'Who could've thought that just opening my eyes could be such a challenge…!'
Lying down in his simple bed and covered with a blanket made out of crushed leaves and the system's magically-sourced material of some kind, Theo simply didn't feel like leaving.
The projects could wait. The further development would come with time anyway. For now, just lifting his eyelids seemed like a herculean task, not to speak about escaping the warm embrace of his crude blanket.
His bed couldn't be more crude. His blankets less comfortable.
To be perfectly honest, his living conditions were hardly better than those of the cavemen who managed to score a suitable cave for living.
And yet, after several days of sleeping in literal holes he dug out from the dirt or stone, even something as simple as this crude bedding was surprisingly effective.
"Omh-kay…" moaning out through his drowsiness, Theo brought his hands up to his eyes, wiping the nightly oils away before blinking a few times and then finally pulling his eyes open.
Looking up, all Theo could see was the nice texture of straight beams of thin stone running across the otherwise wooden roof.
'Stone, huh…'
Still not quite properly woken up, Theo stared mindlessly at this small detail, taking a considerable moment for it to flower into a fruit of realization.
'Stone?!'
Theo's morning exhaustion vanished as if by the touch of a magic wand, sending him flying out of his bed, rushing out of his sleeping chamber, and then to the outside of his mansion.
This time, he didn't have to jump over the half-finished walls, for the first story of his mansion had already grown to its full size, forcing the young man to follow the building's layout rather than the most direct path possible.
Still, in but a few seconds, Theo managed to find a way out, only to burst through the main entrance and then keep running for just a little bit more before digging his heels into the ground and turning around.
Yet, right as he turned to confirm his hopes… the realization struck him, pretty much at the same time as the reality of his situation.
To the best of his memory, he woke up without any notification blaring out before his eyes. And just like that lack of notification implied, the mansion's upgrade had yet to be completed, with around the last two meters at its very top remaining but a see-through projection.
"Well, that sucks," Theo muttered under his nose, shaking his head in slight disappointment.
In terms of his anticipation, this sure was a letdown. Yet, when looked at from a more rational and reasonable perspective…
'I'm perfectly well-rested. From what I can recall, the nights here are extremely short for now. And if it's supposed to take an hour to complete a tenth of the full progress, then…' Theo quickly did the math in his mind, only to then slightly furrow his brows in startled confusion.
"Wait, did I really rest so well in just… six hours?"
For someone just a few years younger than Theo, this shouldn't be a surprise. But he had long since passed the period when sleep was a matter of if rather than when, already deep within the realm where having his sleep cut short, even if only by a slight bit, was sure to come bite him in the ass through the day.
And yet, against all the odds, Theo felt perfectly well-rested, as if he had slept not for just a few hours but… a day and then six hours!
"Well, the only thing that changes is that I still have the time to work for a bit before moving on to the next set of upgrades," he muttered, stretching his hands out above his head before leaning as far out to one side and then the other.
What started as just a morning stretch soon evolved into a fully-fledged warm-up exercise aimed at getting Theo's only slightly sore muscles back up to shape and ready for another day full of nothing but heavy-duty labor.
"At the very least, I can't complain about the lack of things to occupy my body or mind with," he smirked to his own thoughts, only now realizing that with the threat of the Oilrat gone, his life… while by no means easy, continued to quickly grow on him.
There was a distinct beauty in staying occupied throughout the day, all the while being able to watch with his very own eyes as his labor bore fruit.
'Should I go back to cutting trees?' Theo thought once he stretched the last of his muscles. 'I mean, I still have to clear the perimeter out, but…'
Before his attention could lock on the nearby trees hiding behind his lousy palisade, Theo's eyes drew over to something as simple as the empty ground of his manor's insides. He then turned his focus over to the stone walls of his mansion, weirdly charmed by their uniform, natural glister likely caused by the morning dew settling on the surface of the walls.
Next, rather than turning around or roaming his place to search for all his chests, Theo simply summoned his inventory window… only to then bite down on his lip, realizing what crucial element of developing his manor he had missed.
'My inventory is full of wood… But contrary to what happens when I'm upgrading the place, I cannot really access my stuff,' he thought, quickly coming to realize the true worth of one of the upgrades the system had already introduced him to.
"I wonder if I can afford it…" he thought out loud, switching the system pop-ups around with nothing more than a sliver of his will.
Thankfully, just like the rest of the upgrades of the first tier, the storage room extension came at a hefty but reasonable price. And while it would sap most of the wood he had left after already splurging on the bedroom extension… he could still afford it!
'Allows remote access to all my chests within the claimed zone, and remote access to said storage through the manor, huh?' Theo thought as he scanned the lore of the expansion before rolling his eyes and simply willing for it to come to be.
And just like the few times before, that alone was enough for a surge of light to shoot out from the middle of his chest, only for it to quickly turn into a stream of small projections of tiny blocks.
"Well, now that's settled, it's time to finally tackle the next main issue on the agenda," Theo muttered to himself, slowly growing quite weirdly used to narrating his life to himself.
'Is it a coping mechanism aimed at shielding me from going insane from being all alone, I wonder?' he thought before rolling his eyes again and whipping out his shovel as he moved to one of the unoccupied parts of his manor's inner courtyard.
'For now, though, it's time to diggy diggy hole,' the young man sang a little in his thoughts, a weirdly comfortable smile growing up on his lips as his stone shovel dug into the dirt. 'I wonder just what sort of resource vein is hiding in the underground. And beyond that,' he thought, his eyes darting over to the pop-up window with all the possible tier 1 upgrades left, 'I still need enough iron ore to smelt out enough nails to buy both the drawing room and the workshop!'