F-ranker Sword Saint: My Soulbound Sword is Secretly SSS-tier!-Chapter 366: Timber Tumbler

The moment the Hissing ended, the trio converged.

They would’ve proceeded to the Verdant Nucleus, had Daru not voiced against it.

"There’s no need to waste time, I’ve figured out a solution," was the first thing that came out of his mouth.

Elara’s eyes widened slightly, and her brows rose.

Durandal’s, on the other hand, furrowed, and the apex ranker cast another doubtful look his way.

How could Daru, with little to no knowledge of a Continuum Barrier, possibly find a way faster than he, who was more learned and elite overall, could?

As if to answer, Daru merely threw his gaze at the hollow of the nearest tree — Elara’s — and pointed at the gray sap, which now rested on the base of the tree, dried and hardened after the princess kicked an exit open for herself.

Based on their observations, the sap, after being exposed to the death plumes, would harden.

"What of those?" Durandal questioned, brows furrowing further.

"Ha! I can’t believe how slow people are." Elara sneered. "He meant that we could use the sap to move during the Hissing."

This time, however, the half-jerk had a retort:

"Heh, of course I understand that much. It’s just that, how would you use it, is the question? Do you want to die of suffocation by smearing it all over yourself?"

The petty princess puffed her cheeks.

She thought Durandal had the brains of a Waykeeper, underestimating the half-jerk too much. Now, she found herself on the losing end of the argument.

"W-Well, of course Daru had already thought of that, idiot!" she shot back, though not with her usual sass. "Right, Daru?"

Elara prayed to the gods and goddesses that her friend had thought things through. Otherwise, the half-jerk would have ammunition against her.

She did not want to give Durandal even a single verbal victory, especially when she had been winning decisively and had already claimed superiority in this regard.

Daru did not fail her.

"I did. We can’t simply smear the sap all over ourselves, as we would die of suffocation long before the Hissing ended."

They couldn’t leave even a small hole uncovered, after all, as the death plumes would easily find and sneak inside the gap, harvesting their lives.

"So, we must make a sap-covered vehicle, at least the entrance, and I’ve thought of a few that are simple enough for us to make."

The princess’s eyes brightened. She even forgot to mock Durandal in all her delight at the rather simple yet ingenious solution.

"My! This princess must admit. That is indeed clever. Out with it, what vehicles have you thought of?"

"For one..."

Daru explained the options, but in the end, the first one he mentioned was the simplest and most practical.

A giant wheel made from a third of a sap-spewing tree’s hollowed-out trunk.

"Perfect, let’s call that one the Timber Tumbler!" Elara chirped.

None of the two young men cared enough to change it, and so their project would be called by the name the princess had thought of.

Thus, instead of wasting time proceeding forward with meager distance gains, the trio continued to discuss how they would make the human push-wheel.

The idea was to have enough space inside the hollowed-out trunk for them to breathe and push the wheel forward. With their superhuman strength, this wasn’t a problem.

The problem was how they would hollow out a trunk.

Daru explained to them that it was actually very simple, as all they had to do was tear open the sap protecting the hollow of a sap-spewing tree, and it would automatically be hollowed out by the Hissing.

The only thing they had to do then was cut the tree down and take a third of the entire thing for a wheel-like structure, though more like a barrel.

The three also discussed how they would seal the two open sides, mostly through a mixture of sap, vines, and plants that are death plume-resistant.

The only thing they could do now was to gather the vines, the plants, and pick up the hardened gray sap scattered on the base of the trees around them, so that was what they did.

The dried sap, while already hard and unmoldable, still had the property of being able to keep the death plumes out.

They piled everything in front of the burrow they planned to use as their temporary base of operations while they crafted the Timber Tumbler.

Then, once the sap-spewing trees began secreting gray sap, the trio collected as much as they could and stored the Deadbark Sap in their inventory.

Daru then waited at the mouth of the burrow in the last few moments and got into the stance of Crescent Dicer, shooting a spinning cross-slash towards the hollow of one of the nearby trees.

He unfortunately did not have the luxury to check whether it hit, but he was confident, sliding to safety.

An hour and a half later, the three of them exited their burrow and went to check the tree.

He had succeeded.

The Deadbark had been hollowed out, and the human trio proceeded to cut it down with their Soulbound Swords — the poor apex weapons reduced to timber duty.

Since they only had to cut through the plume-resistant bark, the task took them only around fifteen minutes. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

By the time the Hissing was upon them again, they were ready to collect more Deadbark Sap.

Slowly but steadily, Daru and his comrades gathered all the necessary materials, then proceeded to the actual vehicle-building phase.

This one was slightly more challenging, as all of them had little experience.

Still, the Timber Tumbler was simple enough that, even if slow at first, the three eventually managed to seal the two sides securely, even if the patchwork cover they managed to create couldn’t be more displeasing to the princess’s eyes.

Daru and Durandal wiped their faces and stared at their "masterpiece" with a faint smile.

Only Elara wasn’t too happy, deeming its aesthetics unfit for someone of her beauty.

Nonetheless, their vehicle was ready.

It was time to cross the Continuum Barrier.