I took stock of what I had to work with for Kuch's first true body. The answer was unsurprisingly wood, and a whole lot of it. Clearing the mansion out of the fallen trunks had yielded an impressive amount of low quality timber that probably was only fit for making firewood or charcoal. Most of them had been dead trees for quite some time.

  But there were some exceptional few that had apparently fell only just recently, and the ingredient quality was night and day.

  Those ones, I took and got to work immediately as best I could. The workshop tools had unfortunately all mostly rusted away so I didn't have a saw to work with, but that enchanted stick I'd made serve as a clumsy enough hatchet for Kuch to use. Under my guidance, the doll slowly and surely stripped the bark away to fashion the piece into roughly something that could be called a plank. When I used [Infuse] on it, the results elated me.

  Wooden Plank (Item Quality: 22) (Infuse Level: 96)

  Excellent, this thing could already probably beat the pulp out of FLOW's first ever dungeon boss. I smirked, thinking of how it probably would've even broken the frankly terrible swords used by guards in the starting areas. I think I'll fashion a greatsword even if I could, see how long that lasts in Kuch's hands.

  I repeated the process with the remaining quality lumber I had and took it all in. About high nineties to a low hundred infusion. I sipped at the mana potion, thinking best how to make use of this harvest.

  Let's go with making wooden armor. That was what the elves of Shin had equipped their forward scouts and rangers, stressing lightweight protection meant for stealth with their traditional design. But I was going to break from that norm and make a variant that would more closely resemble the plate used for their frontline troops.

  First of all, I did need something to hold the planks together in place and I settled on vine. There was plenty growing in the forest to pick out the best, and a quick [Infuse] made sure they would hold in place too. I was thankful to see that their values pretty much matched up, so the overall grade shouldn't suffer.

  I put the planks next to one another and tied them in place with the vines. My puppet hands easily wove the interlaced bindings and the shape began to gradually form, bit by bit. By the time I almost ran out of the vines, a wooden variant of plate armor was complete in my hands. Chest, arm, and legs.

  I'd done it.

  Crude Wooden Guardian Armor (Final Grade: 110)

  I made something that probably would've earned me an offended arrow between the eyes from Eagle, Lighthouse's elven sharpshooter. Hey, at least give me a moment to bask in my success, even if it's pretty mediocre! I'm working off pretty bad stuff here!

  Once the moment passed, I immediately took to criticizing it. 'Crude' was undeniably an appropriate term for it, given how lacking it was. Had I the resources, I think I would've tried slipping on some woven cloth beneath for additional protection, something like gambeson. And it very clearly lacked all the protection runes that was supposed to be engraved into the wood, but that required an alchemical nature poultice I had no way of making at the moment.

  So there, that was the best I could do and honestly? It could likely tank anything FLOW had on launch and maybe a little after. Which meant it should at least be able to hold together for a few swings with the shadow crystal.

  Speaking of, I needed to make the weapon now. A simple tree club wasn't good enough. Under my guidance, Kach skinned their tool with the same method, this time carving out a crude greatsword shape. The remainder plank went on as a cross guard and the last vines bound it all together to make my first weapon craft.

  Fine Wooden Greatsword (Final Grade: 93)

  My eyebrows shot up at the reading. "Fine?" I repeated, a little in disbelief. "Really? It's better ranked than the armor?"

  Of course the grade meant that back in FLOW, it probably had lower stats roll on that spectrum. But the title of 'fine' also bestowed upon it additional stats independent of the grade. I sat there, slightly stunned, then turned a critical eye on my craft.

  I guess because I actually didn't just sharpen a large stick and called it a day that whatever grading system FLOW worked upon believed I put in sufficient effort and investment. A greatsword definitely didn't need to have a cross guard, I went the extra mile there. If I could make it better, I'd probably again have to carve empowered runes into the thing.

  Huh. Maybe I really should look into seeing if I could grab the stuff needed to make the elven poultice from the forest and swamp at this rate. But processing it was going to be a nightmare without proper tools. I pursued my lips, deciding the lack of tools was definitely something to be addressed as soon as possible.

  For now, I had to install these new things onto Kuch.

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  I stepped back after the reconnection process was completed, bidding Kuch to rise, and took in their new appearance. "The crystal's better protected now, which is good. And the arms going to hold up, hopefully," I told myself. "But I need to do a helmet. That block of wood's only going so far."

  Kuch simply stared while I muttered. Then they flexed and experimentally swung with their new greatsword. It was a powerful swipe, one that I could even feel from where I stood. That convinced me that they could fend off anything short of a major threat now and I sent them back out without second thought. There was another new important resource to bring back.

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  While they lumbered off, I finally returned to the balls of clay that I wanted to begin working with. They had slightly dried while I worked, but it wasn't anything that water couldn't make malleable again. Once it had softened up enough, I set them down upon a disc workstation and activated the embedded earth crystal in the mechanism.

  The wheel began to spin and I smiled, pleased that the potter's wheel worked, just like the fire pit. Good. Not that I could ever get carpal tunnel, huzzah for puppet hands, but it would help me making sure everything came out the way I wanted.

  I made some simple jugs and bowls, then turned to the forge. Ordinarily I'm fairly sure that I would've ordinarily needed a kiln to fire up ceramics to the proper temperature, but FLOW developers neatly condensed that into the general forge functions. Probably another one of their little tweaks to streamline tedious things for the game without feeling like it was removing too much detail. I did still have to set them in the space, seal it tightly, and then heat it all up.

  I packed it all up with wood, then used the fire pit's lighter to give me that starting flame before transferring. Soon, it caught on and the pit cackled merrily along, heating the forge up. Now I just had to wait! I frowned, briefly wondering if I should prepare a glaze. But I really just didn't have the materials to use for that. I guess I'd settle for just bare earthenware at this point.

  Before I could get bored from just watching my forge merrily puff along, I realized Kuch was back with their haul. I eagerly took the collected stones from them and began sorting them out while they lumbered off to collect the additional necessary materials under my direction. Finally, I think I was about to hit the stone age.

  The best among the rocks, I began to chip at together to gradually wear them down into the shape I wanted. Along with the quality wood and vines that Kuch brought back, a dose of [Infuse] reinforced them all with some magic before putting together my very first tool.

  Crude Stone Knife (Final Grade: 86)

  I'll admit, I was starting to get a little tired with these subpar milestones. But both Noel and I knew that not everything was going to be a masterpiece even with our talents and hands. And we admittedly were already making things that would likely make novice players boggle back on FLOW. It was all about context.

  But I promise, as soon as we can, we'll make something better.

  Armed now with a knife, I could finally turn my attention to something that had been left hanging for a while. Literally, I'd strung up the wolf corpse to drain its blood out. Though bereft of further containers, it unfortunately went wasted and simply fed the ground. Pity, that could've made for a possible alchemical regent.

  I gingerly touched the knife against the skin and pressed down. To my surprise, it cut right through and I was stunned just a bit briefly before continuing with the motions. The wolf wasn't that high level then, it seemed. Kuch did kill it in one blow, so I hadn't expected much. But this felt way too smooth. I guess a stone knife whose value exceeded FLOW launch mobs wouldn't really struggle with the thing.

  I did notice though that it played into the quality of the ingredients I was harvesting. Or rather, the lack thereof as I cast [Infuse] to check up on them all.

  Wolf Bone (Item Quality: 14) (Infuse Level: 79)

  Wolf Pelt (Item Quality: 6) (Infuse Level: 52)

  Wolf Meat (Item Quality: 4) (Infuse Level: 49)

  Wolf Organ (Item Quality: 3) (Infuse Level: 31)

  Oh, dammit. I realized my mistake and I sighed violently. "Forgot to clean it right after killing, so the organ blood tainted everything perishable," I flatly told the knife. "It'd be unpalatable if I didn't [Infuse]."

  At the level it was, I think I wouldn't even bother trying to make something from it. Better to just let it rot to become an ingredient for making some fertilizer. I- Noel- didn't have any of the gatherer skills that would let me extend things took before they started to decomposed. If I had, then I could increase the quality before activating [Infuse].

  The pelt had notably also suffered quite badly from the missing head, I reckoned. But the cut was very clean, all things considered. I think the knife did actually keep what quality there had been, but my first kill in this world was just a bloody mess. I was too, noting the mix of clay, dirt, and now blood on my hands. I really should wash this body.

  But not without a taste of success somewhere first. I was determined to be at least have victory somewhere! So I returned to the forge, noted that the firing had finished, and unsealed the space.

  What greeted me was failure in the form of blackened and crumbling creations that were simply unusable.

  I stared blankly, then slammed my forehead against the door. Right. Bad firewood wasn't going to cut it for turning clay into ceramic, it simply just didn't burn high enough. FLOW had always asked for a certain threshold or better in the recipe for pottery, why hadn't I remembered such a basic detail?

  Oh right, because Mikel had offloaded all his crafting to Noel.

  Despondently, I went outside to have Kuch just dump a barrel of water over me. Maybe that'd wake me up.

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