As it turned out, cement did fall under the purview of his Stonecrafter class. Furthermore, the blueprints he received for it were not counted as variant stone blueprints, but entirely new ones. That meant he got full experience for them. It didn't take long for him to get up to level 26, which gave him more breathing room for his spells.
The bad news was, the blueprints were the cement, not the concrete. [Instant Crafting] didn't create a dry concrete block, it created a wet cement one, complete with the wooden slats he used to keep it in place.
Still, this had heaps of potential. He could even re-use the cement if he used the spell again before it had dried out too much. That gave him loads more potential for fixing mistakes than was normally possible with cement. His biggest limit was that the town didn't have anyone who knew how to make cement. It wasn't a complex recipe, but cement wasn't in high demand, so no one had bothered to learn it. According to mayor Vashti, the town chemist thought he could figure it out. Josh made a mental note to visit the man.
Josh continued filling up the gap in the wall with stone, and ran into two problems. First, while he wasn't bringing his mana down to zero with every casting any more, he was still using loads of mana over and over again in a short time. It was exhausting, and he eventually decided to slow down. If he kept on for too long, he'd get an actual penalty to some of his stats, and those always lasted an annoyingly long time.
The second problem was that he ran out of stone. There weren't really all that many large boulders inside their land. He was sure there was plenty of stone scattered around the area the town had claimed, but it seemed more trouble than it was worth to drag them all back here.
While he was considering that problem, Darius finished the shrouds, leaving one for all four of them. He didn't get any new blueprints automatically. That was okay. He had enough materials to experiment, and Josh thought he'd have more success this way. Besides, he was clearly having the time of his life—even if he seemed to think his face might crack if he smiled.
Ruth had more success. Over the course of three days, she copied every new rune on the items the mayor had brought her. She learned an Exemplary-tier Attack rune with Strength aspects, as well as a Heal rune that had some similarities to the Constitution rune—Josh didn't understand it. He thought the Basic-tier Dexterity and Constitution runes were more useful. The rest were all either runes she already had, or connection runes that modified the regular runes. Josh still wasn't sure what all that was about, but Ruth kept insisting that she was close to a breakthrough.
Josh planned to copy all those runes as well. He didn't know if he could use any runestones better than Basic-tier, but he was willing to give it a shot. He didn't really have time for all that right now. Ruth seemed to learn runes faster than he did.
He was too busy digging.
The discovery was a complete accident. He had asked for a shovel just to dig out a stubborn boulder that he thought was bigger than it looked. Darius suggested digging down to see if they could find bedrock. If it was close enough to the surface, they could mine all the stone they needed. Josh wasn't sure if it would be smart to start a quarry right under their feet, but seeing how far down the bedrock was seemed like a good idea.
Assuming that he would need to dig down more than a couple feet, he dug down at an angle, building a ramp wide enough to walk. It turned out “building” was the right word, because once he dug down eight feet, with a nice solid-packed dirt ramp, he received a notification.
CONGRATULATIONS! You have learned the blueprint Dirt Ramp (stone) (pedestrian). A small ramp suitable for pedestrian foot traffic. Look, this is labeled “stone,” but it's below Stone Age tech. This is basically free experience.
Josh spent a full minute staring into space. No one else noticed; they were all busy with their own things. Mary wasn't even inside the walls, she was outside testing her shroud against the local monsters.
Forget the runestones. This could change everything. He had already received a [Dig] technique, which had proven valuable and was a decent source of experience as it ranked up. Getting a full blueprint was something else altogether.
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Eventually, Josh recovered. He took a deep breath, mentally selected the blueprint, and used [Instant Crafting].
The ramp instantly extended another eight feet down. This left a large chunk of dirt hanging precariously above it, the part that hadn't been removed or packed down by the spell. Speaking of, where was the extra dirt? If he had constructed the ramp normally, he would have had to throw it out of the hole. He looked over and saw that his dirt pile was about twice as large as it was a moment ago. Had it just appeared there?
That was something for later. Turning his attention back to the pit and the ramps, he started hacking at the dirt above the ramp. He didn't want it falling down on his head when he traveled under it. It took a while to get rid of it all, and he didn't get any new blueprints for it. Which made sense. Removing dirt wasn't constructing something.
That was fine. He had a plan for that.
Once the dirt was cleared out, he returned to the lowest point he had dug. He scraped out lines on the dirt wall in front of him, as if he was marking a door. He went back up to grab a pick-ax. Between that and the shovel, he managed to make progress, cutting a tunnel through the dirt that was reasonably clean. With his [Dig] technique and the odd cast of [Instant Crafting], he made far better time than he would have thought possible. Once he had dug enough to create a square tunnel eight feet tall and eight feet deep, he paused to catch his breath.
Nothing happened.
He frowned. Eight was the magic number for the System, so if this would earn him a blueprint, eight feet should be enough. Logically, that meant a simple dirt tunnel didn't count as a “construction.” What else did he need for a tunnel?
With a flash of inspiration, he ran back up to the surface. He grabbed a few of the more solid pieces of wood. Mostly the two-by-fours, but some planks too. He ran back down and put the planks down as a floor, then used [Instant Crafting] to put the posts up as braces. He already had a support brace blueprint from building the shacks. He added a few more posts and planks to keep the ceiling properly supported.
This time, it worked.
CONGRATULATIONS! You have learned the blueprint Dirt Tunnel (stone) (pedestrian). A small tunnel in the dirt, suitable for pedestrian foot traffic. Definitely more advanced than the ramp, but still pretty simple. Look, you're probably feeling real proud of yourself, but it's not exactly rocket science, buddy.
Josh immediately tried to use [Instant Crafting] with the remaining wood to build another tunnel. It didn't work, which he expected. He basically never had enough mana to craft any compound blueprints. What he didn't expect was that he almost had enough mana to do it. Assuming he stuck with his current build, he should be able to do it in about ten more levels.
He'd take it.
When he climbed out of the pit, he discovered that it was later than he had expected. It was almost fully dark, and everyone had returned to their little circle of shacks for dinner. It seemed like he had lost track of time while building that tunnel. Even with his [Dig] technique, it still took time to tunnel through dirt.
They all shared their progress. Everyone was level 27 now, including Darius, which surprised everyone. Darius hadn't gained any new blueprints, but he had gone out to help Mary fight monsters. As it turned out, he received experience when someone using a shroud he had crafted took damage. The [Defender] role always received experience for, well, defending people, but no one had realized this would extend to crafted items. They had done some experimentation, and discovered that while the other person didn't have to be in his party, they did have to be nearby. So he couldn't give out shroud focuses to everyone in town and just rake in the experience.
Mary was still having a blast with her new spells. Vareo Shot was both too damaging and too mana-intensive for casual use. Not only did it drain her almost dry, but it destroyed the corpses of anything she hit. Porcine Chargers and Sciuridae Ambushers weren't exactly the most valuable monsters to harvest, but there was usually something worth grabbing. A bullet of randomized high-intensity gravity left no opportunity to recoup costs. She had more success with Pyro Shot and Anemo Shot.
Josh shared his own progress, even though he felt like he hadn't done much. He'd proven that loads could be done with his crafting, but he just didn't have the stats to do any of the really impressive things yet. Right now, he just had a couple blueprints that were useful but tired him out too much, and a few more that he couldn't use at all. Well, that he couldn't use with [Instant Crafting]. Building that tunnel again would be easier with a blueprint, even without extra magical help.