The Stubborn Skill-Grinder In A Time Loop - Chapter 7 - A Different Sort Of Grinding

“No, you can’t just slam a load-bearing beam down into the ground with that kind of strength! Gentler! Get the alignment right, work with me, not independently!”

“Heh… just like back in the day, old man,” Orodan said. “I almost miss working for you.”

“Who’re you calling old?!” Old Man Hannegan barked back. “You’re still the same idiot.”

And Orodan found himself struggling in a way he hadn’t in a while.

[New Skill → Construction 1]

It was a message he had received a while ago, but it didn’t seem to help quite as much as he thought it would, even as it slowly levelled up to 3 over the course of a few hours of work. Unlike being able to brute force his fighting skills and go by feel, Construction required more focus, more theory-work being followed correctly from the get-go and getting the very techniques and principles right, before he could achieve a successful result.

Aside from the Masters underneath the mountain, Orodan’s Physical Fitness of 55 now likely made him the physically strongest person in all of Ogdenborough. But brute force didn’t make the Construction skill advance any faster.

However, it did make him vastly overqualified to work at a poor construction site crewed by people merely using non-magical skills to construct a building. Only one of them had a skill at the Apprentice-level and that was the architect, a young and ragged looking woman who looked as though she detested her life choices.

Frankly, Old Man Hannegan wasn’t aware of quite how high Orodan’s Physical Fitness was even as he yelled at him. To non-combatants, anyone above the Apprentice-level in combat skills and Physical Fitness were all in a different world. So, for Orodan to juggle entire wooden support beams in each hand without a care in the world must have seemed a little out of place given that the man knew him, but he didn’t suspect anything too far out of the ordinary simply because he had no knowledge of what the standard for each level was.

Of course, if Orodan decided to destroy a house with a single punch like he did last loop, now that would be a different story.

Most importantly however, Construction required Orodan to work with other people. He had to execute the architect’s instructions as she envisioned, he had to work alongside the other workers and Mister Hannegan the foreman in bringing the plan together, and so on.

If not for his Physical Fitness which made him appear as a god to the average person, Orodan doubted they’d be as patient with teaching him. But being able to casually throw support beams from one end of the site to the other made him a valuable commodity that increased their work power by hundreds of times.

Orodan fixed the wooden beam into the foundation properly this time and received a grunt of approval from Mister Hannegan.

“Took you long enough! Now then, we’ll need some more material prepared ourselves to save on costs, so get to sawing Orodan. Put those muscles to use!”

He followed the old man’s instructions and got to work attempting to saw planks out of the logs. Something which was trivially easy to do physically but wasn’t as easy to do technically.

Sawing construction wood out of the stack of felled trees the site had on hand was… difficult. Frankly, the job was best left to people with the Lumberjacking or Woodworking skill. He got all the directions from Old Man Hannegan but committing them to practice was harder than it seemed.

For starters the tree needed to be split into different lengths of log depending on what length and size of construction wood was needed. Carving a wooden support beam obviously took the most wood and consequently used almost the entire tree at times.

And then came the de-barking process where the bark had to be stripped. And finally came the act of uniformly sawing a board to perfect specifications. Or as perfect as he could get it anyways.

[New Skill → Woodworking 1]

The message came along after his fifth log being stripped of bark.

Frankly, the old man looked at Orodan as though he was staring at a golden goose. The physical part of preparing the log, which was supposed to be the hardest part for the average craftsperson whose Physical Fitness typically never exceeded 10, was as easy as breathing for him.

Chopping and preparing a log into a support beam was something that would normally take a few laborers working in concert with someone with the Woodworking skill, and it would take at least fifteen to thirty minutes per log.

But Orodan who could shave the bark right off a log within seconds and split it into pieces within even less time? The difficult part of the process for others was but a breeze for him.

Furthermore, sawing a board uniformly was quite difficult, and poorer construction crews like theirs would take what they could get as physical strength was often a limiting factor when attempting to saw well measured boards without the aid of magic or a decent craftsperson.

But Orodan could simply make the saw glide through the wood like hot butter. His arm never struggled against the wood; it simply flew right through.

He instead faced the opposite problem of butchering the wood and not going with the grain correctly many times as he simply brutalized his way into sawing a plank or a beam.

But even if the quality wasn’t high, this was still an absolutely titanic level of production for these poor laborers, none of whom had a skill at the Apprentice level.

These laborers wouldn’t be toiling at one of the poorest worksites in Ogdenborough if they had in-demand skill levels. And to them, producing multiple beams and boards within a handful of minutes was rather unbelievable.

“Well damn… Gods be praised… you could get an apprenticeship at a carpenter’s shop with muscles like that. You’d be making a lumber yard a great amount of profit with that sort of turnaround of material,” the old man remarked with genuine awe in his voice.

“Sure, but none of my beams and planks are of any good quality… does shoddy workmanship like this even sell?” Orodan asked. Truthfully, he could make thousands of times more gold with his combat skills, but this day, this loop… was a break while he found himself and thought about his next steps.

“You overestimate how fine quality the wood needs to be lad. Most construction projects use standard non-magical wood, and not all the construction wood a lumber yard sells is used for building houses. Patching up existing buildings, repairing fortifications, setting up temporary camps in the wilds, there’s a big market for even shoddy wood. And at your rate of work… any lumber yard would be making a fantastic profit,” the old man explained. “If I’m being honest, I’d scoop up a budding talent like you simply as an investment. Who knows how much better you’d become in the future. Damn, you fighters really are a different breed with your Physical Fitness… shame you’re in the militia.”

“And what if I was interested in an apprenticeship and working with you further?” Orodan asked leadingly.

“Then I’d tell you to stop yanking my chain and get lost kid!” Old Man Hannegan exclaimed. “The others might not realize, but I’ve been around for a while… your Physical Fitness is at least 30, isn’t it? I’d be taken aside and given a serious beating on a good day if I dared think about coercing a talent like you into wasting his time with Woodworking… the Burgher would make sure I pay for daring to set eyes on such a young talent in his county.”

Well, that answered why an offer for future work wasn’t exactly forthcoming in this loop.

Orodan sighed and shook his head. “Fine, fine… can you at least direct me to where I can learn to improve my Woodworking skill? Can’t I test for the Crafting Guild?”

“Any test would involve a mandatory examination at the Observer orb, and good luck wasting your time as a craftsman when you’re as strong as you are at your age… what’s gotten into you Orodan?” Old Man Hannegan suddenly asked with a bit of seriousness. “You show up at least a dozen times stronger than you were yesterday, blow off your shift at work and decide to just… work with me? I mean, my door’s always open for you kid, but ever since I’ve known you as that one mean and stupid kid with a death wish who picked fights with the enforcers of House Argon, you’ve always wanted to become a warrior.”

“It’s not that I’m rethinking my life choices…” Orodan quietly replied. “I am a warrior. I’ll always be a warrior… but I need some time to think about what to do, I need some time to hone my mind in other ways. Will you help me old man?”

For his part, Old Man Hannegan had a frown on his face at being called an old man, but which turned to a sigh and a shake of his head soon after.

“Lad… I won’t say that I’m unwilling to teach you, but this can’t be considered any sort of official apprenticeship or employment,” Mister Hannegan said with the inklings of acceptance on his face. “You won’t be paid, and if anyone asks, I’ll simply say that you’re some talented kid who enjoys wasting his time on playing around with wood as a hobby and I decided to indulge you.”

Orodan smiled.

“That sounds perfect.”

***

The last hours till noon and the awakening of the war machine were spent sawing wooden logs into functional construction pieces, working further on his Construction skill, and even gaining a point in Laboring.

And finally, as the announcement came and went, he could hear the distant sounds of explosions and fighting in the tavern. He simply kept working even after the old man and the crew had run for their lives to the local barracks.

He eventually saw the ancient metallic titan awaken and shatter the mountain with its rise, and the jewel on its forehead glowed an ominous red.

But this time… even as everything around him turned red and disintegrated… Orodan yet lived.

It burned, quite badly if Orodan had to describe it. It was still a vast amount of mana.

But his Mana Resistance was much higher, and he also utilized his new Mana Black Hole skill to pull as much mana in towards himself as possible. Of course, none of the skills levelled up, given their rarity, they were much harder to level than skills of lower rarities.

And so, he stood there, amidst the ashes of the former construction worksite on 4 Ale Road, the only living thing for hundreds of miles. Everything he could see on the horizon had been turned to ash and the ground was cracked and shattered with remnants of the familiar red energy furiously flitting about.

Ogdenborough was completely wiped off the map. And Orodan got a feeling nothing natural would grow here for many years.

[Quest Failed → Battle of Ogdenborough – Ogdenborough has been completely destroyed]

It felt… unpleasant. But Orodan couldn’t feel too bad given that everything would restart eventually. Still, knowing the stakes of his failure now put in his mind that one of his end goals in the long run would be to ensure that he perfectly completed the Quest and saved Ogdenborough.

As far as he had come, this poor town was still his home. And some folks within it, people he cared for.

But for now, he had work to do. And as the menacing metal titan loomed over the apocalyptic landscape, for the first time he called upon his new Blessing in relatively safer circumstances.

He called for death to take him, and it did.

***

“Hmm, not the worst. Orodan… have you done Woodworking before? Wasn’t aware you had the skill,” Old Man Hannegan spoke.

“I’ve dabbled a bit once,” Orodan said. Said ‘dabbling’ being in the last loop. His teacher being Old Man Hannegan.

“Heh, interesting hobby to have,” the old man said.

“Say old man… how do carpenters improve their ability to fashion these raw logs into beams and boards? Do they have training exercises? Surely sawing the exact same board hundreds of times on end can’t be the most efficient way to level Woodworking?”

“First of all, who’re you calling old?!” Old Man Hannegan exclaimed, but with no real heat. “But, to answer your question it depends. When I worked with a carpenter in my youth, he imposed time limits on each board I sawed, and for some of his more talented apprentices he told them to saw while holding their breath and while blindfolded… crazy teacher he was. Good results though. Still, there’s also the Tool Mastery skill once you work at things enough, which functions as an amplifier type skill.”

“Tool Mastery, huh?”

Orodan smiled.

***

[New Skill → Tool Mastery 1]

The new skill had then levelled up to 8 over the course of his loops and constant Woodworking, which had also increased.

“Well I’ll be… have you been dabbling in Woodworking without me knowing?” the old man asked.

“I wouldn’t say it was without you knowing,” Orodan replied with a relaxed and knowing smile on his face. “Now then, if you don’t mind, I’ll be practicing something.”

And a blindfold came on over his own eyes.

“This…! I heartily approve of such practice… but to waste the wood of my work site on it…”

***

“Orodan, these beams and boards are… quite good. Honestly, given the quality of the wood that the supplier shorted us on, this is probably the best we could hope for,” Old Man Hannegan spoke. “You could honestly claim you’re an Apprentice at Woodworking if you put in a few more months of hard work and study.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“I’m only at level 18 Woodworking, I have a way to go before I dare claim I’m at the Apprentice-level as a Woodworker,” Orodan replied.

“Level 18?! When the hell have you been wasting that much time on crafting?! You’re the most talented fighter to come out of our shoddy town and you want to waste your time on Woodworking?!”

“Hey… don’t scream too hard, you might strain yourself at your age,” Orodan teasingly replied. “Anyways, explain how a board made from poor quality wood can be improved upon further.”

“You…!” Old Man Hannegan exclaimed with a red face, and then reigned himself in. “Look, this wood isn’t the best quality, but even then, there are some ways of trying to improve its quality. Cutting strictly along the grain is one part of it, as is tempering the board and treating it, some of those prodigies at the Guild even say they can talk to the material and make it a certain way… I think that’s hogwash though.”

Orodan paid attention and took mental notes.

***

The question was… how did a Woodworker ‘talk’ to their wood?

Orodan looked crazy to the crew as he spent multiple loops trying to hold a conversation with the boards and beams that he sawed, but to no avail.

He didn’t understand how wood was treated or tempered either, so that was put to the side until he finished up his loops at the construction site and found a proper carpenter shop or lumber yard to work at.

But he did try various experiments.

First, and the primary path which Orodan felt would eventually yield a result… was attempting to ‘feel’ the material and mentally concentrate and push his will into it almost as though it was an extension of his own body.

While under the strain of death he had managed to acquire skills which came from mentally commanding his own body to toughen, such as Iron Body. So, he figured the same could work here.

Second, he examined existing pieces of wood which were of superior strength to the beams and boards he made, such as the beams that laid the initial foundation for the warehouse, and his shield. And he tried to understand what strengthened wood should look like. Having the idea in his head of what the next ‘stage’ of wood should be and what he should aim for helped.

And third… was that his vacation had to end, and he needed to put himself in the crucible of combat if he wanted to advance his ability to mentally connect with and strengthen the wood.

Orodan felt that this was important if he wanted to retain his equipment and have it remain useful throughout his rampage at Eversong Plaza. A blast from just the Elite-pyromancer would utterly disintegrate all his clothes and equipment, and even if he avoided that, his sword and shield simply weren’t up to par in the melee against the undead Demonic Berserker fielded by the Master-necromancer.

And so, he got to work.

***

The great arrow pierced right through his shield but harmlessly bounced off his Iron Body.

“Damn… you’re probably the weakest Adept I’ve fought in my life and my shield still isn’t strong enough to take one of your shots?”

The militia really was a local group of bumpkins who had utterly garbage quality equipment. True, they were merely Apprentice level at the Ogdenborough barracks, but none of their equipment could stand up to a regular attack from even an Adept.

His sword wasn’t bad. It had been capable of standing up to Balus Mogram’s great sword. The shield though… somebody had cut corners when it came to defensive equipment.

The archer outside the Temple in Scarmorrow really was a complete weakling in the grand scheme of things. And his shield couldn’t stand up to even a single great arrow from the man.

Now that Orodan had fought Adepts of all kinds he decided to come back here and attempt to work on his Woodworking against the weakest foe he knew.

Orodan used the shards of his now ruined shield and attempted to block the now furious shots from the insulted archer. Still, it was for naught and would take many more loops.

He knew his weak wooden shield inside-out. The rounded shield might not remember him, but Orodan remembered it throughout every loop as he woke up next to it. So, he figured that if he was going to communicate with anything, the shield was his best bet to start with.

His fifty-fourth loop yielded an unexpected result.

[New Skill (Rare) → Weapon Aura 1]

And it allowed him to successfully stop a great arrow with his shield, even if the shield was partially pierced through.

It would undoubtedly be a fantastic skill which amplified his battle power by a scary degree once he trained it up. But this still wasn’t what Orodan wanted. Communing with the material, the wood itself, was what Orodan needed.

But he now had a way forward.

He went back and forth, some loops deciding he’d spend the day working alongside Old Man Hannegan, some days deciding he’d test his shield against the great arrows of the weakest Adept he had ever met.

And slowly but surely, he was getting somewhere.

***

His new skill, Weapon Aura, now at level 13, allowed him to not only strengthen a weapon by enforcing his will onto it, but to also feel the weapon, almost as an extension of his own body.

This was great for studying the material and understanding exactly what the wood that composed his shield was, and hopefully communicating with it.

To the side, Old Man Hannegan and the crew were giving him weird looks as he spoke to the shield.

“You’ve saved my life countless times; we’ve been through thick and thin… can’t you at least help me understand and talk to the wood you’re made of?”

The shield of course, did not reply.

By the next loop he now started attempting to wield an entire tree in his hands and extend Weapon Aura to it as he swung it around. And the act while strange and somewhat taxing of a strange energy source within Orodan, yielded fantastic results in terms of levelling the Weapon Aura skill.

But it still wasn’t quite what he wanted, and so he spent even more loops seeking out various wooden objects to extend Weapon Aura to and seek to understand.

The wooden cart Old Man Hannegan’s mules pulled to the work site every day, the wooden beams of the under-construction warehouse, the door to his hovel, the trees, the bushes, the saplings.

Orodan wanted to understand them all.

What was wood?

It was a form of life, communing with it required understanding it, getting at its nature.

Hundreds upon hundreds of loops passed, and unlike sets of loops with a combat objective, Orodan didn’t have a singular goal like he did in a fight and thus allowed himself to lose count of how many loops exactly passed.

He studied different sorts of wood. He extended his Weapon Aura to them. He tested the strength of them in battle and constantly attempted to commune with it.

He extended his Weapon Aura to trees and tried to coerce them to pull nutrients and water from the ground faster, he tried extending it to saplings and young trees to coerce them into growing a certain way where the sun would reach them easier.

And bit by bit, he began to understand the nature of wood itself, and felt as though he briefly touched upon its place in the overall scheme of life.

He wasn’t a researcher or an academic, but this form of practical hands-on experimentation was greatly soothing and interested him deeply.

And eventually, he got it.

[New Skill (Legendary) → Wood Communion 1]

It was the next loop.

“Old man, can you tell me how a board made from poor quality materials can be improved upon further?” Orodan asked.

After his usual grumblings about being called old, Mister Hannegan answered. “Well, aside from making sure to work with the grain when sawing, or treating or tempering the wood, the only rumour I’ve heard is that some of the Elite-woodworkers in the Capital talk to their damn wood. How weird is that? I doubt anyone here will be doing that anytime soon.”

“Hmm… like this perhaps?”

And Orodan acted.

The Wood Communion skill allowed him to mentally commune with any wooden material, and just that alone would likely get him poached. But Orodan took it a step further and used his Weapon Aura skill alongside it.

What would otherwise be a negotiation process as wood resisted the changes he suggested, was instead a guided transformation where he strengthened the wood with his Weapon Aura and then convinced it of the results that could be achieved if it naturally adopted the changes itself and became stronger.

The wooden pole he had expertly carved out of a log was no longer the poor-quality wood it once was.

Old Man Hannegan rushed over with a disbelieving look in his eyes and immediately began conducting stress tests on the weapon.

After it cleanly cracked a rock into pieces with a single swing from his civilian hands, he returned it to Orodan with a trembling grasp.

“What in the Gods’ name… this is… this is wood that could be used in an Adept-level weapon!” Old Man Hannegan exclaimed.

And the entire crew gathered around, disregarding their fear and wariness of him for once as they stared at the wooden pole in wonder.

It was six feet long, and the wood was far darker in color than it was prior to Orodan working it. It also carried a subtle glow which was almost magical. It could likely serve as an excellently made haft for a halberd or spear, but even without it, it could right this instant serve as an Adept-level weapon for a staff-Adept.

The pole could probably shatter rocks into powder without taking a single scratch. And that was without Orodan’s Weapon Aura empowering it. The downside of Weapon Aura was that it affected only what Orodan was wielding and empowering with it. A poor-quality plank being empowered to Adept-level would go back to being just a poor quality plank once done.

But now, Orodan could create wooden products that were strong in and of themselves and remained so.

“What have you been doing in your spare time Orodan?! The crafting guilds will now want to poach you! This… is going to be a headache for you if you want to stay in the militia…” Old Man Hannegan warned, worry in his tone.

Truly, the man had watched out for Orodan ever since he’d moved to his hovel on Briar Court upon becoming an adult, and the genuine concern in the man’s voice caused a smile to crack on Orodan’s normally stern visage.

“It’ll be fine Mister Hannegan… I assure you the Guild has bigger things to worry about than me today,” Orodan replied cryptically. “Anyhow, I have to work further on improving this new skill, so let’s see if I can turn the shoddy quality wood you have into something better.”

And the rest of the loop before Ogdenborough was destroyed was spent turning the already set foundation, frame and existing wood pieces into something far stronger than they should be.

The entirety of the wood used in the construction of the house was turned into Adept-level material, and even the young woman who was the architect began to sweat in nervousness and constantly complained that she’d be made to vanish, as would the owners of the house she was building.

Orodan had an inkling that what he was doing on the scale he was doing it… shouldn’t be economically viable for the average person, or even a far higher-levelled Woodworker, particularly since he felt a drain.

Throughout the whole process Orodan felt a minor drain on the nearly bottomless well of energy he felt the inklings of ever since he drained the orb within the control chamber and gained his Mana Black Hole skill. He suspected it was mana, and he had an absolutely titanic amount of it within him thanks to his skill.

And most unfairly enough… every time Ogdenborough was destroyed Orodan recovered a thousand times the energy he spent empowering the wood by simply pulling in the energy from the destructive blast emitted by the metallic machine.

And the energy he gained remained throughout loops, so Orodan had an ever-growing source of virtually infinite mana for the sake of empowering wood.

A few hundred more loops passed as Orodan continued working on these crafting skills he had come to be strangely enamored with.

And this loop he found himself having finally done all he could.

Before him, in the span of about six hours, stood a completed warehouse. Something that wasn’t slated to be complete for at least a few more months.

Orodan had experimented with many techniques and empowered every piece of wood involved in the building of this warehouse. His final touch was to place his hand on the building… and use Weapon Aura and Wood Communion on the entire warehouse itself to cause wood at joints and gaps to blend together and fuse seamlessly. This gave the structure a level of integrity and durability that nothing else in Ogdenborough could compete with. Frankly, even some of the richer houses and fortifications in the county might be inferior to his work.

Of course, this came at the cost of a frankly colossal amount of mana that he felt drain from his reserves. But again, the amount drained was a drop in the bucket compared to what the end of each loop gave him during the destruction of Ogdenborough.

“…what even are you?” she asked.

Vilia Coventor was the architect in charge of the building of the warehouse on 4 Ale Road. She was a graduate of a middling crafting academy in the County and was of average talent with not even an uncommon skill to her name. For her, this project was her first job she took after graduation and even then, she only got it through the job board at the town hall of Trumbetton where lower paying jobs were frequently posted.

For an architect of average talent, such was their life when starting out.

But with a building like this under her name? Even if she had no relevant skill whatsoever, people would give her regard simply because she was able to secure a talent like Orodan who could build such an incredible house. Furthermore, she quickly realized using any other material besides the scary man’s empowered wood was a waste, and so quickly drafted a new construction plan that utilized only wood to make the warehouse, something which gave her increased levels in Architecture.

Frankly, the owners would face a tragedy as the empowered wood would undoubtedly be stolen and the house damaged and maybe they would even be killed, as this was akin to building a house made of gold without having the appropriate personal power or security in place to protect it.

But that wasn’t Vilia’s problem. She would have a head start now with a completed project under her belt, and she could market herself to one of the more established architects in the bigger towns and secure a well-paying apprenticeship for herself.

Vilia normally held an attitude of caution and wariness towards Orodan. Whichever powerful backer had allowed a monstrous talent like him to play crafter in the poorest town of the Republic… was none of her business. But for once the normally ragged looking woman showed emotions beyond just caution and a hint of fear towards Orodan.

“I just wanted to say… thank you… really; I mean it,” Vilia spoke sincerely. “I’m just an Apprentice-level Architect, but that you forced me to adapt my plans on the fly gave me skill levels, plus I finally have a completed solo project under my belt.”

Orodan finished cleaning up and looked at the ragged looking woman with dark circles under her eyes. Low Physical Fitness, but at least she looked like she worked hard at her craft.

Orodan decided helping her build this warehouse was something to add to the list for his longer loops if he ever managed to get past the day.

“It’s not a problem. But if there’s something you could do for me… how about referring me to a good lumber yard who’ll teach me further about Woodworking?” Orodan asked.

It would ordinarily be a two-hour trip for Orodan, if he had the skills of himself before the loops.

But with Physical Fitness combined with Sprinting, it became a ten-minute sprint to the town of Velestok which bordered the sprawling Aenechean Forest and where Vilia had recommended a particularly good lumber yard in the previous loop.

Orodan had specified that he needed a place where he had plenty of material to work with, alongside teachers of decent skill who would simply let him work.

And so Orodan had asked around and stood before the supervisor of the lumber yard.

A thick, bushy beard. A body that looked fat, but Orodan was certain held a stout and muscular frame underneath, and a beer gut. Orodan looked down upon the fierce looking supervisor.

Not because he thought himself better than him… but because he literally had to.

After all, the supervisor was a dwarf.

Orodan was a street rat who had struggled and grown up in Ogdenborough, the poorest town in the Republic of Aden. And even once the loops had started, he was too bull-headed to consider anything but grinding his head against the wall that was his obstacles.

Exploration? Going to new places and obtaining exotic skills, training and treasures? For a stubborn brute like Orodan such things were not on his mind.

So, it was his first time ever seeing a dwarf.

“Well? Is the beard thick enough? Am I sufficiently short for your liking? Would you like to gawk some more?”

The dwarf’s words brought Orodan out of his hypnotized staring and he felt a bit of shame.

“I apologize… I’ve never seen one of your kind before. The continent is rather… human-dominated,” Orodan replied. But still couldn’t help but sneak a few looks to make sure what he was seeing was real.

“Feh… ‘human-dominated’ until the Dokuhan mountains where you lot are too chicken to settle,” the bearded supervisor replied with a bit of heat. “Our under-mountain holds are built sturdier than any of your human kingdoms and ‘republics’.”

“Of course, you are correct, I didn’t mean to disrespect you,” Orodan amended. “I’m actually here to seek work. You have trees that need chopping and construction wood that needs sawing? I’m a good hand at Woodworking, Apprentice-level. My Physical Fitness is also decent, and I feel I can pick up Lumberjacking rather quickly.”

“Hmph… well at least you have enough sense to get to business rather than try and waste my time with pleasantries,” the dwarf said as he pulled out an Observer orb. “Go on, put your hand on it. Let’s not waste any time.”

“Actually, I’d prefer not to undergo an examination by the orb… I’d rather show you my ability and let you decide if I’m worth keeping around.”

The dwarf gave Orodan a piercing gaze, but whatever he saw must have satisfied him.

“I’ll humor you boy, but if you’re wasting my time a beating is the least you’ll get,” the dwarf gruffly allowed as he beckoned Orodan follow him. “We have daily quotas that must be met, and today your test is to chop down a tree and process as many two by four pieces of lumber as you can… in an hour.”

The lumber yard was on the border of town, near the beginning of the Aenechean forest, and so it was a few seconds before they reached the copse of trees designated for chopping.

“You need an axe, or did you bring tools of your own?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Orodan replied with a smirk. “My hands will suffice.”

And before the stern dwarf could take offense to the presumption that Orodan was playing around, a fist cracked a massive hundred feet tall tree and it fell.

Right towards the two of them.

And as the dwarf’s expression of awe was replaced by one of terror and attempting to dive for safety, Orodan simply stopped the falling tree with one hand… and threw it back in an arc the other way.

Over the next minute, the tree was de-barked with incredible speed and two by four construction wood began to be carved by a saw Orodan had ‘borrowed’ from the construction site at 4 Ale Road.

Within five minutes the entire tree had been converted to a nice stack of construction wood.

And the dwarf was silent for at least ten seconds before he spoke again.

“…well then. When can you start?”

Orodan smiled.

“Right now.”