Wilona kicked the head of the shovel to push it deeper into the ground. The clay got tougher below the surface, and she had to willingly put in a lot of effort to get the soil to break. It got easier thanks to the shovel, but not by much. Wilona didn't know if it was because swamps just naturally created powerful clay or what, but this was hard as shit.

  She took out a shovelful of clay from the earth and threw it into a basket. She had brought two for efficiency, and she was wishing she had brought more. She could have gone into a type of process where she dug clay for a while, filled multiple baskets, and then slowly transferred those back to her camp. She wouldn’t have needed to go back and forth several times if that was the case.

  But it wasn’t, so she’s what? On her third lap now? It was pretty tedious, if she were to be honest. She just wanted to practice more magic, but that probably wasn’t a good idea. Also, she hadn’t gotten a quest for a while. What’s up with that? Did something happen? Did she need to reach a milestone? Like, ask questions? How does a quest trigger? Her system kind of just gave those out whenever she wanted to do something, but now it felt like she needed to be proactive if she wanted more quests.

  Wilona frowned. Was she becoming reliant on the quests now? What is she, some kind of dog?

  She clicked her tongue and stabbed the shovel into the clay. "This is the last one, then I'm gonna stop," she told herself as she carried the two wicker baskets. "Last one."

  Going back to her camp, she dropped her shovel, threw the clay into the pile she made, and sat down. She didn’t need a quest to guide her, so what could she do? Stick with her original plan and make clay pots until she had enough storage that she no longer needed to worry about running out of space.

  Then what?

  Wilona looked back at her house. The hollow tree trunk was now infested with Fuzz's growth, and it looked kind of cool, like the tree was wearing armor or something.

  "...I need food," Wilona told herself. "Fishing." She looked down at her hands. "A place to start smoking any fillets I want to preserve? Or maybe just one where I can cook by smoking food? That can work."

  She had salt too, so it wasn’t a bad idea.

  She wanted to make a smoker... That would be the more accurate term for it. "Maybe just a small tent?" she muttered. "The Cub Scout book has a tent I can make using thin trees and then topping it with layered moss to make a wall."

  It wouldn’t be foolproof, but it’s not like she was going to be living in it. She just needed a confined space where she could smoke meat. Or maybe even vegetables.

  "Vegetables... Pickled food, jellies, uh... Spices?" She knew how to make spices. She just needed to dry fruits, plant roots, or, in the case of cinnamon, tree bark. Simple enough. Making jelly using fruits also wasn’t that hard. And pickled food...

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  Could she waste that much salt? The quest only rewarded her with a small pouch. It wouldn’t be enough to salt an entire jar, let alone a clay vase. "That's a no, then..."

  She could use her mortar and pestle for something—spices. Wilona told herself she could use the mortar and pestle for spices and maybe even crush nuts and tough seeds if she needed to. And speaking of nuts, do almonds exist in this world? Or maybe some equivalent of them? If she could make almond milk, that would be a godsend...

  "You look like you're in deep thought." Fuzz’s voice made Wilona flinch. The myceloid would have raised her eyebrow if she still had one. "What were you thinking about, Wilona? You were dazing off."

  "Food." Wilona waved the mushroom off. "I want to make pottery, and I’m thinking about what I can put in them once they’re done. I'm also considering the different sizes of vases and containers that I need at the same time. Why?"

  "Nothing, I was just concerned that you suddenly stopped moving," Fuzz replied. So Wilona was thinking about food, huh? "By the way, do you have a place where you can store the pottery?"

  "The tree trunk is big enough to fit a lot of it. The ones that won't fit will stay outside. I'll probably put water in them or something, make a lid so that it doesn’t get contaminated." Wilona shrugged. "Hm, should I make clay tubes? I feel like I can automate a water system here."

  Right, as long as she figures it out, at least.

  As though the system took Wilona's musings as a challenging declaration, it gave her a quest that asked her to do just that—make an automated water system.

  Great. So she was gonna have plumbing before an actual house. She couldn't wait to spend most of her days working on that rather than building a shed or finding other humans.

  Wait, but did she have to do that immediately?

  "Do quests expire, Fuzz?" Wilona asked.

  "It depends. Prophecy and Influence-type quests have time limits, but the others don't. Why?"

  "I just got one asking me to make plumbing." Wilona closed her status screen.

  "What's that?"

  "Nothing we need to worry about right now." Wilona shook her head. Her current quest didn’t have a time limit, so she could work on it slowly.

  Moving on, Wilona worked on shaping the clay. She already had two vases filled with water, so she didn’t need to go to a stream every time she wanted to soften the clay, and that made the process of shaping it fairly quick. A little bit of storage changed a lot. Who would have thought?

  Wilona looked at the fire pits that Mossheart had dug out earlier. "There’s going to be more soon," she said to herself. "And when I have a surplus of food, I can work on practicing my magic, scouting the swamp to see if there are other humans, and improving the place around my tree."

  [New Quest! - Pottery Gallery!]

  [Quest Type: Ingredient]

  [Rewards: 2 Charges]

  ["You're now on the way to becoming fully independent! All that’s required is a place to store food to keep it fresh, as well as a container for water so that you don’t have to waste precious time filtering it every hour! Make proper storage!"]

  Wilona looked at the rewards. There goes the two charges thing again. What did that even mean? She was starting to feel curious about what the three stats in her system were, and the surface-level meaning she got just from reading their names wasn’t going to be enough to satisfy her.

  She would distribute the charges after she got them because she didn’t care where they went, but she did hope that her choices would prove to be right later on. One day, she’d learn about the charges and make better decisions. For now, she’d be irrational and use any resources she could get her hands on, no matter how valuable.

  The rest of the morning came and went, all of it spent shaping pots and putting them inside the fire pits. After that, she gathered leaves, branches, and even timidly asked Mossheart to chop—well, it was more like snapping for the ent—a few of the thinner trees to make firewood.

  Once the fire pits had been set, Wilona used her newly acquired spell to light them up. Smoke rose into the air as raw clay got cooked into pottery. It blanketed one side of the camp and formed a wall of smoke that reached the sky.

  Maybe humans would see it and check it out? That would be kind of cool. Getting rescued and reaching civilization would be kind of cool. Getting out herself while fighting a bunch of monsters on the way there would be cooler, though.

  Wilona stretched. "That's for the future." She winced. "God, my back fucking hurts." The complaint was reasonable, really. She had sat down for a few hours in a hunched position. "I really hope I don’t get any spinal problems from this..."

  Speaking of spinal problems—Wilona grabbed her fishing rod and went downstream. It was time to test the strength of her shoulders again and catch another fish.

  "Maybe Garry is there?" she muttered. She hadn’t seen the alligator gar lately. Hopefully, the little guy was safe.