Chapter 266: Not a Trampoline!

Tera and Calis had barely gotten out of the portal when one of her clan members ran towards them.

"THEY ARE BACK."

Tera sighed, starting to get tired of this.

They had split up again, and this time they had taken it much further. There were seven groups in scattered clusters, and each one was so far from the others that she could not see more than two of them from any single spot.

Calis looked out at them and then looked at Tera, disturbed.

"Is this what you have been dealing with?"

Tera smiled weakly at him. "Yes. Give me a minute."

Using the system, she teleported them again. But this time, she did it so far out she could see the tiny specs that were their body out on the mulchy plains in the distance.

[(?﹏?)]

[Host has thrown the Jackdaw tribe a great distance away]

Tera ignored the system. That wasn’t her problem. This time it would take them more days to get here. Maybe that would prevent them from even thinking of coming to her tribe for some time.

Tera took Calis to see Ermin shortly after, and that part went surprisingly better than she expected.

Calis was awkward about it at first, but Ermin was very happy to see him.

After this brief meeting and checking up on Ermin, Tera promptly returned with Calis a few hours later.

To Tera’s shock, the males had finished lashing the whole frame.

She promptly went around inspecting their work, and with each joint, Tera marvelled at how everything had actually been done precisely.

They were getting pretty good without the use of the tool instinct.

The joists came next. Thicker poles running across the inside of the frame to rest on the lower beams. These were spaced evenly apart along the whole rectangle, and they were lashed down at both ends.

Spacing was the thing she would not budge on. Too far apart and the floor would sag between them. She marked every position herself with a measuring rule and did not let anybody eyeball a single one, which caused some quiet grumbling that she ignored completely.

This was why they needed to learn numbers!

Then came the floor base, and the wolves finally got a job they were naturally good at.

Whole bamboo poles were laid side by side across the joists, and packed tight against each other all the way along. There were no gaps wide enough to catch a claw, and each pole got tied down to the joists at regular intervals, and then long cords were run right over the top of several poles at once and pulled tight at both ends, so nothing could shift or roll underfoot.

It was heavy, repetitive, satisfying work. Carry the pole, lay the pole, hold the pole, tie the pole. Thirty beasts with superhuman strength moved through it like a machine.

Somebody started a rhythm, and they all picked it up without being asked.

The deck crept across the frame one pole at a time, and the empty rectangle slowly stopped being a rectangle and started being a floor.

The first wolf to stand on the finished section did it very carefully, one foot at a time, with the expression of a male who fully expected to fall through.

He did not fall through the floor.

He bounced on it once. Then again, harder. Then a third time with real commitment, and when it still did not move, Tera was ready to snap at him.

Did he think this was some trampoline?!

However, he turned around and announced to the entire clearing that it was fine.

The entire clearing immediately came to test this for themselves, and Tera’s horror reached new heights as twenty-odd wolves jumped up and down in unison, testing the new floor they had just built.

’What the fuck? Are you kids?! We just built that!’

[They are not going to break it, Host]

[(￣ε￣)]

’The fuck you mean?! The flooring isn’t even finished!’

[It is holding beautifully. Host should be proud]

’I’m going to have a stroke!’

Tera turned to the beasts and rushed them off the fresh flooring, chastising them for how a phase needed to be completed before they tested anything!

- ※ - ※ - ※ -

As Tera predicted, the Jackdaw members had stopped coming.

Tera had gone back to her territory after a few more days of having the beasts break down bamboo into thicker and flatter strips to weave into a massive mat that would be the flooring, but in this case, they were making two smaller mats.

Because while the beasts had laid down the flooring, they had placed an extra pole on top of the middle pole where the partitioned wall would be, creating a step rise that they lashed to the base pole.

That would not only mark where the wall would be, but it would also be the boundary between both floor mats.

It was starting to feel nice that Tera could leave the males behind to carry out the work and it would actually be done well.

While it was something she had done in her modern life, the overwhelming difference had been the fact that she’d worked with skilled labourers on site, not beasts who didn’t know what different tools were.

But at least they were getting somewhere.

As for Ermin, he fared a lot better, and even wanted to return to join in the construction work.

The wolves and other clan members had been very excited to see him, hounding him like ants who had discovered an exposed sweet on the floor.

Tera had been concerned that he would be overwhelmed, but Ermin surprisingly took the attention well. He was still sad and grieving, but aside from the construction helping him focus his attention on other things, Tera was happy he was surrounded by more people and interaction at least.

The mats were finally laid down tight, and tucked down the side of the second-to-last bamboo pole before they were lashed there using split bamboo strips.

The woven surface spread out across the whole platform and the ridges disappeared under it, and what had been eight charred posts in a muddy rectangle ten days ago was now a floor.

The wolves excitedly climbed it, liking the feel of the new floor. Tera stepped up onto it and walked the whole thing end to end.

It did not creak, shift or wobble. She had noticed that when the wolves had jumped on it, but feeling it herself was amazing.

Behind her, every wolf in the territory was standing around the edge of the platform in silence, looking at it.

Then one of the females stepped up, sat down right in the middle of the mat, and refused to move.

Just like that, five more weeks passed, and in the third month, after multiple rounds of trial and error, the first shelter was completed.