Chapter 17: The journey – part 2

After saying goodbye, a lovely island I found, it’s a nice little place, but alas I once more must brave the ocean. Setting fourth away from where my ship is parked on the island, leading to roughly the direction I was going at originally.

With my course set, I rest my gaze at the island as I fly away, some things in life are meant to be good but short-lived; a rest-bite I still sorely needed so I appreciate it immensely, thank you “little island”. Before I left I did check to make sure the slime and spider were onboard, I have grown fond of my travel companions.

Going downstairs I say hello to the slime, petting it lightly, it jiggles, not doing much at the slight show of affection. Next, I say hello to the spider; or I would have if I didn’t trip over and get stuck in the now impenetrable wall of webs. Should have seen that coming. After slowly extricating myself from the web I wade through the thinner parts to find the happy little bundle of scary fur resting in the corner.

Doing something I haven’t done before I lightly stroke its thorax, it didn’t seem to mind and even crawled ever so closer to me in a friendly manner. I never expected to like a pet spider so much, once you get past the rather terrifying abilities and appearances they have; you find a somewhat cute creature.

Clearly far more intelligent than I anticipated, I am regularly impressed by its silly antics. At one point I thought it fell off, panicking I look over to see the cheeky bastard looking at me hanging from a thread over a large net of webbing it must have created earlier. I got pranked by a spider.

With my idle musings complete I get started on my spirit tools; having long since gathered the berries needed. I craft the tools – one by one; to not strain my self they are all crafted over a couple hours.

Ideally playing with the spiritual weapon, a sword. Upon picking it up with intent it materializes a spiritual copy overlaying the actual weapon, reaching very far. This spiritual copy acts as the tool would normally but with added distance for convenience. Idly musing how cool it is.

As I craft the tools I complete the arduous process of getting efficiency and unbreaking on my tools, nothing fancy, managed to get fortune 2 on my pickaxe and looting 1 on my sword. Working on the enchants made staggering the crafting times for each tool, easy. After completing the tools I idly search the NEI for other spiritual iron-based tools. Lots of recipes can actually use spiritual iron as a replacement to normal iron, altering the effects of the item.

For example, spirit compasses point towards spiritual disturbances, so high populations, spiritual entities, and potentially spirit items. I craft one, simply for the novelty of it and less so the usefulness of it.

Realizing I should have a golden bag for my personal items and other stuff I allow my energy reserves to recover before crafting a second.

After enchanting massive quantities of books in search of the ones I want I have a massive library of enchants, 2 of which are soulbond. I choose to soulbond the golden bag of holding, the one which will contain my tools and survival supplies. After doing so I now realize the item will not leave my person or can it be opened through any means other than my will – intriguing and useful.

I may very well be able to do a lot with such cool and useful stuff, although the bag of holding is now shiny, making it a target for thieves, not a risk of it being stolen, given it neither can leave me nor even be opened. But it may put me at risk of people who I meet in the future trying to rob me violently. Tying a string around it I tie it to my neck tucking it, slightly uncomfortably into my chest, better than nothing I suppose.

With that complete, I try to fly fishing again “chuckles”. Lowering the ship until it almost touches the water. Resting my legs over with a rope tied to the inside of the ship I cast my rod. Watching the water gradually fly by I finally get a catch; a big something, reeling it in the best I can, I have improved. Fighting with the definetly strong beast, hopefully it’s a giant cod. I manage to get it to breach the surface, “holy hell” it’s a small Kraken. As I positively throw the rod into the water before darting to the helm to take flight.

The weather is quickly turning stormy, not good this is a real Kraken. Rising into the air as fast as I can, I realize quickly the Kraken is rising into the sky, a little too fast for my taste.

As I get to a reasonable height I set my course before quickly crafting a bow and some arrows, stalling in between by throwing a few snowballs. It flinched at the first 2 but afterward ignored them.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Using my new bow I nock an arrow and take aim, shooting the bow. I miss badly shooting short, not a lot of power in the bow and I am by no means a pro.

Wait why did I craft a bow? I have magic. I am stupid; I panicked badly and went back to the basics. Quickly pulling out my wand I start shooting it with magic missiles, drawing small trickles of blood.

It is definitely more cautious of me, it stopped advancing towards my ship. The weather is getting really bad though, I need to scare it off. Using my ignition spell; yes it seems a little more nervous around a fire.

Bombarding it for a short while, eventually, it gets too tired to chase me. I am grateful for that – close call. No more fly fishing, for now, my heart can't take it, even if the fish is great.

Settling back to sea gazing, slightly hungrier. I ponder on what I could craft right now; without infrastructure. I could potentially make some basic generators, I could even craft the stuff for genetic engineering.

Tapping on the fence rhythmically, ah yes I could craft that hmm.

With a goal in mind, I create some magical wood. Consuming all this experience and immediately expelling it is healthy right? I have no idea and I fear finding out.

Now with the magical wood, I craft a builders wand and destruction wand. 2 sides to the same coin, one builds many blocks quickly, the other – destroy. Invaluable in building, and since it has no durability both are versatile for other uses.

I don’t feel like testing it right now though, so far everything I have used has worked, no need to fear it. I feel tired, a little deflated after being hunted by a “Kraken!”. Sure it would drop some good stuff.

Sighing internally I make some food. With sea salt in hand, from the ocean when I was bored, salt is universally useful after all. I just sun-dried the water in the cauldron. I am getting distracted; dinner. Taking a metric ton of salt I place them all into a saucepan, easy craft 2 iron and a stick. With water, I absolutely load the water until salt sits on the bottom. I then place several small potatoes inside and lightly simmer them until cooked. Being careful not to puncture them otherwise the salt will ruin the dish.

After they are cooked, based on touch I think they are ready, I strain them out and place them on a plate. The salt crystallizes on the skin in a super thin powder. Making one of the best potato dishes I know, it's traditional in some country that I fail to recall the name of.

With my mood improved with more and more creative potato dishes, I get my head stuck in a book, so to speak. Thinking about producing another spell. I want a light spell, torches without the hassle.

Focusing on the amount of mana I need, it needs to be ejected quickly. Focusing on this new task I lose track of time, with the sky clearing and the sun setting something beams through the few windows I have. A rainbow.

Stepping out onto the deck I see a kaleidoscope of colours cracking and breaking over the horizon. Maybe the world might just be worth it for sights like these. Idly eating essence berries as I watch the sunset. The taste grows on you, after the earthy combustive flavor, it’s a little sour and sweet.

With a breakthrough I have the light spell, the beautiful sunset brought me to where I needed to be to complete my spell. Immediately decorating my ship in lights, I make a small tweak to the spell; which took over an hour, and now they are rainbow, shifting through colours often – perfect.

With my little decoration and tangent complete, I work on something that will be important soon. I feel it will be one of my few options to fly relatively soon.

All it needs is a crapton of iron, some spider eyes, coal, and glass. Some other ingredients too but that’s what you need in bulk.

I will need mobs for this so I cant do a lot right now but I can get hoppers; for automation, and a lot of scrapers. A simple iron item used to get skin cells off mobs. I will also make the generators and analyzer ready. Time flows quickly as I work on crafting many hoppers and the basic items I need. Basic material items now drain me a little, still cant craft a lot but it's much better than the 2-3 max I had before. I can also craft far more complex items.

Crafting myself into the floor I get a lot of materials ready for automation. Creating a stone cage I produce an iron golem. My first test subject, and source of cells to craft further stuff.

Using an ungodly quantity of scrapers I fill a recently crafted diamond chest full and then some of the skin cells. The iron golem is not happy, “sorry buddy”.

Placing the analyzer 1 block above the air, a hopper with a chest on top filled with skin cells, a hopper leading into another diamond chest. I then place the generator and fill it with coal, a little wasteful but effective for now. And now I watch tons of iron golem skin cells get processed. The first stage.

While the machines are running I think about what the iron golem has to offer and how it will affect me. It doubles your health, leaving you with 40 health. It's actually just a flat 20 health increase but it’s a double without other health buffs. Useful none the less. With a lack of test subjects, I guess I am the number one guinea pig. I wonder how it will physically change my appearance if at all, it will most likely I know Felix wouldn’t let the chance pass. My skin is already white, a metallic tint won't hurt, and it's not permanent if I so wish to change it.

Escaping from my idle musings, a lot of the skin cells have been processed but still too slow, upgrade time. 4 gold, 5 Redstone per overclock upgrade, immediately crafting 5 and installing them on a side panel, 10 spaces max, interesting.

It is not working lightning fast, good. Thinking back to me gathering the cells; far more intensive let me tell you that.

You have to manually scrape off a sizable chunk of skin for it to count as a ‘skin cells hurting the entity in the process. I will try and find a more ethical method for this process in time.

At least golems are not really living things, just mindless automatons, or at least when they first spawn they are.

Taking the cells being produced I make a good 6 DNA dictionaries; 4 cells 1 book and a vital ingredient for all things genetic. Well, this should be an interesting route to flight.