Holding up another lopsided chunk of worn stone, he saw how the meeting vertices on the two ends failed to meet along the central line. He tried to shave off some from each side to line it up once more, but anyone could tell that he’d screwed up here.

The problem came from the fact that this jig did hold the stone steady, but due to having no way to ensure consistent angles it was near impossible to obtain ‘mechanical’ consistency.

Perhaps possible for those who consumed several potions, but this relatively basic body could do no such thing…

Where could he find alchemical plants?

“Damn it, this is too screwed. There’s not even a bin or trash can here or something.” He complained whilst removing the poorly cut stone with a little splint of alight wood.

If one looked at the chest, they’d see that not just the first row of the top layer had vanished, but in fact two entire layers were already gone. He’d burned through at least 50 stone bricks in the past few hours and built up a few specific techniques as noted in the books.

Namely, he figured out how to consistently form points and rotate the jig in set motions that it gave actual hexagonal prisms as well. But after creating the prism, he struggled to wear down the last step. He could feel how close he was though, every single attempt just nailed down the movements more and more, allowing him to feel how to move and control the arm as well as the rate at which the abrasive grinder removed stone.

How quickly it wore down gemstones and other materials scared him though. What if he ended up needed tons of those as well?

It now made sense why he had to practise on stone for now, in fact, he’d realised that this stone worked slightly different from others. Whether granite, slate, marble, sandstone, or really anything really, this grey stone somehow grinded down smoothly without any fracturing at any point. It made him wonder if this was actually something special, and resolved to take some pieces to the village next time for an identification.

While the cube identified it as ‘Haxbar stone’, that name meant nothing to him in this place. It could very well just be a strange new things, like the yellow trees and their red sap which tanned hide. How it worked didn’t really matter, just the fact that it did.

In better news, he found that since the blade didn’t wear down no matter how much of the Haxbar he cut, it was easy to slowly cut away the large chunk of it for the grindstone. In just ten minutes of relatively imprecise cutting, he achieved his goals.

But as with the solar droplet, he just stored the two halves of the wheel and returned to grinding away the stone pieces.

Throughout the day, he ate some smoked meat to deal with the tiredness of everything, and more than ever he wished he had some juice or fruits to eat. Vegetables and meat were nice and all, but something sweet, sour, or savoury would be good around now. Especially some salt, but so far he’d found no rock crystal mines.

Was he ever going to be able to cook full meals…

“Do I actually have to make meals from those magic plants? That’d be stupid as hell… Right?” He stopped grinding away at another piece of stone from that sudden realisation, and really hoped that the future of his farming magic didn’t involve cooking.

Sure, he could make bread and eggs, bake a cake or cookies too. But do anything well? He never learnt how to make rice outside a rice cooker!

This screwed him over, hard.

Anyway… He put the stone back onto the grinding wheel and continued the delicate process. Every little millimetre of movement could make or break the chances of this stone being the one, but overtime he’d build up some understanding of how to precisely rotate and control the arm such that it created a tip perfectly where he desired. The problem still came down to actually having that crazy positioning.

He gave up after six hours of attempts. The fact he actually had so much diligence amazed him as well, but after this amount of time he routinely carved the stone into a hexagonal prism every time without flaws.

And while both ends did end up as proper points, the exact position of them still didn’t line up.

Actually, he read the introductory book just to see what his requirements were, and so long as the tips were parallel to the prism itself, he could pass this test.

As for passing straight through the prism’s centre, that was only required from the next test onwards, making this starting point incredibly generous. At this rate, he believed it might have been a week or so before he created a perfectly carved stone. But with the current progress it seemed possible to get it done tomorrow so long as he got a bit lucky.

There really had to be a way to do this without randomly hoping he precisely grinding down a surface to a point. Some sort of markings or locking mechanism on the arm to hold the thing in place while rotating the stone… But a short search found no such thing. No buttons, triggers, magical symbols, nothing in the slightest.

In the end, he chose to sleep a floor down after setting some coal on fire in the fireplace. The smoke simply vanished as soon as it hit the top of the fireplace, and that allowed him to calmy rest on one of the chairs in the room.

Tomorrow… should be the day it happened.

* * *

While most nights in the world seemed rather dull, perhaps the most exciting matter being migrations of creatures and monsters for seemingly no reason unless carefully identified, there were always things to take note of if carefully analysed.

In the dark forest to the west, one could see numerous puppets formed of ash grey wood and black vines dancing in a circle, all synchronised in such a manner that it cold only be described as eerie. In their circle was a pile of Razorhound corpses and piles of wood ash, all of it soaked with a strange mix of blood and other liquids.

In the swamp to the east, one could see little bulbs floating above the water, giving off coloured lights like the magical plants detailed in many of Joey’s notes, but if one was not careful they might miss the creatures beneath such bulbs that used the lights as bait. Terrifying crosses between angler fish and alligators. And that didn’t even account for the leeches, poisoning frogs, man-eating fish, and general toxins which filled the waters.

Of course, some of the magical plants which grew, whether on lotus flowers or beneath the murky, algae-filled waters, were real. Whether anyone could harvest them is a tougher question though.

Even to the south, in a seemingly endless forest, one would find that things moved. The ground quaked at regular intervals, and somehow, an entire hill shifted along the ground, slowly at a snail’s pace, but surely, making its way north… What for?

Well, to taste a delicious oak tree.

It travelled tirelessly throughout night and day, still so far that the hill could not be seen over the horizon even on top of a tree which stood above the forest. One day it would complete the journey though.

* * *

Next morning, Joey used his circlet to confirm the time as morning, a while after sunrise to be exact. He jumped right back into carving after enjoying a few pieces of smoked meat, actually using the warm coals to heat up the food a bit.

It was thankful that plants stayed perfectly fine even after fully growing, or rather, the crops didn’t have to worry about pests and diseases like on Earth. In all honesty, given how realistic everything here behaved, if this were a game he’d have imagined it were implemented as well to punish him for leaving crops for too long.

The villagers made it clear that plants could be left ripe and fully grown for even months without side effects, but once harvested would begin to slowly rot.

This felt more inline with how various monsters and beasts behaved as well, like cows acting perfectly find all day long, but not long after dying they could rot to mush in a matter of days. Thinking about it deeply, for once, he couldn’t help but wonder what even caused this effect. Was there actually some sort of strange microbe in the world as a whole that broke down dead tissues faster? Or maybe it was some sort of magical law across the world, perhaps even just an effect of magic itself existing, as a dead thing could not resist the various powers.

And how exactly did ‘The Arcane’ play a part in all this too?

The questions helped pass boring thoughts as he tried another 50 times at producing a stone, and on several attempts he very nearly achieved his goal, only missing the alignment by a matter of millimetres.

“I can almost taste it. The next ten, I just know it’ll be there…” With every piece of connected stone, he could feel the results just waiting.

He failed twice in a row, throwing away the pieces as soon as he realised things were screwed up. At this point he recognised flaws well enough to tell when something was wrong.

For the third try, he watched carefully, moving his hand with extreme care but holding down ever so slightly too hard, resulting in one end to be closer to the centre of the prism than the other.

A fourth, fifth, and sixth try took twenty minutes total. These were some of his slowest attempts in a long time, but every single one was unimaginably closer to reaching the goal…

Eighth was a slow and tedious process, perhaps he only shaved off mere tens of microns of stone at a time, controlling the arm with more precision than ever before...

And then, he succeeded on the ninth.

There was no sparks of light or magical glow to confirm it, He could only hold the stone up and line it against straight edges to make sure. But throughout the whole time, he was sure of it, and the ecstatic feeling within him bounced way too high up once more.

This joy! This pleasure! The happiness he truly loved!

Without waiting, he almost stumbled over the workshop chair in grabbing the solar charm and rushing upstairs, finding the barrier of light which blocked him once more. As the book told, he gently placed the stone against it, and watched it absorb the stone, allowing it to sink in like a thick syrup.

It flashed between green, red, and blue for several seconds as soon as the stone completely disappeared. And finally, it ejected the stone, allowing him to take it from the glowing plane of light…

Before it popped like a bubble, leaving just some sparkling motes in the air like bits of glitter.

“So that’s it? No cheer or announcement? Almost can’t believe I’ve been doing this for 10 hours now… Just 10 hours to reach a basic level of cutting stone. I’m gonna be here god damn forever, ain’t I?” His words emitted annoyance and pain, and yet the tone filled with unbearable enthusiasm simply did not match. For some reason, he found some real joy in learning this craft.

Lapidary wasn’t even a skill he ever once considered, to be honest, he assumed it was just all done by machines. Actually, it rose a different question as he finally stepped up to the new level and used his charm to see what laid within.

Would artificial gemstones work just as well as the mined sort for this magic? Obviously, if magic gemstones are a thing, who knew if they could be made artificially…

But just for a moment, suppose they could. He wanted to know how that stuff worked, to know if he could abuse the perfectly grown stuff instead of impure and imperfect natural crystals.

Nonetheless, he passed the first test, behind the barrier of light he saw the stairwell continue on upwards. On the left was an open doorway to a new room, and he imagined a similar barrier of light awaited higher above to act as another test. For that one he had to successfully place a carved stone with runes on it.

Just six runes, but that stone also had to be properly carved. He put that thought to rest for now, and instead entered the next floor’s room, searching inside to find out that it actually stored a wealth of materials. Not just various gemstones of all shapes and sizes, both cut and uncut, but vials of liquids and a variety of plants.

Roots, fibres, petals, stamen, and more than a few But most importantly, was that on a table with some simple glass flasks with markings for measurements, he saw a copper ring embedded with a citrine gemstone, and a single green-glass vial of potion.