One might want to ask Joey, ‘Where did you put those zombie corpses?’, and the answer would be rather distasteful…

He gathered them into a pile and simply threw them out of sight. After a mere day they’d gone from a dry, mummified state with chests and heads torn open, to wet and partially rotting bodies nearing a mulch. Decomposition speeds of these things really couldn’t be joked about.

Though, for the undead he practically expected such a thing.

At least the rain helped suppress its smell. And tomorrow he hoped the bodies completely sunk down into the dirt, or at least stopped smelling like hell.

Rot is never an appreciable thing for the senses.

With the oven on and warm enough to bake goods, he began heating it up further and further, until it seemed perfect for making more bronze. The crucible gained a piece of tin and 8 pieces of copper, then came the simpler wait. The tray of sand and fire clay remained on standby too.

“Would it kill to give me some tongs or just a holder for this thing,” he mumbled whilst looking into the oven and saw the crucible full of molten metal. After the lessons from before, he knew the best way to properly pour such a thing as well as securely placing it inside the tray of sand. In fact, he adapted to the haphazard methodology well enough that his body remained mostly still during it all. And there were no spillages when pouring into the cast this time round!

The wedge nail cast contained holes for 12 such nails, and he estimated that to be equal to three ingots in mass. But since he wanted to avoid making more nails in the future, he opted to just craft a second cast and poured two thirds of the molten bronze into the two.

From there, he argued back and forth for a few minutes about what to do with the remaining metal, and he allowed all the material to solidify over the course of ten minutes.

In the end, he settled on first checking the next level of recipes as another bronze tool might exist, and re-melting bronze isn’t the quickest process.

So, he broke the two nail casts, gathered all 24 wedge nails, and saw a rather interesting point about the bronze axe recipe. No longer did a simple finger-long cylinder of bronze act as the rivet, but it also showed a second image in which the wedge nail took its place.

“Ingredients are replaceable, so long as I’ve created or found them? If I chopped some of those grey trees, would it show both logs for any recipes which used them?” Without time to bother about that, he decided to just use all six wood pulp to make paper, and then also created the bronze axe with all the other parts on him. “Short sword cast, can’t say I’m very surprised.”

The cast recipe was extremely similar to the wedge nails, and after crafting, he didn’t hesitate to empty the rest of the molten bronze into the cast. It was either enough to completely fill up right now, or too little and he’d have to make another batch of bronze in the future.

Fortunately, just as the final drops came from his crucible, he saw a glowing orange fluid just barely reach the hole in the cast, and that pretty much confirmed a sufficient quantity.

He placed the crucible back into the oven, by using the cube’s ability to deposit items anywhere around him, and allowed the oven itself to slowly burn out overtime. After he stripped the blade from its cast, he stored all the cast’s materials and took a closer look.

It lacked a proper handle, instead the tang simply jutted out a bit too far, and lacked proper shape at the tip due to the hole in which he poured bronze into through connecting here. However, the blade itself was in fairly good condition. Simple, with a spine through the blade’s centre, and given a good pommel, would easily move its centre of mass down into the hilt. Whilst he didn’t dare use the thing to fight zombies, it might see use in other cases down the line. Especially with a bronze shield, whenever he got a recipe for one.

Hopefully, at least, since making a shield wasn’t very easy on his own. He doubted his ability to do more than reinforce the wooden shield with some bronze plating.

“Still, I should probably look at all the new recipes clearly. I think the farming tree had a new one too.” He nodded whilst carefully placing the bronze blade into a crate, and entered the cube once more for a proper look at new recipes.

And there were more than a few to look at.

First came the recipes on his first tree. Besides the sword cast, the only other recipe was for a wooden frame, a tanning rack to be more precise. And that could only mean one thing… He’d have to learn a skill he’d never even seen before. Needless to say, the prospect worried him, but perhaps the village knew someone who could give tips?

He absolutely needed them now. But for now he could just make the rack, as it required some wood in the cardinal places, four bronze nails in the corners, and one hemp rope in the middle.

With that, he completed two more levels of recipes in a single day!

Actually, the one he just completed, the 12th level, contained no branch recipes even though a few branches clearly existed on the same level. It was the first real proof that not every branch was a new recipe, but if it were…

“There are dozens of branches up there. That’d be absolutely fucking insane,” he scoffed. But really, he retained part of that fear still. “But these recipes. Damn, the cube’s really not pulling its punches now.”

Five recipes to complete.

Oh, wait… Five required recipes. And two branches on top of that.

And then there was the farming recipe as well, in which case unlocking the hoe actually unlocked three more recipes. And at that low point on the tree, there were no branches, so that was another three required ones.

However, as much as it might seem like he moaned. Joey couldn’t wait to get started, his complaints came from indecision.

“Hmm, it seems everything pretty much requires leather. And not a small amount either… Guess I should go attempt to kill something. There are some cows over there,” he said whilst looking over to the southwest side of the plains. In that direction, the cows which normally grazed there moved into the forest as a way to hide from the upcoming downpour. If he wanted to kill and harvest one, he’d prefer to wait till tomorrow. Not just because of the rain, but because Joey had never butchered such a large animal.

Rats, insects, and chickens? Sure, there were sometimes he did it himself, but those grew few and far between as an adult. An adult cow is a whole different issue though, especially since it was far more likely that he’d be attacking a bull.

The first set of five recipes he unlocked were, in order, leather strips, a bronze short sword, a leather binder, bronze tongs, and a leather Parma. Needless to say, but the tongs immediately drew attention… If only they didn’t require 6 bronze ingots to be crafted.

It didn’t end there as he checked the new recipes in the third recipe tree.

Once more, they were all farming implements, and this time he could roughly guess their uses from name alone. What exactly the ‘adequate hoe’ did was utterly beyond him. If not for the strange shape he’d have assumed it to be a durable hoe at most.

A scarecrow, crop sticks, and a millstone. However, what intrigued him were the modifiers on each, the first was called a ‘wild scarecrow’. This vagueness interested him, but it likely revolved around wild animals in some way. Perhaps it left a sense of unease in their primitive minds.

Beloved crop sticks came next… Actually, he didn’t have the slightest clue here. He really wanted to know what found them beloved though, but the requirement of 3 hearts of weeds in this made it unaffordable.

Lastly, the seed crushing millstone. What appeared to be a specialised millstone for crushing cereals into flour, by his guess that is.

Three farming implements which greatly aided his future attempts, but it felt a bit early for any. He really wanted the wild scarecrow of all three choices though, and actually would’ve made one at the time if not for the requirement of straw. Harvesting masses of wheat resolved that at least… When he finally got round to it.

“The millstone recipe should be coming up soon. Hopefully I get a windmill as well, that’d be nice.” He stared at the recipes a bit longer before sensing how the necklace informed him of the oncoming rainstorm.

Without enough time to properly protect his crates, he instead slipped some wood planks beneath the platforms to elevate it a tiny bit, then quickly crafted some more wood panels to cover up his crates. Unsurprisingly, the weight of four wood panels did not overcome the increasing wind speeds.

Instead, he placed the crate with stones on top of it, and allowed his other, more valuable materials, to receive protection instead.

It completely fell on him for not finishing the project yesterday, or today in all honesty, but the prospect of making that hoe really ate into his time… And then the prospect of the lens… And farming…

Honestly, he probably wasn’t the best individual to enforce this stuff.

After walking back in the light rain, he lit the lantern on fire once more using the dozens of lamps inside the workshop, then sat back down inside his home and tried carving once more. After he carved for almost an hour, it once more failed and he ended up with a shoddy statue.

His second one. It was too bad the recipe only existed for the owl statues though.

Joey’s eyebrows descended into a deep frown, and he blinked with clarity as though insulted by his own utter lack of intelligence.

It didn’t take much longer until he formed a third serpent statue, once more shoddy in quality, and threw the three into the same arrangement as the owl statues. He pressed the grid and saw how it remained blue, without any failure messages which informed him…

“So it was always an interchangeable one? Why this magic then? Why not solar or farming… I suppose that one requires dead zombies, so makes sense at the very least,” he rationalised the choice to himself, but still felt somewhat idiotic about this mistake. “And is it possible to make those hearts myself? Where would I even begin?”

As he thought about the oddities involved, he truly had no clue how anything worked! At least for nature magic he’d learnt how the totems invoked some natural powers, although how exactly that even functioned could be argued for days. But it didn’t take long until he realised just how much he over thought this all, and went to bed for the day. One final check ensured that the door’s bar remained secure and he slept rather well that night.

What came tomorrow was the hunting of a bull.

And the copper spear slid through its neck and completely pierced through, for just a moment the sheer disparity between monsters, beasts, and wild animals came afloat. The bull tried to charge him with final moments of rage as the lethal wound overwhelmed it…

He leapt to the side, and completely evaded the beast whose speed simply did not compare.

Unsurprisingly, killing the beast proved to be the easy part. And he hoped its death was close to painless, a fast death certainly does so, and perhaps using the bronze axe to take off its head would’ve been a kinder end. But now, with a massive bull corpse on hand, he had to take it to the river and begin a long dissection process, not to mention harvesting anything remotely useful.

Hide, fat, and flesh are the obvious three. But what about the bones, organs, and blood?

With the slightest clue on how to use any of the stuff, he grabbed a hold of the thing’s legs and attempted to pull it. The idea worked, but even with his strength that wasn’t an easy thing to do…

Then he realised he could tap the body with his cube and carry it like that. Confused steps followed as he reached the river to clean and drain the bull, and he slit its throat whilst saying, “How the hell do I skin a cow?”