“Ohh~~, if I could, I’d kiss you now!” I said, looking at the exposed green rock from a distance, longingly. Though, it was not meant to be, as malachite was toxic, and inhaling it would cause some damage to even the immortal me.

And about keeping the miners safe... honestly, no goddamn clue. I am just planning on ordering them to chip away at the ore and telling them to avoid inhaling malachite dust at any costs possible, and just return back instead of mining it if it’s wet for some reason.

If I could, I’d give them everything I could to allow them to mine safely but without major leaps in my level of technology and magic, there was nothing more I could do to for them other than clasping my hands and offering a silent prayer, after all that ore was needed, and the only way to get it was mining.

After mining a really, really small amount of malachite stone with a stone knife, just so I could have it as a trophy, I led my exploration group back to the village which was only a few hours away, and though it was approaching evening, I was happy with what little we had done today.

It was my 70th day in this new world, and in the last 3 days of exploring the forest, I managed to discover 3 other magical herbs other than those ferns, and a hematite vein a few hours away from the village like this malachite vein!

So, I could potentially get both iron and copper! I am saying potentially because I need a furnace that can reach 1500o Celsius to smelt iron and need one that can reach around 900o Celsius for copper, but hey, at least the copper one is pretty doable!

After I get smithing that is, which I hope gives me information about how to make a furnace, otherwise I am kind of... fucked.

But that’s enough about my worries, let’s talk about the herbs I found in the forest!

I call the first one I found, which is also the most common one and the one that is actually not an herb, Iron Trees! They are basically just trees with a lot of mana in them, and because of the mana in them, they are harder than the other trees.

Are they actually hard as iron? I hope not! But they will surely be of great use because every tree has the capacity to become some kind of Iron Tree!

I call the second and the third one I found Opal and Azure berries respectively. Opal berries have a light blue colour, and I’ve seen first-hand that if you eat enough of them, small cuts and bruises on your body heal much, much quicker than normal. And it’s the first magical herb that I’ve found that is actually somewhat useful, and probably can be made into some kind of potion of healing, and yes, I made the gatherers pluck some Opal berry bushes out of the ground and put them near the village in case you are wondering.

And the Azure berry is... well, they are eerily similar to Opal berries, and the first Azure berry bush I found was actually growing near the first Opal berry bushes I found, and me being me, I thought the one with the darker colour must be the ripe one, and Rae surprisingly stepped in to stop me eating the Azure berry as, while she didn’t like betraying the spirit of the great game and telling me not to do something, but did so anyways because, if I had eaten the Azure berry, I would’ve had uncontrollable diarrhoea and vomiting for a few days and might’ve actually died...

Noting the difference between both, I then informed the Gatherers to not to touch any Opal berries that they found in the wild that looked darker than usual.

After I entered the village, which had 60 Homunculi right now, I retreated to my hut after dinner and opened my Empire System.

Level 2 Experience: 20/200

Population: 61

Empire Stockpile +

Research +

Research Points: 2

Quests:

Main Quest - Galactic Conquest – Win The Great Game and Conquer the Galaxy! – Rewards: Heaven or Draconic reincarnation + memory wipe.

Safe And Secure – Build a wooden wall around your settlement. - Rewards: 10 Exp + 1 Research Point

A Big Village – Have a total of 100 Homunculi. – Rewards: 10 Exp + 1 Research Point

Irl Farming Sim – Make enough farmlands to feed 100 people. – Rewards: 20 Exp + 1 Research Point

Nurture Over Nature – Domesticate at least 1 kind of plant and start farming it. - Rewards: 10 Exp + 1 Research Point

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Whispers From The Dark – You’ve realized that there are a lot of tier 2 beings in the forest. Discover their origin. – Rewards: ???

The First Step – Make an alchemical product. – Rewards: 10 Exp + 1 Research Point

The First Swing – Gather a total of 10 units of ore – Rewards: 10 Exp + 1 Research Point

After looking at both of my new quests, I opened the research tab and re-read the description for basic smithing.

Basic Smithing - A basic information packet about smithing. - Costs 2 Research Points

Though the research said nothing about furnaces, or furnace making of any kind, I clung to the hope that it’d give me the knowledge to melt copper, and clicked on the research, and saw that a few new researches appeared as information about smelting flooded into my mind.

Armour Smithing – An information packet about how to make armour. – Costs 2 Research Points

Weapon Smithing – An information packet about how to make weapons, swords, halberds, spears, etc. – Costs 2 Research Points.

Bloomery Construction – An information packet about how to construct a bloomery, the first furnace capable of smelting iron. - Costs 1 Research Point

Tool Smithing – An information packet about how to make tools, hammers, pickaxes, axes, etc. - Costs 1 Research Point

Gold and Silver Smithing – An information packet about how to make the shiny. You might want this for making coins. – Costs 1 Research Point

Looking at my new researches, nothing other than bloomery construction and tool smithing interested me.

Neither was I confident that I could make plate armours, nor was I confident that I could make a mace, but they were simply too much to research for me, right now, I would be focusing on getting tool smithing and constructing a bowl furnace, which should be more than enough to smelt copper, and would allow me to make the basic tools I’d need to progress my quests further, and actually allow me to use the researches I spent so many points on.

And to make the bowl furnace, I’d need to dig a hole in the ground, and a tunnel, through which I could introduce air from a bellow, or a few.

It was actually... surprisingly easy and simple to make a furnace that was hot enough to melt copper. Too easy even.

But I couldn’t come up with it so, oh well.

After I woke up, I went to check the chest high mud wall the construction group started building yesterday after they were done with the houses. It wasn’t that big, and it wasn’t designed to be.

This wall was just being made so I could complete the quest, after I got my hands on actual metal tools, I’d give the order to make an actual log wall, and wooden houses. But, for now, this was the best I had.

Then I greeted the explorer team and converted them into the mining team and sent them on their way. There was 6 of them, and if we assumed that they could each mine 1kg of ore per hour, they should return with around 60kg of ore, and that means I should be able to complete the first swing quest tomorrow... but its wishful thinking to assume that they’ll be good at mining ore in the beginning, and that they could even mine for 10 hours straight.

I’ll probably get something around 5-6 kg of ore from one Homunculi, so 25-36kg per day, which will allow me to complete the first swing quest in 4 days or so.

And god knows I need that research point because the number of tier 2’s the hunters bring have increased again. Now, instead of them bringing a tier 2 every 3 days, they bring one every other day.

Though, thankfully, any injuries they have are only light injuries, so I’ve not yet lost anyone to any injuries, but a few hunters have had to stop hunting for a day and rest, not that their injuries inhabited them from hunting, but I just did not want to have a dead Homunculi at my hand.

Then, over the course of the next 2 days, I had a few people from the construction group help me set up a few bowl furnaces so we could have a strong start to our ore production, and I found that 6 miners bringed around 3 units of copper ore per day, so 30 kg. It was not the best, but it was not the worst either, so I was fine with it.

But I did not start crushing and smelting copper ore the moment I got the first ore, as I wanted to get tool smithing first.

Then, the next day, the construction group finished the wall around the town.

*ding*

Quest Safe And Secure completed! Rewards, 10 Exp + 1 Research Point have been granted in the Empire System!

Seeing that the quest was completed, I immediately researched Tool Making, and information about how to make basic tools flooded into my mind. Then, I immediately took a 4 people from the construction group and put them into the smithing group.

1 of them would start crushing up the copper ore into dust, 2 of them would man the bowl furnaces, and the last one would make casts out of clay to pour the molten ore into and turn them into usable metal tools.

But I’d have to teach him that later, for the first day, I’d be the one making the clay casts, and he would be helping the ore crusher.

With the help of another construction group member I had enlisted, I went down to the river and started digging the ground for clay and started making casts.

But, due to me being anxious and going faster than I needed to be, I had already made the first 2 casts half an hour before the first of the ore was ready to be poured out.

It seemed that a bowl furnace could smelt around 1kg of ore per hour, which was a... decent amount. And, while only 2 bowl furnaces were manned right now, I had constructed 6 of them.

So, I made 8 more members of the construction crew temporarily man the bowl furnaces and had 2 more help me get clay and make casts for the copper to be poured into.

By the time the miners returned, all six furnaces had been working for 3 hours, and we were able to produce 10kg of pure copper and had used up around 20 kg of ore.

Though I’d have to cut down the amount of ores smelted tomorrow, or send more people to the mines as we could easily go through the rest of our ore reserves tomorrow.

But I’d probably be sending a few construction crew members to the mines honestly, as, without wooden house making, they were kinda useless when left in the village.

And with only 2 of the 6 furnaces running, we’d need 9 hours of working to smelt the same amount of ore we smelted today, but thanks to the amount of ore we smelted today, we were able to make 20 tools, 10 pickaxes, and 10 axes.

Did we need to use a kilogram of ore per every tool head? Probably not. We could’ve probably turned those 10 pickaxes into 20 spear heads easily, and made the miners continue to mine with stone tools, but more ore meant more copper tools in the future, and when I researched bow making, I’d be needing a lot of copper arrow heads to deal with whatever was inside the forest.