[IonoZone: wat r u doing?]

  “I'm getting wood”

  [IonoZone: y?]

  “Well it just feels like the smart thing to do”

  It's like Minecraft, right? This just feels like a necessary step.

  Luckily he doesn't need to punch it, he just has his aura envelope a meter of it and it slowly gets added to his inventory. It looks like the tool requirements are a thing, as just like the game he's able to collect wood without one.

  He collects a few logs, and even some saplings as his aura goes over the leaves, Joshua isn't sure of their use now, as there's no way trees grow fast enough to benefit. But the firewood helps.

  Putting a log in his crafting input, predictability it turns into the usual four pnks.

  Two pnks into eight sticks, four into a crafting table. It's like muscle memory how weirdly familiar these actions were, nostalgic at the days of just starting a world.

  Question is, how do you pce down something? In the game it's as simple as a click of a mouse, but that's not an option here.

  Joshua goes to his inventory and hovers his hand over the crafting table. His hand goes through the screen. But once he wills it, he's able to move the crafting table around his inventory.

  Maybe if he moves it to the hotbar?

  Moving it to his hotbar, he tries to ‘select’ it. Surprisingly a translucent crafting table appears in his palm.

  It's small, how is this supposed to be usable?

  He hears a snort behind him.

  Looking over, Jophiel still has that calm smile, but from her small quivering he can tell she's holding back a ugh.

  “What are you…”

  Oh. Right, psychic type.

  “How are you gonna ugh at something I said in my mind?”

  Jophiel just turns away, refusing to meet his eyes.

  Joshua scoffs and looks back at his hand.

  It definitely doesn't seem right, what happens if he tries to ‘pce’ it?

  His eyes widen as the image of a translucent outline appears on the ground, and the visage of the crafting table forms inside it.

  Willing to ‘pce’ it, the crafting table disappears from his inventory and appears in pce of the outline with a small wooden thud.

  “So it shows me a preview? That's a little different…”

  He hears the awkward cpping of hooves behind him.

  “Thank you”

  A soft cry from the mare is his response.

  [IonoZone: wooooaaahhhh r u a psychic?! magician????]

  “Haven't you been watching the whole time?”

  [IonoZone: o I thought this was a movie trailer or smth so I wasnt paying attn… ( ′-ω-) ]

  Joshua's been demoted to a movie trailer it seems. He'd feel offended if he didn't actually understand, considering how weird his situation is.

  But hey, he figured out how to pce things, so small miracles.

  “Jophiel, come here”

  “Pon?”

  Joshua reaches down and picks the unicorn up, setting her on top of the crafting table but with the table's size (it's a meter wide) and the fact he doesn't actually need to use the table physically aside from the screen that appeared once he interacts with it.

  It's just a crafting grid, but a 3×3 this time. Jophiel looks over the screen, intrigued by the strange hologram(?).

  Joshua was delightfully surprised too, he's gd he doesn't actually have to craft things manually.

  He makes basic tools and alings them in his hotbar, along with his leftover logs and wood. The hotbar is… weird, when not under Minecraft logic. He's able to switch to the 9 different slots mentally without opening his inventory, simir to the game. But anything else he'll have to open the inventory and switch it.

  A wooden sword, axe, shovel, and pickaxe. The pin handle of the axe feels like a rolling pin in terms of texture, a weirdly specific comparison but one that worked for him.

  While the bde is sharp, it is still wood, and its fragility is not hard to discover with a few swings of the thing.

  “Wonder if I even need to use this…” With his aura, he doesn't need to touch something to ‘break’ it, it would make no sense if he has to switch to manual bor now.

  And he's proven right, as he hovers his aura over the crafting table and it goes into his inventory at a much faster rate with the axe in his hand.

  To try it again, he chops down a few more trees, noting the noticeable increase in speed at which he's able to collect them.

  To his surprise, a fsh of red enters his inventory before he can see what it was. Opening it, he's met with one of the slots being filled with apples.

  He forgot that trees drop apples. Plucking one out of his inventory, he hands it over to Jophiel, but when he looks over she's been staring into the treeline with a weird tenseness to her posture.

  “Jophiel?”

  Her ear flicks, but her gaze never leaves the trees.

  “Are… you okay?”

  Jophiels's gaze moves to Joshua, then back to the trees, and then back to Joshua.

  Joshua senses her unease and looks out into the trees. And in that moment, it's like all the sound in the world was suddenly snuffed out.

  He doesn't see anything.

  But… strangely, that doesn't calm him. Like he's simply not aware of some threat, the subconscious mind warning him of a threat not yet recognized.

  Something is in there.

  Gritting his teeth, he slowly puts his stuff away and grabs Jophiel and pces her on his shoulders. Her hooves wrap around his head, body shaking slightly but her expression stern. It seems she's shaken up, but she's smart enough to not make any sounds.

  A wooden sword appears in his palm, it feels heavy, but the sense of security it gives him makes his steps more confident as he moves backwards, never taking his eyes off the treeline.

  His footsteps seem so much louder, cursing each time a branch crunches under his feet.

  He isn't sure how long it took to reach the pokecenter again. But when he did, he noticed the cold sweat down his back, and the soreness of his palm as he clenched the sword so tightly.

  [IonoZone: wat??? wat happen???]

  Joshua stares at the message.

  He isn't sure himself.