Chapter 54 A Completed Tree Base

" A new spell, huh?" Lucius whispered to himself, waking up a few minutes after he had passed out.

He was beginning to get the gist of how creating new spells worked. It was basically experimenting until a system event was triggered.

Though he was curious as to what kind of spells he could create, he had to get started on his work before sundown.

~I feel parched,~ he thought to himself, finding that his whole body felt dry. So he took a quick trip to the river before returning.

"Ah, you guys are awake," he whispered as he entered the shed. Though Alpha and Hannibal were conscious, they still seemed incredibly weak, so much so that they couldn't even stand up properly.

"Perhaps you guys should continue resting," he said to them, before heading out to resume work.

The first thing he would have to do was make a simple pulley system to get all the materials up on the tree. Seeing that most of the vines he had cut earlier were too short for his uses, he grabbed his knife and searched for a suitable one.

The thing was, in order to cut a vine of the required length, he would have to climb up high onto a tree, and cut it from the top. The problem was how to get up there.

"Sigh, I hope this works," he whispered to himself, staring up at one of the taller trees next to the camp. He put the stone knife in his mouth and moved a good distance away from the tree before galloping towards it at full speed.

Just as he was about to crash into it, he launched himself into the air, bouncing off that tree to the one next to it, and so on, using them as platforms to get higher. With every leap he made, he moved faster and faster, jumped higher and higher till eventually, he got to one of the higher branches of the tree.

~No strength, no agility, nothing?~ he sighed, disappointed at the lack of system notifications. He didn't even feel slightly exhausted, which was sort of scary. Had he completely plateaued in terms of agility?

Suppressing those thoughts, he quickly cut the vines he needed and got to the ground using the same method he used to get up.

Next, he got to the camp's tree, and tree-hopped his way to the top.

~If only everyone else could do this, I wouldn't have to build a pulley,~ he thought to himself as he hung the vine over the branch he would be building on.

~But I'm almost sure my adaptations are because of this 'guardian' evolution,~ he considered, realizing that the only reason he could do this was because his body had been modified during his last evolution.

After creating the makeshift pulley, he got down and tied as many twigs as he could to one end of the vine, before pulling on the other end. Once the twigs were at the top, he tied the vine around the tree to prevent them from falling, before hopping back to the top.

The first step of construction was to shave off bark from key areas he would use for building. So after using his shaving tool to remove a good chunk of the bark, he began placing the stripped twigs to form the foundation.

The twigs used for the foundations were way longer than the other twigs, to allow for a larger floor. He stacked down about 60 of such twigs side by side, covering a length of about 1 and a half meters. Each twig was tightly tied to the branch, and then to the following twig, each of them being tested for stability before the next was planted.

Once the foundations were set, Lucius began with the walls. He loaded even more materials onto his makeshift pulley and began stacking twigs vertically along the foundation.

This was the most dangerous part, as he would mainly be working at the edges of the foundations. So to avoid accidents, he tied a vine around his body and tied the other end to the branch directly above the one he was working on, so that if he fell he wouldn't be injured.

The leaflings came around a few times to see what he was up to, however, Ghost quickly ordered them to get back to work, as she knew Lucius would need the extra twigs. Somewhere during construction, Hannibal came to watch, staring silently as Lucius slaved away.

After Lucius completely finished all four walls, he realized that there weren't enough twigs for the roof. So he quickly went in search of more.

Searching for them, and then chopping and stripping them to his requirements took an hour as most of the twigs he came across were either badly shaped or too short. Perhaps an effect of the leaflings collecting all the good one's closer to the camp.

But after all that was done, he got to finishing the roof. The roof was one of the hardest parts to build, as he had to suspended in the air to actually place them on top of the walls. It was a bit difficult doing it alone, but he found a way to tie the safety vine he was using to get the job done.

"Perfect," he whispered. It was just about sunset when he had finally finished, and he was quite happy with the build.

It was large enough to house all the leaflings, however he doubted that it would be able to house them all once they evolved. But that was an issue for another time, as he planned to have them help with further builds.

Now came the finishing touches. He used the remaining twigs and lengths of rope, to create even more stability for the base. He placed the extra twigs at areas of stress, and used the rope to form even more links with the tree's branch.

"Look!" shouted a few leaflings, noticing the completed structure.

"What is it?" another asked, looking up at it.

~Ah the pulley,~ Lucius realized, before getting to the ground. A commotion began, with all the leaflings surrounding the tree, trying to figure out what exactly Lucius had built.

Meanwhile, he began constructing a small platform for the leaflings to use as an elevator. After he was done with that, he tied it to the safety vine he had been using and used the branch above the base as an axle.

"I introduce to you, the Elwood Kingdom's first structure," he announced to the leaflings, a satisfied smile on his face.

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