Once Lucius had rested up he decided to get his needlework done before mid-afternoon, as he had arranged a trade with the lizard-beings and didn't want to be late.
So he quickly grabbed one of his needles, his knife, and a vine and went to where he had hidden the arachnid hide.
The hide still had pieces of flesh stuck to it, so he had to clean it in the river with his knife before he could do any work. Once it was clean, he began inspecting it carefully. He pulled on it to test its shear strength and found that with a good pull, he could somewhat tear it.
"I thought so. If it was too tough, the arachnid wouldn't have been able to move the way it did," he whispered to himself. "But still, a flexible material that's hard? Quite the fabric."
He quickly began tearing the arachnid hide to get it into more square-like pieces, which proved to take a great deal of strength, even with the help of his knife.
[+4 strength.]
[+2 Stamina.]
In the end, he managed to get it into five squarish pieces. The work was quite ugly, and the pieces weren't even of equal area.
"Well, I'm no fashion designer, that much is apparent," he whispered to himself before taking the needle and trying to puncture it through one of the pieces.
His plan was to puncture holes into the fabrics and craft a makeshift cloak by sewing them together with threads of vine.
However, this was easier thought than done, as the material was quite tough. He ended up having to use pebbles to hammer the needle through.
Every hole took at least a minute to make, but after an hour or so he managed to make holes in all but one of the pieces of arachnid skin. The last would be the shrooms share.
He then began stripping the vines and used the threads to sew the pieces back together into the form he wanted. Which again ended up being shoddy work, as he had no idea what he was doing.
In the end, he had a sort of fleece-type thing, with a small hood. He put it on and began inspecting.
~Ugly, but it'll work,~ he thought to himself. The cloak was a little on the small end since he had grown, but it covered him just until his upper leg so it worked well as a protective measure against poison attacks.
By the time he had finished, it was getting close to midday, and he still had one more thing to do. So he returned to the camp and collected a few branches before chopping them, this time however he did not turn them into planks.
He left chopped them into smaller cylinder-shaped pieces, before using the grinding stone to smoothen them out. In the end, he was left with something that more resembled a wheel.
He then used the needle to poke holes at their center, before using the chisels to carve the holes out.
Once he had finished that, he began working on the planks. He fashioned them together like he had done before with the sleds, using rope to combine them, but this time he added small ledges on each side, to allow them to carry more stuff.
He then ran carved and ground axles out of a long branch and connected the wheels.
All in all, it took an hour to make, but he finally had a large cart. It was now very close to the allocated time for the trade, so he decided to get photosynthesis out of the way before going to the spring.
He ate one of the pieces of arachnid meat before gathering everyone, and Pagan began the session.
During this session, Lucius could feel the 'evolution' sensation emanating from a large number of leaflings. Though it was faint for most of them, he would soon have a large number of them evolving.
~I'll have to go to the Dark Forest soon. I can't leave when all of them get into their pod state, it'll be too much to ask Pagan to protect them all,~ he realized as he invested all his points into growth.
This time there were no visible changes, though internally his systems were becoming more complex. His 'heart' organ beat with more power than before, increasing the rate at which his bodily processes took place.
His body heat had increased, and all his senses were sharper. The pulling feeling he got from the ground was beginning to feel more like a 6th sense than a mere feeling, though he couldn't quite put his finger on what exactly he was supposed to be sensing.
His internal framework as well as the fibers that ran throughout his body had become stronger, denser, and he seemed somewhat more built than before.
Pagan had also grown, however much like Lucius, it wasn't a growth in size but rather in density and body composition.
"We should get going," Lucius said as he began picking up the leaflings that had fallen unconscious and putting them in the tree base.
They were getting a little too large to all fit in the tree base, so he had to put a few of them in the cottage. He closed the door and put the grinding stone in front of it to stop small hunters from accessing them.
Once all that was done, Lucius ordered Pagan to pull the cart along, and they set off to get the shroom.
"I see you've gotten even bigger," the shroom commented as Lucius removed it from its cage. "And is that the arachnid skin?" it asked, touching the cloak that Lucius was currently wearing.
"Yeah," Lucius replied off-handedly, already moving towards the spot they had hidden the remaining pieces of arachnid meat.
"Where's mine?" the shroom asked as they walked.
"I have a piece of arachnid skin left, that one is yours," Lucius replied as he tried to remember which tree he had hidden the meat in.
"You made one of these... things," the shroom said, gesturing towards the cloak, "-for me as well?"
"No," Lucius replied, stopping by a tree, before jumping up to retrieve the meat and herbs.
"Why not?" the shroom asked once he was back down.
"Why would I? You aren't in my commune yet," he replied, placing the herbs in the cart.
