A Small Timeskip And The True Craftsman Beginning

It had been a few months since I was transmigrated to this world. In that time, I had managed to learn a decent bit about the way this world functions as well as completed a couple quests from the system. Mainly those quests had been repeatable ones, typically being tasks given to me by others that I would already do.

For example, one such quest would be to do the laundry, a chore my mother had already assigned me. These quests typically give far less experience but make up for it in being repeatable and easy, while active quests were typically harder and one-time objectives.

Looking over my status screen, a grin of pride emerged on my face at the clear showing of progress visible.

Status

Level: 5 (25/500)

Strength: 7

Endurance: 6

Intelligence: 22

Agility: 12

Creativity: 29

Stat Points: 0

As can be seen from my stats, I had spent all of my points upon earning them. While other people may choose to save them for life or death situations, the points would still end up being used either way. I had also learned that I could manually raise my stats through corresponding activities, something that led to my decision to spend my points on intelligence and creativity, seeing as they were the stats that would be the hardest to raise through actual activity.

While I believed it likely that intelligence could be raised through things like reading a book, I couldn't actually check that as my family were dirt poor and couldn't afford books. In this world, books were an object considered a luxury and could only be bought by the stupidly rich or cultivators.

Still, while I had managed to complete a number of quests, there was still one that I had yet to finish; my very first quest. This was because skills were insanely hard to create; one might think that skills would be easy to make, but they would be completely wrong. This is because the system I have is a craftsman system, this means the skills I can make have to be related to that in some capacity, it wasn't like other systems where you could get a skill for something as simple as running.

Another big reason for the difficulty of creating skills was that I had to do just that, create skills. In other system stories, the character would perform an action and then gain a skill from it, my system worked completely differently; to gain a skill, I had to truly perform an action. As an example, with another system, someone could gain a carving skill by using a knife to carve into wood, with my system I would need to actually carve the wood into something that could be classified as art.

However, while it was taking a lot longer than I had originally expected, I had finally managed to procure the necessary resources for my first skill. Eyes shining, I rushed out of my house with a quick yell back to my parents, rushing straight to the woods next to my property. Reaching a clearing, I rushed to the center of it in which a number of objects lay strewn.

While one might not think much of the objects individually, together they would help me to not only gain my first skill, but hopefully a couple of them. I had thought long and hard about what skill would be most useful for this world, one in which I would become a cultivator. Eventually, I settled on taking a page out of the book of past me, skills in regards to hunting.

That's right, laid out before me were a collection of sticks, string, fruits , and strangely a wooden box as well.

Quickly getting to work, I began to slowly start to cobble together what I had been planning with these objects. Some of the items I made with them were rather basic while others were a bit more complex. The one that was the most blatantly apparent for what it was as well as the one that required the least amount of materials was the box.

Using a stick, I propped one side of the box up whilst placing the fruits I had collected from the forest inside it, creating a trap. I figured that this would be a great starting skill, one that could potentially be useful throughout my entire life if used correctly, as well as one that wasn't too difficult to get.

Upon finishing the traps, I received quite a few pop-up notification from the system.

Ding!

The User Has Created The Skill, [Trapmaking Lvl 1]

Ding!

Through Repeated Action, The Skill Trapmaking Has Leveled Up [Trapmaking Lvl 2]

Ding!

Congratulations on completing the quest, 'Create Your First Skill'

Reward: 5 stat points and 50 EXP

Eyes shining at the notifications, I wasted no time in putting the traps to good use. I carried a trap with me as I walked into the woods, looking for areas near water. I knew that those were the areas most likely for the traps to work, being areas animals would gather.

I slowly took the traps to different locations whilst marking trees to help me find them later, hoping that by spreading out the trap locations it would increase the odds of my traps working.

Building the traps and placing them in decent locations took little more than half an hour, leaving me with plenty of time to start on the next skills I planned to make. I was hoping that what I had planned next would net me a couple skills for the price of one, making it to where I could work smarter rather than harder, as well as one of them being one that I was particularly excited for.

One of the main reasons I had taken so long to begin gaining skills was for the procurement of a specific object, one my parents would by no means allow me to have; a knife. It had taken me working as a helper for an old man for a few months for me to earn the necessary copper coins to buy the rather crude metal knife I currently had tied around my hip .While not strictly necessary for the next step of my plans, it would speed the process up by a considerable amount.

Heading back to the clearing, I reached the center, in which multiple sticks still lay strewn. The sticks were rather long, being just about the height of my 1.63m (5'4") frame. That was one thing that took a while to get used to, while I hadn't necessarily been the tallest of people in my last life, reaching a height of around 1.75m (5'9"), that was still a significant difference. I think that without gaining the memories of my new body, I would've had a fair bit of trouble even simply walking.

Grabbing the stick, I stuck one half of it into the ground, allowing for me to more easily reach the other end. Using the knife I had around my waist, I slowly began to carve the end into a sharp point. I was obviously making a spear; however, I had more than just a spear planned for this session of crafting.

Upon completing the spear, I swiped my brow of the accumulated sweat before looking over my self-created weapon with unconcealed pride, a smile growing on my face. This smile only bloomed further upon my hearing the glorious sounds of,

Ding!

The User Has Created The Skill, [Wood Weapon Crafting Lvl 1]

Ding!

The User Has Created The Skill, [Wood Carving Lvl 1]

With one last nod at my finished work, I dropped it to the ground before turning to the other sticks, getting to work on the next spear with a smile still adorning my face.

~~~

It had been about an hour since I had created my first spear, and in that time I had managed to complete another 15 of them, giving me a total of sixteen.

And yet, if one were to look around the clearing they would find that I still had one stick left over, this one being a decent bit shorter at only around 61cm (2'0"). This was one of the objects I planned to make that would hopefully net me another skill.

Before getting to work on this new project however, I decided to check my Skill list to see what level my [Weapon Crafting] had reached. The reason I had to open the menu instead of already knowing was because of a nifty feature I'd found in the system, one to mute notifications. This had led me to the conclusion that the tutorial had clearly not told me everything the system was capable of, and that I would probably have to properly explore it to learn all its functions.

Skills

[Trapmaking Lvl 2/150]

[Wood Weapon Crafting Lvl 4/50]

[Wood Carving Lvl 2/75]

Nodding in satisfaction at the raised number, I grabbed the remaining stick. However, when I noticed how little [Wood Carving] had gone up, I frowned in thought. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the skill had barely levelled as creating spears required very little carving.

With a shake of my head to clear my thoughts, I began to create what I had been planning for this smaller stick. Rather than sticking it in the ground, I instead chose to lay it down, this being because the delicacy of the work required for this object would be much higher than it was for the spears. That was also the main reason I had created the spears first, I figured that creating them would give me the [Wood Carving] skill, something that would speed up the process of creating this object by a considerable degree.

~~~

I had severely underestimated the difficulty of crafting this item. Even with the newly gained [Wood Crafting] skill, the object had still taken a little under four hours to make. Still, as I stared down at the finished product, I could feel it as I practically started to glow in pride.

The object I had created was an atlatl, something used to fling spears at speeds that the human body couldn't hope to reach. I hoped that this would be able to make up for my lack of strength, considering my rather small and weak body. Even still, there was one more quest I hoped was possible to obtain through my currently created objects. (Image here)

Grabbing the atlatl as well as around five of my spears, I was quick to begin the process of loading one onto it. With the spear firmly locked in place, I grabbed the opposite end to the one the atlatl was on before pulling it back behind my head. With a deep breath, I flung the spear forward, it sailing toward the tree I had set as my target at a speed far faster than my puny body could possibly throw it at.

Even with the help of the atlatl, the spear still steered off course, slamming into the ground before the tree. With a sigh, I walked over to pick the spear up, preparing myself to repeat the process until I could accurately hit the tree at least 2 out of 3 times.

~~~

I spent the rest of the night practicing my aim, getting far better. While I hadn't managed to hit my goal, I had still gotten what I was aiming for upon my first successful throw in which the spear had hit the tree

~Flashback~

Having spent the last 20 minutes throwing the spear, I had begun to learn how to properly throw the spear, allowing it to fly faster as well as increasing my accuracy.

Taking in a lungful of air, I reared my arm back, before letting it fly forward. I watched on with no small amount of anticipation as the spear seemed to sail through the air, creating a rather beautiful arc before it slammed into the tree. Lost in my excitement from my success, I began jumping up and down in excitement. This went on for about 30 seconds before I realized what I was doing, quickly stopping before glancing around in embarrassment.

I was brought out of my shame by the sound of,

Ding!

Through Repeated Action A Skill Has Been Created, [Spear Throwing Lvl 1]

Atop of gaining this skill, I had also gained another thing from this extended training. That being a point in strength, something I had gained through exercising my arm muscles using the atlatl.

Reading the title of the skill, I was a bit upset that it wasn't what I had been hoping for. This feeling of disappointment was easily overshadowed by my feelings of success however. What I had been hoping for was the creation of a skill such as throwing, something that would allow me to level up the throwing of all weapons instead of just spears.

Glancing up at the sky I noticed that the sun was beginning to set, pushing me to return to my home before my parents became upset. With steady steps, I began dragging my tired body back home, excitement for the next day spurring on my steps.