Chapter 17: The Bath part 2

He chose the smaller piece because he wanted to use the larger one for firewood, and also, he'd rather waste the smaller wood than the larger one.

Foin started the process by carving the rough shape of his planned spade on the surface of the wood. Since the piece of wood was larger than his planned tool size, he started hitting the wood with his larger stone to cut down the part he wanted to use. That way, he could move it around more easily and also have a better angle at it should he need to rotate it.

Unlike he believed, using that somewhat dull piece of stone proved to be quite effective. He couldn't understand whether he was just strong, the stone was sharp, or he just chose a poor and weak piece of wood. But he no longer cared about it. He quickly managed to cut off his needed portion and then slightly rolled it away.

Having never done anything like that, he decided that the next step he should work on was the head of the spade, so he started removing larger chunks of wood using his large piece of stone. He purposely evaded the area around his blueprint so that he could finetune the shape later.

Once he was done with the roughing of his head, he proceeded and started working on the handle. He purposely made the hande quite think, as he wanted to avoid breaking it as much as possible. As a result, he wanted to make it so wide that he could just barely wrap his fingers around it.

The sawdust around him gradually increased, and the shape of the spade got better and better. Although it was quite a long, time-consuming and tiring process, for some reason, he felt energised; it was most likely thanks to the bath he took earlier.

Once he was done with the roughing, then came the finetuning with the smaller stone. It was somewhat sharper than the larger one, but not much sharper. He slowly chiselled off the excess wood; the process was tedious, and the result, although it was usable, was not very even.

The stone hit the ground as soon as Foin felt that he was ready. He jumped up, and with a smile on his face, he was about to walk away, but suddenly stopped as he noticed that wood fragments were stuck to him, so he quickly dusted himself and walked back to his clothes to get dressed. Although they were still somewhat wet, he didn't care.

Foin walked next to his pool and tested his handmade wooden tool. Using only his hand, he thrust it into the ground with great force. Much to his surprise, it cut through the dirt without a problem. However, the real test had just begun. It was one thing to be able to penetrate, but lifting the dirt out was another question.

Foin slowly started lifting the head of his tool. He was prepared that if it started cracking, he would drop it immediately and would try working with a smaller portion; however, he could lift the dirt out without a problem; his tool held out well.

With a grin, he started excavating with great speed. Now that he had a tool, he could work many times faster, and on top of that, it was not only faster but easier. Since his farm was already quite large, but still, he was planning to expand more, the hole he wanted to dug was quite a few times larger than the one he dug for the pool, though it would be shallower.

Every once in a while, Foin looked back at the large pile of vegetation which needed to be turned into compost. The hole grew wider and wider at first; once he had established its diameter, he then proceeded to deepen it a bit.

Foin knew that under normal circumstances, he would have long collapsed from exhaustion; however, he felt no tiredness or fatigue at all; although he felt less energetic, he was still perfectly fine, even after moving a large amount of dirt, which grew harder the deeper he got.

Once he was finished, he climbed out of the hole, put his tool down, and then started hoarding the unneeded pepper and potato plants into the freshly dug hole. A large number of plants, and even some grass as well, were all thrown into one corner of the hole, and when Foin was finished, that one corner was so full that the plants were above the ground. As a result, he walked over there and, using his spade, pushed some of the plants back down into the hole.

After being finished with the work, Foin slightly stretched his back and sighed. His speed had exceeded his expectations, and he still had some more time. So he decided that he would go and harvest the rest of his grown peppers and potatoes. Just to be sure that he was ready and had enough supplies, he broke a few peppers and planted their seeds; once he was finished, he tasted one of the presumably fully matured peppers.

"Well, this is a bummer; I can't feel anything extra... so I don't have to wait for things to get 100% mature to eat them..."

He mumbled as he walked back to the compost pit with another pile of plants. Once he dropped the pile in, he grabbed his empty water bottle and then filled it with water. He remembered that if he watered the plants, they would rot faster, so he started watering them. Since he had yet to manage to create a larger container, he needed to make do with that one-litre bottle. 

Once he had poured quite a few litres of water onto the pile of plants, he started watering the massive pile of dirt not far from the pit and his pool. After every bottle of water he scraped around the mud, he managed to wet it and then created a brick from it after each round.

He spent the rest of the day hoarding water to the dirt pile and then creating a brick. He aimed to create bricks of similar dimensions, but of course, his precision was not that great, so the sizes differed greatly. By the time the sun was going down, he had a few dozen bricks ready for drying.