The feeling of monkey...bits hugging my leg got old and uncomfortable fast. I shook Nun off of my leg, extracting my poor limb from his death grip of a hug. He was strong for a monkey so small, but his strength wasn't as jarring as the fairy's - who still hadn't shown up.

I'd say I was worried but, in reality, I was just scared of being caught by a Stationary Ent while she wasn't around. I wouldn't be able to defend myself if a branch snuck up on me. I didn't want to end up like that poor bird!

"Nun," I said, crouching down so I was eye-level with the Stone-Shaper Monkey. "Nun, if I get caught by one of those tree monsters," I pointed toward the forest, "will you save me?"

The beast looked over his shoulder at the tree line then faced me. His furry face was aghast as if he couldn't believe I was asking him to save me from certain death.

"Fine, then. We'll just stay away from the trees until the fairy gets back. I'm sure we can make what we need from clay."

Speaking of making things, what was up on the list again? I needed to build the Cultivator Summoning Altar and, to do that, I needed one large stone, an offering bowl, and a summoning formation. To get the offering bowl, I needed to make a clay kiln. I didn't know where to get the other two resources.

But that was fine. We could work on finding the stone first. Luckily for us, we were on a riverbank. Surely there were plenty of large stones to collect.

Looking up and down the riverbank, however, shut down that line of thought quickly. What few rocks around were about the size of my palm or smaller. None I could see just by glancing around would qualify as a large stone.

Or maybe...Maybe I'm thinking about this wrong. I was picturing something like a boulder but the system didn't say that, did it? I needed to lower my standards for this large rock hunt.

With a firm vision in mind, I picked up the biggest rock I could find. I had to dig it out of the dirt but, eventually, I held it proudly in my hands. Now, to check out if this is the 'large stone' the system requested.

...

How do I do that?

I'd only ever accessed two parts of the system on my own and neither of those, I didn't think, would help me here. Now would've been a great time for the fairy to pop back in and tell me the command. I waited for an entire minute in a half, searching the skies for any sign of the tiny magical woman. No sign of her anywhere.

Huffing, I stomped my foot and turned to Nun, thinking to somehow get the information out of him. Unfortunately for me, the monkey was too preoccupied splashing around in the river. I watched him paddle around in the shallow area, duck down, and then come back up a second later, carrying a smooth and round river rock. The monkey squeaked happily, swimming back to dry land and putting the rock on top of a pile of other similar stones.

He's too cute...