kscans

Chapter 131 - The Long Road to Woodworking 1. A Divine Statue

There is a proverb that says, "Geta sandals and an Amida Buddha are from the same piece of wood."

I don't know if it's appropriate to bring up that proverb here, but Yuri, fed up with his Woodworking skill remaining stubbornly locked, turned his attention to wood carving to gain experience. Specifically, carving a divine statue.

Ever since he was reincarnated in this world, he had never forgotten his gratitude to the god who had brought him here. It was also true, however, that his thoughts had never extended to making a small shrine or an altar to pray to. This was a good opportunity. It might be disrespectful to call it that, but wouldn't it be a good idea to carve a statue of the god on this occasion?

It might seem like a sudden idea, but it was not as if Yuri had conceived of this without any context or chance of success. He had a foundation... something like experience in carving and sculpting.

The first catalyst was when the Yuri of his past life, Yuuri, was a child. His uncle had brought him a hand-carved Jizo statue as a prayer for his recovery from illness. That Jizo statue had the distinct feel of an amateur's handiwork, but the photographs of Buddhist statues in the textbook his uncle had brought for reference greatly stimulated Yuri's young heart, especially the statues of Ashura and the Nio guardians. Yielding to Yuri's pestering, as he had become fascinated with Buddhist sculpture, his parents first bought him a kit for carving the animals of the zodiac, telling him to start with something simple. Thinking back on it now, it might have been some kind of correspondence course. In any case, Yuri, who began carving on the condition that he only did it while his parents were supervising, managed to complete several of them, excluding the Dragon, which seemed too difficult for a child. There were critiques, like his Tiger looking like a cat or his Snake looking like nothing but poop, but he was finally permitted to attempt a Buddhist statue, his heart's desire. However, his illness worsened shortly after, and the precious Buddhist carving came to a halt partway through a Jizo statue.

The second opportunity came when he was an adult. A nurse, learning that the now-hospital-acclimated Yuuri had experience with Buddhist carving, asked him to repair the dolls in the pediatric ward, the Gogatsu-ningyo and Hina-ningyo. He couldn't very well make them out of wood, so he ended up having to repair them with things like stone powder clay. But the sick children found out and pestered him, and he ended up getting into making figures. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Yuuri of his past life seemed to have a talent in that area, and he was able to create things at a level that left the children reasonably satisfied. However, he never reached the professional level of creating dynamic poses from scratch. He could never get the balance right.

"...Well, I'm not a complete novice... and if it turns out badly, I just won't offer it up... in that case, it'll still count as experience, right."

And so, with a foundation of gratitude, sincerity, and calculation, Yuri began to create the divine statue.

That being said, he didn't risk jumping straight into the real thing. He first practiced by carving a simple human figure out of soft wood. When he purchased lumber at the woodworking shop in Laurenzen, he had received a lecture on the properties and suitability of each type of tree, and based on that, he had purchased a variety of woods. Among them were soft types suitable for carving, so he used one of those for a trial piece...

"Somehow... I feel like it's easier to pose than I thought..."

In his past life's memory, he seemed to recall struggling even to create a pose with a bent arm. Yet now, he was able to carve statues in much more complex poses with surprising ease. A flicker of hope led Yuri to check his status, but the Woodworking skill still hadn't appeared. Yuri looked puzzled... but in truth, this was a benefit of his Dismantling skill. Through the experience of butchering his prey, he had gained anatomical knowledge, which allowed him to create anatomically correct postures and body types without even being conscious of it.

Unaware of these circumstances, Yuri simply concluded that some skill or other must have done the work, and he finally began production of the divine statue...

"...Huh? ...Was the god from back then a male god? ...Or was it a goddess?"

He had immediately run into a difficult problem.

It had been shrouded in a whitish light, so he hadn't been able to see its features at all. The voice was husky, making it impossible to judge whether it was male or female, but the way it spoke was masculine. The clothes, while indistinct, seemed to be something like a three-piece suit or a pantsuit. At the very least, he was certain it wasn't a dress or a skirt. Judging by that alone, it seemed to be a male god...

"But still... for some reason, there was an atmosphere like a Takarazuka male role performer..."

To mistake a god's gender was the height of disrespect, but he then realized that perhaps the god hadn't shown its form precisely because it didn't want to reveal such things. In that case, he would have to leave the facial expression, proportions, and such things ambiguous...

"I guess I have no choice but to carve it as it was, sitting in a pantsuit..."

It felt quite different from a typical divine statue, but the only god he had ever met was that one. He was only carving the form he had seen, so there shouldn't be a problem. He didn't even know its name, after all.

In any case, with that decided, Yuri began to create the divine statue.