Like the cube itself understood his plight, it gave a perfect improvement which helped his problems. For the past few days he rarely had more than 10 available orbs, especially with all the meat and such he’d been grabbing.

However, the recipe for this level couldn’t have been any worse for him.

An iron ingot as the central material caught his eye. Perhaps the hardest thing from the whole thing to collect, but an accompaniment of eight different items made it an utter pain to manufacture.

His leather chest piece, a stick of dynamite, a bronze shield, a bronze sword, hemp pants, a rune, a heart of flowers, and a sun shard.

“All three magics… And a collection of all my best equipment right now. Sun shards have the be what the channeler creates then, a bit anti-climactic to find out from a recipe.” Although he sounded a bit depressed, in reality he could make this upgrade very soon.

When he next visited the village, a small pile of dynamite and an elite warrior would make destruction of that golem a breeze, and surely he could just ask for an iron ingot at the time. He already possessed some means to heat the ore, although forming it into an ingot required a lot of hammering.

Until he created a furnace capable of melting iron that is… And then there’s steel which required a temperature somewhere around 1000 degrees higher.

“Really hope the 20th doesn’t want a steel ingot. That’ll suck.” He knew how to work steel, for sure… But smelting it was well outside his realm of knowledge.

From what he sparsely knew as well, pretty much all iron contained far too much carbon and resulted in the creation of pig iron, therefore requiring some techniques to draw out this additional carbon. But with this world’s oddities, he began to wonder if the iron ore would also be native like the copper and tin.

In which case… there’d be no impurities and he’d instead have to add carbon through the use of coal or coke. This could be both a blessing and a curse, but he waited to see how exactly the metals worked.

For all he knew, perhaps the copper he mined wasn’t pure.

In which case electrolysis would be critical down the line for copper wiring.

“I guess they’ll know how to make steel, they know how to make clear glass pretty quickly as well.” Thinking back to how those in the village clearly knew a lot about their crafts, their decades and even centuries of knowledge had not been lost to time.

If not for the restriction of that malignant force they might have formed glorious empires across the world long ago.

This heavily suggested that he should be able to produce some basic form of glass soon, as the lens of nature came right before a chisel made of iron. Although, the farming magic still made itself a pain as he hadn’t come across any ivy in the forest recently.

“Although… Do I want to see what they were running from?” He looked at the markings all around him and felt an instinctive fear of whatever caused such a migration until looking northwards to the mountains in the far north. An idea came to mind as he said, “What if they were drawn by something instead? By the mountains? Or something below the trees I can’t see from here?” In his mind, either idea was possible, and an obviously safer option won over.

Follow the trail to see where they went.

Because, if something caused this, it would be a hell of a lot scarier than the beasts themselves. He was about to head off, but a glance back to the sun channeler and sources revealed a small change. Just that the socketed sun sliver had grown significantly. Not an unbelievable amount, as it was at most twice as thick, but when he moved closer it became apparent that the crystal grew at a speed his naked eye could see. Like a balloon swelling up, it somehow just continued to get bigger and bigger, transforming from the almost lightning-bolt shaped cylinder, into a cone with a curved base. With some minor deformations which reinforced its ‘crystalline’ identity instead of some unnatural figure.

After around ten more minutes, that growth completely stopped, and whilst it continued to absorb sunlight, he knew that the process ended. The cube revealed the name, sun shard, precisely as expected.

That really meant he now only lacked the iron ingot to improve his inventory.

“I doubt I’ll need more than one of these for the next level, but let’s just wait till the new set are done.” The sun shard returned to its small circular slot from the channeler, and it led him to believe another level of the item could be made through further exposure, clearly some sort of sphere.

However, he didn’t need such a thing at the moment, and definitely lacked the time to spend on such a thing.

Instead, his curiosity got the better of him entirely…

At the gravel trees north of the prairie, he continued north past the forest of yellow-bark trees and even saw the set of them he used for sap collection! All but one were completely empty, and he plugged all three taps to stop them running frivolously.

In fact, he hadn’t even been following that path.

He followed the trail of prints in this direction. Nothing about it stood out to him besides the sheer number of beasts which ran here, and the circlet told him that only two-thirds of the day remained, a massive amount! With so much time spare, he continued forward and climbed the odd, tall tree to check for distance.

The mountains in the far north appeared no closer, while the prairie behind only grew smaller and smaller.

Eventually he even saw an end to the yellow tree forest. In fact, it changed into another woodland of tall trees with a dark brown bark, almost black in colour. However, it only possessed sparse sets of canopies.

That’s right sets of canopies. As these trees contained between two to five ‘levels’ as he called them. The lowest level was always the largest, whilst the highest might be no more than a ring of branches and leaves smaller than hands.

“Strange. Why did the beasts separate here? And it seems like they continued straight after this curve… Were they avoiding something here?” He made an observation of what laid in front of him

In front of him, the myriad markings instantly separated into two paths, leaving an untouched region directly in front of him. It made no sense. Not a single creature stepped into it of the hundreds or even thousands in this untamed horde!

Naturally, his first instinct was to see if they diverted into two groups entirely, but this wasn’t at all the case!

Instead, after creating a certain distance from that parting point on either side, they both continued in a straight line which he followed for a short distance. This alone inundated him with curiosity, but it only began there as the group didn’t remain on a straight line, but they merged back together at a steady pace, precisely the same as the turns that they separated at!

It was like a giant eye-shaped hole existed in the ground that they all avoided… But clearly there was ordinary land there. So why?

Surely it wasn’t a random decision…

“They avoided the oak tree as well, didn’t they?” He thought back to the lens of nature which he left at home due to its fragility, but even if he brought it he didn’t believe that it held any use. If the tree only held a bit more of the green nature magic over normal plants and trees, it couldn’t truly be special.

Not when compared to the sun which was a blazing ball of red solar magic.

“Nothing to lose. I think…” He tried to keep a smirk on his face, but the overwhelming concern remained.

Holding the bronze shield and sword in hand, he moved forward with slow steps and incredulous anxiety. At every moment he expected… well–

He expected something to happen.

Joey spoke to himself in hopes that it calmed him of the situation. Simply explaining to himself the situation and some observations. “The space the paths diverged was way less than I’ve been walking. I should be able to see either side from here… In fact, I could see the other side just barely when standing on the outside. The space inside the region is actually larger than the outside? How the hell did… someone…”

His mouth fell as he realised that a small clearing appeared in front of him. And in the middle of it, a ginormous tower like a skyscraper in this old age world. Formed of brick, stone, and some sort of mortar, it was perfectly round for some reason, and somehow supported offshoots all the way up. These offshoots branched off into rooms which appeared to be self-sustaining.

As in, gravity didn’t matter for them!

Merely a connection but no supports to stand them up without collapsing the tower. It was a magnificent feat, and every part of his brain screamed to him about the type of tower this was.

A magicians tower.

Mage, Warlock, Sorcerer, Wizard, Witch, Caster, or whatever the hell title you wanted to use… It was someone who knew magic to an unbelievable degree.

Someone who knew how to bend the fabric of space itself to force beasts to divert away.

So why could he find it?

Maybe it required a conscious element to locate. In which case, it gave another matter he could ask about when he visited the village. But for now…

“I wonder what sort of notes are inside?” He began to walk up towards the tower, but began to notice something strange. His necklace kept on warning him of an imminent rainfall, in fact, the rain appeared to be growing worse and worse by the second! It should be a horrendous flash flood which drowned out all the surroundings at this point… So where was it?

And then. It stopped.

Rain in 2 weeks. Then rain in 3 days. Then not for 4 years!

And not just the necklace, it was his circlet as well. Telling him that there was just a fraction of the day left, then jumping back up to a whole day, down to half. And it rapidly jumped around without any consensus, in fact it dropped down to negative 5 days at some point, as well as 4 years of daylight at another.

He considered putting the two items into his cube before moving any further, but a new idea came about. What if, the tower hadn’t broken the two items… But rather this was some sort of warning mechanism?

That the magical items themselves feared the tower, and felt as though they had to send out any signal that they utterly hated the idea of moving closer?

Of course, he ignored the possibility that either of the two items cared for him personally.

They were tools. And even if ghosts, spirits, and possessed items existed in this world, why would his two exceedingly basic tools be such things? No, it was childish to move any closer before gathering news of this tower from the village. Imagine if he jumped into the workshop in such a manner as well, he’d have died twice in two days!

When Joey backed away to the trees surrounding the clearing, his necklace and circlet returned to their usual behaviour, and just a few steps forward had them freaking out once more.

This cemented the tower’s danger in his heart, and while he desired magic, it could wait until he was strong enough to enter the place.

For now he moved past the tower and went to see if anything laid further north, however, he realised at some point how stupid this idea was as he likely stepped beyond the safety zone he started in…

Unfortunately, he noticed this a bit too late.

In front of him stood a large hairy humanoid creature with claws resembling a bear and a face closer to that of an ape…

A monster sasquatch?

“Fuuu…” He shut his stupid mouth as the large creature growled intensely with a force which almost burst his eardrums. Now was not the time to anger such a thing.