Back at base, our physicist rushes through the process of crafting bronze.
First, he crushes a stack of chalcopyrite and tin ores with an iron mortar and pestle. Then, he mixes the ore dust together in a crafting table, and empties the two stacks of dust into his five furnaces.
"Good that should cook up right quick" he muttered with a smile. "Let's go grab some rubber-I want to get into making my first circuit as fast as possible. 018?"
"Locating rubber tree. Located. [180, 12]"
our physicist smiles "good that it's that close..."
The reason our physicist needs to make a basic circuit is due to the nature of this world {gregtech}. He has to slowly upgrade through difficult tiers of progression separated by their voltages.
From lowest to highest, it goes Ultra low voltage, low voltage, medium voltage, high voltage, extreme voltage, insane voltage, and ludicrous voltage.
These are the tiers of progress that our dear physicist knows for now. The current limit of the Akashic book. That's not to say there's not more, of course.
And the alloy that our dear physicist is making now is the very first alloy.
The one that starts it all-
Bronze.
While his bronze is cooking, our physicist takes the time to make a few chests, lining them up against his wall on top of each other.
Their strange inner dimensions astounded him.
By the time he was done sorting his miscellaneous items into the chests, 20 bronze had finished being smelted.
That was enough bronze to setup his first few machines.
Using some clay he'd also gathered while waiting, he crafted some bricks, and after combining those with the bronze he got, using his crating tools, he finally crafted a "Solid fuel boiler!" he smiled.
With his remaining bronze, he fashioned a small pipe, using his knowledge on siphoning water and infinite water sources to create a constant flow of water into the boiler.
He then filled it up to the brim with charcoal, and it immediately ignited, producing steam at a steady rate.
"Now to make our alloying machine..." You see, not all materials could simply be smushed together in their dust form to make an alloy. They had to be melted together in an alloy smelter due to their volatile properties.
A good example of this is sulfur and rubber tree sap, to make rubber, and redstone and copper to make red alloy. Our physicist needs both of these items to progress.
For now, the physicist simply setup a steam run alloy smelter, macerator {material shredder}, and compacter {material...compacter...}, and quickly went out to the river to collect sand, gravel, and clay. Lots, and lots of clay.
Why? Well our dear physicist needs it for two new, and far more complex machines-the primitive blast furnace, and the smeltery {gregtech, and tinkers construct}.
These two machines were the reason our dear physicist didn't simply make bronze armor and weapons-he wanted to make armor of a material far more durable than simple bronze-he wanted to make armor out of steel, a material with far more strength, durability, and edge than any simple bronze alloy.
This was also the reason he had left some charcoal in his chests, as combining that with iron in a primitive blast furnace would leave him with the glorious steel. Melting that down into liquid and pouring it out into a mold would leave our physicist with glorious steel equipment.
And so he got to it!
________________________________________________________________________________________________
[Two days later]
Our dear physicist is laying on the grass in front of his house, staring up at the sky with an annoyed but relieved expression on his face.
"Finally" he croaked. "I finally made them..."
Beside him stood two multiblock structures. One was the primitive blast furnace, a simple, but annoyingly resource heavy machine that stood at four meters tall, three meters wide, and three meters long.
The other was slightly more complex, the smeltery-a five meter tall, five meter wide, and five meter long construct with two ports, one controller, and one fuel gauge.
Our dearest physicist had also taken the time to locate and obtain a whole 15 buckets of lava to fuel the smeltery, and had already waited the hours for the steel to actually be made.
He was ready to upgrade to steel age.
"here we go..." Slowly but steadily, our physicist pours out the melted steel into sand molds, making plates for his armor that he quickly hammered together into shin guards, leggings, forearm guards, chest plate, and a somewhat fanciful helmet.
He then detached the coat from his previous iron armor set and re-attached it to his new steel one.
He also ended up making steel variants of all his tools and his sword, lost hatchet, and pickaxe.
He was now, finally, equipped to fight.
"Ok...Let's go exploring, learn more about this world, and find a less hostile villager settlement." Murmured our physicist. "And maybe even find a diamond vein for enchantments!"
He paused for a second and smiled sheepishly to nobody "And maybe a few friends too..I'm tired of mining by myself."
Humming "Haggstorm" and slinging his satchel over his shoulder, he let out a short peal of satisfied laughter. "018, set course straight northward!"
"Yes." replied the robotic voice. An arrow appeared in our physicist's vision, pointing straight north.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
[???, 95, ???]
[The Ringed Child]
the ringed child has recovered slightly from a shard of his soul being rendered off by the ring, a surprising feat.
Not knowing what to do, and very susceptible to the suggestion, the child unconsciously wanders toward a source of energy similar to the one he felt as his soul was being rendered off.
The child wanders into the dark forest beside him.