By the afternoon, Joey walked around with three new drying racks and precisely 45 units of hemp stalks, which turned out to just be 45 stalks…

These new drying racks took their place beside the original for hemp, and he left them to do precisely as expected.

Dry.

Flax fibres are weaved into linen, and as long as the recipes allowed for an exchange of materials, he could finally stop wearing the rough hemp which he adapted to recently. But even that only took about an hour of his time, and so, he spent the day carving totems instead. That ritual of the ox needed to be completed eventually. The sooner; the better.

In the end, he created 6 of these totems, the last two carved in significantly less time as he grew a bit more adept with the shape and style of this ox face. Its major difference from a bull was how much calmer it appeared, even friendly to a point.

Surprising given how it resonated with fire of all things, but this also made sense.

The ritual of the ox might seem chaotic and boisterous, but it was a methodical and calm one. It did not overreact to the blazing bonfire, only standing its ground in the uncomfortable heat. This ritual stood out a lot more than the other three, holding a lot more meaning and intent, although he accepted that the others all had their own specific environmental requirements.

Their movements didn’t seem so… specific.

Did any of that even make sense?

With the two poor quality ox totems ready for use. How big a fire had to be to transform into a bonfire interested him for the day, but it ended up with the vague guess that so-long as the flames were taller than himself, it should be fine.

As he carved the totems beneath the oak tree, he occasionally glanced over to the four black pearls bathed in sunlight all day, and it was a minute change which led him to rush over whilst throwing the half-carved totem to the side. The change in question was a small glitter which came from the pearls, a yellow glint unlike a reflection of white sunlight.

“Has it finished? How much longer until the transformation ends?” He sat nearby, far away enough to ensure that nothing about himself blocked the sun’s rays. And with every few minutes, he saw how some of the black pearl fell away like a chick breaking its egg. Flakes of the material flying off, but evaporated in mid-air like the black blood of zombies…

As one pearl completely cracked with about half the material lost, he saw another two begin the same process. This was the final 15 minutes or so of the process, and it didn’t take much longer as the final shard appeared too.

With each little broken piece, he found that the thing inside wasn’t a perfect sphere, but instead similar to the sun slivers he’d seen in its recipe tree. A rugged crystal which was several times longer than its thin diameter. But overall, it couldn’t have been more than an inch in length, whilst what truly disappointed him was the light it emitted. He felt thankful that he hadn’t depended on these as much now, they didn’t seem particularly strong, but looking at light bulbs in daytime never truly works out. As each pearl shattered to reveal the sliver within, he threw them into his inventory and checked the recipes again.

“I made them myself, so go ahead and tell me I won’t get the recipe,” he mocked the cube for once.

Just as before, a tree stood between the ones for nature and farming magic. A familiar ball of heat and light above touched the branches just barely, until he closed in on it once more to see the three recipes he’d seen so long ago.

Sun channeler, sun charm, and solar droplet.

The first required more quartz, which likely meant investigating the tin mine some more for more crystals… Not an issue since he crafted the second item, a sun charm, on the spot with its requirements of a single sun sliver and four hemp string. Exactly the same as the lightning necklace, its simple recipe resulted in a long piece of string with a cylindrical sun sliver carefully drilled for the string to pass through.

He could tie this charm to his wrist, and hoped it illuminated things enough to warrant the removal of carrying lanterns down deep mines. Unfortunately, this recipe stopped there, as nothing in the next level unlocked. He anticipated this fully.

Lastly, the solar droplet… No clues, in the slightest, on how it worked.

But it notably required 4 solar dust, which somewhat glowed similar to the sun slivers. However, due to his lack of quantity, he held back on smashing one. Instead, a few more slivers could be made tomorrow, whilst he checked the tanned hide and mined for that quartz.

All in time though, for now he gladly tied the small charm to his vambrace, its simple appearance matched the plain leather quite well.

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With that done and dusted, he returned beneath the oak tree as the sun still remained in the sky. Then finished the fifth and sixth totems, eating the evening away so as to be able to make two runes of the ox in the future. He did this as the notes on it stated that the ox stood up to flames, unintimidated by their presence or heat. If taken seriously, this implied that the rune created heat-resistant gear, which would greatly help when travelling deeper underground, and even into that tin mine.

Later on, a final crafting of the second poor quality totem indicated his time to sleep, although, in reality he just wanted for tomorrow to come sooner and grant him some leather to work with.

* * *

Sometime later, he ran his hand over the smooth bull hide, and felt how it firmed overnight. However, it clearly retained a lot of its softness, making it ideal for more flexible leather creations at the moment like jackets, belts, or shoes. However, if he wanted to make armour from it, this stuff was wholly unacceptable. Like Averin pointed out, if he boiled it for six hours then set it using a mould, he’d have some leather which could be turned into armour.

Still, just this much was enough.

Removing the ropes which kept the hide taut, he rolled up the springy leather and tapped it against the cube to see what the large bull netted him.

A full 14 pieces of leather according to the cube. More than enough to complete all the recipes in 13th level. Which just meant that he required one more item, a set of bronze rings for a binder. He imagined that this existed to make note management so much easier.

After all, all the notes actually came with a set of four pin pricks in the left margin. And Diavolo’s notes matched these precisely, clearly these magical individuals formed a collective method of storing their papers.

Unlike the Reader who simply kept hundreds of parchments as well as more traditional paper scrolls.

To make these rings, he simply planned on creating a set of simply ring-shaped gaps in some wet sand and allow bronze to fill each. It was no more complex than how he created the makeshift rivet. Thicker than normal rings meant that the metal wouldn’t break or fail to form properly, but that was an issue for later.

Right now, he brought his wooden shield to first upgrade it into a bronze Parma.

In the first column was the shield and bronze ingots on either side of it. Then a full layer of leather in the middle column, with a bronze nail in the top and bottom remaining slots, to complete the craft. The result was a shield with a metal handle seemingly melded into the wood backing, as a thick rim of bronze now held the leather layer on top in place. Finally, six nails all around the rim were tightly hammered through the metal, leather, and wood to keep the whole thing intact.

And just like a real one, this Parma was a round shield, a completely new shape compared to the wooden starter version which appeared closer to an oval.

Unfortunately, its design was simply a dark brown leather, no fanciful designs.

“It should fend off the swing of a zombie… but even then that’s not very useful. If it grabs the shield I might lose an arm.” He pondered over it for a few minutes before storing the shield and going on to craft some leather strips and the bronze short sword.

More importantly, he noticed that the moment the strips were crafted, the recipe tree lit up once more. Inside he saw three new recipes on a higher level, all of them in a very expected direction.

Basic armour… And explosives.

“It actually expects me to kill those machines then. Even if they’re decayed, does this dynamite even work?” He stared at the three recipes with a frown, but didn’t fight against it.

The leather strips could be combined with leather to form a tough chest piece and leggings. But strangely enough, not boots.

Which led him to believe that one of the side recipes instead held such things, and he opted to wait until some of the upper branches revealed themselves to throw leather into the cube. Also, while such equipment would protect him, it wholly lacked when compared to the brigandine and vambraces with metal plates weaved into them for added durability and cutting resistance. But for now, anything to keep his legs safe was better than the hemp pants he wore.

As for the dynamite, that was an entirely different story.

Two nitro-gel with a hemp string on top, for the middle column, as well as paper on the left and right of both gels. Given that one slime gave so much gel, he was probably expected to treat these basic explosives like candy against the golem.

Ridiculousness further reinforced, he now feared the intact golems even more.

Although this dynamite method likely involved him sourcing no help from the villagers, thus it shouldn’t be too hard for him to throw dozens of the explosives in their direction and shatter the weaker gears which allowed them to continue working. In theory at least… When it came to actually hunting these things, he saw no reason to hoard the results and instead wanted to simply trade their bodies for the help of some elite warriors. Plan built up in his mind, it seemed that iron was growing closer and closer by the day. For now, he had to create a bunch more paper, and build up the dynamite stockpile for proper execution.

Additionally, he wanted to head down into the tin mine once more to search for quartz. Something about the name informed him of the sun channeler’s importance.

Either way, he needed more leather to complete the next level of recipes, and to that he said, “There has to be a better way than killing cows constantly. Is this even sustainable? Wonder how long it takes for calves to be born and grow up, not that a week would surprise me.”

Joey shook his head and left to go replace the empty cups at their trees to the north. Two cups per adult cow was the figure.

But outside of his distaste for hunting, as exhilarating he found the killing of zombies to be, it felt good to finally have access to leather. Linen too meant that he’d have some more comfortable pants, shirts, and socks for the future. Although, cotton would eventually be the ideal goal…

Well, while he waited for the cups to fill up, it wouldn’t hurt to get a bunch of wood pulp ready and check on that iron mine. Maybe the two golems completely broke down a few years ago and the village never checked up on it.

Who was he kidding! No way it’d be that easy!