The item displayed was a hemp shirt, no doubt about that part. But it was how the recipe featured two runes of the ox on the left and right of that simple shirt. The item’s name couldn’t have been simpler, but that’s exactly what made it so desirable.

A heat-regulating shirt, obvious from the fact that it required ox runes, the specific one which demanded mental fortitude against temperatures. To make that into a physical effect was another matter entirely though! Was this the dedicated path to survive those deep mines without dying of heatstroke? Or perhaps other such methods existed and this shirt was simply the first he came across.

After all, solar magic absolutely had to include its own method as well.

Besides the assumed magical shirt, it unlocked a second recipe for a nature’s compass. This required a compass in the middle, which he didn’t have, flax and hemp stalks on either side of the compass, then a rune of the owl above with a rune of the boar below.

Whilst not too tough to complete, he really needed to make more owl totems. Or, realistically, all types of totems as the need for runes only rose higher and higher. Hopefully, with this new chisel it was simply easier to carve away the wood. At the very least he expected a sharp metal edge to slide through wood with ease.

But for now, he just sat down with a log and began to carve relatively mindlessly, digging out exactly what made the chisel so special over the cruder stone one he’d been using so far.

A first note was precisely its sharpness as with just lightly pushing he could chip away whole sections of a log in quick movements. However, this barely mattered for the biggest effect which was instead some sort of figure appearing within the log, acting as a sort of guide for him to cut around. For now it showed the appearance of an owl, precisely the totem he wanted to produce in this test. The image was hard to explain, as it was inside the wood itself, but still shone through like some sort of ghostly apparition…

Still, with this guide he could very likely produce poor quality totems directly. One of this greatest issues when carving was actually how lopsided various features of his production were, and this solved the issue entirely. With that in mind, he simply got to work on producing the totem, it wasn’t exactly hard to smoothly shear through wood now. And in just half an hour he had a roughly owl shaped base to attempt carving features into.

It went… better than his usual attempts. While the guide provided an ideal case for the totem, he lacked the dexterity and control to precisely match such a thing, and he messed up the finer details around its face and wings.

Especially the individual feather carvings, just how he was supposed to carve out tiny partings and layers astounded him, however, its adequate shaping and roughly matched.

And surprisingly, just with this he was able to produce a poor quality totem on the first try.

“That certainly makes things easier. Is that sun shard done as well?” For a moment he turned to the rock nearby that he placed whenever he carved, but took a moment to remember Sal wasn’t alive, unlike the villagers he talked to every now and then. “Right… a rock. How long am I going to keep doing this?” He palmed his face before he stood up to check the sun channeler.

Whilst far larger after so many hours, the sliver inside the channeler clearly required a bit more time to completely finish. It’d finish before the day ends at least, whilst the next set of sources of darkness required another day.

In the meantime, he casually carved out a new totem, this time trying out the new one Diavolo just gave him. The totem of the frog.

When he pulled out the thicker log, the owl apparition which he used as a guide morphed into a new shape, precisely the frog he needed to carve in fact. Just as a minor test he thought of it changing to a jaguar, even though he’d never seen the totem, but nothing happened. Either he needed the rough design in mind, the chisel only allowed totems of a certain ‘level’ to be used, or this totem was simply too large to be carved into a single log.

He commented on it to Sal, “Not that it matters. I don’t have the ritual so why bother trying to make one?” His mind returned to the frog totem, which the apparition was still showing.

Similar to the ox totem, the frogs face stuck out from the totem’s body, but instead of horns sticking out he had to create four legs which were level with the base. This wasn’t too hard, but he did struggle to get a similar degree of smoothness that the guide showed him for the legs and feet though. In fact, this same problem occurred when trying to make the wings of the owl and the ox’s horns, and he probably needed more precise tools along with sandpaper to properly complete this process.

His first attempt, unfortunately, came out as a shoddy quality totem but he accepted this with the sheer number of mistakes he made. Far too many points along the legs and bulbous toes did he carve away too much wood, and the frog’s face itself appeared a bit flat even if he matched the guide rather well.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The issue lay in a lay of detail, as he utterly failed to replicate the smoothness and wet nature of frog skin in this carving… Although he wondered if such a thing was truly possible.

This second carving was purely used to eat away time though, as he waited on the sun shard to finish forming in the last hours of the day. Of course, it eventually completed and he made the solar spike without a second of thought. Quite literally in fact, as he created a wood cup and unhesitant made a slit along his wrist to bleed into it…

It hurt but not enough for him to care. Really, it just felt itchy, but every bit of common sense told him to not actually scratch it.

Although, he healed so fast that a second swipe with the copper knife was actually required to fill up the cup. A few hours ago he thought that he’d chicken out of the idea of harming himself for a recipe, especially at the imminent pain, but his mind just went white in the moments prior and it didn’t really feel of anything. “Is this some sort of really advanced trauma? How did I even miss that?” He said with no real memory of cutting his wrist open.

One moment the knife was placed against the vein, and a moment later he’d already began bleeding onto the green grass.

So, yes, he literally made the solar spike straight away.

“No new recipes though… I guess that solar droplet is more important than I realised,” he immediately rationalised why the 4th level of recipes hadn’t appeared yet and dropped the solar spike outside for further understanding. His thought process on the recipes was simple as well, since he knew that only every 5th level required the entire previous level to be completed.

No recipes meant that he required a resource from a recipe he hadn’t unlocked, a simple conclusion overall.

Once outside his inventory, it became time to stare at the large spike, and there really wasn’t any better way of describing it. With a length roughly comparable to his forearm, the spike began with a round base and continued at a constant thickness for a few inches, but then began to slowly reduce to a single, sharp point. The spike itself was a dark brown, but lustrous, due to the bronze, except for a small tip of shiny iron visible at the very tip. He guessed that this tip of iron actually formed the core of this spike, and that left one other visible feature.

Up and down the spike were engraved lines, forming dozens of rings. This continued even as it began to shrink in diameter, but even more noticeably were the additional tiny rings which were engraved tangent to the circumference lines. When he said tiny, he really meant it as even the largest couldn’t have been wider than his fingertip, and there must have been hundreds of these tiny tangent rings.

Not to mention, in the sun’s faint setting glow they too occasionally illuminated with a yellow shine like the sun slivers.

“Interesting… So are you a tool or do you have– A purpose.” His voice cracked at the end as pulling the spike closer to his head had a very direct effect. A small shake emanated down his arm, as though the spike itself gained excitement from being so close to him. It didn’t take much time to figure out this feeling amplified as long as the tip pointed towards his body…

Specifically, towards his heart.

“What is it with these things and torturing people? How do I know I don’t instantly die from this shit?” He shouted aloud without any response from the spike besides it heavy shaking when placed against his chest. Obviously his lives meant that survival was guaranteed, but with two deaths did he really want to throw away another one of these precious things?

Well… There was no way the spike truly killed him. At least it made no sense for a recipe to ask for his blood and then kill him on top of it, but before that he wanted to perform a small test.

Namely, finding a wild animal, knocking it to the ground, and checking to see if the spike at all cared about its heart.

In the end, an annoying and rowdy boar became the test subject, but without any shaking from the spike throughout that whole ordeal, he concluded that idea very quickly.

It had to be used on him. But… It could wait till tomorrow, right?

Stabbing himself with a spike didn’t exactly sound fun, or easy.

“Just. Fuck You.” A single swing jammed the long metal tip into his chest, missing a rib and hitting his heart directly, but there actually wasn’t any pain.

Barely even registering the widening hole in both his chest and heart, he had to look down to realise that it likely travelled all the way through, yet he still felt nothing except for the vigorous shaking of the spike.

At the same time, blood began to gush from the wound, even with the spike trying to clog up the wound. He didn’t know what was happening, but the engraved rings all along began to glow at once, in comparison to their intermittent glows when in sunlight.

As their bright yellow light only continued to grow, he was forced to squint as the various rings pulsed in rhythm, and with the spike’s vibrations beginning to condense, he could feel a dense beat from it. Extremely similar to a heartbeat in every sense, but that barely intrigued him when compared to the blinding light finally flashing once with such intensity that everything around him dyed white for several seconds, and then returned to darkness. The bronze and iron-tipped spike turned a green and brown, respectively, as they somehow rusted in seconds. But following that was the object literally crumbling into a fine powder and eventually becoming no more than dust. A check of his chest revealed no wound nor scar, as though it healed instantly or there never was a wound in the first place. This strange outcome didn’t interest him in the slightest though, as an overwhelming urge to strip forced him to take off everything and stand in front of the setting sun with arms outstretched.

He bathed in the weak light, and his body quivered from its vitality. With every moment his mind and body felt fuller, as though he could suddenly eat through photosynthesis, a laughable concept on its own.

However, it only took a quick check with the lens of nature to see what the spike had done to him.

Previously, his body which completely lacked any of those magical colours now contained the fiery and blazing red belonging to all the sun-related objects. He didn’t know what exactly this meant, but from the gnawing desire for sunlight within him, clearly it would be important that the red solar magic always remained topped up. If anything answered how exactly Diavolo used those similar circle engravings on his hand to create flames, this was definitely part of the answer.

Although, it did leave him wondering when exactly he’d receive a method to use the solar magic within him…

Hopefully it was sooner rather than later.