After Amethyst left to carry out her orders, Gael came to ask him why he couldn't go with the skeletons to kill the goblins. Theo sincerely replied that it was because he didn't trust him enough to let him get stronger.
He also said that he should focus on getting the logs needed to build his house first. So, Gael returned to cutting down trees while being supervised by the level 1 zombie farmer apprentice. Theo hoped that just observing wouldn't give the zombie a tree-cutting ability, which would ruin the entire plan he was making for this unit.
Happy with the resources that would come later, but without missing the opportunity to get more, he decided to go back to cutting trees, as it also served as exercise that could get him in shape. Despite not caring much about appearance, he still wanted to gain some more muscles, who knows, maybe his strength status would also improve.
After he started chopping trees, he no longer thought about the problems or the things he should do, and focused only on the axe. Staying like that for a whole hour, he discovered a new way of swinging the ax that managed to improve his cutting speed, and with that, a notification took him out of his state of concentration.
[Your Lumberjack Skill has leveled up, it is now level 2.]
Quickly opening the skill description, Theo immediately noticed the change.
[Skill: Lumberjack 2: You have a better chance of getting 3 extra units when you collect trees that you felled or helped to fell. Your cutting speed slightly increases.]
Two extra logs on top of the speed increase, this was already much more than he expected. So he thought that he would have to help his skeletons more and more to have a greater chance of triggering the bonus.
Thinking about it, he didn't plan on becoming a professional lumberjack, but for now, it would be a great help to have this bonus. So he continued cutting trees for a while until he came up with an unusual idea.
Theo removed his goblin staff from his inventory and pointed it at the next tree he intended to fell, after aiming for some time and making sure he wouldn't miss, he said the spell.
"Stone Bullet"
The stone bullet that came out of the staff hit precisely the center of the tree, but did not knock it down as Theo imagined it would. The damage to the tree was great, and with two shots, he could knock down a tree, and that's what he did with this one and another.
The limit of costless uses of the magic was what didn't allow him to continue with it for long, but now he would train like this every day, not just to cut down the trees faster. But also to improve his aim and his use of magic, he now knew that if he repeated an act long enough, he could gain a system ability that would help him execute it.
And learning more about this skill, different ways of using it, or improving the method of use could make this skill level up.
Returning to camp, after collecting all the logs from the trees he felled, he began selling them for stone and whatever else caught his eye.
In one of these agreements, he found something he really wanted, a watchtower project. Yours came from a chest as a reward and could only be used once, but this one was different, it had to be learned and would unlock the project in the crafting section of the menu.
So, whenever he wanted, he could build one, it was similar to the basement design he got from Gael. Without thinking much, he accepted the buyer's offer, and soon the project was in his hands.
After learning, he went to the back of his house and went to the wall, then built the second watchtower practically glued to the wall.
After that, he returned home to rest and noticed that his loom had a glow around him, as he approached, the information that the ropes had been made appeared. Just like a screen where he can take strings from the loom's storage and place it in his, it was very similar to some Survival and Craft games for mobile phones that existed in his previous world.
Seeing this, he decided to check the tannery where the leather was made, also finding it shining, he removed the leather pieces. With this, he had almost all the materials to make a basic leather armor, but there were still some pieces of leather missing as only one was produced at a time, unlike ropes, which were produced in batches of 4.
Theo left the tannery to work and returned to his makeshift bed to rest, that would be another thing he would need to improve soon. When it was getting dark and hunger arrived, he left the house and started to prepare dinner. Shortly afterwards Amethyst arrived, saying that her loot would all be here the next morning as the skeletons would need to make some trips.
She also informed him that a low-level unit had leveled up, piquing his curiosity whether he had also leveled up. But to her disappointment, that wasn't the case, despite now being much closer to advance.
Theo would have to wait until the next day, when his skeletons would attack the kobold village, to finally level up, and maybe even more than one. With that happy thought, he ate and prepared to sleep next to Copper.
The seeds he planted would take time to grow into trees and then bear fruit, in the meantime, he would have to ask one of his skeletons to look for fruit in the forest to feed his new friend. Lying on his makeshift bed, thinking that tomorrow he wanted to be lucky enough to get another ranger to place in the new watchtower, Theo finally fell asleep, ending another day.