Chapter 2: Crafting and Level Up

Looking at his passive magic skill, Silas was lost for words as this was probably the best skill for the arks if he wanted to survive longer than a day out here. The rest of the tree was greyed out similar to the engram tab where if you aren't the right level for an engram, it is just a silhouette of the item.

"No use looking a gift horse in the mouth. I should start off making a basic pick and gather some materials." Silas remarked as he turned his attention back to the status tab.

Clicking on it, the familiar three-panel view reappeared, and he clicked on the crafting option in the inventory panel. The menu that opened up was a list of engrams showing the different craft-able pieces of equipment and structures, but currently his own menu was rather bare showing the three level 1 engrams. A Stone Pickaxe, Torch, and Note were his only engrams as a beginning survivor. Weirdly enough as soon as he opened the menu, he realized that he knew how to create these engrams as if he'd done so before.

Thinking about it for a second, he realized why this might be. In the lore an engram was what they called the copies of human's memories and DNA that they utilized in recreating people long dead and placing them on the ark. So, these engrams that you purchase upon leveling up could be other's experience in creating the same items.

It made sense in a way, as the game just used it as a progression system without any real lore behind it. Things that would probably take years of study to master in the 21st century are now far easier as when humanity discovered element it was full century ahead of his modern day. Now however, it is an uncounted number of years into the future with only the ark's terminal possibly having record of what year it was.

Breaking away from his thoughts, Silas walked the beach in search of a decent angular rock to make up the pick head for his pickaxe. Finding one easily, he ventured closer to the canopy where he stripped the leaves off a fibrous, tough plant, making use of the angular point of his rock to split the stem in half. Then he began to pull the fibers apart one long string at a time, after he had decent pile of plant fiber strings, he began to weave them together in a triple helix pattern. Gathering these materials together gave him quite a decent bit of Experience with his experience bar sitting at 6.5/10 XP to next level.

After about 30 minutes of tedious work, he had a length of cordage about two foot in length. The final piece needed was a decent piece of wood about a foot and a half in length and an inch in diameter, which he broke off of a nearby low-hanging branch. He made sure that it was a piece with a Y-shaped split at the end before wrapping the rock with the cordage in a loose X-shaped crisscross. He then nestled the rock in between the two prongs on the wood and taking the loose ends of the cordage and wrapping it about the bottom of the Y-shaped split twice. Then wrapping back over the rock and the back down the opposite side of the wood alternating between the sides of the rock and the branch following the original X-shaped pattern a couple times before pulling the cordage tight and tying it off. He took a rough, flat rock off the ground and began roughly carving the shape of the handle into the wood. He flattened out the sides before carving a grip for his fingers, making sure to keep the wood relatively smooth to prevent jarring his hands when he strikes something.

(A/N: I know this isn't how you make a pickaxe in-game, but IRL thatch wouldn't be a good cordage material for this. Thatch is mainly used in primitive roofing and waterproofing.)

After adding the finishing touches, Silas felt a rush of experience feeling like something akin to satisfaction and euphoria. He'd used some of his past life experience with survival videos and bushcraft projects to help him improve upon the basic crafting experience from the engram. He checked his status to find the inventory now showing his creation.

[Ramshackle Stone Pickaxe]: "A large stone pick for harvesting primarily flint from rocks, thatch from trees, and raw meat from bodies."

Weapon Damage: 140%

Durability: 65/65

Silas's eyes widened as he realized that unlike in the game, he wasn't limited to primitive crafting quality until he found blueprints for higher item quality. But even better was the realization that his achievement in crafting a higher quality item gave him bonus experience pushing him up to level 2.

He deliberated over his level up and the stat point that came with it as what he chose would decide how he'd live and fight from now on. Oh, he knew he'd have to fight as very few people maintained complete neutrality on the island at least amongst the characters mentioned in explorer notes. Ultimately, he decided to put his stat point into his Fortitude as death by exposure to the elements is a very real threat since he didn't even have clothes save the ragged boxer shorts you spawn with. Immediately after applying the stat point, it felt like the temperature had suddenly dropped a couple degrees even though the temperature on his status hadn't changed. On that note, he moved on the engram tab and picked up the stone hatchet, cloth pants, and campfire engrams in hopes that he can finally get something to cover himself with. Afterward, he moved on to the magic tab that now had a spell point he could spend.

(A/N: spell points are going to be 1 per every 6 levels. So, from level 2 to level 8 and so on. The spell points are only going to be effective until level 100 afterwards MC will have to experiment to create new spells.)

Silas looked at the spell tree that now had three abilities outlined in blue to choose from:

[Thorn Bind: This spell causes a line of thorns to erupt from the caster's position, (will eventually allow for remote casting at higher skill levels), to entangle a primary target in thorny vines for five seconds and deal a small amount of poison/torpor damage. Any medium-sized or smaller creatures that go through this line of thorns will be slowed down and take damage akin to running into a spiked wall. Mana Cost: 25]

[Beast Companion (Passive/Active): This skill allows the user to mark a tamed creature as a Beast Companion granting a passive buff to health and movement speed up to 10%. Max Beast Companions at skill level One: 2. Mana Cost: 35]

[Storm Strike: This spell concentrates lightning into your weapon imbuing it with a 35% damage buff alongside a 5% chance to paralyze foes on contact. Mana Cost: 20]

These three spells were the beginnings of separate branches of the spell tree, Silas could tell they each represented a different aspect of his magic tree: Thorn Bind was a CC or Crowd Control spell, Beast Companion was a taming skill, and storm strike was an enchantment spell that channeled the elements. 'It seems like whatever sent me here is trying to class me as a druid from an RPG like Diablo.'