One Last System

'This is really going to be a pain,' I thought, slashing some kind of a tall-growing, thin grass.

It was the third element of the total of five that I had to gather to make my project a reality.

There were three possible designs for what would become my living place from now on.

The first idea was to just dig a hole big enough for me to lie flat in it. By covering its bottom with straw, I could make such a house somewhat bearable...

But it was too risky. A single rainy day, a single monster straying into the clearing, and I would be fucked beyond any recovery. With rain, my hut could even collapse and bury me alive. With a monster, I would wake up to the fact of being eaten unless the monster would be kind enough to wake me up first.

Second, came the idea of fulfilling every kid's dream that lived anywhere near the trees. A tree-house!

It was relatively safe, protected from most of the monsters, and safe from getting destroyed by rain or winds...

But I gave up on it the second I thought about all the work necessary to make it happen. What's more, without nails and proper tools, creating something stable enough to trust it with my sleep would be a nightmare.

In the end, the third and most reasonable idea prevailed.

"That should be enough," I thought, trying to compare the amount of tall grass that I gathered to what I pictured in my head. Satisfied with the results, I brought the grass back to the clearing and got to work.

First, I dug six small holes. As I could only use my knife and hands to do so, this was the limit of the earthwork I could partake in. The amount of effort it required of me to complete those holes also proved another point.

How did I ever expect to dig something big enough to fit myself in with no real tools and all... if just a few small holes already tired me out so damn much?

"Now, nail those down," I muttered to myself, forcing the logs made out of the young trees I cut with my knife into the hole. In reality, those wooden parts were more fitting to be called sticks than logs, but for the sake of my own mental comfort, I decided to color the reality in slightly brighter colors.

'A third of the job well done,' I thought to myself, getting to my knees and grabbing the stick firmly lodged into the ground.

And then I started jerking it. Up and down, to the sides. From its tip, roughly one and a half meters above the ground, then from its very base right where it was buried into the ground.

Only once repeating this process for each of the buried sticks did I get back to my knees and started to dig six more holes.

I divided the task of digging for one simple reason. I needed to make sure that those frame sticks were firmly lodged into the ground, refusing to buckle even under great stress.

If they failed my test, I would have no other choice but to get back to the drawing boards for the ideas of my house.

The six further holes that I made turned out to be twice as deep as the original ones. Since I was now building the construction frame from my actual bed, they had to be able to withstand all the possible forces of nature... all the while burdened with my own weight!

With all the twelve holes done, I filled the six new with the shorter sticks, each of them ending roughly half a mater above the surface.

'This is starting to look like...' I thought, only for an ugly grin to appear on my face.

It was nowhere close to the piece of art that the people in the videos I watched could make with their bare hands and sharpened sticks. It looked exactly as one would expect, like a bunch of sticks forced into the ground.

But I was only getting started.

With the construction now done, I moved on to the next part.

Using some thin sticks and rubbery weeds, I created a horizontal frame resting on the lower six beams. By connecting each of the lower beams with the other, I then added one more support right in the middle of the entire structure.

'Now, for the test,' I thought, taking a deep breath as I sat down on the improvised bed.

Right now, only the twigs that I used to bind the entire thing together were holding my weight. And to my actual surprise, they actually didn't snap!

"FUCK YEAH!" I shouted, allowing the joy to get the better of me for a moment.

'Fuck, I can't let him know yet,' I quickly realized, throwing a worried look towards the tent of my Overseer.

With how he treated me ever since we met, I wouldn't be all that surprised if he took joy in destroying the makeshift house I worked so hard to make.

Thankfully, after a few moments, I could breathe a sigh of relief.

Whether he was sleeping, was busy jerking off, or just didn't care for my random shout, it didn't matter. What mattered was that he didn't get out of his tent to check on me.

With the frame of the bed now done, I quickly repeated the same thing for the upper beams, making a simple roof above my head.

After solving some problems regarding the lack of sticks long enough to connect the two beams that I set furthest apart, I could finally start the last phase of my build.

And it was filling the raw construction with the grass I cut before so that it wouldn't be just a bunch of sticks bound together with a twig, but an actual cover and bedding.

'This is going to be a massive pain to sleep on,' I thought, twisting my lips in an ugly grin.

The moment of satisfaction caused by finishing the job was quickly soured by reality.

Sure, I secured a place to sleep in relative safety... But there was nothing to keep the wind away. If the rain fell sideways, I would get wet anyway.

At this moment, the idea of just burying myself in the ground for the night or sleeping on the tree became far more appealing than when I was considering it with a relatively rational mind.

"Well, those are all the worries for tomorrow," I muttered to myself as I took a look at the sky.

The sun would still take a long while to start setting... But I was tired.

I had yet to recover after overexerting myself from making the spear. But instead of taking proper rest, I traveled for a few hours and then ended up building a damned shelter all the way up from scratch.

'I guess I should take a little rest and think about what to do next tomorrow,' I decided.

With nothing but my robe to shield me from the cold of the night, I carefully climbed into the bedding I made with grass and leaves. In an instant, I felt all the sticks that the bedding was made from pressed against my back.

'I guess I should add more of the grass to make it softer,' I thought, closing my eyes while trying to ignore the pain that would wake me up tomorrow.

But surprisingly, nothing like this happened. When I woke up, my back didn't protest after the long night of sleeping on such a crude bed.

And there was a simple reason for that.

I didn't sleep through the rest of the day and then the entire night. Right after I finally managed to start falling asleep, a single kick sent my entire home down to the ground, burying me underneath a pile of wooden sticks, grass, and twig.

"What do you think you are sleeping for?" my Overseer asked with a sneer. "It's time to hunt!" he said, turning around from the broken remains of my makeshift house.