The stone axe recipe resided on a level above the axe head, as one would expect. Fortunately, the recipe was rather simple as well, only requiring three items, two of which he already had.

The final one was some hemp rope, no doubt crafted from hemp string. Fortunately, his placement in this plains had been just as intentional as imagined, the oak tree he started beneath provided ideal shelter and some branches which he smoothed into sticks. Whilst the river nearby provided some stones and freshwater, he even noticed animals in the distance!

Horses, boars, cows, whilst they all kept to themselves for the most part, he knew that food wouldn't be an issue.

For now, he just needed hemp, but didn’t actually know what it looked like besides growing rather straight with moderately recognisable leaves. Of course, he had a far easier way to test plants in the end. Walking about whilst muttering to himself, “If I just put it in, I’ll know the name of anything here, right?”

After he got hold of his footing from the whole reincarnated or whatever thing, things seemed pretty good. Food and water weren’t technically an issue with its copious sources, and he got to learn and play with things that he only dreamt of as a child.

“Where did those dreams go…” As he crafted the axe head, his growing excitement hadn’t been apparent, but he knew, deep down, that he loved this, almost to an unbelievable degree. And he didn’t really understand why.

Looking at the stone axe head as a basic idea, it was a sharpened piece of stone which appeared as artwork on its own. A hole bored through the thicker part of the head allowed for a rod to pass through, and he understood that the axe itself was held together by a wedge being lodged into the rod’s head. This split the wood such that expansion held the axe head in place with tension.

He'd seen the process of building ‘old’ tools enough to understand the principle inside and out. For god’s sake, he made a few pickaxes as a youth using precast steel heads.

Why did he ever stop doing all that?

“No reason I’m so miserable, I should've started building things again. That should be a patch of hemp.” He looked over to a small section of tall greenery which had hundreds of thin stalks with its well-recognised jagged leaves. It only took the process of snapping a stalk and tapping it with the box to get his answer.

These were indeed the plants he needed… But how did he get fibres from them? It was just a stripping process from what he knew, and without better choice decided to follow that. With a finger grabbing bits of the stalk, he pulled upwards to separate a section of its outer lining all at once. This repeated several times, stripping leaves in the process, and ending up with a pile of thick strands which all felt a bit damp to the touch.

A test with the box confirmed this. “Wet hemp fibres? But if I dry them, that’ll take weeks? What do I… Ohhh.” He shut himself up after looking around and finding several stalks of hemp which had been torn down and partially eaten. Whilst not ideal, they’d been left to dry in the sun enough that he didn’t doubt their usability.

He gathered just fifteen stalks in the end, and now hoped that it worked. A quick repetition of the same process resulted in a handful of finer fibres with bits of dry hemp stuck in between, but he didn’t care about that. When depositing it into the box, he was interested to see that a single, longer, reed granted just 10 hemp fibre.

It seemed that the box actually considered ‘a bundle’ of fibres as a single count. Again, he simply couldn’t make sense of this all, as much as he wanted to know to sate his own annoyance.

Three fibres turned into a string quite easily, and it was no surprise to see the recipe it unlocked now turned four strings into a rope. Quite nicely, he found that the resulting string was completely clean and even bleached white! Unlike the very pale brown of the fibres he just stripped, it further reinforced how much simpler the box made everything.

Was it any surprise that just a minute later, he was placing the axe head, a rod, and a bundle of hemp rope into the crafting grid? With a simple tap, he hurriedly retrieved the object of his desires. A weighty stone axe, and he could feel the power behind it, not to mention its durability.

Besides the sturdy rod, he noted that the rope tied around the connection to further provide a tension which kept the axe head in place. He guessed it was time to cut down a few trees, not hesitating for a moment to carry the axe over his shoulder and wander off.

Beyond the boundary of the plains he started in, he saw three other places to go. Two sides were forest composed of different trees, one had a grey bark whilst the other was a greenish-brown. Naturally, he went for the latter as it was the closest. However, the last connection to this plain was what seemed to be an extraordinary flat wetland, perhaps even changing into a swamp or lakes at a deeper point.

He chose to avoid that place until gaining weaponry or a boat, or if the box required an item from there to craft better tools.

And so, he entered the forest, first stopping near the edge where some smaller trees grew. The one he selected was around the same size as his head, and on appearance it stood out as a leafless tree in the middle of such heat and sun. Just lightly swinging his axe into the bark revealed wood which practically crumbled when he used a bit of strength.

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Oh, and did he ever mention how strong this body was?

As a small test, he grabbed the dry wood tightly, and plunged his fingers into it. The bark creaked for a moment before cracking and his fingers simply tore through as though playing with dough.

Let alone this dead tree, when he was climbing the giant oak he started beneath, every time he gripped its bark his fingers dug into it. He snapped branches as thick as his arm with ease, this body’s outrageous strength going well beyond the means of muscular. It was more than merely strong as well. In his experience, physical labour simply didn’t tire him out! At least, none of the climbing, running, cutting, and so on, tired him in the slightest.

And he loved it, but more than that, wanted to dig out why this was possible. From there, why else would he want to know?

To become even better.

His axe slammed into the dry tree, and in just a few swings he had it toppling down to the floor with a crash. It didn’t take much to separate the tree roughly double his height, into roughly 12 logs. Pleased by his own gains, he collected the logs and travelled deeper for even more, knowing that today’s crafting would require far more than just that.

Of course, this random walk awoke a new sense of curiosity within him. Because not only did he come across two more standing dead trees, but a sight left him shaking in anticipation.

He found a small shack in the woods.

This wooden shack wasn’t large, in fact, he preferred to call it a shed. Its walls were made of thin wooden boards of equal size and colour, not to mention the roof simply being wood covered in clay. This was a real home belonging to someone, and he wasn’t sure how to react.

“But if I go up with a weapon they might attack first… But if I don’t…” He simply hid behind a nearby tree and watched the shack intently. Picking up some stones from the floor, he chucked them to the shack’s door and waited for a response.

Nothing. Not even a creak.

A few more pebbles struck it, even leaving a mark on the grained wood, but still no one came out.

“Is it empty?” He wondered to himself whilst readying the axe, then took a deep breath. Knock on the door and see who, or what, was inside. “Are there natives?” He only said that to himself when halfway to the door and just a moment away from bashing open its door to check.

He completely overlooked that this world was populated, in truth believing it to belong to humans. But now…

How could he back off? In front of the door, his face hardened as he kicked hard and completely pulled the top hinge out of the wooden frame. But as the door swung up and slammed into a wall, he received an upsetting sight.

“Empty. Of course,” He said, full of disappointment. Not that he held a murderous streak, but there felt a bit of emptiness as the loneliness of this situation set in. Who knew how long he’d be alone? His eyes glazed over the shack’s insides and picked out some things of interest, commenting on them. “The bed hasn’t been used in ages, and it looks less comfortable than the ground. And that’s paper? No way it’s any language I can… read.” He took a step inside and glanced down at the few sheets of torn and scraped paper.

As well as some diagrams, it was very clearly in English. Plain English to the point where he doubted his own eyes.

This house was… What was it? The old home for a human from months ago? Where did they go? Are they alive?

Is there already a thriving colony or complete society simply further beyond!?

He squashed those questions to read the paper, perhaps it contained notes on trying to find them?

“Notes on Nature? This is just wildlife documentation… Wait… A ritual? This– This is a fucking tribal ritual! Why the hell would you leave this useless crap of all things!?” He slammed a fist against the table, ignoring how it left an imprint and feeling distraught from the facts. A quick skim through the other pages only confirmed what he read.

It claimed to be a ritual to ‘invoke nature’s power’, requiring some sort of totem and ceremony in the rain. Not for a moment did he consider such a nonsensical ritual or notes to be legitimate, if magic existed then why would it utilise such a mediocre process?

He found the idea a joke, but threw the paper into his cube, nonetheless. Who knew if those who wrote this stuff would find it valuable? In which case he could obtain some useful resources for once. And as a final attempt to find something of immediate value, he swept through the shack. A slightly loose floorboard actually revealed a strange ornament which he realised was one of the items described in the ritual.

This was a windchime, and swinging it at a specific rhythm should meet this simplistic ritual’s requirements. Once more, he stored it as selling it for resources was always a possibility. He decided to use this shack as a temporary residence as well, although its tiny size made it worthless to live in. Storage for things he didn’t want in his box made more sense too.

In fact he noted that now was a perfect time to quickly craft a mallet and check what new recipes he had.

In excitement, he ignored the ones below and focused entirely on the one above the stone axe. Surprisingly, it was a simple wooden box with a lid. With just four logs he could make one right now, and placed it on the shack’s rather rubbish bed.

The box itself was a similar dark-yellow wood to the dry logs used to make it, and he noted that there were no nails, guessing that the box was held together by glue instead. The lid was easy to remove as well, simply lifting off the top, overall about the length of his forearm and reached up to his knee on the ground.

Whilst not ideal for storing wood, he could keep rope, and smaller tools in here for convenience.

He left the windchime and paper in his cube though, not risking the environment degrading it overtime. A few tests with wet leaves at the river showed that the cube might bundle similar items together, but it specifically remembered which one was which.

A dry leaf put in would come out like that, same for a wet one. This information was important simply because it implied that the cube ‘maintained’ an item's condition. Indefinitely though? He wanted to say yes, simply because it sounded amazing.

“Nature magic though… How could there ever be such simple stuff?” Just a glance at the complex characters which covered his body instilled the idea that magic was well outside his grasp, if it even existed that is. For all he knew, the tapestry was just some unbelievable tech beyond any human’s understanding.

But no matter how much he said it… That little spark ate away at his resistance. A little spark of desire, a wilful curiosity that threw caution or common sense to the wind.

A spark that wanted to test the ritual. Who knew how long he could hold it back, but the relatively exciting goals already laid in front of him were more than enough to give a buffer.