In Need of Some Wood

Mission:

Yet another day with yet another mission in need of completion. The sun was just rising over the horizon as Vergil stepped over the threshold of the village's gates to walk into the woods just outside. For this mission he had been supplied a large ax and a wheelbarrow in order to chop down as few trees as possible while getting as much lumber as possible. he had to admit: axes were a new beast to handle for Vergil what with the majority of his weapon training being around swords and knives. Who knows? Maybe he'd be just as good with an ax going into this labor filled task. Walking through the woods with ax hanging at his side and wheelbarrow being dragged along behind him he looked around the woods in order to find a nice big tree that held plenty of lumber for him to take. It wouldn't be easy as, even though the trees all came in different sizes, there were more smaller ones than bigger ones hanging about close to the village. Being that he was supposed to make certain not to damage surroundings he felt the best trees to find were ones that were as far away from the village as he could possibly travel as he walked through the woods until he was about a mile away from the village's gates.

Upon making it out that far he saw it: a good sized tree that was taller than all the other ones around and pretty good in width as well. He thus put the wheelbarrow a safe distance away before walking over to the tree and looking up and down it's trunk to see where a good striking point was for him to take advantage of. Looking down he decided that striking at a point just above his hip level was probably best as he looked at the ax and back at the trunk. He knew of how lumberjacks usually used axes as he got up close to the trunk and, as he wound up the ax behind him, he swung the ax around at the trunk with all him might. A crack was heard as the steel of the blade sunk into the wood as he brought it back around him and struck again to find the ax sinking deeper. 'Damn. This is going to take forever. If I had brought my sword...' Then it hit him. Stepping back from the tree he got into a slashing stance, his ax in his left hand as his right hung over the handle, before he quickly dashed at the tree while bringing the ax around in a blur.

In a flash he was on the other side of the tree as he had brought the ax around in a full arch and he looked over to see the ax fully intact before turning around to see the tree trunk cleanly chopped through which made Vergil look at the ax with a look of impressed wonder. Looking up the tree he did wonder how he was going to safely topple it over before splitting it into smaller sections for the village as he noticed that west of the tree's location was mostly clear of other trees. He walked around the tree thusly and used his hand to push against the chopped trunk as he watched it slowly topple over and fall where he needed it to fall. Giving a sigh of relief he walked over to the trunk while taking his ax and looking along the length of the fallen tree while wondering exactly how much wood he could extract from a tree that had to be around 40' long. Shrugging at that thinking, knowing he was never going to find out as long as he just stood there thinking, he got to work as he brought the ax down and started chopping.

He would go to work on the trunk for the next 20 minutes, the sun now clearing the distant horizon as it's rays shone through the leaves in the trees upon him, until he had chopped the entire tree into piles of smaller segments of lumber as he walked over to the wheelbarrow and wheeled it over to the piles. He huffed as he picked up logs from each pile and tossed them into the container of the wheelbarrow before he had managed to fit it all inside and upwards in a neat pile he was going to have to try and not topple as he made his long trek back to the gates. The wheel squeaked as he moved past the many trees along the road back to the village as he felt a little sweat rolling off his forehead from the rising heat of the sun going further up into the sky. He would take a few breaks of moving the wheelbarrow every now and then while stretching his muscles out to give them a bit of relief from the labor he was putting them through.

Before long the gates of the village came back into view as he walked past them and made his way to the place he was to drop the lumber off and say good riddance. It was a little bit of a trek away admittedly, as he would walk past many villagers giving him an astonished stare at how high the pile of wood was, until he made it to a factory that was to take in the lumber and put it to good use for the village. He stepped inside as another ninja confirmed the amount of lumber he had come in with and wrote into his clipboard on how much of a good job Vergil had done. Confirming his quota fulfilled Vergil nodded to the workers inside before dropping off the ax on the tool rack and exiting the factory. After such a hard morning's work he couldn't wait to get himself some breakfast as he made his way to a nice restaurant that was just opening to serve some.

(WC 1,006)

(Claims: 2 stats, mission rewards and bonus rewards, Hidden Arms and Raiton Kunai Cutter, and 1 AP.)

The wc on that mission should have been 500 not 1000, as this was a staff error you may claim 1000 ryo as a mission reward instead of the 500 listed - Approved