Skinning animals was harder than he anticipated.

This wasn’t cockiness of his skills talking, but a basic expectation that his extreme strength easily pried off the hide. Or something like that.

At the very least, he sliced open the corpse at the river side with extreme care to avoid the bull’s digestive tract. Also, with its genitals in the way far too much, he threw them to the side after a few seconds of squeamish horror, internally that is. But after that, things only went downhill, and fast at that.

Blood splattered all over the hide, and no amount of washing seemed to drag it all out, not to mention he remembered too late that he’d likely need urine to tan the thing. And it just so happens that Joey only remembered his own lack of the substance after dumping the bull’s into the river. Which likely left…

Well, actually, he didn’t know. It only occurred to him soon after that he’d only heard of tanning with urine and… faecal matter. Which meant he now had to find some of that before it rapidly decomposed like everything else did. At the very least, he sliced out huge chunks of flesh from the bull which the cube graciously counted as 46 pieces. The questionable hide counted for 16 pieces too, and if that transferred into leather directly he could have enough to complete all the current level of recipes!

Also, due to a lack of space he chose to dump the various organs. However, just before he left, he asked himself, “I can always smoke them… How long does that stuff last?” The numbers 3 and 4 appeared on the tip of his tongue, but the rough answer just had to be weeks in the end.

Hopefully things stayed that way here.

Reluctantly taking the liver and heart, he refused to take the brain for… reasons.

The lungs simply took up way too much space, and he knew nothing about the safety of kidneys, although their prevalence on Earth led him to believe so. Alternatively, none of that might apply here and the whole body could be consumed without fear. But without a look back, he took the meat, hide, and fat with him.

“Actually! I can make pemmican can’t I? What the hell was the ratio anyway? Eh, I’ll just wing it,” he spoke out rather excitedly after returning to the oak tree, a rather old memory coming back to him as he thought about what to use the fat on.

Sure, reducing it for soap or candles sounded nice, but how about a long lasting food which could easily be stored as briquettes?

Also, it made up for his poor smoking skills. If it came out poorly, he just cooked them and made it into pemmican. This ended up going rather well. Unfortunately, not a prophecy for the coming future.

He used the small holes in the top of his oven as a way to smoke strips of meat, but also directly cooked some in the oven on a lower flame, ensuring that it dried out entirely due to the requirements of such food. Water makes things last a lot less time, so half an hour to completely cook and dehydrate meat is the best option in the end, although smoking clearly required far more time as it still felt soft and squishy on the inside.

After he roasted four units of meat, it was a breeze to grind it to a fine pulp with some stone, then his original, shoddy clay cast was used to melt a handful of fat, forming a layer of the stuff to which he added more and more, creating a thick rendered form.

And once taken out, he simply poured it into the ground, dry meat and mixed with his hands.

At first some of the fat spilled, but with so much more than he needed in the cast, he quickly ended up with a sticky, doughy paste which would soon set into pemmican.

“It went really well. Now if only it tasted nice.” He laughed to himself over the rather bland taste of meat and fat, but knew this stuff worked better when turned into a stew or such with other things. Beyond that, he’d never actually eaten pemmican before, only seen it made and the descriptions from actual survivalists. Funny that he cooked this thing first instead of one of the many other options, even just a stake could’ve been done.

But next came the tanning. For which he already thoroughly washed all the hide to remove as much blood as possible. However, what he knew about tanning began with removing the flesh and fat on its underside, with which the rack helped by spreading out the floppy material.

The pickaxe helped make a dozen or so small holes all around the hide’s edges which he then strung to the tanning rack’s frame. With some knots, he quickly had the large cowhide spread out.

Overall, the rack itself stood about his height, with a width of about two feet. Ordinarily speaking, hanging a deer hide from such a thing shouldn’t be too tough. Unless of course the way you skinned it resulted in the hide being separated into two pieces, effectively, and stretching it just a bit too much had the obvious result.

The small channel of skin connected both pieces tore, and he ended up with the large piece, which still made sense to place in the rack… And a tiny bit which barely covered his front chest as a pelt.

A useless piece which couldn’t even be tanned easily.

Then came the next mistake, where he tried to scrape away the back of the hide with a bit too much force. It couldn’t have been more than a tiny slip, but the blade slid uncontrolled for a mere moment only to completely cut through the flesh and fat. But then continued right through the hide! It created a small hole in the middle of the fabric. He learnt to take his time a lot more, and from there used both hands controlling the blade such that it never travelled too far into the hide. In the end, he scraped off most of the flesh, and some of the fat. But then came the final steps which he knew just required waiting, as is the case for many manufacturing steps.

How to tan the hide?

Well, on account of his own lack of urine, and accidentally throwing the bull’s away without properly thinking. That left one plausible method, which he admittedly liked the absolute least of them all. Finding piles of shit isn’t that hard at least.

If you could even consider that a benefit.

* * *

“This stinks so damn much. Why did I put it next to this tree as well!” Joey gagged several times as he picked up a handful of mushy brown goop and spread it all over the hide. He made sure to work it into the stretched skin, and covered all of it thoroughly in hopes that a second coating wasn’t required.

Although, halfway through it occurred to him that the cleaned hide might have to be submerged into the watery faecal mixture and left for a day instead… Or he could just be horribly wrong and this step merely provided some sort of finish to tanned hide.

But for now, he finished covering the stretched hide and finally left the rest of the mixture on the floor, hoping that by tomorrow it followed the path of the zombie corpses and completely broke down into the dirt.

Of course, he transported it to his hemp farm first, pouring the slurry onto a bed of soil and then saw that the hemp seed pods simply littered the area.

So, now that they dried in the sun this morning, he quickly pulled out as many by hand and sprinkled them throughout the rows of tilled land. With the slurry as a fertiliser, he hoped to see dozens of new stalks appear in a few days. Perhaps even hundreds.

And, well… He really only saw two options in things to do. More farming, or an attempt at making that rune of the serpent. And while he certainly saw the appeal, Joey just grabbed a few bushels of wheat from the prairie up north, stripped them of their grain, and left them to dry in hopes it gave enough hay before nightfall. In the process he switched out the hemp stalks on the drying rack, which he’d put off separating for well over a day now.

While it seemed like there was so much to do. He often collected so many resources or processed them, that it often left him choosing specific tasks constantly.

“I can’t really use the serpent rune anyway. Should check,” he said whilst quickly jumping into his cube to check recipes, but confirmed that until he created that lens he simply saw no use for other runes.

A small chance that one of the many branch recipes required other runes remained.

“No runes, I do need more copper. Maybe there’s something better at the deepest parts of the mine? I should take a look at least, it’s still pretty early too.” He looked upwards and saw that the sun still hadn’t reached the zenith, which meant hours of sunlight left. With that in mind, he grabbed the lantern from home and headed back into the copper mine once more.

This all took about twenty minutes on its own. Deep within the mine, he continued well beyond the previous places he mined, even with rather notable copper deposits on either side, he marched onward.

Only the dozens of tablet fragments strewn about interested him. It didn’t take long until his count rose up to 20 units of them, and by now he trusted that the village would trade them for a lens.

“Still, this mine is so damn deep. What did the Forger need so much copper for? All those machines were made of steel and stuff, weren’t they?” He tried to recall the first room he’d seen in the workshop, and how massive metal smelters and casts allowed for quick refinement of ore to ingots. Especially with the door to his room using steel, or something ferrous at the least…

Just what was all this copper used for?

He wanted to know even more, what was the secret of the workshop and its golems? Their brass-like plating glistened far more like a mixture of bronze and gold, so that could partially explain the appearance, but most of him doubted this far too much.

Not to mention their insane power, some metals far more special than mere steel had to exist.

The chief mentioned power stones, whatever the hell they were, so his hopes inflated as the mine’s depth grew more and more.

At some point, he realised that the pathway transformed into a natural cave, where the walls were weathered rock and supports grew far less important. Perhaps this is what the Forger cared about down here?

The mine which previously felt rather cool, perhaps due to groundwater nearby carrying away heat, began to rise in temperature almost rapidly, and he grew concerned as the obvious natural walls had been mined away slightly to open up for more room. He even came to realise something strange and said, “How did they mine this so that the tunnel is so uniform? Did they use a boring machine… Probably, but then why the lack of a minecart?”

And it didn’t take long for him to understand why as he suddenly stumbled backwards and nearly fell over.

Fortunately, the lantern’s oil was rather gelatinous, so a last second fix allowed it to remain inside stably. But the reason he fell back was more worrisome, as just a single step in front lay a deep black pit to which he couldn’t see the bottom.

A small pathway with hooks embedded into the stone wall ran along the edge of this pit, and just to test, he grabbed a chunk of rock and chucked it down. Then counted the heartbeats until he heard a sound…

Five thumps. Ten thumps. Twenty thumps…

Fifty…

He gulped at one hundred and took another step away from the edge in fear. Was what they came for down there?

One other consideration came to him, a rightfully insane one at that.

They dug this hole to excavate whatever was here previously. In which case… There was no part of him which wanted to go up against the workshops which could manage this level of destruction.

But with the path which led around the pit’s edge, he was inclined to believe that whatever they wanted resided on the walls. In which case, he might have to…

“Fuck this. I don’t want to know what happens if I die down there.” Without even a moment’s hesitation, he dropped the expectations and simply mined larger copper deposits until he gathered another 58 more units, and also 3 more tablet fragments.

After which, he finally returned to the oak tree to check on his smoked meat and the leather which he hoped to have tanned a bit. Except… it clearly wasn’t looking any better, but maybe it needed a night or two?