{DAY 2}

It was cold

Really cold

And uncomfortable as well

The sounds of sticks hitting each other had awoken me from my slumber

I immediately tried to stretch my body out, before my foot came in contact with my makeshift shelter and I came to realise that I was still stuck in this shitty Survival-RPG

The fire was beginning to die out as I crawled myself out of the shelter and stood up, now fully limbering up

Putting on… Well, nothing since I don't have any clothes, I walked over to the river and washed my face with it, trying my absolute hardest not to allow any liquid to enter my parched mouth

“Two days till I die of dehydration” I think out loud, and my stomach grumbled in response

I'm hungry, but I can endure this for a much longer period than thirst

“My best bet at the moment is to try and learn and build stuff in order to level up and get a skill that's actually useful…” If I make a few more shelters, I could edge out a level up…

Though I’m not entirely sure, after all my class was Scholar. Which means “Learning = EXP”

I'm assuming that means I get Experience points for learning new information, which means I need to find information, comprehend that information and use it

“I guess it's about time to address the Water issue…” I say, staring at the river and grinning “Which means it's time to try my hand at pottery!”

I've always wanted to try working with clay!

Well properly, the only experience I've ever had with it was when I was a kid and we made clay bowls in school

I mean, I did buy some clay when I first moved out, but I've was so preoccupied with work that I never got the chance to use it, and it was dried out by the time I did have time

Taking a few twigs from the pile, I chucked it into the flame to keep it from burning out

I take a deep breath, before I walk forwards, bend over at the river yet again, using my fingers to press on the sides of the bank

I kept pressing on it, till I found something different from the typical mud feeling

It had a kind of texture similar to plastic but I knew what it was

“Clay is a natural material that's surprisingly easy to find. There are two main types but the one I've got is called Secondary Clay. Composed mostly of Feldspar, a mineral that makes up nearly 60% of the planet” I think aloud, before correcting myself “Or rather, 60% of Earth… I’m half assuming I'm in another world. I mean it would be dumb to think I'm still on Earth when the RPG had fantasy creatures as part of its race list. If I'm my RPG character, then it's not a stretch to think I'm in the RPG world as well”

Scooping up some clay, I find a relatively flat rock nearby and place it there

I take a few more scoops till I had a relatively big mound of clay

“The first thing to do is remove anything that's been mixed in” I say, spreading out the clay as thinly as I could on the slab. Picking out the small pebbles and stones that soon showed themself

After the tedious process, I was left with much less Clay than I began with…

“Time to do that a hundred more times…” I groan and repeat the process a few more times. Eventually getting a sizable amount of clay, a little more than i had without removing the stones

“And your done! Clay is pretty easy to make… Well if you're lucky. Which I was. It's hard to find naturally processed clay, and initially I was just looking for some clay stones I could process myself. There are two ways to process clay, the dry way and the wet way. But we don't need to worry about that since I seemed to be pretty blessed…” I say, stretching my arms as I hear a few cracks

“Now it's time for the shaping. It's gonna be pretty hard to time crunch and learn how to work clay in two days…” I murmured, before smiling to myself “Or it would be if not for the fact that my frequent Internet deep dives have taught me most of the basic theory… Combined with the [Genius] Skill, it may be a little more than plausible”

I take a deep breath, cracking my knuckles as I prepare for the gruelling work of using clay

Making the pots isn't the hard part, after all I don't give a damn how it looks, as long as it can hold water so I can purify it, it's fine

But the kilning process… Doing it over an open fire in these conditions is going to be damn near impossible

Which means I need to give myself as many attempts as possible

Once I figure out the trick to it, I can simply repeat it on a bigger scale

I've got a limited amount of clay, but I can always make more if I run out. So the best thing to do is this!

I had quickly finished making a small crude bowl out of clay

Again, I go through the tedious process of repeating myself. Making as many small bowls as fast as I could

To reduce the chances of cracks whilst putting it over the fire, they need to be completely dry and without air bubbles

If I make it about a quarter inch thick then it'll have an even lower chance of cracking

After about an hour, I had managed to create 10 bowls, with some leftover clay to spare

I had also made it much faster than initially expected…

Oh! Craftsmanship?!

I might actually survive! I completely misjudged how useful this ability really is!

Maybe it's not a trash skill after all!

My hands were completely muddy, but I couldn't care less at the moment

Gently dropping one of the bowls into the fire, I wait

“Sadly, most of the process is just waiting for the bowls to actually fully harden…” I say to myself, taking a stick and balancing it on the top of my lip

“Might as well forage some food…” Picking myself up, I walk over to the river and wash my hands, before taking a rather thick branch and wrapping vines around it's top, drenching my hand and the bottom of the stick with water before bringing it up to the flame

The vines will act as a conduit to make a very rudimentary torch, and the “handle” being drenched means the flame wouldn't spread, avoiding a nasty burn mark

Or another nasty burn mark, the character spawned in with a shit ton of them to begin with

Now I've got a torch though, I can walk and forage inside of the forest easier!

Holding it out in front of me, I meander my way over to the forest

I made sure not to go too deep before I crouch down and begin picking up every mushroom I could

It's hard to differentiate them in the dark, even with the torch. Plus fire is a dangerous thing, if I bring it too close to the mushroom, something could catch on fire and I'd burn to death

After a few minutes, I had an armful of different fungi

Dropping them onto the ground, I sat with my legs crossed and began to separate the mushrooms between edible and poisonous

“Boletus Edulis, Edible. Pleurocybella porrigens, Poisonous. Amanita pantherina, Poisonous. Galerina marginata, Poisonous. Auricularia Judae, Edible. Clitocybe rivulosa, Poisonous. Agrocybe Cylindrica, Edible. Unknown, not gonna risk it. Pholiota Mutabilis, Edible. Agaricus Bisporus, Edible. Conocybe filaris, Poisonous. Amanita virosa, Poisonous. Amanita phalloides, Poisonous. Cortinarius rubellus, Poisonous. Agaricus Campestris, Edible…”

I continued this process, leaving the edible ones alone whilst throwing the bad ones off somewhere behind me

Whilst humans CAN spend three entire weeks without food, at the end of those three weeks that human isn't even gonna be able to lift a pencil. Let alone try working towards their own survival, or run away from a dangerous beast if need be

“It's only logical to keep myself fed…” As I say those words, my stomach rumbles loudly “... Yep, logic, no other reason…”

Picking up the pace, I take the edible mushrooms and wash them in the river, before skewering them on a stick

“Mushroom Kebab Acquired!” I say, before jumping up and holding the kebab above my head like Link after obtaining the Master Sword “Do do do dooo~!”

I make my way to the fire

“I should probably disclose how most pieces of pottery take up to 12 hours for basic firing…” I reveal, poking the clay bowl with my skewer “This might take around 4-5 hours because it's so small… I spent about 2 and half hours foraging and separating, so we're about halfway there…”

My eyes widen in surprise as the bowl clinked

Quickly, I use the kebab to lift up and roll the bowl out of the flame

My eyebrows furrowed in confusion, as I saw the bowl's colour…

“It's done…?” I mumble before my eyes light up “CRAFTSMANSHIP!?”

I was reminded of that time when I was a kid in art class, where we were tasked with making clay bowls…

“It encompasses Pre-RPG items…?” There was a stupid grin across my face as a sweat droplet ran down my forehead

I quickly remember that I was cooking my dinner when the aroma of cooked mushroom assaulted me

I raise my skewer, turning it as I continue to let both sides cook properly

It didn't take long for it to finish, as I bit into it, I ended up doing the “Hashashash” thing when somethings too hot for you

I patted my near full stomach as I lay on my back on the grassy floor

I let out a small burp, before sitting up

Enough time has passed for the bowl to finish cooling off

I walk over to it, picking it up gingerly, testing to see if it would burn my skin

“So the cooling process is also sped up…? How does that even work?”

Picking up the bowl, I toss the next clay bowl into the fire and fill this one with water

Making my way over to the fire, I build a small contraption to hold the bowl over the fire

I was still a bit peckish, so I took some leftover mushrooms that didn't fit on the skewer into the bowl, making a kind of shitty soup

It's more like just water and mushroom than soup to be honest

And after the small stew finished boiling and cooled down enough for me to eat, that's exactly what it tasted like

“Blegh” I took a bite of a mushroom. It's texture was half decent but it just tasted a bit weird whilst soggy

Thankfully I was hungry enough to just stomach it and eat

“Water and Food… I no longer have a time limit on my actions…” I muse to myself “Which means I can start on long term projects like clothes and a proper home…”

“Right now there are two ways I can make clothing. Either leather or Vines. I'll set up some basic traps to get an animal I can skin, and I'll make some vine clothing whilst I'm waiting…” I sip some of the water from the bowl “It would be easier if I had cotton…”

I stop drinking as I begin to think

“I should also start on making the tools for Iron…” I wipe my mouth and look up at the sky. It was just around about mid evening “More than anything I need to level up as much as possible…”

“Speaking of, why haven't I yet? I mean I guess it's because I haven't really learnt anything, I've just been utilising information I already had…” I yawn and stretch out my back a bit “Either way I’m gonna get started on the traps before going to bed… I'm stupidly tired…”

Quickly finishing the rest of my “soup” I head over to my stash of materials, taking up my sharpened stone and making more rope

I made as much as I could, since it was basically just a better version of vines that I could make at basically no expense

It took a while, but I had managed to turn all my vines into its basic threads. Only turning about half into rope, leaving the rest as threads

The first thing I do with all this rope is tie some of it around my waist. Placing the stone knife in it. I tied quite a few ropes around my waist in case I was ever in an emergency that required it

After all, rope is probably the most versatile object I have at my disposal. With it I can make a bow drill to start a fire, set traps to catch food, use it to climb trees and escape danger. And it's also the easiest to carry, as well as making some other small objects easier to carry…

All in all, it's just something that's handy to carry at all times

Taking the other half, I wrap it around a stick before submerging it in the river

“If we let a plant stay submerged for long periods, the cellulose within it breaks down, making it softer and more pliable. This is called retting, and I'd say it'd finish in… A few days? Maybe less since it's under constant flowing water” Taking the rope, my homemade torch, and the last of the mushroom, I make my way into the dense canopy of the forest

After making my way through a decent chunk of the forest, I stab my torch into the ground and set the trap

It was a pretty simple tension trap, that would hopefully wrap around the leg of whatever animal gets caught in there and lifting them into the air for me to either kill, or befriend if sentient

It was now early into the night. Meaning that i should probably go to bed

I manage to find my way back rather easily

Feeding a few sticks to the flame and rescuing my second dirt bowl, I squish myself into the tent and let myself drift away into sleep

Author's Note

I'm gonna be honest with you, some of the shit about clay is just plain bullshit

Just it would be physically impossible for him to find clay, let it dry, process it, shape it, put it over an open fire, watch it cook for 12 straight hours to make sure it doesn't crack and then finally wait for the water to boil and drink it, well not physically impossible, but impossible for him to do accurately, so instead he found "Naturally Processed Clay"

I also made it work on the first try, but in reality he would have to go through ten to even a hundred different variations before getting something usuable

And, again, keeping it a hundred with all yall, I am NOT a good enough writer to yap about that and make it not boring 😭

I still hope you find this chapter enjoyable, even if there is some misinformation sprinkled within it

PS: To the four people who disliked this story. I hope you all find happiness and love within your life. I hope you get a promotion at work. I hope that everything works out for you. I have no enemies (except for Hasbro. Hate them mfs. All my homies hate Hasbro)