In a quiet voice that no others could hear, Diavolo asked, “What time of day is it?”

“A bit before mid-day.” An urge to ask what angered the man came, but left just as quickly as Joey realised that for just a few moments… the elderly figure actually stopped patting his leg.

Under his breath, he muttered, “At its highest, tides are high, tablet is flowing…” He sighed out and gulped before returning to face Joey, clearly upset about what happened. “They do not take kindly to those like us speaking of them. Do not touch the stars unless you are prepared for the hell that comes with their power. And never allow its corruption to touch your materials. Only the sun is your ally outside these ruins.”

Fear struck a chord as he heard the man’s innate caution involving even the word ‘stars’, and he opted to never speak of them again. At least not before learning how to block their influence, whatever that may be. “Why are you whispering as well?”

“This matter is not spread amongst the village. Only the Reader, I, and now, you, know of this. Can you imagine how frightening it truly is? That world above dotted with your enemies… Our enemies.”

“But what are they?”

“Have you never wondered why the Forger alone was the malignant force’s subordinate? No… Where do you think monsters come from? Enough, I’ll teach you properly once you prove yourself.”

Diavolo breathed deeply whilst rocking in his chair once more. With closed eyes, albeit hidden frustrations in his face, Joey left to go speak with others. It left him standing in shock for a few minutes as he simply attempted to rationalise the lengths of information heard. In fact, how do you go about just understanding such a thing?

The stars themselves were ancient enemies! The fucking stars.

He couldn’t even begin to understand how powerful such beings were… And from Diavolo’s fear he knew that speaking of them at night would not end well.

“What did he mean by corruption though… Is it possible to refine their power? And are all the stars these enemies? If so… Fuck.” He instantly understood where the elderly man’s intense fear came from.

Thousands upon thousands of enemies.

The power of which could not be treated lightly, and with them came the ability to create monsters constantly.

There wasn’t much else to do for the day, and so he spent a couple more hours training. Whilst he hadn’t been so diligent the past few days, his experience with zombies not too long ago provided some much needed experience for stabbing a creature’s eyes.

“Joey? You’re called for by the head forger, Reina.” A young man who appeared no older than himself stood in the training room’s doorway, if not for the tattoos on his own body there must’ve been few differences between the two of them.

In fact… Most of the boys had pretty similar bodies, only those who trained significantly stood out. Only their faces really differed, but no one had objectively ugly appearances.

It was pretty strange overall, but he ignored it anyway.

When he went back to the workshop portion of the hall, the woman who took his order and answered those questions stood with a curved piece of clear glass in hand.

Once he approached the stone counter, she said, “So, this good enough? Or do I need Creymin over there to spend half a day polishing?” Her head tilted to the side of what seemed to be an apprentice focused on keeping the forge fire stoked to a certain temperature, as well as sifting out any debris in the quenching fluids. He seemed to take the work seriously, and Joey too would hate the long time required to slowly grind down imperfections in this piece of glass.

Just holding up the transparent piece to his face, he saw how everything wildly distorted through it even if the lens appeared good enough to be in a telescope.

Held against his cube, he saw it vanish as the orb symbol appeared. Then came his turn.

It told him, ‘glass lens’. In other words, precisely what he needed for the recipe.

And that meant, he had everything he needed in the village for now. Leaving the inventory space, the head forger looked in curiosity at his static face and how it suddenly returned to action. “Well, how was it?”

“It seems to fill the requirements. Thank you for your work, Miss Reina.”

She smiled at the response, clearly glad that it fit the bill, but shook her head as his sentence ended. “Drop that will you. Only those with qualifications have titles, and I’m merely the head forger.”

“And that’s not enough to count?” He felt it strange that one of the most talented here didn’t have a title. Surely, creating their weapons deserved her of such a thing.

“There is a title, once called the Forger but changed to the Smith after… You know. But to meet the requirements I must create a weapon with intrinsic magic, and we lack the forge and tools to work such materials.” She went on to explain the mechanics of producing such a weapon, but with the description of ‘flames which boil steel’ as a description, he took her word on how tough it was to make such a thing.

Hopefully, the cube had a way for him to both melt such metals one day, and then cast it without melting a pit into the ground…

After saying farewell to most of the villagers he knew and got along with, Joey left in the evening and made it back home before nightfall. Although, not without an encounter with more nitro-slimes, of which he safely detonated one and killed it for more of its interesting insides.

The cube now counted what he gathered from just two of the blasting balls as 20 units, more than enough for the near future.

At least, as long as no recipes required 30 of them to form a single material.

Once back by the oak tree, his cube already contained a bushel of barley alongside the glass lens, and before going to sleep he wanted to finally complete this endeavour. Heading to the wetlands just eastwards was an extremely quick jog, whereupon he returned soon after with a handful of flax in the cube. Sunset approached, and it could be argued that just because it’d only been one week he was horribly rushing through all the recipes…

But another side to this argument existed.

Who the hell wouldn’t want to hurriedly see what laid beyond?

With all eight ingredients inside his cube he began. Hemp stalk, barley, and poppy in the top left, a glass lens in the centre with two runes of the owl in opposing diagonals. Which just left flax, grass seeds, and a sunflower for the other three slots in the bottom right…

And then he pressed down, but double checked all the item names and appearances just to make sure it was all correct.

“Finally! I’ve been teased for days over this! What the utter hell do you do!?” His mind wrapped around the name of the object which filled his desires these last couple days. With it finally in hand, he carefully took it out of the cube and held it, at the same time he began a walk back to the workshop for the night.

Obviously, he first inspected the lens, just like the image he noted how the thing very simply appeared like the lens with a rim of plant stems wrapped around it tightly. However, it was almost like miniaturised flowers coated the thing, the existence of all the original plants could still be seen. The stalks of barley, hemp, and flax, combined with the flowers of a poppy and sunflower. All that he remained unsure of was the grass seeds.

But the little monocle-like rim barely mattered when compared to the glass itself. Just from the outside he now saw how the two runes of the owl had been imprinted into either side of the glass lens, the sparks of lightning contained within each rune clearly remained, but dimmed noticeably when compared to the wood.

And besides all that, it clearly felt heavier than the original lens by at least a few times over. Then, he performed the last act with trepidation. Holding up the lens to his eye…

Colour drained from the world, in its place a greyscale scape of nature took place. A depressing dynamic view of the world which still greatly intrigued him, no way did this object only apply a drab filter. Then he began to look around, the grass and trees all around were only identifiable by the varying shades of grey. Finally, he stopped staring into the distance and turned around.

The oak tree was different.

On its bark and in its leaves, faint green sputters flowed about. He had no clue what this represented, but immediately gathered an idea due to it.

He looked down to the lightning necklace and saw thick lines of green across the drawn rune. However, the lightning contained none of this green. “So the rune itself is what’s special. Does that mean I need this green substance to draw runes, or do runes generate it?” He found a question which quite literally defined the origin of these runes.

And he knew the answer would greatly change how easily he could one day mass produce such things.

But for now, he decided to look at a variety of other plants and items to test things. An attempt to look up to the horizon revealed the sun as a burning mass of red and yellow light. Any continued attempt to look upwards would’ve blinded him though, and in the few glimpses he did take, the red mass clearly became chaotic. Did the sun take offence to the action? Possibly… He didn’t dismiss the possibility of intelligence.

Diavolo quite literally told him the stars were his enemies…

A great desire to check the sky above had to be suppressed. But before night fell, he did take the ‘source of black magic’ out of his inventory to check it.

Interestingly, it appeared just as black beneath the lens. Perhaps the only difference was how the blackness remained still unlike all the other colours. Whether the green of the rune and trees, or the red and yellow of the sun itself, all the colours flowed as though ‘alive’.

“If I leave it outside, it becomes a sun sliver. Does the black represent some sort of emptiness… Or is it really dark magic?” He not only wanted to know that answer, but learn more about dark magic itself.

Was it truly some sort of morally reprehensible concept, or could it be wielding like anything else?

Many consider nuclear weapons the worst of humanity, but it directly led to the energy revolution of fission, and perhaps fusion if Earth had survived. After years talking to engineers his thoughts on the topics mostly settled, and he didn’t demonise the technology beyond the humans who cut corners and allowed it to fail. And dark magic could be no different…

Of course, the possibility that it truly was ‘evil’ also existed. In which case he’d happily lie down and pretend he said nothing.

The sun reached its end, and Joey returned to the room for the night. Even as he walked back, he almost approached another of those nitro slimes, but fortunately evaded its lightly glowing body. Once back inside, he rested on the pile of mattresses in a corner and checked the cube properly.

It was time to see what recipes came next.

“Damn. I really want that– No, I need it! Am I really going to spend all night making totems again?” He exhaled whilst his mind worked to argue himself out of the task. But it was too encouraging.

Totemcarver’s chisel, a tool which sounded exactly as one expected. However, it came with two minor issues.

Firstly… It required an iron ingot. And secondly, it required three runes. Altogether, one for the owl, serpent, and boar which he’d just received notes on. So, even if he acquired the boar rune, only after he returned to the village and traded for an iron ingot could he make the thing. From name alone he could only imagine how well it glided through wood and allowed him to make carving of utmost precision. His skills reached a similar level as well.

But the other one seemed far more doable. It required all the flowers for a heart of flowers, and created an item so originally named, ‘Crown of flowers’, which looked different from a laurel wreath.

At the very least, he agreed that the crown actually looked good, and as it required a rune of the frog in its centre instead of a zombie heart, he imagined that it also did some useful things.

“I’ll just make a totem and go to sleep, no need to throw myself into it.”

And that’s precisely what he did. Made a single shoddy boar totem and went to sleep, awaiting a bright morning where he’d make his first sun sliver and try out some solar magic.

At least his light source issue had been resolved.