Since she was already with me I had the celestial power level as well meaning I had her sit on my arm and steadily drip healing fluid on it while my hand was burned and melted. It was the absolute worst thing imaginable, after two levels I had managed to reach the point where I was always burning without my nerves burning off. Between rounds of torture I continued to assemble the larger furnace and to ensure maximum multitask I had a bunch of dirt balls balanced on my head. It was annoying that I could not use the way I boosted valerie on myself but I still hadn't found a way to get past the one spell at a time rule so I had to level 'move dirt' the slow way. Eventually all the outer parts of the furnace were finished so after a check that the grid separating the second and third layer was installed properly I started it up.

Since I had hot coals ready to go in the first furnace I was able to get the second going full power really fast by spreading the already on fire ones into the pile of fresh charcoal I put into the new one. I poked at and fanned it a bit but I was careful not to let it get super hot before the grid was baked and hardened or it could get weird. It was actually kinda hard to keep the temp down, the reflective effect of the hardened stone caused it to build up amazingly fast. Since I was training my resistances I just reached in through the top door to feel the grate with my hand to see how firm it was, that was an extra fun experience as my finger flesh fused with the clay and I had to rip the skin off to pull my hand away.

On the upside, exposing the muscle under the skin to the heat was apparently worth it because it ticked the skills up again and I think it brought me over the hump. Normal fire by itself was really hot but no longer did my hand burn from it, sticking my hand in the coals still caused damage though, but being able to touch fire for extended periods of time would be a big help if something like 'move fire' involved a lot of fire touching to learn. While contemplating that Valerie and her team came up and asked what they should do now that the wall was done, I looked over and saw that it was indeed done as I had specified. I asked why it seemed the last bit took longer than the rest of the wall, and it was because repairing the parts they messed up on actually took longer than making new sections due to needing to dig them out and reform the foundation for the pole.

With that answered I inquired how Valerie's quest was going to earn 'control dirt', she said she moved near five hundred tons from knocking over all of trees needed to make the wall and then making the ditch for them, and about a hundred just from digging up and moving the plant. There was nothing that involved a load of dirt left to do at the moment so her options were just walking around and moving dirt at random or doing something else for a bit. I told her to learn 'expand earth' from one of her sisters and then she was free to join them in digging to gain class levels and thus stat points and actually make use of her 'moon bird' trait by reaching the appropriate level for the spells she had.

It was a bit too late to start a new metalworking project so I just made a jumbo crucible, put it in the furnace, and left it alone to cook and cool over the night. Next on the list of things I could do, let's see... wall, metal, dirt, physical training, ah-ha trying to read a new rune is still a thing I can try to do that can fit in the time left. I released the celestial back into the tunnels as I picked up the bag once more and started sliding the edge along itself to find hidden runes. By that I meant I read the whole thing and it made no sense at all so I tried lining up the runes the wrong way and eventually I found another rune. It had the same up-sweep as a previous one and the down sweep of another and that formed an entirely new one. Layering enchantments like this seemed like something that needed a higher level enchanter class to be allowed to do.

The enchantments I already knew how to do did not have this issue, and I could tell because while the grammar was weird it expressed a full concept. Over the last hours of the day I found two runes on the bag but then I hit the roadblock, I knew twenty four rune words and apparently that meant I was full up on my 'rune reading' skill. I found a twenty fifth rune but I was just not allowed to memorize it, I tried a little but stopped before i broke something and got the system pissed at me again. Every time I was close to figuring something out there was some annoying blockage in the way. If only I could get a mission to unlock it like how Valerie had a mission to upgrade her spell, like "system request: mastery of rune reading skill" and then it would pop up and say...

Request denied: 'rune composition' required to obtain mission

... what the fuck, was it really that easy? Uhhhh, "system request: rune composition skill"?

Request denied: class is not one that learns 'rune composition'

Ah dammit, I knew that would have been too easy, okay what else could I ask for that I should be able to learn? Ah, I know one "system request: light spell".

Request error: skill allowed but requestee is incapable of completing mission: sub request filed

Sub request passed: mission for 'mana weaving' granted

Statement: God's absence is felt by all

Well that sounded ominous as hell, I mean, I already knew the god was away from the world but why the hell is the system telling me that? Regardless, it actually helped me out a ton, it obviously could tell I had a solution lined up but was having trouble, so it just nudged me in the direction I was already going. Oh wait, maybe it can help me with with other base level skills that shouldn't have any restrictions, "system request: move water spell".

Request denied: you must wait 50 days after current mission is completed to request a new one

Fuck, that was a long time before I could ask for help again... ah-ha, before 'I' could ask for help again. I hurried inside and told a soldier to make that request, so she could get the mission and tell me what it was. But it failed, she followed my instructions exactly and nothing at all happened, I could do it but they could not, meaning it was something special about me. Logically it was a secret effect of the genius trait, well, secret effect of having access to the skill tree to be more specific. Anyway, looking at the quest I was given to unlock that skill I needed to do something weird. To get mana weaving I had to first get a long string, pull it taut between my hands, then pass mana through it for twenty-four hours, straight.

That was a ridiculous length of time to do one single task, and I just knew from the laws of comedy that after twenty-three hours something will crop up that demanded my attention and I would have to start over. The thing was, I had no other real options, the manual way to make the woven sphere could involve weeks of trial and error playing high-low since it took so long to make a raw sphere. Looking at the sky I saw it was getting late so after double checking the furnace was working smoothly I went inside for the night, hopefully some sleep will give me an idea.

Today I got to work right away on making a big tin barrel, meaning I took my new jumbo crucible and filled it up about halfway with a mixture of tin ore and charcoal then used my vacuum seal technique to make it a nearly airless chamber. With the new heat reflecting stones inside the big furnace it took a really short amount of time to heat up and start melting the material. The crucible itself was glowing red hot, meaning the tin was also that hot but tin melted well before it started glowing red so I was worried it would explode if I opened it without letting it cool down a little. After taking it out and letting the glow subside I pulled up and made some hard sand and popped the seal, pop was the correct word choice, the lid jumped near half a meter in the air once I made the connection weak enough, but I caught it so it didn't damage anything.

After checking for slag and reheating it a few times to make sure it was clean I poured the whole thing into a huge mold, a meter long, half a meter wide and several centimeters deep. I wasn't sure exactly how thick of a sheet I would end up with but I made sure I had plenty of room so it wouldn't overflow. I also did something that would have been a completely idiotic move until recently, I poked it while it was still molten and thought of it forming a perfectly smooth and uniform sheet. My twin fire resistance skills prevented it from fusing to my finger and allowed my 'casting' skill to imbue it with the concept I wanted from it. Spreading from my finger the metal wiggled, flattened, and cooled until it was perfectly smooth like I asked of it, ending up with a mirror sheen.

This resulted in the first time I saw myself in a long while since the river was much too turbulent to see a reflection in. Looking at myself I saw quite the beard, I could always feel it but seeing it was different, I also could see my muscles, even through my shirt. I knew I was stronger from the size of rock I could lift but again, seeing it made it more real, I wasn't a muscle bound freak but I was absolutely toned now. There was also something else that was familiar but different... enough of that, I was busy working on a thing. I dumped out the tin sheet and it was really heavy at about three centimeters thick, but I could lift it easily enough, although I needed one hand free now to hold a hammer. That was simple enough to fix, I created a dirt pillar and set it to automatic control to be a helping hand.

With a helper in position I leveraged my 'blacksmithing' skill for as much as it was worth to make sure I didn't crack or break the tin as I thinned, lengthened, and bent it into large tube shape. When set down it was about two meters in circumference and a full meter tall. Now the hard part, connecting the ends of the circle together so it was a solid tube instead of having a huge gash in it. For that I had it laid with the gap facing down inside the previously used mold and had to use more non-automatic dirt hands to hold it properly. Then I took a red hot stone rod with a thin point and melted the edge and had the dirt hands press it together as I melted my way across the whole thing.

The moment it thought 'done' I could feel the system consider if my bootleg welding job counted as blacksmithing or if it fell under the header of a different skill I didn't have. After a few tense seconds I felt it attach to 'casting', meaning it decided that what I did was basically just a really odd use of that skill instead of anything more esoteric. On a positive note, my seam morphed from kinda gross looking to pretty smooth, it was still clearly a seam but now it looked good. Next I used more tin and repeated the process but this time I used a hardened sand sawing action to cut a circle of tin that was a bit larger then the base of the tube and folded it over before using the scrap as filler and melted it to the seam at the base on the inside and melted some more to the seam on the outside.

As expected, the seams tightened up and became sturdier after I made them, meaning I now had big metal pot to make stuff with. First thing on the list was collecting tannin from bark, which was done by basically making bark tea, I had to call up some workers to scrape up all the bark while I made a whole bunch of trips to collect a ton of water to fill the thing. Finally, with that all sorted, I put some heat under it with a heated stone and let the water get hot, is suggested that the water be hot but not boiling, it was bark tea not bark soup. With that done I had nothing super pressing to do so I pulled a string out from the lower hem of my shirt and re-tied it so it wouldn't unravel, then headed inside to sit with Victoria for the next day while I magiced the crap out of it.