“One golem, a bit rusted but relatively intact. It walks fine, so clearly its balance is good… And its eyes still glow. That’s going to be tough to deal with, but where is the other–” Besides an entrance to the dark forest, a large river with pebble stone banks separated the forest of brown trees. However, between this river and the less dense forest was the cave he needed.

The one which contained iron.

And just beyond its entrance, Joey saw a single golem patrolling endlessly. But just that one, never more than it.

But now, as he quietly circled around the riverbank and did his best to avoid the golem’s gaze in the flat area with few trees, a glimpse of rusted metal laying against the inner wall of the mine entrance stood out to him.

The second golem. A broken golem. And that instantly halved this mission's difficulty, but not greatly.

After all, a great decrease implied little chance of death.

But just a single intact golem would kill him in a single hit, and so dynamite became a necessity. As did those special spears belonging to the elite warriors of the village, when combined he could blow off parts of that rusted thing and aim to break whatever powered it.

“What the hell even are the power sources for these things? Those power stones? Or maybe whatever that pit holds.” He rubbed his chin whilst walking away, but took one glance at the dark forest behind him in concern.

In person it scared him even more, as the eerie appearance of small lights seemed to draw him into the visage of darkness.

Trees thicker than his body and several times as tall, tightly packed together in such a way that every step risked him stumbling over a root. Its canopy appeared even thicker up close as he saw personally how it only took a few metres for the warmly lit outdoors to transform into that. Some of those lights flickered, and he was unsure if they were fireflies, a plant like the one which grew on the village’s ceiling, or something giving up on prey. He said to himself, “Only when I can see well enough. I hope, at least.”

He walked northwards for about five minutes before coming across a second mine, this one completely unguarded as told.

However, he quickly came across a very similar rope set used to descend deep into the ground. Given that the village seemed to know their stuff here, he chose to believe that they were right about this one’s depth and temperature.

With both mines confirmed, he could focus on the more immediate goals at hand. For example, he left a huge amount of crushed wood to soak in water, with that much pulp he’d have enough paper for ten or so sticks of dynamite. It sounded like a lot less material when phrased like that. Besides that, he now headed further north for the prairie, and more specifically the tin mine at its top. It was still dangerous, but he needed that quartz far too much to let go.

Besides, as long as he focused on searching for shiny rocks, he believed they would come far faster. Maybe he glanced over several pieces of quartz in his tin mining as well?

It wouldn’t surprise him.

With the sun charm to keep the tunnel lit as well, it was so much easier to climb as he no longer held a precarious lantern throughout. Thankfully he asked Diavolo about the method to create sun slivers, it was so simple that he almost questioned if the recipe would’ve been necessary.

Once at the shaft’s bottom, he already began sweating but kept his cool. By drinking a fair bit of water before arrival, he gave himself a couple hours to search for these crystals. However, it became pretty clear that the start of the mine contained nothing, which meant having to navigate the sprawling tunnels for such crystals… Something he wanted to avoid if possible. In the future he argued for stringing up sun slivers along the wall as markers, if it ever became such a problem that is.

For now he simply dropped a spare one on the floor by the rope as a marker and headed in a random direction. In fairness, he chose the ‘left wall’ strategy as some would do for a hedge maze.

Choose a wall and stick beside it the whole time.

It didn’t take long for him to be so far that the placed sun sliver completely disappeared behind walls, but he was fortunate enough to find a piece of quartz just after a couple minutes of walking.

Something about the jagged granite all over told him that this cave was a bit more natural than he gave it credit for.

“Well, just a bit more and I’m off… Unless I should collect enough for future projects too,” he argued with himself, which only ended with a sigh.

For a while he couldn’t measure, but in just half an hour, the stockpile of quartz grew to roughly 20 units within his inventory. And he would’ve left already if not for something gaining his attention. A strange crystal-like structure embedded into the wall, almost like looking at grains of crystal. He fully expected it to be some sort of giant crystal, and mined it out carefully to keep the whole thing intact. When it fell to the floor with a thud, he was surprised to see it intact and insanely heavy. So much so, that the chunk roughly equal to his torso in size required him to properly grip it with one hand and lift from beneath!

It sounded unimpressive, but he usually lifted everything by grabbing its edge with ease.

But rather than waste time, he checked the name in his inventory

Tungsten ore, six units of it to be precise. He didn’t know this metal formed near tin veins but the knowledge would absolutely pay off in the future. Wires, filaments to be precise, would eventually be required. What other tungsten uses eluded him though, but he did bounce his head back and forth before saying, “Guess I can make a cube of it.”

A small joke, but he didn’t have any immediate use for the metal. But just in case some strange ritual or recipe required it, he stored the bulk of tungsten and continued the search for quartz.

Besides finding another few chunks, he gathered another bunch of quartz to gather about 32 units worth. Meanwhile, when he climbed back out of the mine, he hit 22 units of tungsten ore.

Refinement was likely months away, but something is better than nothing.

Back at the oak tree, he emptied the tungsten and quartz into empty crates, then prepared to make the sun channeler. He now had half the ingredients, but one particularly troublesome one remained. Three fired clay plates.

Unfired clay plates? That’s the easy part.

“How am I supposed to get the fire hot enough to fire anything? Nitro-gel?” He threw out a random guess, but simply couldn’t think of anything better. He lacked gases to extremify the flames to higher levels, and in theory a better form of coal would reach higher temperatures as well. Or a second bellows would be great if a second person existed.

Testing the effects of fire on nitro-gel was pretty simple. He stood at a distance, with a piece of gel on the floor and a flaming stick to try and light it on fire.

The instant he saw the flame touch it, a flash of light and heat bathed him wildly. It wasn’t even a question of explosiveness, he felt like a barrel of gas blew up right in front of him, and it hurt… a bit.

Besides a thin layer of soot all over his body, a surprising result, he knew something had to be modified. A part of him truly believed that the gel wasn’t this volatile, and in a way it partially reminded him of natural gas. If it lit on fire too fast, then what if he mixed it with something which burnt slower? Or just applied it to a flame in small bits?

Specifically, what came to mind was making shortbread pastry. The softened butter is mixed together with flour to create a consistency of fine breadcrumbs.

For now he decided to use ash from the burnt sticks as a binder, although the few charcoal ones also became an interesting choice. That became a secondary idea, but if neither of these worked he’d be out of luck for quite a while. Another idea came to mind whilst he picked out some of the whitened wood inside his oven, specifically, as the cylindrical crystal on his wrist filled him with ideas.

“Sun slivers. Is that the power of the sun or the light of the sun?” His confidence waned as he said that aloud. The stone in his hand continued to grind sticks into fine ash before he rubbed a unit of nitro-gel into it.

The originally gelatinous substance mulched together with the fine grains, slowly forming a sticky clump almost like a roux. It quickly gathered together into a weighty ball, and from there he separated it into four roughly equal balls, each about the size of a ping-pong ball. With these, he would now test their heat generating capabilities. On an interesting note, the cube referred to this item as ‘nitro-gel accelerator’, further listing the ingredients of this accelerator. So, clearly he’d done something right… Whether or not that was a good guess or simply a side effect of mixing the gel with any dusty substance remained to be tested.

The lit torch slowly descended onto the ball of gel and ash, and it instantly erupted into a large flame when he touched it. Like a bonfire, its flame easily exceeded his height and he felt the powerful wave of warm air slam into him. However, just as quickly, the flame died down and it only lasted about 10 seconds before ending entirely.

“More ash then?” The obvious answer came to mind, and he quickly began to crush another few pieces of wood from the oven which then mixed into a remaining accelerator ball.

The resulting thing was no longer so red as the white ash greatly stained it a pale white. The original red of the gel was barely visible at this point, and he didn’t hesitate to check the name which still read ‘nitro-gel accelerator’. However, there was no way this still burnt out in a few seconds.

It took a bit longer than that to perfect the idea though. The current test mixed a nitro-gel with four units of ash, effectively.

Splitting that one unit into four quarters made testing a bit easier at least. The ratio was now 1:1.25, but from the way its hardy flame blew out after just half a minute, he knew it to be too quick for a firing process. Fortunately, he was given an easy way out, in that he mixed another unit of ash into the third ball, and saw it burn for three minutes.

With the concentration of gel decreasing, it made sense for the ball to burn weaker every time, but the fact that it worked so excellently exceeded expectations. However, an attempt with charcoal powder right after actually gave even better results!

With a lower ratio of 1:2 for gel and charcoal, he found it burned sustainably for 15 minutes, and with a flame which soared upwards even without a bellows dedicated to it.

Now, he just had to line the oven in some clay plates and he had the thing ready to fire in just a matter of minutes!

If only the heating process didn’t take an hour…

But eventually, he utilised 10 chunks of clay to make 10 plates. A faster firing process eased that burden, and he didn’t hesitate to fish out three pieces of quartz and dive right into his cube whereupon he crafted a sun channeler without the slightest bit of anticipation.

“Just another stepping stone. Why are there so damn many of them?”

Not that he really needed an answer with the grin in his mind. A tap converted the set of materials into a single tool. A clay tablet with intricate circular patterns all over, but most importantly, the sun sliver clearly indented into the centre of the tablet.

In a circle, the three pieces of quartz had been polished into strangely reflective surfaces to act like mirrors, all pointing inwards.

All pointing towards the sun sliver. And as the concentrated beams of light pressed down on the yellow shard, it pulsated with a visually stunning power…

Something was happening.

It utterly enraptured the addicted man.