HC: Handyman | Ch. 12 – Scrambled Eggs and Coffee (Patreon)

You’ve reached level 3 in [Bushcraft]!

You’ve unlocked [Rope Weaving], lvl. 2.

You’ve learned a new bushcraft recipe: [Weak Rope].

It took Jack two hours of twisting and braiding cords to get bushcraft from level 1 to 3. Even though the xp points he got from crafting cords had lowered in between, he also got better at it and got a few As. The bonus experience and ease with which he could procure dry grass around him had put him on the fast track to get this far this quickly.

Jack studied the new skills he had obtained.

Rope Weaving, lvl. 2

Skill description: The ancient art of twisting or braiding natural fibers to form strong, flexible ropes or cords.

Skill effects:

You can craft cordage.

+1 durability to all cordage you craft.

He had noticed that skills came with levels, but this was the first time he saw a skill level increase. Prior to this, he hadn’t known whether skills required skill points to advance. That was the case in some games. It looked like that wasn’t the case in New Earth, not with crafting skills. As one gained levels in the profession, they also upgraded their skills.

Due to this upgrade, all ropes and cords gained one more point of durability. That was good news. It meant more money in his pocket, and he also got to unlock a new recipe!

Weak Rope

Ingredients: 4x[Weak Cord]; 4x[Dry Grass].

Recipe: Untie one of the ends of each cord before you get started. Twist the weak cords like you would with dry grass while producing cords. Once you run out of fiber length, feed more cords to the rope.

Requirements: [Rope Weaving], lvl. 2.

Fortunately for him, Jack hadn’t sold the cords and had stayed here to level his profession up to 3. How lame would it be to sell all the cords only to find out he needed them to craft ropes? There was no way he was going to sell them now!

Ropes required a tremendous amount of dry grass! Each weak cord used up six pieces of dry grass. Altogether, a rope needed twenty-eight! No wonder there were people buying dry grass and weak cords in the marketplace. As long as one had the money, they could just sit in the marketplace, crafting to their heart’s content while some poor schmuck did all the menial work for them.

Jack gritted his teeth. He hated the feeling of working for others! However, he did need the money. It was a good thing that there were people lazy enough not to make their own cords and dry grass as they leveled up their bushcraft profession. There was also a good chance that there were other recipes that required these materials.

Biting his lip, Jack let out an exasperated smile. “Hi, dad!” he said, knocking on his head. It looked like some of his dad’s speech last night had gotten through to him, especially the part about doing the jobs no one wants to do. Well… he wasn’t wrong—not here, at least.

He felt his heart juggle the burden of staying here crafting ropes with the excitement of gaining one more level. In the end, he decided it was time to log out. He needed a break. He was tired of dry grass and had to wash the bitter taste of grass from his mouth. He’d been biting the fibers so far and could use some coffee.

“Log out!”

Logging out on 10, 9, 8…

*

Jack jolted upright. Had it been a dream? Feeling his sweaty hair and heavy head, he knew it hadn't. He removed the heavy pink helmet and looked up the time on his phone. “10 am? No. That isn’t right. I logged out two hours ago.” As the haze of sleep wore off, he finally realized what had happened.

Logging out of the game didn’t mean he woke up. He just returned to whatever state he was in. If he was sleeping, he continued doing so. What a waste. He had just thrown away two hours of gameplay.

He unlocked his phone. No messages. Lydia hadn’t said anything. Should he try texting her? He started writing a message but deleted it. He put his phone away and closed his eyes.

“Hey, Lyl. Can we talk?” He mumbled. “Good morning, babe. I miss you. No. No.” He paused for a moment before trying again. “Hello, my love, you were right. Please forgive me.” Whatever message he could think of just sounded stupid.

He decided to get out of bed and stretch. Yawning, he grabbed some fresh clothes and opened the door. His mother was probably back from the graveyard shift, and his father would have left hours ago.

Careful not to wake up his mother, he trod lightly on the fluffy carpet of the hallway, entered the bathroom, and took a hot shower. He thoroughly scrubbed his hands and face as if about to undergo surgery. Once he realized how weird it was, he laughed. In his subconscious, he hadn’t washed the clay off before going to sleep. The same thing happened when he brushed his teeth. He found himself rinsing his mouth more than usual.

Even though he had gotten used to having his hands dirty with clay and his mouth tasting like grass, he had missed having clean skin and a fresh breath. Just for this, it had been worth it to come offline.

He put his dirty laundry in the hamper and headed downstairs. He poured himself some coffee and programmed the kitchen robot to make scrambled eggs and toast. He wanted to have a hearty breakfast so that he could go back to New Earth. He turned on his phone’s projector, causing a holographic bigger screen to appear before him. He moved his hands around, and his phone’s camera picked up on his movements, accepting the input as he browsed the internet on the bigger holographic screen.

Just before logging out, he remembered discovering that some of the items he crafted in bushcraft were necessary ingredients for more advanced recipes. That begged the question: Just what could he sell? What should he keep? What about pottery? Would a similar situation occur in his other minor?

Jack hated studying. But if there was one thing he hated more than studying, it was realizing he had worked for naught. There was no sense in braving new territory when there were many guides online. He might as well research and save himself from making more rookie mistakes.

“Don’t work hard. Work smart!” Jack said one of his favorite sayings aloud with a mouthful. As he drank the hot, black coffee and scarfed down the scrambled eggs, Jack did his research to have a plan once he returned to New Earth.

*

“Full stomach. Check. Hydrated. Check. Guides and prep work,” Jack said while grabbing his phone and transferring the notes he’d taken to his VRX helmet. He smiled when he heard the ring of a new message in his VRX helmet’s inbox. “Check!”

He looked at the clock. It was a little past noon. He'd been in the real world for two hours between showering, having breakfast, and reading up on the game. It was time to go back to work. He activated the button on the side of the helmet and returned to the world of New Earth.

Jack’s vision whitened, and he was back at the hill where he had logged out. The sky had darkened, but the starlight, moonlight, and the distant glare of the gaslamps in the beginners’ town were enough for him to see clearly around him. The empty patch of grass had grown back again, and looking over his shoulder, he noticed how the hill was just as full of beginners as when he had left the game.

The number of players active in the game didn’t seem to diminish. The peak of players in his time zone must be the nighttime. However, this game was played all over the world. The game had only one worldwide server. Therefore, as the moon rose in different time zones, the game was kept busy 24/7. He still didn't know what the developers had done to ensure players who could only access the game at certain times didn't get stuck with always playing at night. That would be kind of depressing.

He ran toward town, straight toward the fountain. He then grabbed the glass vials from his inventory and immersed them in the water. As the air bubbled out of the vials and they filled with water, he received a notification.

You've collected [Water]. Added to your inventory.

According to guides, this was one of the most accessible spots to collect water, an ingredient he would need to create silt and to make rope. He filled the other four vials with water in the same way, and once he was done, he found a lamppost in a quiet area. He preferred to see what he was doing since he was about to craft.

Jack first reread his notes to determine how many more pots he needed to make. “Calculator,” he called. He ran the numbers and double-checked them: Ten more. That was it. Licking his lips, he got down to crafting pots, the same as he had before. He took the time to distribute the clay evenly throughout the pot, making the base the right thickness and then pinching along the pot's rim.

He carefully inspected the pot to ensure he had done everything right. Satisfied with the results, he removed the gray shirt he was wearing.

Gray Shirt (Common)

Item description: It offers hardly any protection. You might as well walk around bare-chested.

Effects:

You consume stamina slightly slower.

It didn’t even grant any stats. But that’s not what he needed it for. He huddled the item of clothing, forming a little ball that he tied with one of the grass fibers around him. Satisfied with how similar it looked to the tutorial video he had seen earlier, he nodded approvingly.

Jack grabbed one of the vials of water and poured it over his shirt. Happy with how wet it was, he picked the molded pot carefully and then gently wiped the impromptu ‘sponge’ he had made over the clay. The damp cloth evened out the rough irregularities he’d been helpless to smooth out. There were talented people out there. This little trick would ensure he got at least a B in this pot!

He set it aside to dry and began working on the next one. He checked whether the shirt was still soaked enough, and when needed, he poured some more water on it. After fifty minutes, he had finished crafting the ten extra pots he needed.

Now, it was time to move on to bushcraft. He had over four stacks of [Weak Cords], enough] to make ten ropes. From what he had read online, ropes were well-sought-out ingredients for shipwrights, siege engineers, trappers, and other professions. In the case of bushcrafters, they were used with cloths to make an outdoor tent once he unlocked level 6 in the profession and gained the [Camping] skill.

[Camping] was especially useful for those who took survival quests in the wild, whatever that meant. Since Jack planned to level up these minors while in the beginner town, he decided he didn’t need to leave the ropes to rot in his inventory and could use them to start making money.

He reread the recipe and tried to remember the steps he’d seen in the tutorial bush crafting video he’d watched before coming online. He first untied the piece of grass he’d used to tie the ends of the cords. He then poured some of the water he’d collected into his hands and ran his wet fingers through the fibers. The guide said wetting the fibers helped them tangle better and increased the chances of obtaining a better crafting grade.

He held two cords together firmly in one hand and started twisting with the other. The motion was the same as when crafting [Weak Cords]; however, since the fibers were already tangled and thicker, they offered more resistance. Jack did as instructed in the video tutorial and coiled the braided rope around his arm to prevent it from slipping.

Once he was about to run out of cord, he double-checked that the rope was firmly wrapped around his arm and brought in the two new cords. He smiled, seeing how well they were melding together thanks to the earlier trick he had employed. Jack kept the rope tightly fastened while twisting and turning the cords. Once done, he grabbed four pieces of dry grass and tied them around the rope at the ends and along its length to prevent it from unraveling.

Congratulations! You’ve crafted [Weak Rope].

+100xp in [Bushcraft]

Even though reading all that information and seeing all those tutorials was tedious, it was worth it. Thanks to all the hints he got online, he obtained a solid A on his first try! Maybe his success was also partly due to having rested. Sleeping a little and having a shower had freshened him.

Not only was the experience granted for crafting an A-grade rope quite generous, but he had also gotten three stacks of dry grass worth only nine coppers total and transformed them into something that sold for over 80 coppers! It almost multiplied the value tenfold! He untied the ends of four more cords and poured more water on his hands. He still had nine more ropes to make.

According to one of the guides he had read online if he could get ten items with an A-grade in a row, there was a special reward. Hopefully, he would be able to pull it off.

Ch. 11 - Survival Cooking

INDEX

Ch. 13 - Glazing