That was a very exhaustive night.
Viswa started digging as soon as he recovered a bit and just like how Mr. Guide said, he managed to recover very quickly. Even if he is completely exhausted, he managed to get back into shape in less than an hour.
Of course, this made him feel very hungry. After digging until midnight, he went to the lake and washed up before going back to orphanage.
Mr. Guide didn't object, so he felt like it is okay to rest.
The next morning, he woke up with refreshed mind and a relaxed body. He really recovered pretty well, and of course, his hunger increased like crazy. He really wanted to raid the kitchen if possible. The problem is that it was before dawn and he doubted anyone would be awake in the building.
But to his surprise, when he went to the dining hall, Jiva is already sitting at the table with a bowl of warm porridge and a piece of bread.
When he saw Viswa he was surprised.
"Oh, I didn't expect there would be another early bird in our midst. Good Morning. If you are here for the food, you can help yourself. There are some leftovers from last night."
"Good morning," Viswa replied with a greeting of his own. He is still not used to the warm friendship of Jiva or any other person for that matter.
Viswa went into the kitchen and after much reluctance, he brought back some porridge but a lot of bread.
He finished off a piece of bread, before tying the rest in a clean cloth and finishing his porridge. He felt a bit rejuvenated and it was like he could digest the food immediately.
Jiva also finished his breakfast and asked.
"Are you going to train?"
Viswa nodded without replying.
"Do you want to join me then? I am going for a run to the seashore. The sunrise is always beautiful there."
Viswa shook his head and said.
"Thank you for the invite, but I have some training pre-planned. It is a bit unique. Maybe some other time."
With that Viswa went back to the spot where he started digging. Even after all the digging last night, he only dug a knee dip pit that is a couple of feet wide and a couple of feet long.
He looked at the heap of soil and thought of how to bring water here.
Mr.Guide said that he should be playing with the clay and making sculptures, even though the soil here is moist, it is not moist enough to be molded as he liked.
And there is a great chance that he might need water for future use as well. If he really manages to finish that large tunnel to the mountain, then he would have tonnes of soil and he would need tonnes of water as well.
He started estimating the distance between the lake and the pit where he started, he gritted his teeth and made a decision.
"This better be worth it."
He picked up a rock that is a bit long and pointed it before walking toward the lake.
There, he started digging at the bank of the lake. The water is very moist and it is mostly mud, it was easier to dig and within no time, he started making a path that is almost a foot wide and half a foot deep. The water started flowing out of the lake.
After digging away all the wet soil, he soon hit the hard soil, but now that the water is flowing there the ground is slowly soaking
Viswa left the ground to soak while he went back to the pit and started digging. Here he didn't use the rock, instead, he only used his hands, The progress was much faster than the day before. After digging for a couple of hours, he felt tired. He went back to the lake, washed up, and then took out bread to eat.
His recovery was indeed much faster when he has a full stomach.
After resting for half an hour, he picked up the rock and dug around the lake. Soon, it is breakfast time and he went to get some hot porridge and fresh bread. He once again kept some bread before getting back to digging.
That was all he did for the whole day and he kept on digging until late in mid-night. He might have stopped in exhaustion over ten times and every time he recovered within twenty minutes if had enough food.
On this day, the progress is much better and he managed to finish half the waterway from the lake, while the pit was made wider and a bit deeper.
After some thinking, he realized that he needs a relatively wide and deep opening at the start of the tunnel, he made a rough design in his mind and decided to work on it.
The next day, he once again woke up before dawn met Jiva in the dining hall, picked some leftover bread, and was off to digging. Except for the three meals and sleep, he was never in the building. By the end of the second day, the waterway reached the spot, after some thought, he let it flow into the pit that he is working on, which is deep enough for him to stand without revealing himself outside and wide enough for him to lay down comfortably.
By the end of the second day, he started digging a slope so that he could have an easier time pushing the soil up.
Viswa was actually surprised, he managed to do so much in just two days. It seemed almost impossible. But the last thing he did on the second night was not digging, instead, he finally found some use for the heaps of soil that he already dug.
He let the water freefall into the hole and then started throwing the soil in batches. Just like what Mr. Guide said, the clay started separating from the soil, which he carefully collected and started playing around with it.
After he got enough clay, he started building a circular mud wall. He doesn't have any experience in this, of course, it wasn't that hard. He made large rectangular blocks of clay and let them dry a bit before piling them one by one.
Only after piling three stacks did he realize that he is way too naïve. It is not that easy to just stack them and make a wall.
After some thought, started placing more bricks on the bottom stack and lesser on the higher stacks. Now he has a tank of some sort to store the water.
He diverted the lake water into it, and after it was filled quite quickly, he made a few openings in the walls on the outside to divert the water in a different direction.
He knew that it wouldn't be a good idea to just let the water into the tunnel he is digging. The farther it went, the more difficult the task would be because of the water.
After setting up everything, he washed up right there and went back to the dormitory. He is quite exhausted when he hit the bed and immediately fell asleep, but not before he checked his status, and to his surprise there are two changes.
[NAME: VISWA (Current State: Exhausted and Recovering)
CULTIVATION LEVEL: NONE
CULTIVATION TECHNIQUE: NONE
ATTRIBUTES
SKILLS
MISSIONS
ACHIEVEMENTS {LOCKED}
SHOP{LOCKED}
KARMA POINTS: + 56
TICKETS: 0]
The changes he saw are in the attributes and skills section.
[ ATTRIBUTES
STRENGTH: 11
AGILITY: 12
STAMINA: 16
COMPREHENSION: 27
WILL: 45]
His strength and stamina both increased by one point. He was quite delighted by it. He really did feel stronger, but he only thought it was just his imagination. After all, if someone worked out for a couple of days, they will mentally feel stronger, but that doesn't mean they really got stronger.
But it seems like in his current case it is actually true.
He felt quite happy with this change, but he didn't know how he felt about the other change in the skills section.
[SKILLS
BASIC HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT- 10%
BASIC KNIFE SKILLS- 9%
BASIC SHOOTING SKILLS- 15%
BASIC CLIMBING SKILLS- 12%
BASIC RECONNAISSANCE SKILLS- 8%
BASIC COOKING SKILLS- 6%
BASIC DIGGING SKILLS- 2%]
He didn't expect that he would gain digging skills and he didn't even how useful they could be here. But another thought popped up in his mind if he starts doing an activity and does it correctly, maybe he can indeed develop some skills.
With those thoughts in mind, he went to sleep. The next morning he continued with his newly established routine and went to his spot.
He kept on digging and used the water to get some clay out before making some more bricks. He decided that he should extend the tank while he is not digging. Even though the clay molding also takes up quite a bit of his energy, it was relatively less taxing compared to digging the hard ground with his bare hands.
And the activity felt a bit therapeutic as well.
By end of the third day, not only did he manage to dig up his desired entrance of the tunnel, he started digging forward as well.
All this while, the soil is actually relatively loose and soft and he didn't sustain any major injuries to his arms. Except for some skin chaffing which didn't feel like much, he was pretty good. But now, the soil was harder. He could feel that it is more packed than normal.
He was completely unable to dig his fingers into it normally, in the end, he could only pick up the rock he used to dig the water stream and made a few nicks before he went back to using his finger.
He was actually surprised by how much effort he needed to make a bit of soil collapse and dig it out. But this also felt a bit refreshing for him, after all, the digging task itself is a bit monotonous. At least the change in difficulty is a bit of food for his mind.
He noticed that even though the digging became harder, his overall speed didn't decrease by much, he almost dug the same amount of the soil as the day before. But the clay output is surprisingly more.
Now that he has an open tank of water right beside him, he is playing more with the clay and started making more than just the bricks. Of course, he didn't go with making rocks with the clay like Mr.Guide suggested.
He decided he could make some small figurines that are much more easier to make. So, whenever he is recovering he spent most of his time in the clay pit after eating and started playing around with the clay to make different shapes.
After disastrously failing to make some humanoid figurines, he went back to basics and made basic shapes. Sphere, cube, pyramid, a prism. He made them of different sizes. Some are only size of a small marble and some are as big as a football. He just kept on doing them on a whim.
After that, he started carving some facial features into larger ones. As he spent his recovery time like this, it passed much more quickly and he felt like he is recovering faster.
By the end of the day, he has a bunch of objects around him with all kinds of weird lines that looked like faces out of a horror movie.
He checked the status before sleep and he saw that there is some slight improvement in his strength and stamina. The proficiency of the digging skill also increased by one more percent.
The next day, he wanted to go with the routine once again, but in the morning when he was having his pre work out meal at dawn…
"Hey Viswa, how is your exercise going on?"
"It is okay, I guess. There is some slight improvement." Viswa replied with a smile. This is a common conversation between them every morning.
"Anyway, I would really like it if we could work out together once in a while. The others would be there as well, we can make it fun."
"Well…" Viswa was about to find an excuse to politely decline, but Jiva cut him off.
"How about we do it today? We can go for a run now and then go for a swim at the beach. Afterward, we can join the rest of the group and go to the market to get groceries and vegetables. Then we can work out until lunch.
I will show you the usual place the group works out at."
Viswa thought for a moment and then nodded in agreement.
Even though he has a behemoth of a task in front of him, taking half a day off wouldn't make a massive difference. Anyway, he also wanted to explore the village a bit.
So, after he finished the meal and packed some stale bread, he went out with Jiva. They ran at a moderate pace and went out of the campus, then into the streets, and then to the seashore.
On their way, Jiva kept on introducing different things about the village. The blacksmith street, the stationery section, and then there is a fruit market which is everyone's favorite in the orphanage.
When they hit the beach, they ran for a few more minutes and then they went into the water for a swim.
When Viswa removed the robe, Jiva was stunned to see all the whip scars on his body. His back is nothing but scar tissue.
Viswa also noticed that he made a mistake by revealing it like that, but neither of them didn't speak anything about it.
They swam for a while and Viswa felt great during the swim. Even though he is swimming every day in the lake for washing up, the sea breeze and the warm sunlight made him feel more refreshed.
After the swim, they went back to the village to meet with the other kids at the market.
Even though it felt great to change up the routine a bit, Viswa had this uneasy feeling since they left the orphanage. It is a very familiar but uncomfortable feeling for him. It is almost like someone is observing him. But there is no one in the surroundings that he could see that's observing them.
He shook his head and tried to ignore it before he just went with Jiva to the market.
Viswa was dumbfounded because almost all of the kids from the orphanage are there and they attracted a lot of attention,
"We do this twice a month, everyone could use a break right?"
Jiva said with a smile and even Viswa smiled in agreement. Indeed everyone could use a break.
After they all gathered, Viswa started distributing some copper coins to everyone.
"This is the allowance, you can roam around and buy whatever you want with it. But we have to gather back here in two hours. Understood."
"Yes!!"
The kids replied enthusiastically. Even Viswa got some allowance and two kids held his hands and dragged him away.
These two kids are the ones that Viswa is most familiar with. They are both nine years old and both of them are twins. A boy and a girl.
The girl is quite mischievous and outspoken, while the boy is a bit reserved, but just naughty in private. They always felt that Viswa is a bit fascinating as he had this cold aura around him. Viswa also enjoyed their company during their meal time and just let himself be dragged by these twins.
Manas and Manavi.
They went to different fruits shops in the fruit market and tried already-cut fruit.
One of the stalls is selling something that looked like a pear, but it is much juicier and sweeter. This is probably the best thing Viswa ate after he came to this world and he almost teared up.
As he enjoyed these fruits, Manavi and Manas went to the next store where they are selling a fruit like a ripened mango. It is very pulpy. Manavi was lost in the flavor of the fruit as she turned around and walked into someone.
The fruit pulp was all over that person's dress.
"I am sorry," Manavi said in a very soft tone as she still looked at the fruit that fell on the ground. At this moment, she felt a slight breeze on her face and raised her head only to see a black shoe zooming toward her face.
She was stunned for a moment and only reacted when she was yanked to the side.
*BAM*
*CRASH*
The leg directly went into the wooden box behind Manvi and destroyed it.
Manavi and Manas, both started crying and Viswa hugged them as he looked into the air with shock apparent in his eyes.
There is a prompt in front of his eyes.
[ YOU HAVE CHANGED THE FATE OF A PERSON MANAVI AND SAVED HER FROM DEATH. HER DESTINY HAS SHIFTED AND IS FULL OF NEW POTENTIAL. YOU HAVE BEEN AWARDED 5 POSITIVE KARMA.]
[YOU CHANGED THE FATE OF A PERSON NAMED MANAS AND CHANGED THE COURSE OF HIS GROWTH YOU HAVE BEEN AWARDED 35 POSITIVE KARMA]
The prompts flashed by and then Viswa went into a daze. He felt like he was being sucked into some kind of wormhole. A scene in greyscale played in front of him. In that scene, he was not there and the kick landed on to Manavi's face directly. Her head got crushed in the impact between the shoe and the wooden box.
Then the scene changed and he looked at the scene from a different angle. The people who killed Manavi were gone and Manas collapsed to the ground while weeping. He hugged her bloody corpse not knowing what to do.
The scene flashed and he saw a young man in his late twenties standing in a large palace. He had a scimitar in his hands and he wore brown cloth. He looked ragged with a beard, but Viswa immediately recognized him.
Manas.
Manas stepped forward and started killing one person after another. There are a bunch of nobles sprawled and crawling on the ground as they tried to escape from him, but he didn't care. He just kept on killing them without a change in expression.
He wanted to stop him, but he felt the suction and was pulled back to the present.
He looked at the two innocent kids in his arms and his hug tightened. Then his eyes landed on the guy who kicked and his gaze is as cold as ice could be.