After a few hours of slowly filling up my new core I reached 25%. The capacity even surprised me...

From what I remember my last cores would be full by now. Especially since my control is quite a bit better than before my training sessions.

I gave a small smile as I laid down on the ground and stretched our more sore limbs. The soothing feeling of the wind and sun felt especially good after finally making some progress in my mission to get stronger. The feeling from the night before as my consciousness slowly faded away into darkness was something I intended to avoid in the future by all means. If I had brought a decent amount of mana with me I would've easily made it back here without causing deity mother and father any problems.

I felt really bad when I thought about losing my own reflection when I passed out... I don't know when I'll ever find a treasure as good as that in the future... Even my own claw was not as beautiful as my own reflection after all...

Remembering back to when I analyzed the structure of it. Maybe it wouldn't be too hard to make that thing in the near future with the way I'm progressing now. Might as well think of it as a future goal...

Feeling refreshed after writing of the loss as recoverable I glanced around my surroundings. I was currently alone outside. Without mother deity to keep me here I decided to explore my surroundings a bit.

I quickly decided to see if I could reach the top of the waterfall somehow. The view from up there must be amazing.

The first issue was how I would get up there. The rock face was not something I could challenge with my tree climbing skills... I would have to go either right or left and look for a path up there somehow.

But first I'll have to do something about my core... It was beginning to be cumbersome to walk around with it in my left hand all the time. And if I were to venture out in the future I would need some way to keep it with me without having to hold it in my hands...

Looking around for inspiration I quickly thought about that shiny metal I saw back in the forest on our hunting trip. If I could somehow make a vine like those from the jungle it would be easy to hang it on my body... It would also look quite well with my hair....

Without the material at hand I would have to either construct it from the ground up or use something else as the foundation. The mana I would save from using rocks to make iron would be extremely limited... My only path was really to construct the materials myself even if it would take a little while. I did have the mana from the vein underneath me to fuel it...

Sitting up on the ground I resumed my previous serious expression as I imagined the form I would like it to take. The iron I found in the forest was weirdly formed and not very malleable. I did not want to go around with something like that. So I had to find an elegant solution... The vines in the jungle were long and straight, but soft and malleable. The straight and long part were doable easily, but what about making it malleable? I had no clue about how to permanently soften iron like a vine so I sat and thought for quite a bit...

Maybe making it extremely thin would be a good idea?... No... I once tried to climb up a tree using a thin vine and it easily broke and I still remember my sore butt afterwards...

I've not really encountered anything through my life I could use as an inspiration... But there must be a way to do it...

The weird plant materials I found in that square back in the forest were all mingled together... that made it feel stronger somewhat.. But how could I use that...

Rocking back and worth I kept mulling over ideas as I kept finding fault with my own designs.

The form should be simple like a straight line... Not be too heavy nor too stiff. It should be lose around either my arm or my neck... So it should be round... But getting something stiff and round over my head would make it lose around my neck...

Rocking even quicker back and forth I began to slowly grasp a pretty decent idea. Thinking back on the weird plant materials in the square I finally got a spark of inspiration. Smaller parts crafted into something larger. That would remove the negatives about the material not being that malleable and still keep it reasonably strong...

Abruptly stopping my back and forth rocking I readied myself to test out my theory.

As it were my first attempt at making this I tried changing rocks at first to get a good understanding of the process before trying it on a new material.

After a few attempts I finally got something I felt was just right. Two delicate small circles formed within each others middle part. A very simple form as it was basically just a straight line I've made into a round circle. So it wasn't really that difficult. But the effect was just thing I needed.

After a lot of failed attempts at iron I slowly grasped it clearly. I had to make it from memory since I did not bring any of it with me. So that made the process harder to say the least.

But when I finally formed the two intermingled circles I gave a loud snicker as I kept making more and more until it sat with a decent circle of smaller circles in my hand. Tugging and pulling at it only made my face turn into a grin as I laughed out.

"HAHAHA! A world's first!" I yelled out as I raised it high into the sky as I ran around in circles.