cross-breed creature yesterday, but only a few – the bulk of my Energy has been earned by just existing. It’s good to know that I’m still making progress, especially when my attempts at making an axe blade have been so frustrating.

On that point, I suppose I’d better get back to working. Getting up, I stretch to release cramping, tired muscles, and go back outside.

Regarding my axe-blade, I consider what to do next. I’m going to need to finish preparing the haft for certain and now I’ve completed my axe-blade, I have an idea of the hole size I need to make. That said, it’s almost guaranteed that I’m not going to be able to create a hole so perfectly sized for the blade that the sharpened rock slots in without difficulty – and stays in place despite swinging it into trees.

Normally using hide and pitch would be the best idea in this situation, but I don’t currently have either. Well, I do have some hide in my Inventory, but it’s untreated so it’s likely to just rot. I’m definitely not going to delay my axe by as much time as it would take to treat the hide I have.

In the end, I decide to sacrifice a part of an already torn shirt to wrap around the flint blade to help hold it in place. On another note, this world seriously has something against my wardrobe – I’m struggling to find clothes to wear that don’t already have holes and bloodstains on them. Actually, thinking about that, I ought to have a wash and repair day some point soon...which means making soap, and a needle, and finding something to use as thread… It’s really never-ending! I’m fortunate that at least this place is warm through most of the day: if I’d needed to wrap up against the cold, I’d be in a significantly worse position right now than I actually am.

It would be good to have some pitch too, and I have actually got all the ingredients available. That’s if we consider ‘know where to find them’ as ‘available’. Maybe that’s what I should do with the rest of today? Go back to that place where I found a tree with sticky sap on its trunk. Probably a good idea, though I hope I won’t have a rematch with that spider thing, or one of its relatives, at least, since the original is most definitely dead.

Hopefully the pitch, the cloth, plus the bark-fibre cord I’m going to tie around it top, bottom, and over the blade in a criss-cross manner, means the knapped flint stone will stay in place when I pound it into trees.

I might as well plan to make soap at the same time since there is some crossover of ingredients needed. Man, it will be so good to have clean clothes – and to be clean myself since all I’ve done in terms of cleaning myself since my arrival has been dips in the river to wash off the blood stains. I feel grimy, like the dirt has actually ingrained itself into my skin and won’t shift for anything less than a harsh attack with soap.

So, in terms of ingredients, I need resin, charred plant fibre, and animal fat for the pitch. For soap, I need ash and animal fat. For both I’m going to need containers. For the pitch I’ll need a filtering bowl for the resin, a container in which to char the plant fibre – I’ll probably use a bit of the bark fibre I’m twisting into cord – and somewhere to actually mix and keep the pitch.

For the soap, I can either create a quick and dirty bar which just requires mixing ash with animal fat, or I can try and do something more properly. In the latter case, I would need a filtering container with a hole at the bottom to allow the lye solution through, something to gather the lye solution, something to boil the lye solution. Actually, thinking about it, the last two uses could be a single container. Then I also need somewhere to render the fat, and then a mold to form the soap bar. The mold should be pretty easy to make – that could just be made of wood. Actually, so could the filtering container, thinking about it, as it doesn’t need to go in the fire. So maybe I’d only need two different containers that could go in the fire.

In total then, I need at least seven different containers, four of which need to be pottery as they need to go in the fire. Or I could use my wok for one of them, but I’m hesitant to do that: I don’t want to damage it or render it unable to be used as a cooking utensil. As it stands, I have two medium-sized pots and one bowl currently drying. So, I guess I only need something suitable for charring the fibre, as the pots I’ve made so far won’t really do the job.

I’ll also need to make another bowl for my own use, but perhaps that doesn’t need to be now – I can just eat straight from the wok as I’ve been doing so far. Actually, maybe I don’t need a bowl – I’ve got that shell from that sneleon I killed a while ago… It’s been sitting in my alcove for a while, unused despite its watertight nature. The main issue is its shape – because it’s conical, it doesn’t stand up very well.

I’d tried using it for water, and it does help when watering my beans, but if I could use it as a bowl… I’ll just have to eat like the Vikings were reputed to drink – all at once without putting the container down. If I have soup left in the shell, I can just put it back in my Inventory. Strangely enough, it doesn’t seem to spill there.

I’ll still need to make more pottery and maybe it would be a good idea to fire all my pottery at once. Then use the ashes from the fire to create the soap… But before I can fire the pots, they’ll need to be dry, which will take a few days. Plus, although I have the time right now to make the last pot I need for my project, I don’t have the clay – having only intended when gathering it to make the fireplace, I’m lucky that it’s stretched this far already.

I’ll need to head back to the clay pit near the river soon to collect some more clay. If I’m going to collect resin today, maybe I should plan a trip to the clay pit tomorrow morning? Then spend part of tomorrow to make the last pot – actually, since I’ll be firing several at the same time, I might as well make several pots since there’s no guarantee that they will all fire without cracking. I decide to take Spike with me since his horn will be useful in speeding up my collection. Besides, the samova beans haven’t yet sprouted so there’s nothing for him to actually guard at the moment.

Then, while I wait for the pots to be ready, I might as well prepare as much as I can for my future bow and arrows, i.e. creating my bowstring once my sinew is dry enough and...knapping flint heads. I grimace at the thought.

Still, that’s tomorrow and the days after tomorrow. Right now I need to go and collect resin before the sun starts seriously heading for the horizon. I briefly consider switching up my tasks and fetching the clay tonight as that’s the more urgent task, but then dismiss the idea for one simple reason: time. The clay pit is further away from the hopefully-resinous tree and there simply isn’t enough time before dark for me to go there and back and collect enough clay for my needs.

Resin it is.