The Way Ahead

Stone, water, clay, and metal. Those were the four foundational materials for building something substantial. Well, also sand. Arguably wood as well. And maybe-

Okay, so there was a lot of stuff that went into pretty much anything, all tangled together in a vast web of interconnected technologies and methodologies, that meant if he wanted to make substantial progress in one area, he’d have to also make progress in other areas. And he’d need to do it all by himself unless he wanted to return to civilization...

He cracked his knuckles. Well, nothing to it but to get started, then.

Stone was technically easy to find, but it would be hard for him to actually use. He wasn’t sure what the cliff face was made of, but it wasn’t limestone, unfortunately. In addition, if he wanted anything more than tiny pebbles, he’d need a pickaxe, chisel, and hammer. Doing that would be insanely laborious, though. At the rate his Packing was growing, it might almost be easier for him to get stone from Vinstead or something. Where they got their stone from, he had no clue. Maybe they had a quarry in the mountains and shipped it downriver or something? Ah, the details probably didn’t matter. If it actually was important, he’d find out eventually.

Water, at least, he had in abundance, but purifying it was starting to get tricky. He only had two proper-sized bowls, after all, and even then his second, non-dwarven, bowl wasn’t anywhere close to being as large as his primary one, and they were both in fairly regular use. Not to mention that he didn’t want his drinking water anywhere close to his alchemy cauldron, no matter how much he scoured it with sand between each use. For the time being, he had just been collecting water in his canteen and suspending that over his fire to boil it all off, but that wasn’t really scalable.

Clay took a minute to confirm, but as it turned out he did have a pretty good supply of it in Inion’s streambed. Nice and thick, too, though a bit rocky and buried under layers of rock and sand. It would take some work to actually harvest, but he could probably shovel out a fair amount of the stuff. Or, he supposed, he could dig a pit elsewhere in his clearing. The clay wasn’t restricted to just the stream, after all, it was just the only place where the topsoil had eroded enough to uncover it.

Metal was the absolute hardest. Even in the unlikely situation he managed to find a vein of iron ore or something, he’d still need to dig it out, incurring all the issues of using stone, before smelting it himself and purifying it by hand. He… more or less remembered the Bessemer process (Almanac to self: introduce that at some point), but that didn’t help him at the scales he was looking at. Plus, he’d need to work it and twist it… no. That was far too much work and hassle for something in which he’d never manage to compete with the professionals in Vinstead. He ran his finger over the maker’s mark on his axe, a torch set into a diamond. Nah, if how well it had held up an edge after so much use was any indication, he’d never be able to hold a candle to the skill and Skills of actual metalsmiths.

Sand he had lots of, as the bottom of Inion’s pool was filled with the stuff and the riverbed had a fair amount as well. That would be really useful if he wanted to make more cement, let alone if he wanted to try glassmaking. Plus, he still remembered the strange semi-superfluid-like behaviors Infused sand had demonstrated when he’d tested it previously. That in itself was worth investigating once he had a bit of time.

He already had a lot of wood, and he could also pretty easily get more if he needed it. That said, if he wanted to dry any more to turn it into a more easily-usable product, he would need to find more firevine and make more oil. Once he had it, though, all kinds of simple machines were makeable. He could use the stream and waterfall as a source of mechanical power fairly trivially, and once he had mechanical muscles doing his work for him, well….

No getting ahead of ourselves. First things first.

The experimental drying potion still didn’t seem to have soaked all the way into the center of the log, and hadn’t even soaked into the wood past the surface. What was up with that? It didn’t seem like it had taken this long last time, did purifying the lye mean it couldn’t penetrate the wood anymore? That would be interesting if so, but also really annoying. Well, there was still time left. Maybe last time it had just gone particularly quickly. If it hadn’t been absorbed by tomorrow, then he’d look into it more.

Actually, maybe he just couldn’t tell if it had been fully absorbed? Previously, there was a slight discoloration everywhere the potion had soaked through, but not this time. Well, perhaps that was because-

Oi. No. Wait until the experiment actually gives a result before making hypotheses about why it failed and what to do next.

Well, in the meantime, he wasn’t about to just sit around. The benefits of superhuman athleticism and rest meant he could work himself way harder than normal, day after day. In some ways, he was surprised at how well he was able to stay focused on work, day after day with none off- he certainly couldn’t have managed it back on Earth after all- but then again, he had lots of different projects to jump to whenever he got bored with one of his tasks, and was making more or less tangible results with every passing day.

He wanted a pottery bowl to boil water with, though, and maybe an entire distillery setup. It would be graceful as a skating stegosaurus, but if he built it right, it might work well.

Getting enough clay was easy in theory, and it wasn’t exactly complicated, but it still involved him being waist-deep in freezing spring water and trying to dig clay from under the layers of pebbles and sand which had accumulated over decades and centuries. Because he was stuck between not wanting to get hypothermia and not wanting to strip down in front of Inion, he ended up undressing to his underwear and mentally ignoring the naiad’s teasing comments as he did so.

His feet were starting to go numb, but as his shovel bit into the thick soil, scooping out and piling up a decently-sized pile of clay on the riverbank, he was immensely grateful that he was almost done. Next time, he was going further downstream to see if there were any exposed banks, because he was not doing this again.

None of his Skills were helping- he’d tried. Not that he knew which of his Skills would actually be of any potential use in this, but giving it a go still almost made him feel better.

Then, finally, he was done. As he plopped the final scoop onto his admittedly arbitrarily-sized mound of clay, he practically jetted out of the water and rushed to his fire, gratefully relaxing as the radiating heat washed over him like the first rays of summer sunlight after a long winter.

“Y’know,” Inion sidled up next to him teasingly, trailing a finger along his goosebump-covered arm, “You really should clean yourself more often. Aren’t you getting dirty from working so much? Yet I think this is the first time I’ve seen you shirtless, and you aren’t that bad of a sight,” she purred.

Edwin shifted, shivering as he wiped himself down with a spare rag, “Yeah, well, before I woke you up I made sure to clean myself somewhat regularly. Bit of hot water and a rag, a momentary dip in the stream or pond to get dust and sweat off… I didn’t have soap, but I made do.”

“Oh, really?” the naiad drawled, “I guess I missed out.”

Edwin shrugged. It was hard to say he didn’t like attention from a pretty more-or-less girl, but it just felt… awkward. None of her teasing really came across as genuine, more just her messing with him. Compounded with his how-to-survive-in-Joriah sense screaming at him to not get entangled with a fey in… that way, he wasn’t terribly fond of it. Not that it was enough for him to actually get her to stop, but it was enough for him to not reciprocate her teasing in any way, “Guess so.”

Dang it, why couldn’t anyone have shown this kind of interest in him back on Earth? It would have been so much simpler if they had. Not easy, but simpler.

He finished drying off and pulled on his shirt and pants, sighing in appreciation as the warm clothes slid over his still-freezing skin. He looked away from Inion pretending to pout as he pulled on his socks and shoes and wrapped his cloak around him, waiting for his body heat to warm him back up.

…screw this, I have magic.

He had to be careful when using Firestarting, to not include any part of himself or his clothing in the effect, but the sudden surge of heat from the flames as they shifted from orange to blue felt so nice. Hmm. He’d tried Infusing firestarting before, as a replacement for matches or flint and steel, though never once did he already have a blazing fire going. What would happen if he did?

…

Level Up!

Skill Points 542→549

Progress to Tier 2: 739/1590

Firestarting 45→46

Mana Infusion Level 63→64

Bomb Throwing Level 9→14

“Yes, you do still have your eyebrows, Edwin. You don’t need to ask me again.”

“Are you sure? Because I really don’t think…”

“It wasn’t even that big.”

“It literally blew up in my face! I got Skill levels in my explosives Skill!”

“Only a little bit.”

Edwin harrumphed and turned away from the fey, who was badly concealing how much she wanted to laugh. So, as it turned out, when Infused Firestarting was used on something already thoroughly on fire, it seemed to set every part of that object on fire… all at once.

The resulting whumph had spread burning coals all over the area, setting a ton of things on fire. Fortunately, Inion reacted quickly enough to extinguish the embers that landed on his shelter before the branches which made up his roof could catch fire, and put out all the flaming chunks of firewood before they could catch the underbrush on fire. It had the unfortunate side effect of drenching a fair amount of the stuff inside, but Edwin would take it over them burning up.

He did lose a few pieces of deer jerky where it was sitting out, and more than a few pieces of firewood ended up in the campfire before he would have otherwise intended, but overall? Not too bad of a mishap. Especially not now that he’d found a new way to get bombs working!

Well, so long as he was able to already get something firmly on fire. And could Infuse Firestarting to target something at a decent range without also igniting a lot of other things. Heck, his current range for firestarting was like twenty feet at most, and Infusion was still barely past touch range. Also, he wasn't able to exclude anything from his Firestarting area of effect, so he'd be making his surroundings hyper-flammable then setting off a firebomb....

Overall, a lot of bugs to work out, but also a lot of potential if he could actually get it working. After all, real-life explosives were all about trying to get a bunch of really flammable things burning simultaneously. If he could do that at will? With anything?

Well, the results would be positively explosive.

“See! You’re smiling again! I told you you’d be fine.”

Edwin waved off Inion and poked at his fire, making sure the freshly-loaded stock of wood was well and truly aflame before he got up to deal with what he’d been trying to work on before accidentally discovering mana-powered grenades.

Clay was easy to sculpt. Well, it was supposed to be easy to sculpt, but trying to do so with his newly-scooped clay just wasn’t working. It was probably too wet, honestly. He’d let it dry some and come back to it later. Hmm. What else could he work on, then? Maybe get some sand out, so that it could start to dry as well for his future use?

Edwin looked at the stream and its icy, frigid water and his shovel discarded next to it. He shuddered.

…I’m going back to my fire now, I think.