In the end, the two boys spent nearly three hours roaming around the fields, looking for horu-beetles for Yorick to battle. By the finish, Yorick’s poor shovel had turned into a deformed mess - at this point, it was more of a piece of scrap metal than a shovel. However, he was satisfied. This was the most exhilarating experience he had had in a long time. After extensive effort, he had even managed to give a few more cracks to some other horu-beetles’ shells!

The whole time, Emmet was grumbling. He wanted to go back to his room and work on the latest puzzles in the book that had been stumping him. However, Yorick would not relent and forcibly dragged him along, searching through the fields finding beetle after beetle. Although none were as big as the horu-beetle they had first seen, Yorick still manically enjoyed beating them up while basking in the sun beam’s nurturing rays.

Arriving home, just from constantly using the contraption, Emmet had already thought of a dozen different improvements that he could make for the sun beam. In reality, it was a pretty poor construction, an initial prototype made without any testing. After a few hours of use, the ray that it shot out had already dimmed in quality, and would turn inconsistent, sometimes sputtering out randomly. Further, the device was heavy - holding for a long time tired his arms. Within an hour, Emmet had already visualized multiple superior designs in his mind. In truth, he reasoned, theory was just theory. In order to really identify areas of improvement or find shortcomings of the design, one would need to use it in practical reality.

For example, he realized that his method of circulating the energy from the sunstones outward was too naive - there was no guarantee that the sunstones would charge equally, or provide the same amount of energy, or actually, even provide any energy at all (maybe there would be a defect). There would need to be a better mechanism for controlling the flow from the energy production to the output, and controlling for when one was faster than the other. This type of problem had been introduced in the recent pages of the book (producer - consumer problem, as it was titled), and only now did Emmet fully understand the practical applications.

Thus, by the time Emmet had charged into his room and shut the door, going into seclusion, he was actually glad he had spent so much time out. He had been able to extensively test out the contraption! Not only was he enlightened about how to improve the sun beam itself, in the process, he also thought of numerous possible directions for the other problems he had been pondering. Everything was connected, and learning one thing would help build understanding for another!

Seeing the boys return home so late, their mother chided them. However, hearing that they had spent all this time driving away pests from the fields, her eyes softened. So they were so dedicated to their crop! It was a blessing.

--------------

Time passed as quickly as a sun’s rays passed through the atmosphere. In the blink of an eye, an entire three months had passed.

It was now the dead of winter. The entire landscape was coated with a thicker layer of white, creating a breath-taking portrait - because there were little trees in the area, the white stretched all the way to the horizon.

At this point, everyone in the tribe was stagnant. In fact, there was nothing much they could do - it wasn’t like they could grow crop in that vast field of white. Thus, everyone spent their days inside. They would chat with each other, play games, whatever they could think of to pass time.

“Emmmmettttttt! Emmmmmeeeet! Come fight me!” Yorick’s annoying voice resounded outside of Emmet’s door.

At this point, the entrance of Emmet’s bedroom had evolved once again. The old doorbell had been replaced with a sleeker, more responsive, less space-intensive, smooth jade chime. The slot in the door was also now no longer just a funnel - somehow, Emmet had implemented a contraption that would suck any letter delivered in, safely transferring it to his desk. Further, there was now a doormat in front of the door, that when stepped on, would trigger some sunstones to light up near the sides of the door, creating a nice little light for a visitor.

“Shut up!” Emmet’s exasperated voice rang out once again. At this point, he was reaching the end of his rope.

During the tilling season, Yorick’s intrusions had been annoying, but tolerable. Yet, now that it was winter, often Yorick literally had nothing else to do. It wasn’t like he could just casually go outside - it was freezing, and at times, blizzarding! Thus, he would spend much of his time leaned up against Emmet’s door, pestering him.

“Let’s go outside and explore!” Yorick’s excited voice rang out. “It finally stopped blizzarding... There’s so much we can do! It’ll be just like tilling season - going out every week and bangin’ up a bunch of critters!”

After that day three months ago of having searched relentlessly for horu-beetles to batter, for the rest of the tilling season, they had made it a routine, going out and fighting pests nearly twice a week. At first, they had just fought boring, passive horu-beetles. However, after Yorick gained the strength to crack through their armors, they weren’t enough of a challenge. Soon enough, the two were tackling bigger and bigger beasts. For example, they would often challenge grazing beasts, as farmers called it - they were big, horned quadrupedal creatures that would stand around in meadows eating grass. The problem was, they would also often come to farmers’ fields and eat up all their crop.

Even though, like horu-beetles, they too weren’t known for being too aggressive, farmers still didn’t like to mess with them. Sometimes, when they were in a bad mood, they would lower their horns and charge at you. If you weren’t careful, they would maul you with hundreds of pounds of force. In fact, just the previous year, a careless member of the tribe had been killed by one of these grazing beasts.

However, Yorick was fearless. Although he at first only challenged small, juvenile grazing beasts, he soon moved on to bigger and bigger beasts, until soon, he was challenging prime, adult beasts! Needless to say, he had several close calls, but luckily enough, had escaped any serious injury.

Much of this accomplishment was only made possible by Emmet’s inventions. Unlike the first time, in which Emmet only brought one contraption, and it was bulky and inefficient, each time Emmet now brought several compact contraptions, including a new and improved sun beam! At this point, the sun beam was in its fourth iteration, and was much superior - while being a third of the original size, it would give twice the nurturing effect for twice as long, and was also much more consistent - the beam would rarely sputter out anymore. Further, unlike before, where it had gaudy circuitry dotting the outside of the contraption, all the mechanisms were now hidden underneath some casing, giving it much needed durability - even when struck by a shovel, it probably wouldn’t break!

However, that was no longer Emmet’s only contraption! Now that he had compacted them into smaller, more efficient shapes, he could carry more, and sometimes combined them to make a contraption with dual effect! All of them were largely based on schematics found in puzzles in the puzzle book. One such contraption was called the earth aura beam, which used the combined effects of sunstones and earthjade to shoot a beam that provided its recipient with a surrounding earth aspect - a thin mist of earth would surround recipient, providing him a slight defensive advantage - any strikes into the zone would be weakened by the earth aura! Of course, it was only a slight effect - a regular punch might only have its power weakened by a slight factor. However, Yorick didn’t mind. It felt amazing being in an earth atmosphere, feeling like a god amongst men, as if you could slay anything!

Besides that, there was the healing beam - it utilized the overgreen root (sometimes found just naturally growing as a weed in the fields) combined with sunstones again to bless whoever came into its path with a slight sped-up healing effect, and the speed beam - it used quick-reacting spin-circle leaves combined with sunstones to bless the recipient with quicker reflexes. Although they both gave tiny, almost unnoticeable even, effects, they still gave Yorick a sense of vitality and quickness. It felt like his muscles were not only recovering quicker, but twitching faster, allowing him to move around with greater ease!

The fast improvement of these contraptions was only made possible by constant use and experimentation - thus, during the tilling season, Emmet had actually not been too opposed to occasionally going out and aiding Yorick in fighting whatever he wanted. He wouldn’t use the beams on his own self - he knew how scrawny he was, and didn’t like to physically fight when he could.

There was an unintended side effect - the more Yorick fought, the stronger and more skilled he became! At first, he had just used haphazard strokes on his enemies, just using what he knew from tilling and harvesting to shape his strikes. However, the more he fought, and the more he got in exhilarating situations, the more practiced his movements became, and the more confident in his fighting he became.

While before, it would take at least a few dozen strikes before he could crack a horu-beetle’s shell, now he could do it with just a few well-timed pierces. Needless to say, his strength also increased as well - repeatedly striking with a heavy metal shovel took a lot out of a person, and thus, Yorick became stronger and stronger, his muscles expanding. This was combined with his recent growth spurt, in which in the span of these three months, he had grown an entire inch and a half, just as he turned 11 years old. Everything lined up for Yorick to grow more and more into a young headstrong lad. (With all that striking, he had also destroyed a lot of shovels - at this point, he had probably deformed a whole dozen, completely beyond repair.)

Emmet, on the other hand, barely grew at all, still the same scrawny little fellow. However, inside his head, his mind was rapidly expanding! In these past three months, other than working on his various contraptions, he had made it past another twelve pages in his book. It was hard work - after page 25, the puzzles continued to get progressively difficult, the answers more and more obscure. At this point, on page 37, it might take Emmet more than a few days to just solve a single puzzle on a page.

However, to Emmet, this just made it more and more exciting! Frankly, he was glad the puzzles weren’t basic. He was never one to back down from a challenge - if there was a puzzle, he would solve it!

However, he was helpless about one thing. Starting from page 30, the puzzles would often include the use of something he had never heard of - a substance called ‘mana.’ The further pages Emmet flipped to, the more ‘mana’ would be used. In many cases, it was an indispensable component to the puzzles. Apparently, it was a crucial control source that could act through a surface, providing much more minute manipulability, opening one up to a much wider field of diverse puzzles. It was often depicted as a light blue colored amorphous substance and would often act as the primary sustaining energy through the circuits. Oftentimes, these would be puzzles with practical applications, many times including real-life objects such as sunstones or different types of plant parts. Mana was included equally as casually, as if it was a real life thing that could be easily acquired.

Before page 30, sunstones and other similar equivalents had almost been exclusively used as the energy sources in the puzzles. However, after page 30, the puzzles would include this ‘mana’ more and more. The benefits of this ‘mana’ to sunstones were apparently immense - it could be instantly channeled, much more minutely controlled, and often provided a larger amount of power. Thus, the complexity of the puzzles could be greatly increased. However, Emmet didn’t have this ‘mana’ in real life! Thus, he was a bit confused. Was this ‘mana’ actually a real thing? Could it be used in real life to build those schematics specified in the book? How could he get it?

However, he slowly pushed these thoughts out of his mind. When pondering the puzzles, only thinking about the theory, it didn’t matter - he could still visualize the problems in context of this ‘mana,’ even if he didn’t have it in real life. However, this did restrict how many contraptions he could adapt in real life. Although Emmet would try to skirt around this lack of ‘mana,’ occasionally succeeding with more complicated circuits, it was growing more and more of a problem. In fact, sunstones had large drawbacks - they would only work after absorbing the sun’s light after some time. Further, they could not turn off on their own - some circuitry was required to manipulate them, and that took resources, space, and time.

Emmet pondered these issues for all of the three months.

After the first snowfall hit and the family hunkered into their cabin for the winter, Emmet became even more obsessed. While before, he would take some breaks from the book to do farmwork, there was now little to do, aside from tending to the animals. After that was done, Emmet now spent 100% of his time on puzzles, completely engrossing himself. Sometimes, he even forgot to sleep.

“Did you hear me, Emmet?” Yorick’s voice screamed out again. “Let’s go out! It’s so nice outside!”

“Go away!” Emmet screamed out, closing his eyes and waving his hand around. He was attempting to visualize a solution in his mind. “You’re annoying!”

“Come on, Emmet! Let’s go!” Yorick was persistent. “Let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go-”

“Fine! Fine!” Emmet yelled out exasperatedly, throwing his book down. “I have a new contraption to test anyway.”