As he looked down at the new tree laced in fruit and vegetables, with the unbelievable sun having vanished as the choice for solar magic left too, he began to wonder if he made the right choice. What he expected to be a tough recipe couldn’t have been further from reality. As in front laid the recipes for the heart of flowers and heart of weeds, and as the name suggested, they required flowers and weeds, respectively.

And on top of that… a zombie heart.

Thankfully, killing a zombie with a metal spear is a breeze! The problem was he very much didn’t want to leave the safe confines of his own home. At least, not whilst these simple monsters could break his limbs and pin him down with ease.

He did still have that concoction to improve his strength though, and perhaps this was the time to drink it? A preparation for his first attempt killing a zombie, then heading back to his safe confines.

When he took out the small clay jar from his inventory, it featured a hardy cork jammed into its top as a lid, but that easily came out with the help of his copper knife to pry it off. The moment it was released, the scent of fresh dew and spices assaulted him. It wasn’t at all the vile or fruity concoction he imagined, even so, he simply held it gently and prepared for whatever changes it brought upon him. He’d seen enough movies to guess it would hurt like hell… Probably, and prepared himself for the pain which might be as light to the punches of a strongman to the endless force from a titan’s hand wrapped around his fragile form. But rather than scare himself out of it, he downed the shot of fluid in a single go and burped lightly due to the gulp seconds later.

Things seemed fine at first, but it took all but 10 seconds for his body to break out into a drastic sweat and he quickly threw all his clothes off as the heat only built up further and further. Everything felt warm and ached, like he’d just been in the tin mine for another few hours but somehow exhausted himself on top of that.

And then the heat grew painful. As though touching a scalding bath, but once more it wasn’t impossible to endure. He simply feared how much worse it would get.

But it didn’t. In fact, some heavy breathing allowed him to stay calm in that scalding pain and after some time it passed as expected, resulting in what he considered an easy way out. Part of him expected to be writhing in pain for an hour or two, to the point where he just begged for it to end. But instead he got this… Although there was one slight issue.

“Am I really any stronger? I don’t feel any different. And nothing looks different, though it was purely an internal change. Strange.” Just to test, he pulled a log from the cube and tore it apart with his hands. It certainly felt easier to tear his fingers into it and splinter the thing to pieces…

But enough to be a noticeable change?

She had said that three of them are the limit, which likely meant Kalgon and the other elites already consumed as many as allowed.

Were there actually stronger recipes which Shalner reserved for the village? He wouldn’t blame her for such a thing, or perhaps the effects of the latter two concoctions are just stronger. Either way, a non-negligible effect means that he had every reason to focus on gathering the alchemical plants she wanted. Not to mention, he’d be able to farm them at some point in the future.

“I wonder if she’d be willing to give me a copy of those alchemy notes. Probably not.” He frowned at the thought, also wondering if a recipe tree for alchemical tools and such existed.

In the end, he chose the reasonable action and looked back at the recipe tree to see what appeared in the original tree. He wondered if completion of the 20th level would have a similar effect, granting him another precursor to a new magic pathway.

Or did it grant completely new options?

He looked forward to the options, and once more saw several recipes appear. Not only were there three from the direct recipes, but he also found two shorter branches with their own unknown recipes. And without even a glance to the sides, he focused on the three central points of light and found three recipes of great interest.

“Wedge nail cast, that’ll help to make the rivets too. Finally have a bronze axe. Why give me paper though?” He commented on the other three recipes, but only felt confused with the last one.

He had yet to get any ink, or even graphite, so he didn’t have the slightest clue on how to write. Odds showed that one of the branch recipes allowed him to create a writing implement, but that was a horrible way to go about it.

It didn’t matter though.

If there was one thing which really concerned him, it was precisely how the cube even defined something as a rivet or nail… Or just a small bar of the metal. Either way he opted to make the cast first as it only slightly differed from the previous two. The cast required clay, fire clay, and sand, a recipe he completed in seconds due to having the ingredients on hand.

It was rather interesting that such a cast was only given after he completed the pickaxe, as though testing his ability to come up with a quick, temporary solution. Even without this recipe, he already thought about making such a cast to simplify the process immensely.

Now he just needed to fire up the forge one more time for those rivets, or nails technically.

Paper required three bundles of hemp fibre, but also three units of ‘wood pulp’ which was just as easy to make as he imagined.

Partially that is.

Joey knew next to nothing about papermaking, and even less so about ancient methods. But anyone who knew anything about the topic more or less understood how it revolved around wet wood, and perhaps glue in modern recipes. And so, he fully believed that so long as he ground up a log or two, and left it to soak in a watertight box for a few hours, he’d have the wood pulped asked for by the recipe.

Then, he just put a row of wood pulp on top of the hemp fibre row, which created six pieces of paper. He could only imagine the sheer pain of this all if he had to make the paper himself, somehow flattening it into thin sheets and drying it all.

“How the hell did they even make it… Wish I’d watched something about it now. I also wonder when I’ll get something so I can stop fucking lifting up a crucible with my hands,” he said with a sigh. He rubbed his head and decided to hold off on more forging in the meantime.

He wanted to gather some copper with his new pick, and also try and get over his fears of staying outside at night. At the very least, he could stay by the oak tree to climb up if he believed himself surrounded, but just a single hit could kill a zombie if he stabbed its brain.

These ‘weak’ creatures were truly just that if you knew how to kill them. Whether it was dark magic or some sort of infection, a zombie’s brain and heart are utter requirements for the thing to function, and as such, one solid blow sent them down with ease.

If only he guessed that instead of trying to smash open their heads. Even a wooden spear can pierce their eyes and destroy their brains. But a copper one? He didn’t doubt being able to kill a few zombies.

But for now, he just focused on crushing an oak log, or rather finished crushing the one he mutilated earlier, and filled a large hole with water in an attempt

“Well it hasn’t drained yet… So that should be fine. Now, how about I search for flowers properly for once, I might find poppies too.” With a solid goal for the day, he decided to just spend the next few hours focused on wandering the plains and surrounding forests in hope that any of those plants turned up.

In the plains, he eventually found a small patch of lilacs with buttercups, two flowers he needed for the heart of flowers. Then came some white orchids, a purple-blue hyacinth, pink peonies, and lastly, sunflowers. Altogether, this accumulated to six of the eight flowers he needed, which simply left the poppies and marigolds. Overall, it required quite a vast array of colours, but it undermined an important property of flowers if it didn’t make use of them. The heart of flowers was rather interesting in appearance, as it appeared to be a ball of stems tied together with the various flowers sprouting from this strange orb.

Did that mean the zombie heart was within that stem covered orb? Or was it mulched down to transform the flowers in some way?

Only tonight could reveal it… If he found those damn poppies!

His search through the forest actually revealed two more of those shacks, one of them simply repeated the owl ritual which he knew, but another actually contained notes of an entirely new one. And not the serpent one given to him by Diavolo!

“Ritual of the ox. Requires a totem, normal stuff… I have to throw the totem into a bonfire and perform the ritual whilst the cries of an ox fill the air? This magic is so damn weird,” he spoke and read the sheets of paper at the same time.

Although, tribalistic was a better description.

Without the final ingredient, poppies, he opted to simply gather a fair bit of all the plants seen so far and store them in a crate beneath the oak tree. He didn’t know how long they’d last out of the ground, but surely they wouldn’t rot after just one day.

As sunlight fell, he came to realise his lack of light, and returned to his home for the lantern. This way he actually had a way to see the zombies, and escape if need be.

Daylight waned with every passing moment, and it wasn’t long after that he once more saw the sun fall beneath the horizon. He learnt his lesson well enough and took out the copper spear from his cube, and placed the cube nearby. First and foremost, his goal should always be to stab their brains.

A damaged heart may restrict his ability to use it for recipes, wasting an entire kill which he prepared himself for. He would get revenge for what happened some nights ago, and prove to himself an ability to handle what the world threw at him.

Not just the tasks and labour, but dangers and treasure.

Today. He would not be a coward.

Finally, it fell beneath the horizon. Only a half moon above illuminated the night sky besides the myriad stars, only tonight did he finally take a clear look above and see how many stars were… Not white.

Pinks, purples, greens, oranges, and so many things he’d never expect on Earth.

And then the shuffling came, he turned rigid for a moment. But relaxed as the lantern illuminated a shambling figure to his side, the dead and pale body eyed him down and already drooled from its overwhelming desire to consume. It just didn’t stand a chance though.

A spear lashed out, zipping towards its slow body and leaving a deep cut in its cheek before the zombie even reacted.

Its seemingly weak hand tried to slap away the spear tip which cut its face, but utterly missed. He stabbed out again, avoiding the hand, and this time saw his gleaming orange tip stab right through its eye, the thing stood still. Its body turned rigid, and he pulled out the spear as a strange black goo coated it for a few seconds but slid right off like jelly.

And then the zombie fell down, collapsing onto its back to return to the corpse it should’ve been. He already had the knife in hand to cut out the heart, not for a moment seeing the pale inhuman monsters as anything resembling himself, especially not after one very similar in appearance killed him.

But just as he approached it, the zombie’s corpse suddenly changed.

Its bloated and wet skin suddenly shrunk, like a heat wrap applied as packaging, tightly constricting to bones and small fragments of muscle. Meanwhile, the previous sogginess of its skin disappeared, turning the frightening monster into little more than a mummy.

He worried the heart might’ve been destroyed as well, and quickly cut open its chest with the knife… But no.

Inside, lay an intact heart.

One dyed black and brown… As though rotted and infected by some retched disease. And with merely seconds of work to tear it from the rib cage, his cube gave an answer he awaited.

A zombie heart.

And as he left, the sounds of shambling reappeared. It would be a long night.