When he made it back to the oak tree, the first order of business was turning all those stones into chipped stones. But the number he gathered would also allow him to test the limits of his inventory; once he entered, it told him that there were 114 stones in total. But more specifically, 99 of them resided in one orb, with the remaining 15 in a second.

But instead of that, the incorporeal form frowned as another line in particular caught him by surprise. “Salvador? It’s separated from the rest simply because of a name… At least I won’t ever lose this rock. Ah right, and each slot holds 99 of that item, no real surprise.”

He took the rock with some semblance of a face out of his inventory and rested it on the floor beside him whilst chipping away at stones. He still didn’t understand exactly what to look for when doing so, and for the most part he took guesses at what sorts of ‘grains’ allowed the rock to shape as he pleased.

To ease the boredom, he narrated the process to Sal, much as he did to his blank faced friend so long ago whenever performing handiwork.

“So when chipping stones, or anything really, you wanna strike downwards so shards aren’t flying about trying to cut you. A piece of glass is going to fuck up something. I just wish I knew where to hit. Like that didn’t work… That hit shattered the stone. Oh! This one’s good, now to just make an edge carefully.” His voice quietened as he focused on gently chipping away the other side to meet the cube’s requirements.

Like that he formed another chipped stone whilst only ruining 5 in the process.

For the next hour, he repeated this for a whole 100 stones, earning a sizable 36 chipped stones in the end. He came to realise how rather than just hammering the stone over and over. A single hard hit did way less structural damage.

Even if the result was more snapped off, as its internals received far less micro-fractures, it actually survived the second half of the process more often!

Or at least, that’s what it seemed to be in his head.

He didn’t talk much to Salvador outside of just narrating his actions for the sake of it. After all, he was bored being alone, not insane.

Probably.

Packing up the finished stones, and Sal, he crafted a stone knife and the chisel head. If things continued at this speed, he didn’t think it’d take too long before the tree started giving him guns and such… That is if he didn’t have to smelt metal by hand.

“I’m going to be here for a long time. Aren’t I?” He came to the realisation, but his heart felt fine as ever. Accepting this fact, he looked at what new recipes came to be, and saw something new, once more.

This time, three recipes branched off the two he just completed, but he noticed that off to the side of the recipe a branch stuck out . It was more like a twig which partially grew, but then stopped after forming a few leaves. And on this little stump of a twig, a point of light glowed to show off some recipe.

Obviously, he moved over to it and blinked several times when looking at the recipe.

Because there was none!

Besides the iconic crafting grid, all it showed were size question marks taking up the full first two columns. And then the output was another question mark!

“What do you even want me to do? Find recipes out in the wild… Ah! Maybe some notes have them!” His eyes lit up with the thought, and he left the cube with all 7 pages he’d found in hand. Some were of that naturistic ritual, but the others were… “The fuck? These are just more detailed notes of the first three!”

Needless to say, it pissed him off but that didn’t stop him spitefully reading every line. These new notes explained the ritual in the same level of detail, but it also revealed that some sort of ‘focus’ was required. The creator of these notes fortunately provided a sketch of the focus, which was actually a totem of sorts. And of course, it had to be whittled from a whole log.

As much as he wanted to burn all those notes straight away… An annoying consideration popped up. He couldn’t deny that whilst the more reasonable, mechanical part of himself denied such ridiculous magic…

Another part screamed at him with a single question.

“Why not?” It rang out into his head with every moment he looked at the notes, no matter how much he tried to reason with it, that side was only growing louder. Surely, it wasn’t a waste of time to just try the ritual, and put that annoying voice to rest?

It might disappoint him a bit, but he needed weaponry, not to be focused on following ancient tribal rituals.

“Fine! I’ll do it once! Just once!” As though he actually had to explain it to someone, he shouted those words. He should’ve felt aggrieved by the wasted time and resources, but there was only joy from this all. From such experimentation he hadn’t done in years.

His mind returned and he checked the three other recipes on the tree, fortunately, these all showed ingredients and outputs. Another thing he realised was that he was told the names of all the items in these recipes even if he hadn’t discovered them, unlike the one on that branch which showed nothing.

“Stone pickaxe, simple crucible, and a tree tap. So that’ll get me ores, metals, and sap, respectively. I wonder how effective stone pickaxes really are as well, supposedly they were actually used.” While he knew a lot about tools, nothing about that made him a walking encyclopaedia. Anyway, a few hours would clarify the case when he made it all. Before he got to work on it though, he looked around for a second before saying, “I should also leave a bundle of hemp stems on a drying rack.”

But that came with the small issue of running out of sticks when making the knife. Well, it was just a short walk to find a dead tree. But first he gathered 99 hemp stalks, and could place them out on drying racks later on.

Finding a dead tree to snap branches off didn’t take too long either. With his knife to make the smoothing process a lot faster, he gathered 10 more sticks from one tree, then another 12 from a second. He believed 11 rods to be enough for now, making a couple drying racks and placing them a slight distance between the reeds and oak tree. In that position, nothing obstructed the sun and he hoped it dried out in less than a week.. although that appeared unlikely.

And so he first made a stone pickaxe as its recipe could be completed immediately. With the head in the central column and two rods beneath it, this recipe actually called for two hemp ropes on either side of the head as well. He somewhat wondered what would’ve happened if none of the recipes required by the box grew locally, but he deemed that unlikely.

Actually, the sticks and logs required by recipes weren’t specific to trees in the first place, and other types of fibres for string existed, like flax for linens.

If he ever acquired those, would the cube allow him to use the same recipes to make string and rope from them?

An interesting question he considered, but as he swung the pick around, he now considered the lack of open-air ore veins in the area. It was very likely that such a thing existed in the forest though, and that meant finding one… If he found it that is.

He didn’t doubt using up all his luck in that regard after coming across the workshop.

Well, the tree tap looked simple enough to craft at least. From the image he saw, it required 5 wood logs which formed a ‘U’ shaped along the bottom, and then a hollowed out stick in the top slot. While figuring out what the cube meant by this might have been hard from words alone, he could literally see an example of the item.

And from that he knew it was just a piece of wood, about the length of his palm, and entirely hollow through the middle.

It didn’t take much to score out a good portion of both ends of a stick, but from there the knife refused to go any deeper without cutting the thing open. It was here he remembered the original, smaller chisel he’d made. And with a point smaller than the stick, he used it to scrape wood out until a hollow tube was left. It wasn’t straight in the slightest, but what mattered is that the box found it good enough.

Meeting the requirements, he crafted the tree tap in little over half an hour from the pickaxe.

Interestingly, whilst making the pickaxe unlocked nothing, likely because he needed the crucible for whatever came next, the tree tap actually unlocked something even higher.

Two things in fact as another branch resided at this level of the tree! Yet again, just a small branch which extended past the trunk, but he found a strange recipe which only required three items, but all unidentified again.

“It can’t be items I’m unfamiliar with since the hemp shouldn’t have shown up either then. So is it just that I have to randomly input things and get lucky? But if you get a recipe wrong it consumes them…” His voice trailed off as a thought came to mind, and for a moment he believed to understand how the recipes on these branches worked.

His inventory reported everything contained within, and he thought about having a stick, a hemp fibre, and a wood log all in the leftmost column. Nothing stopped him from throwing such items together randomly, and he pressed on the blue lines as with every craft.

However, unlike all those times, the items all vanished and it glowed red. Alongside that, something told him ‘Incorrect recipe’, just like the first time he did this entirely by accident. That story wasn’t so impressive though.

Back when he wanted to make his first rod, he grabbed a branch of that oak tree and tried to directly use it as a stick for the recipe. In retrospect, the fact that the cube called it a ‘sapling’ instead of a stick should’ve indicated enough on its own. But he stupidly stuck to his guns and used the sapling for that recipe, watching the two things vanish as the blue lines turned red and told him the same thing.

At the time he thought it was simply the cube not putting up with him being an idiot. If he wasn’t willing to follow the recipes, then it would punish him. That thought disappeared as he realised its true purpose.

For some reason, it required him to discover recipes as well! And checking the two branch recipes on the tree only confirmed this!

While the higher one with three ingredients was empty, the lower one with six was a completely different story. He read it aloud to himself, “one wood log confirmed, five logs incorrectly placed… But there are only five more slots. This recipe is seriously just six logs?”

Following his expectations, he filled the two left columns with wood logs and pressed down. The items vanished, but no red light appeared. Nothing told him this was an incorrect recipe, and his inventory now contained a new item.

Four wooden wall panels.

In excitement of the new toy, he dropped them all outside at once, but took one quick glance at that same branch recipe to see how it changed. Just as anticipated, it now filled in all the question marks with wood logs, and the output was precisely the wood panel he received. Interestingly, it only specified four panels when he looked at it to receive the item’s name in his mind, he had to remember that feature in the future.

Once outside, he saw the four pieces of wood panelling in a pile in front of him. Each was no more than half an inch thick, and formed a square of wood about the length of his arm. In his opinion the size was considerable, but how was he supposed to hold them together without nails?

Picking up to pieces, he stood them up on the ground and held them together as a test. “The grains don’t even line up! Why give me a recipe for this?” He’d rather get just plain wood planks or something which slotted into one another with ease.

But when he lifted up the panels to move them out of the way, he found that the two pieces had somehow merged into one. In fact, the seam where their separation should’ve been also vanished. In that moment, the panel to his right began to change in front of his very eyes. The horizontal grains which previously didn’t line up, perfectly combined with the lines from the first left piece.

And whilst in his very hands, he saw how the two wood panels somehow merged into one…

Just how far did this go?