The next day, he woke up to a gloomy morning covered in clouds, but no storm yet. However, the necklace very clearly informed him of the rain starting extremely soon, and with that knowledge he set off for the river once more.

While the papers reference no such need to space out rituals, he imagined that performing them closely together would simply make them fail. After all, if there was no rain, or clouds above, how could he expect lightning or storms to be contained?

As such, he believed that he should switch locations after the first case, and decided on a place rather far upstream, near the wetlands which was likely closer to a bog given the heavy rain these past couple days. With some muddy yet solid ground beneath him, and the rain increasing by the second, he began the ritual and ensured his process copied the prior.

He didn’t rush it. Nor skip even the slightest detail. And as promised, lightning arced, thunder clapped… And the storm smashed into his totem. A white light filled his sight once more and the vanished wind finally picked up again. The hole of clouds above already began to fill up once more, and directly in front lay the charred piece of wood with a lone rune engraved.

Stored in his inventory, he travelled down the river until the rain began pouring in full force once more. A second ritual went smoothly, and as he stood beneath a cloudless hole once more, it became a question of ‘What next?’

Certainly, he had way too many things to do.

With the coal he had now, it was even an option to go about attempting his first try at melting copper. If he had access to sand that is.

“Would molten copper destroy a fired clay cast? I can just make one myself then, although it probably won’t be enough for an iron ingot,” he said whilst recalling the rough shape of the ingot cast recipe.

As long as he made a similar shaped thing, there existed a good chance of success.

But first, he had to move the clay oven further beneath the oak tree, preferably into a dry spot whilst the rain poured down around him.

The thick foliage fortunately provided a runoff for the rain, but all that water still had to go somewhere, for which he had no solution. But instead of worrying so much, he found the four wood wall panels he made long ago and simply laid them down in a square. When all of them merged together, he just sat on them to avoid getting mud all over himself.

First of all came a fire, for this he used the clay oven to hide some embers from the wind as he allowed them to alight some hemp fibre, similar to the last time overall. But this time the notched sticks he used were finely cut instead of shoddily worn down. Like this, he had a small flame in the oven soon after. The rain would last a few hours at the least. And that gave enough time for the oven to completely heat up and attempt firing some clay.

Whilst he threw a handful of coals into the furnace, he began work on the clay cast first and foremost. Taking out two lumps of clay and crushing them beneath his hands with ease. Whilst not ideally damp, his high strength breezed through the process and ended up with a sort of rectangular tray not too different from a casserole dish but around a third the size.

The only difference was the shoddy work done at first. To fix this, he cupped his hand in the heavy rain and used this to smooth out the clay object to the best of his abilities. While not perfectly straight, he believed it to be good enough for an ingot.

That only left a short drying process before he could try firing this clay.

In theory, you’re supposed to add some sorts of powders to the clay, but lacking information meant that he didn’t have the slightest clue on why this was required. Instead, he hoped that clay alone worked.

When placed in the moderately warm oven, he waited for it to dry off whilst stripping more hemp fibres from the tens of dried reeds stored over these past days. One requirement for melting any metal would be some bellows, and he only lacked the hemp fabric to make one.

So, as the clay cast rested on a flame in the warm oven, he spent about an hour separating 154 fibres from the 12 stalks he managed to complete in that time, and even then immediately created two hemp fabrics as required. And to stop the fibres from taking up two orbs of space, he created 14 more hemp strings. Finally making one rope from those.

This left him with 97 fibres and 21 string in total.

Besides all that, he required one hollowed stick which he easily created with the stone knife and chisel, finally allowing the bellows’ assembly.

Two fabric and the hollowed stick in the middle row. The rod and log were the first two slots for both other rows, but the final two items differed. As the gluestick entered the top right with a hemp rope in the bottom right, he clicked the lines and saw how a greatly reduced chunk of the glue stick remained, but out came a bellows with it!

Connecting it to the oven took little work, he merely created a tiny hole in the side, then extended it out with clay until a safe distance for the wooden bellows to directly blow air into the oven.

As the clay dried off from heat as well, he ensured a successful inner working.

He gently pulled the two arms apart, watching as the black hemp fabric worked to keep air trapped within its chamber, somewhat imperfectly he admitted, before squeezing down and seeing the flame inside the oven flare up for a moment.

With this he now believed it possible to try melting copper, but casting remained a problem.

Well, first he checked on the dry clay cast, which he pulled out with considerable use of the stone pickaxe. Once outside the oven, he cooled it over the course of a few minutes and gently touched it to find it hard to the touch. However, it still felt a bit too brittle for use, and he gently placed it back inside the oven with a dying flame after a few more coals entered as well.

Along with a couple chopped oak longs, he sealed off the opening partially to further retain heat and began using the bellows to bolster the fire. As the rain had yet to lighten, he had no plans to leave until either a copper ingot came out, or the ground completely dried.

The next couple hours ended up being incredibly boring, and he took Salvador out of the cube to talk to instead.

When it appeared the fire lowered a bit, he threw in some more wood as tinder for the coal.

“I’d say that cast is finished. Also, unglazed pottery looks so much different from the proper stuff, although I thought this stuff would look more like bricks do. Is that stuff not pure clay either then?” He narrated his opinions on the red-brown fired cast in front of him to Sal, who did not respond on account of being a rock.

And so, he placed the stone and clay crucible inside his oven with some new coal and wood to support its flames. With one unit of copper ore inside, it gently sat in the oven such that it stood upright. Of course, he had yet to receive an answer to the great question of, “Don’t suppose a rock has any suggestions on how to pour the molten copper, right?”

But now that he reached this step, he refused to step down. Even if it were a waste of resources, he wanted to have at least a single copper ingot before the sun went down today.

“So, I thought that collecting some more fragments in the mines would be a good idea. But now it seems that just hoarding a bunch of coal is the smarter idea. Of course, I’d be best off if I set up a small storage hut here as well to keep that stuff,” as Joey spoke, he turned to Salvador on impulse, part of him felt stupid for looking at a rock when speaking, but with no one around it didn’t really matter.

He'd only truly grow concerned if he became attached to it in some way. But if it happened, there were bigger issues at hand.

“Well, I could always try to make a load of clay tiles, but would have to make a drainage channel for water during the rain. Not that it’s a huge issue at least.” As he talked to himself about the problems of building a shack in the forest, it was times like this where understanding building on earth made a huge difference.

Not that he remembered that whole damn semester focused on topology and the study of soil… But he actually did pass it, and with flying colours he’d add.

The long story short was that big things didn’t like being placed on normal dirt.

But everything hated being placed on wet dirt. In which case he either needed ways to stop water being an issue, or get rid of water. Guess which is easier without a massive industrial complex to fund tonnes of concrete and giant soil compactors?

The process of building a channel is actually no different from a moat, however, the natural flow of liquids must be remembered.

“So, I place the supports here, then the walls around it. Floor should merge into it, and then I can focus on the roof and have rainwater flow away.” In his head, he mapped out the rough placement of the new building with use of the natural terrain as well.

He noted that one side of this oak tree was on a slightly higher elevation than the rest, and by placing a building there, he could make use of this natural height as a runoff for water.

A far more efficient method than manually raising up the land by grabbing soil from elsewhere. Although, such a thing is tough on Earth since land must be compacted afterwards… But here?

“I think I’m coming around on the whole ‘things merge together’ concept now. Really fucking annoying to build without that.” And he said that as someone with experience on a construction site and having done an internship on roadworks for his degree.

Internship was putting it a bit loose. As an engineer his job focused on looking at the blueprints for most of the day and directing workers. Although, in his case he just watched a senior engineer all day and emulated what they did, with some sucking up to get a good grade and commendation.

A great idea education-wise, but horribly executed.

While all this conversing occurred, he repetitively blew air into the oven but had yet to check on progress for the past half hour. If it had melted, then things were great, if not though…

“Only one way to find out… Now to take it out.” In the narrations to himself, he had several ideas on how to do so. Some were indefensibly stupid, meanwhile, others simply weren’t possible. But in the end, he just settled on making a clay cover for his hand such that it didn’t instantly sear his skin the moment he picked up the crucible.

It only took a quick check to confirm that it worked. His oven produced more than a great enough temperature, and a small portion of a bright liquid resided at the bottom.

From there, a few seconds tipped its contents into the clay cast and he quickly placed it to the side for cooling.

The cast had to be shaken to ensure a balanced fluid with no bubbles, but after a few minutes the bright orange glow reduced until just a sweet honey-like colour remained.

And while it took a bit longer than expected, all this work resulted in an alright copper ingot.

His first copper ingot, made from scratch.

He mined this copper, albeit in a native form, and the coal. Gathered the wood himself, and with the exception of the bellows, he believed crafting all the parts involved were within his range of skills.

The box helped a lot, he didn’t deny it for a moment. But that shouldn’t take away from his accomplishment. And he knew that merely copper wasn’t enough to satiate him. Out there in the world, he knew iron deposits had to exist, as did tin, lead, zinc, cobalt, manganese, titanium, tungsten, and…

“Get a hold of yourself! Why am I grinning so much?” Not that he needed to be told why, but it certainly didn’t feel comfortable.

He gently pried the cooled copper ingot from his makeshift cast, and flipped it about in his hand with pleasure.

The thing was about an inch thick, wide enough that his fingers wrapped around with ease, and as long as his whole hand. This had been the same amount of copper ore as one unit as the cube defined it, and as such, this had to be one ingot as well.

It retained an orange metallic lustre, although he noticed that it appeared a bit dimmed and threw that up to impurities in the forging process reducing the copper purity even further. Especially since the coal quality he used wasn’t the best.

Just four days to go from naked in the forest to forging a copper ingot with ore he mined personally.

No way on Earth he could ever do such a thing without paying his heart out.

God he loved it here.