I Cultivated Too Long and Got Isekai'd Into a Game
Chapter 15: Crafting System

Chapter 15: Crafting System

Xu Tao pondered for a moment.

Technically, he could make a mud hut by hand, the traditional way. However, he was quite sure that wasn’t how the System wanted him to do it. If it did, then what was the purpose of giving him new functions?

As such, he opened the main menu as usual.

There, he quickly noticed that among the entries he barely touched—apart from Character and Gacha—two more lines had been added: Crafting and Mixing.

He quickly selected Crafting, and the panel changed. It now showed a long list of entries, most of them still filled with question marks. Only the first four items were fully revealed: Mud Hut, Stone Shovel, Stone Spear, and Stone Hammer.

Trying wouldn’t hurt, so he tapped on Mud Hut. As he did, the side panel extended, showing an image of—as the name implied—a mud hut on a white background.

It looked more like a small mound with a curved opening that couldn’t even be called a door. Entering it might require one to crawl, almost like in an igloo.

[

Recipe: Mud Hut

Requirements: 1x Stone Shovel, 1x Stone Hammer, 100x Mud

<Build> <Upgrade> <Dismantle>

]

"Huh?"

But when he tried to tap the Build button, it only beeped loudly, as if an error had occurred. Xu Tao paused, trying to figure out what he was missing—and then realized.

"I have to craft the hammer and shovel first."

Realizing this, he quickly moved back to the list and tapped Hammer. As he did, the window changed once more, now showing a small stone hammer—primitive as could be.

[

Recipe: Stone Hammer

Requirements: 1x Wooden Stick, 1x Stone

<Build> <Upgrade> <Dismantle>

]

This time, when he tapped the Build button, something happened. A translucent "shadow" of a hammer appeared, glowing faintly in blue, floating just inches away from his hand.

Wherever Xu Tao moved his right hand, the holographic hammer followed.

"The heck do I do with this?" he mused in confusion, until he decided to touch the ground.

As he did, the hologram detached from his hand and rested on the spot he touched. But it didn’t end there.

The hologram glowed golden, with what looked like golden threads extending from it—two of them.

Xu Tao checked the ends of the threads and confirmed that one was pointing to a pretty large stick—enough to serve as a hammer’s shaft—while the other pointed at a sizeable rock.

"Huh... Neat," he commented, surprised at this little function.

Without delay, he collected the items indicated and brought them both back to where the hammer hologram was. Then... he was stumped. He didn’t know how to proceed.

Did he need to craft the hammer by hand now? But putting a hole through stone would be hard without proper tools. He could use his Qi Finger technique to punch a hole, but there was a high chance the stone would crumble to dust in the aftermath.

Just as he was about to ponder further, resting both materials beside the hammer hologram, a weird phenomenon occurred. Both items got pulled into the hologram and disappeared!

Instead, a new popup appeared above the hologram, showing the numbers "0/10", along with a large, dynamic "HIT!👊" button floating on top.

With the visual and textual cues, he figured out what he had to do.

"So I just punch this ten times?" he muttered, clenching his fist. "Then, here goes...!"

Xu Tao lowered his stance, keeping both fists by his sides. Then, he took a sharp breath in and—launched a flurry of punches. They were so fast his arms seemed to disappear for a moment!

Instantly, the number on top changed to "10/10", before the hologram shone with a bright white light. And then, in the next moment, a Stone Hammer fell right where the hologram had been.

[Congratulations! You have crafted Stone Hammer x1! Rating: 100/100! Saving the finished product.]

[Product saved! You can now spend System Points to instantly create a Stone Hammer!]

After reading the notifications, Xu Tao nodded.

"So there’s this shortcut too. But it seems I need to create the recipe at least once to activate it..."

If he could just straight up build things through shortcuts, he’d be much happier. After all, at the moment, he had tons of System Points with nowhere to use them!

Gacha?

Adding new companions wouldn’t really help him right now. Rather, more people would just make it harder to manage things... And with the way Xu Tao currently was, he might end up spending all his points rolling nonstop until he went bankrupt!

He was aware of this tendency himself—hence why he wasn’t even glancing at the Gacha option.

After crafting the Stone Hammer, he moved on to making a Stone Shovel. The base materials were the same—just double the quantity. Thankfully, there were plenty of stones and branches around, so he didn’t have to wander too far.

After making both tools, he returned to the actual recipe he wanted to complete: the Mud Hut.

"It’s finally buildable!" he gasped, feeling slightly excited.

As he pressed the Build button, a large hologram appeared. The Mud Hut was larger than he thought—it had just looked small on the white background, it seemed.

The entire hut stood about three meters tall at the highest part of the dome, the area being a circle of 6 meters diameter, with the door just a meter high. It was quite wide, so fitting two people inside should be easy... But having rooms? That didn’t seem possible for now.

Quickly, Xu Tao tapped the ground, planning to set the hut there. However, he noticed the hologram wasn’t glowing blue as it had for the previous tools—instead, it glowed red.

"Weird..." he muttered, trying to figure out what was wrong.

He checked left, right, up and down, and realized a possible issue. "Could it be that I can’t build it where there are obstacles, like trees or such?"

To test his guess, he moved to a wider, open space. As soon as the hologram was no longer intersecting with anything, it began glowing blue again—just like before.

"I see, so that’s how it works," he nodded, slowly figuring out the workings of the crafting system.

After placing the "blueprint" down, the hut began to glow again. This time, there was only one thread heading some distance away.

It was quite far, but still within Jehanne’s observation range, so he didn’t say anything. He just sprinted to the other end of the pointer and arrived at a specific plot of land.

The thread stopped there—on the earth itself. No... it seemed to go even deeper below the surface. Quite deep, in fact.

"No time for patiently digging!"

Xu Tao wasn’t in the mood to dig with a shovel. He touched the ground, gathered his Qi, and—

"HAAAP!"

—Forced a pulse into the earth.

It exploded, sending dust, dirt, and rock flying around. That one strike alone had created a five-meter-deep crater in the shape of a bowl—as if a meteor had landed.

Thankfully, that was deep enough. The earth below his feet was a lot softer than the topsoil of the savannah.

Xu Tao now looked at a new floating panel, showing a counter "0/100" and the large word "DIG!", along with a picture of a shovel.

As a test, he tried to "dig" using his hands. However, even after moving a bucket-sized pile of muddy earth, the number didn’t change. It seemed the system only recognized mud that was dug using the shovel—not by anything else.

"Fuck..." Xu Tao complained. "Should’ve pulled for that sword guy and let him handle menial labor..." He sighed.

Still, despite the complaints, he started working without delay—shovel in hand.

The source of this c𝓸ntent is fr(e)𝒆NovelFire