The progress of reshaping the log into a bellow was progressing, to Nik’s surprise, fairly well. And that is to say at all. The general idea and planning had gone well. The splitting in half so that he could hollow the stump out was put on hold and replaced by carving it out from one of the endings. It would have probably worked but Nik didn’t want to endanger the chunk log and thus tried a different approach.

Thus he started scratching and chiseling with a sharp stone inwards into the log, making sure to keep sufficient distance to the walls and not to strain the wet wood. This process went smoothly - ignoring minor hiccups such as cutting his own fingers and palm - and even progressed at a decent speed.

Once he had buried his entire arm inside the log up to his shoulder he stopped. Using the same distance, from his shoulder to fingers, he began cutting off the other end to reduce the overall weight and improve portability and also implement another feature. He told himself that creating symmetry was totally not the main reason. This was where the first minor issue occurred. He hadn’t considered the length of the rock he used and that he had turned his shoulder inwards a bit, resulting in a slightly cut open side.

It wasn’t going to be a huge issue and he would try to close it with some resin and wood splinters later. The air pressure created by the piston shouldn’t be large enough to damage even such a poor seal.

Another issue he had come across was technically easier to solve, but it took him till the late afternoon of the still early day. He had to find and form a stick with sufficient strength to not bend under a large lever and had to have the length of his wooden cylinder plus a little extra and make it as straight as possible. The initial prototypes had somewhat worked but suffered from one final flaw. The thickness of the wood used was not big enough causing the wood to strain when held horizontally at one of the ends. Nik reasoned that this was due to the age of wood he used. Young sprigs and even thin trees were a lot more flexible compared to their dried counterparts.

Nik ended up using the trunk of one of the younger - and thus thinner - trees he found. To combat the all to present flexibility of the wood he tried hardening it over the fire. Constantly worried about it starting to burn, which luckily didn’t happen, he turned it over a fire. In the process, he burned himself frequently, which he found rather ironic. After some tinkering, he found ways to keep his personal burns to a minimum without making the tree catch on fire and drying it. The process seemed to have hardened the wood enough to be held horizontally without bending at all. Further testing would show how true that was going to be.

He would have preferred to use another method of wood hardening like epoxy or even just commercial wood hardener, though none of that was available anywhere around here. And if they were, he wouldn’t have started from scratch with his bloomery, bellows, and forge designs by extension.

The hardening had warped the wood somewhat, not to an unusable degree, though it would reduce the range of motion of the piston design he was planning on building.

Inside the hollowed-out tree trunk, a piston-driven by muscle-power would constantly push air through not yet carved out exhausts into some wooden piping. The air would enter through two intakes on either end of the flat tree trunk endings which would have one-way inlet-valves made from a combination of resin and either bark or some kind of leaf. He hadn’t found a suitable material yet, as they had to withstand bending several hundred possibly even thousands of iterations.

The current top runner was a leaf which he could bend frequently without breaking the fibers. This very same material property was while essential also the second biggest issue of the material. With high hopes, he decided that he would try and use very thin sticks to decrease the internal elasticity, and stop the leaves from folding in on each other.

Rusmon Leaf - A leaf of the rusmon tree, higher than average elasticity.

The other main issue he was currently facing was twofold. He needed a lid to enclose the open side of the bellow twice - the second to push air through the bellow - and a material that could seal the inside of the piston sufficiently well. At one point he could hopefully use a liquid sealant or even completely forget it, with enough precision in construction that should be possible. Though right now he was far away from that point.

The lid to construct the cap would be carved out from the remaining wood stem and the same would hold true for the inside, the outside sealing could be done with resin and if the gaps were too large the resin could be mixed with wood splinters for reinforcement.

The piston itself had a few different design issues. If it were to be slid on a rod - instead of through a rod - most of them wouldn’t exist. Issues like sealing and degradation would be reduced drastically. While technically possible changing the design to something more complex to avoid those issues wasn’t feasible with the current tools and skill he had. Another possible solution was to get sufficient lubrication to reduce friction with oil extruded from the nuts he often ate. Not that he tired generating any as of yet.

He did have other design ideas for the piston bellows, but those were a bit too intricate for him right now and required more precise tools.

While his mental exhaustion was rising and he became increasingly annoyed at his own dexterity Nik continued laboring over the bellow lid and piston. The good thing in his opinion was, that nothing had to be a perfect fit as sealing with resin should be doable.

After fixing the rod of hardened wood to the wooden piston he had carved with flat stones plugged into rod on both sides of the piston he sat down content. The only issue he was facing now was the sealing of the piston. Piston rings were not available and after some time of considering the best options, he decided on just sticking grass together with resin onto the sides of the piston. It would be far from a perfect seal, but it was the only thing he could really think of.

Before continuing though he decided to wrap up for the day. He had been occupied with the project for the better part of the day, only occasionally checking on the hardening process of the bloomery.

He had set fire to the entire construct an hour ago, constantly keeping it at a low flame trying to get it to heat up evenly and thoroughly throughout the entire construct.

He already made plans on improving the next version. He would use a multilayer design, it would help reduce the overall cracks caused by steam escaping and thermal expansion, a natural result of the drying of clay. He would also like to use several different materials as escaping heat would definitely be an issue with this iteration.

He waited for the fire to slowly cool down and inserted the clay door into the proper opening in the bottom. With any luck, it would help extinguish the fire so he could inspect the bloomery faster.

The moment he inserted the door a notification appeared in his mind, a notion he still wasn’t entirely comfortable with. He appreciated it either way.

You have created |Basic Poor Clay Bloomery| - 32 experience points gained

“At least I accomplished something today,” he said grinning. Sitting down he enjoyed a few stamina berries and let the endorphins released by his minor success flush through his body.

“It is ‘basic poor’, huuh. So that has to be better than ‘flawed poor’ and I got a bunch of experience points for that. More than for the tongs, by a bit even,” he went on contemplating the situation in his head.

In the end, he decided that he had too few data points to come to any meaningful conclusions and got up. He made his way back towards the lake thinking about how to best progress from where he was at now.

The class, metal, and crafting aspect was fairly straightforward. He would finish the piston and connect it to the bloomery. Fill the bloomery with the very high iron concentration stone dust and similar amounts of charcoal all while pumping air into the bloomery. That would hopefully result in a bloom, and if he were to be extremely lucky even some kind of steel. He had never really particularly cared for steel production itself, rather just the different properties of the types of steel so this was all guesswork. He would then make an anvil, tongs - depending on how well the wooden ones would hold up -, and finally a hammer. Though the order would be reversed.

What he was curious about were the race-type skills. He wanted to further experiment with the magic skills he had unlocked and failed to unlock. Condense Mana was a prime example of what he wanted to fix and figure out.

Once he reached his tree, repurposed as a bed, he climbed up repeating yesterday’s attempts at consensing mana. He coated the skin of both of his hands with mana and folded them over each other, pushing mana into the cracks his folding had caused.

He pushed just like the day before, his mind and body slowly growing sluggish. Pushing through the worn-out feeling he continued. He pushed mana through his hands in a gushing flood, keeping it sealed up tight between his palms.

The negative pressure between his hands kept reducing until he could feel a small, pebble between his hands.

His eyes, head, belly, and hands hurt the most. The rest of his body just felt lethargic, as though all the energies he had usually access to had just vanished. Though his eyes hurt because of how tight he had shut them closed to better concentrate. In his mind, another notification chimed.

You have created |Condensed Mana Splinter - Purity 51%, 7 Mana| - 0 experience points gained

His status supported how he felt, but not how the mana splinter had only 7 mana, whatever that meant. He had gone down to 17 mana from 280. This was almost enough to place all of his points into the wisdom attribute this very moment, but he decided to go against that. It wouldn’t do to mess up his status just because he was slightly annoyed by something that could be fixed through eating a whole lot of mana berries.

After all, having a higher rate of regeneration than usage would be awesome, and after a certain point only having ten percent of his output as regeneration would be as though his mana pool would be the same amount larger. And he couldn’t increase his maximum mana through eating berries. But if willpower had secondary effects like strength and endurance investing in willpower would be the smarter move.

He would solve that problem tomorrow because his experimenting had tired him out too much. He opened his eyes one last time and stared at the small lightly white shining pebble inside.

Condense Mana Splinter - Purity: Poor; Stability: Poor; Mana: 6

Wondering if the stability was really degrading the splinter so quickly he fell asleep, dreaming of hammering an anvil on a field surrounded by tools he was currently creating.

The next morning hit hard. The whole body ache that is. It seemed as though the fact that his soul somehow wasn’t up to the task of either manifesting, compressing or expelling such amounts of mana really screwed him over. But the ache wasn’t really a painful ache, in a sense, it was like a regular muscle ache after too much sport, just less physically exhausting and more affecting his mood and mental awareness.

Having made the distinct error of trying to condense mana he slipped in and out of sleep for the rest of the day. He had considered getting up at some point. Doing anything besides getting up today seemed a bit risky. He thought that he couldn’t really keep himself safe in such a condition. Not that he had experienced any palpable danger in the last couple of days, besides the large flying thing a few days ago.

Taking a rest day would be the smart thing to do, so all Nik planned on doing was occasionally getting up to drink so water, and to get the provision up into his hammock.

When he got up for what felt like the tenth time he once again regretted his lack of modern equipment. He would have given an arm for a mattress and blanket.

As the day progressed and Nik played around with mana and stamina inside of his body. He had gotten curious about the last deed he had gained. It talked about manifesting any type of energy giving Nik the impression that one would be able and do the same thing with stamina and health as well.

Too inquisitive to stop, he started pushing stamina throughout his body. Slowly getting used to its energetic flow. It followed commands easily, way easier than mana. Pushing the bounds he gave it. Always reaching for more, looking for the next milestone to reach.

He coated his skin in mana again, having learned from the mistakes the last time and began channeling the stamina inside his hands. It sept forward from all over his body towards his hands, following his will easily.

It flowed throughout his hands looking for a way out. That was when Nik realized that he had massively screwed up. Firstly, he had never channeled so much stamina at once, both running and haste required so much less. Secondly, the nature of stamina was volatile whereas the nature of mana was inquisitive.

In the same moment, he realized that immense pain erupted from his hand. Blood started dripping down his hands and arms, covering him and his hammock. The whole area he had coated with mana was now torn and a small yellow red-tinged pebble dropped from inside his hands. Thousands of small tears within the skin as though little explosions had taken place right below the skin.

Greater Deed Unlocked - [Solid Power] Solidify stamina, one of the five primary energy types.

Nik Thems: {(Evolving) Extraterrestrial Human} Level up! You have accomplished the Greater Deed [Solid Power]. 16 Stat points have been awarded. One General Skill Slot unlocked.

Class development. 250 exp gained for reaching a class milestone [Solid Power].

He passed out just as he saw the notifications.

When Nik woke up the next time his health was still rather low and his hands felt unusually smooth, tender, and too sensitive.

“Mistakes have been made. I really shouldn’t try this with health, so I will wait, but I should totally do so,” he thought, quickly trying to erase the memories of the previous day from his mind. Keeping those memories would only make him hesitate more in the future.

In his mind a dormant notification waited from him.

You have fulfilled a requirement for one (attribute-type) race skill

You qualify for obtaining the following Race skills [6 slots available].

[Lesser Intrinsic Willpower] - enhances mana regeneration and mana strength

Not thinking long about how exactly he gotten the skill and where the equivalent of the endurance skill was he moved on, accepting the skill.