‘The tower provides protection against the stars. However, in any case that its protection fails, immediately destroy these books immediately.’

“That certainly clears things up. I guess anything capable of blocking out those stupid curses can stop the stars then… Maybe.” He added the final addendum simply due to knowing too little about their magic. One thing he understood clearly, was that, even if he had access to magic with the cube’s help, that didn’t suddenly create talent in that field.

Gemstone magic perfectly proved this. He didn’t have any special talent, and depended entirely on his freakish body’s control to make up for deficiencies. Though, perhaps his pre-existing handiwork made this quite a bit easier, after all, someone who never used a similar grinder, blade, or sander would have quite a bit of trouble learning to use it.

Perhaps even apprehension due to the power of the tool.

His drive to dig deeper into this magic had been worn away though, and while the cube clearly showed the symbol for a lit up tree, indicating new recipes to be checked, he went home and prepared a sumptuous meal using some of the crops he planted a while ago.

He first cooked some raw beef and used some additional fat to then roast some pre-warmed vegetables, leaving a crispy covering along with some char. While water alone couldn’t satisfy him fully, it certainly washed down the meal, and that hour long cooking session left him stuffed and ready to relax. Fortunately, crafting with the cube was precisely the perfect thing to do here!

Another set of five sun slivers were done forming, as was another sun shard, and he knew it to be enough for whatever came next. Only after his meal, and collecting all these things, did he finally open the recipe list again and come to a new realisation…

There was a new tree. When he moved over to it, situated just beyond the furthest farming tree, he saw the background wildly transform from vast wildlife to a great ravine which engulfed him on either side. The top of which could not be seen from within, where he and the tree stood, but on either side he saw thousands of opulent gemstones light up the world.

Crystals and fragments of all colours, some glowed with a mystical light whilst others had to be simply regular gemstones. Pinks, reds, blues, greens, yellows, blacks, whites, and obviously, just every colour of the spectrum.

However, on the tree itself, he saw the leaves of the branches were instead made of a thin, delicate crystal now. It was semi-translucent as well as a pale green, but the vivid crystal clusters which decorated its trunk impressed him far more.

And then there was the crown, what usually held something spectacular. On this tree he saw a selection of crystals which left his heart pounding, one radiated a rainbow light, its shine like nothing else. Another was dark as that endless pit he found within the copper mind, a crystal which absorbed all light and seemed endlessly desolate.

And at the highest point, he saw a single crystal. A lone dodecahedron, like some sort of dice, with a milky and celestial colouration, giving off a golden, divine glow. Whatever that gemstone was… The magical tool it could produce had to be so powerful his small mind couldn’t hope to comprehend it.

In a way it seemed even more awe-inspiring that the star which was touched by the solar magic tree.

That gemstone rested on the tree, did that mean he would one day completely grasp its power?

Unfortunately, the base layer of this tree only contained a single recipe. One which required 6 metal ingots, and the mini-chisel he used at the tower to engrave runes into the stone. These two items seemed to produce a selection of ‘pendants’ for which a gemstone could be socketed it.

How it switched between them was beyond him, but he believed that the test must have been so specified for a reason. Perhaps all gemstone sizes at the start are standardised, and the cube pushed that along with a simple way to make a necklace from it.

Anyway, it reminded him of the two more important recipes that he wanted to check on as well. The solar magic tree came first, and he found two new recipes unlocked by the solar water.

“A potion, seems to just restore that red energy or something. But this one… A sun dais? And this just makes a piece of its rim, so how large is this thing even? And then there’s the centre of it too, is that going to squeeze me for sun shards?” Joey couldn’t help but find the entire matter troublesome, imagining a grand ritual platform which ate up a wealth of resources to build.

And while that potion sounded amazing, in reality it suffered a flaw of requiring two items he’d never even heard of. Sunblooms and warmth crystals, the first of which sounded somewhat magical and troublesome to find in his current region.

As for the crystals, well, he had no clue on their source.

Maybe deep mines where magma sprouted up?

Either way, it was very likely that consuming a droplet directly ended poorly, so he stuck with storing it for now and trying to make one piece of the dais’ rim. It required four fired clay plates in the bottom row and middle slot, two sun slivers to fill up the rest of the centre row, and three pieces of quartz all in the top. And this was just a single piece of a potentially massive dais!

It had always been a matter of time until some sort of magic asked for a convoluted ritual. Nothing about it surprised him.

What did trouble him though was the pendant he needed to craft, since it allowed his stone to then be strung on a necklace and provide an effect. However, Joey knew better than to randomly use whatever metal he had on hand, as stone is rather troublesome compared to other materials. Specifically, the corresponding materials for stone are either metals or gemstones, in a sheer twist if it could be considered that.

Yes, the books noted that pendants and sockets of less, or occasionally more, valuable gemstones are sometimes used due to special requirements.

And Haxbar stone is one of those cases.

As it turned out, the reason that tower master selected it was not simply due to ideal carving and grinding properties, but due to considerable Arcane conductance. As far as stone went, it actually could produce a real magical accessory when socketed into the right equipment.

Notably, it either had to be a necklace or a headpiece of some sort.

The runes he engraved were actually all defensive as well, the only sort that can be engraved on most types of stone. By default, only a few offensive runes worked on Haxbar stone anyway, which meant the selected metal chain and pendant had to be of a few specific selections.

High-carbon steel, tungsten, titanium, or pure ruby.

It probably doesn’t need to be said, but acquiring all of these things were well beyond his means. Of the four, only steel could be considered ‘reasonably’ within reach, and even then he possessed no means of obtaining a specific carbon content with this technology.

However, those were ideal metals, in reality brass and iron work rather well too. Funnily enough, pig iron performed better than pure iron. That worked out fine since his flawed smelting method produced the exact type! From what he read, the resulting necklace should grant a weak ‘stone skin’ ability. How to activate it fell into the same category as the ring he received from the tower.

But the next thing came to pass, making that grindstone!

With both halves of it in hand, called two stone arches by the cube. He simply had to collect a couple wood planks and craft a rod for the final thing. In a minute, he placed down the grindstone and found himself at a loss without a seat, without any better options he simply stood and placed his foot on the pedal before gently pushing down.

He saw the attached gear rotate rapidly, and that transferred momentum to a far larger wheel. Its greater size resulted in a slower overall speed, but he could see that the grindstone itself required a bit more work, an innately high inertia meant that acceleration took far more force before starting.

Once it got spinning, he maintained it with rhythmic steps on the pedal.

“This is really easy, but why’s it so fragile? None of the other wood stuff felt this weak.” He naturally couldn’t avoid the complaint, it’d been ingrained into his very being at this stage. But as he held the spear tip against the rapidly spinning stone, he heard the ear-scraping grind and the slightly dulled edge gain a bit of sharpness.

He would need a proper whetstone to completely finish the blade, but this method regained more than enough usability.

“No new recipes then? So I have to make the handsaw as well… It’s just that–” Joey sighed, unwilling to use two more iron bars so easily. Smelting more was just ever so slightly outside his ability, on account of needing a more developed furnace that better contained heat and kept it focused on the pure iron. Not to mention allowed carbon to properly fuse into the molten metal and form a poor-quality steel.

However, he knew one rather obvious thing already. It was very likely that he wasn’t truly expected to smelt iron as he intended. But rather break it down into small shards and prills, then pack them together in a cast and melt it to shape.

From vague memories he knew this method was used for Damascus steel, probably.

Was he right or wrong?

Well, that either required testing or someone else to correct him. For now, he believed that he ought to produce a hundred or so sun slivers as well as a few more channelers to deal with his expected short supply of sun shards. Not to mention, multiple channelers allowed him to keep one at the side creating what came after a shard, likely some sort of orb.

But first! That fricking handsaw.

Bronze nails in the top-left and bottom-right slots, then the two iron ingots starting from the left of the middle row. Two wood logs then filled up the right column, leaving a single rod in the top-middle slot.

A recipe where he already possessed all the materials, but with just two iron ingots left, and a heavy will to never ask for more ingots until he produced his own, it was inevitable that he bit a lip whilst staring at the glowing icon.

The tree of relatively primitive recipes had a new one waiting for him.

It was actually quite amazing how this so-called ‘primitive’ technology jumped around quite a bit. Some of it was stone age, other parts clearly bronze age, and yet some of the primitive things he’d heard about weren’t even used here. For examples, wasn’t there something better than a fire bow using a rope wrapped around a stick?

The tension spun it rapidly, well, he just remembered seeing it in videos a few times. How to build it was beyond his means, and Joey had no reason to bother finding out with such easy access to fire.

Given that the level with the grindstone only had one recipe even after the completion of two recipes, he imagined that it would at most contain a second before moving onto the next level…

This was no the case at all.

Instead, he evidently saw that none of the branches on this level contained recipes, but instead three new ones popped up. One of them was actually rather pleasant, while the other two were rather painful.

A small stool for him to sit on, likely made to easy the use of that grindstone. Anyway, it was the first seat offered to him by the cube, although he believed his own skills good enough to make a better chair. The handsaw and chisel were pretty much all he needed for that, even if he mostly cheated through having superstrength. Of the other two though, the first was a spinning wheel.

Making it wasn’t the issue. With a recipe nearly identical to the grindstone, it just requiring an additional large wheel and spindle which would collect and wound up the resulting thread.

“But I’ll actually have to make my own string and yarn, how about including some fucking manuals for once. Am I just missing huts or a whole part of this?” He simply couldn’t grasp how the cube expected anyone normal to possible know how these things work.

Of course, those from less developed nations would likely know someone who used spinning wheels and such, perhaps learning how it worked in their childhood. But what about smelting, blacksmithing, surviving, farming, and just woodwork in general?

So much to learn, it seemed unreasonable that the cube simply expected anyone who came here to know all this.

Joey long-since assumed that others like him existed, with similar tattoos and such as there was a high chance his family existed somewhere too. Maybe even on different planets, but that didn’t explain his issue of the cube being ridiculously demanding.

There had to be something at play here. He’d bet money, if any existed in this world, that anyone else with a cube would be dead a month in or stuck in progression because they simply couldn’t understand how to do things.

“Fuck it, fine, I’ll just make them. What sadist designed a recipe for a door that requires a whole fucking door?” His complaining reached no ears, not even Salvador’s as Joey still floated inside the cube’s recipe space…

And the fact that Sal is a rock.