Once back inside, the constantly filled lantern kept his room lit up, and he began separating more hemp fibres. In fact, he took all the dry reeds still on him and separated them for a rather noticeable, but strangely lacking, 133 fibres. He then turned 99 of them into hemp strings. Of the 33 hemp strings, he made 20 of them into rope.

This made his final count: 34 hemp fibre, 13 hemp string, and 5 hemp rope.

The first thing he did was craft the fabric, something he desired more with every passing moment, especially since gaining this armour. It required two hemp rope in opposing corners, with the string in the other two. And just like that, a sheet of tough fabric about the size of a hand towel entered his inventory. Too small for real clothing, but an important step, nonetheless.

That just left the chipped stone which he felt torn on.

Finding this place had been pure luck last night, and from what he saw in the morning, it was such an inconspicuous entrance that he’d require days of walking in the forest to search for it normally.

In which case, leaving a clear trail to return, and even marking trees, was far too important. As he grabbed the box, a stone axe slung over his waist when he left the workshop’s slave quarters. As he walked, a line of wood planks were used to point out the direction of that place at all times.

He repeated this until he caught sight of the plains and the large oak tree near its middle. Now just came making a path. For this, he used the axe to create marks in trees along the way, collecting all but a couple wood planks in the end. A quick test proved his path was more than easy to follow.

Now he just had to mark that it was this part of the forest where the pathway was, and for that chopped down a live tree at the exact spot, this fallen trunk would be a perfect marker in the future.

Once at the oak tree again, he only needed fifteen minutes, and a few tries, to make another chipped stone for the chisel. Following which, he made the next item in minute.

A drying rack which only required rods and logs?

This rack was clearly designed to dry larger, longer objects though. Probably reeds like the hemp fibres to be precise, but this was something he precisely needed!

Like the item rack, a triangular support held it up, but the difference was the design which was instead just a rectangular frame with a simple horizontal support bar. Compared to the item rack its design was so much simpler, yet had an equal material cost. Perhaps the recipe cost more due to functionality?

But Joey didn’t care about that, he was too excited when the tree icon inside his inventory glowed with confirmation of a new recipe. Who knew what this fifth level held?

Above the lines of four glowing points, a new one glittered like a fresh star in the sky. It was placed in the middle of the points below it, and even at this distance he made out the faint lines which connected it to ones below. Four lines all converging into a single recipe, this was completely new.

“So recipe dependence is all in the lines? I’m already sounding like an engineer aren’t I?” He laughed at himself over that, but didn’t sound too spiteful about the word for once in his life. Wasn’t it because he knew that as a know-it-all kid he spoke in a similar manner anyway?

He pulled closer to the new recipe, and finally took a look at it. Whilst immaterial in the cube’s space, he still felt his eyes go wide and a few moments of disbelief hit him. It took a lot to believe, but now he understood why this recipe was so important.

“Crafting upgrade… Does this mean that some recipes will upgrade the box?” As he felt increasingly sure about his guess over the course of seconds, he already had all the items for this recipe. Was there any need to wait longer?

The difficulty increase from a two-by-two grid to three-by-three would be immense, and no doubt the things he could make would wildly increase.

His heart fluttered from the excitement, and he crafted the thing on impulse.

The price made his heart ache, but expectations offset that enough that he completely ignored that all.

His stone axe, a wood chest, a drying rack, and that single bit of hemp fabric all vanished to output a simple object to one of the orbs. He immediately retrieved it to take a deeper look. The ‘upgrade’ was simply a black metal card no thicker than one issued by the bank, although with a sleek reflective design, and in truth being impossible to bend even with his strength, nothing about it stood out.

However, when he held the card closer to the cube, a blue arrow lit up on both, glowing brighter as he brought them together. It was clear what they told him, and since investigating it himself wasn’t an option, he just placed the thin edge of the card against the cube.

“So is there a slot here? Or does it collapse after transferring some sort of data?” He held the card against the cube a bit longer, but nothing seemed to happen.

However, when he tried to pull the card away he realised that it refused to budge, as though welded to the surface. When his hand let go of the card, the face of the cube touching it suddenly creeped up the card’s surface and pulled it inside what should’ve been a completely solid object.

In fright he dropped the cube, but watched closely as though that face had transformed into a maw which devoured the entirely willing card. By the moment he was starting to think this cube was a lot less inert than it presented itself, thankfully it didn’t see his body of any use like that.

“Why the hell would you design it to do this as well? Unless it was never made and instead born, but how could… Feels a bit boring to throw all the answers to futuristic tech.” As much as he wanted some answers, and knew nothing would give them, he also didn’t want to just label everything about the cube into some dull category.

Was it too much to want answers?!

The merger finished as the cube lit up with blue lines all around its edge and finally returned to the inert state. He entered as usual with no apparent differences to see at first.

But when looking down, the tree symbol clearly glowed with new recipes, and the little plus to his right now looked like a tic-tac-toe board instead. The two horizontal and vertical lines crossed over to create a space for nine items to be crafted together.

He wasn’t stupid, this box and its crafting recipes were his greatest reason for imagining the world as a game. However, there were too many inconsistencies now that he actually got into it, and after dying… He had to accept that a load of this was intentional.

He’d been set up by something. Perhaps the tapestry?

It was still impossible to gather any information on either though, and he clicked on the glowing tree to find out what new things he’d discovered. Unlike the lines of four before, the upgrade to his box only unlocked two recipes.

A stone knife, and a stone chisel head.

The latter wasn’t like the little hand chisel he obtained from before though. It was more akin to a pickaxe but with one side blunted, likely for stability as making such a thin shape from stone would shatter it in two with a single swing.

But that knife… It might be useless for fighting, but he found cutting reeds and other fibres a massive pain as they stretched more than tore.

However, he needed two chipped stones for the knife, and then a third for the chisel head. Not to mention three more to make a new stone axe. His pile of stones reduced to a mere three though, and he decided to head back to the river for more. He could wash up at the same time.

“Shouldn’t I be dying of thirst or something around now? And I haven’t had to piss once, is that just cause I’m bone dry? I should be dead then. Strange,” he spoke aloud whilst trying to see if he at all had to urinate on the way there.

Not even the slightest drop came out, and in the end his only answer was a strange morphology which not only made him extremely strong, but meant he no longer had to drink water.

Perhaps that applied to food as well, he thought excitedly.

The sounds of rushing waters in a stream came soon enough, and he saw another school of fish rushing through the waters much like last time. Their scales were a fair bit darker than the last school, but he still couldn’t tell the two apart. The clear water made it a breeze to see hundreds of stones fallen into the sand and dirt base of the river, and he almost rushed in to directly grab some.

A long and exaggerated, “Ahhhhh,” followed as he remembered the armour he’d put on. It didn’t take long to undo the strings tightening the leather around his body and place the cuirass and vambraces into his inventory. In just fifteen minutes he collected a pile of stones, all roughly the size of both fists closed around one another before touching them against the box.

That was just 47 of them… He definitely needed more for the future.

When he was marking trees in the morning, it became apparent that the originally sharp axe head already blunted a bit, and no doubt that would get worse overtime. Knives, chisels, spears, and any tools he made in the future, were not ‘fixed’ by the cube passively. In other words, he needed to either repair them or make new ones.

It was an important thing to note, and pushed him to gather more stones than necessary.

In the process, he happened to find a rather large rock about the size of his head. This was nothing special as the river contained several of these at the deepest points. But he fished it out in curiosity as he thought it had some strange markings, perhaps it was actually a piece of ore?

But no. The markings he saw were simply patterns on the rock, but still they interested him.

Two of them looked like eyes, and another a mouth. The detail was uncanny to the point where he believed it might have been painted on, and for some reason the relatively blank face reminded him of a friend he had as a teen. That guy almost never showed emotion, as much as he’d tried to make his friend laugh or freak out.

Quite a few discussions revealed his friend shouldn’t be depressed in any shape or form, especially since there were times he felt exceptionally happy or sad. It just never showed and led strangers to assume he was apathetic to it all.

Of course, he could control his face to smile and frown, but it refused to move naturally. Although, naming a rock over a friend he hadn’t met in years would be a pretty daft move.

Instead, he rolled his eyes and rubbed his head whilst saying, “Fuck it, why not? You can be Salvador. Hope that little guy had a good life.”

Salvador was not the name of that friend.

He was a pet lizard Joey kept for five years now, before Earth was destroyed, and damn did he love that little guy. Possibly the thing he loved most in the world at the time… After falling out with his parents and all.

“Yeah… Hope you had a good life, Sal.”

He tapped the cube against it and gathered another 67 stones from the river before heading back to the tree. The only place he’d go was up, or die trying.