Gonna keep this one relatively short. Between the apparently thousands of words I wrote yesterday, the brick making yesterday, and the work we did today, my wrists are pretty sore. Still, it's very important that I document something.

Levy and I are idiots.

Let me explain.

When we went to bed last night we were each in our own sleeping bags but we shared the tent. It wasn't cramped, but there wasn't more than a foot of space between us. Sleeping in a tent… wasn't easy. Not just because of the cute girl right next to me and my overactive imagination. No, it was mostly because both the tent and the sleeping bag were very thin and it barely felt better than just sleeping directly on the ground.

Thankfully the grass and soil of the Skyblock are pretty soft and free of rocks, so it could have been a lot worse. But I was used to mattresses. Roughing it like this is going to take some adjustment.

Both of us slept in our clothes because we didn't have anything else. If possible I'd like to schedule a clothes shopping trip when the portal opens, but who knows if we'll have time for that.

We both ended up waking up at around the same time, when the tent started lighting up and the sun rose. That's another adjustment I'm going to have to make. I was quite the night owl before, but now the sun dictates when I sleep.

We used the toilet hole, used our canteens to wash up a bit, and then checked the bricks. Levy deemed them dry enough that we could finish drying them by placing them near a fire. So she made the word 'SAND' with her magic, which instantly dissolved into a pile as soon as it hit the ground, and I spread it in a big circle using the shovel. We'd be working with fire and didn't want to risk burning the grass up.

She then made a fire with her magic(have I mentioned how useful her magic is?) and we placed the bricks around it. We had too many bricks so we had to do it on rotation. Levy said that if we didn't do this and we tried to fire them, the bit of moisture inside the bricks might explode as it expanded in the heat.

And that took most of the morning. We stopped for another lunch of blapples and then got to work putting together the actual kiln.

The design of it is pretty neat actually. It's essentially a square tube stacked on a grill made of bricks. There's a little shelf for firewood that allows air to flow under it, and above that are the bricks spaced with room between them so the heat and ash travel upwards, all in a two foot tall chimney with an open top. We used the bricks to form the structure, but didn't use adhesive. Gravity would hold it together, apparently. It seemed stable enough when we used it today.

Though this is the part of how we're idiots come into play.

We get to start making more bricks, this time with the intention of actually firing them in the kiln to use in more things, when I realize something.

When Levy did her trick to make brick molds using the 'O' of 'STONE', she also created 'STNE', each as individual letters. We used the 'T' as a tool to scrape the top even to make uniform bricks, but the other letters were just stacked to the side.

I put the 'T' down after making a handful of bricks to take a break and stretch my wrists, stacking it on the other letters. My eyes wandered as I did, first on Levy, who was focusing on the brick of clay she was working on. Then to the empty void of the sky, then to the pile of bricks. And then I decided my wrists were stretched enough and looked at the stack of letters that I put the 'T' on.

'T', 'N', and 'E' all have at least one part of them that are long and straight, and the way they were stacked had all of those lined up, with 'S' on the bottom being the only outlier.

But it was the way they neatly lined up, at least from the angle I was looking at them, that made it click in my mind, and I let out an audible groan.

"What?" Levy asked, concerned and looking up from her own brick.

"I think we're over complicating this," I said. "Can you do me a favor? Make the word 'Brick' twice? Uppercase 'B' and let the letters separate."

"Sure, but they won't serve as very good bricks," Levy warned, though she did as I asked and soon there were ten letters made of brick in front of me.

"I'm not so sure about that," I said. "Sure, as a word, it's not a good brick. But if you do this…" I trailed off as I grabbed the 'B' from both words and then stacked them on top of each other. Then I looked up at her. "A 'B' is flat on one side, but even with the other side being curved it's actually pretty close to being in the shape of a brick. Aside from the rounded corners and divot in the middle, the outside edges are all supported. For most things we need to make out of brick, this would work perfectly fine. Sure, it'll look a little weird from the outside, but the inside will be totally normal flat bricks."

Levy looked at the pile of 'B's for a moment before making a few more of the same size, tossing aside the extra letters. Then she stacked the brick 'B's in an alternating fashion, looking at how they lined up.

Finally, she sighed. "I completely missed this," she admitted, tone apologetic. "You started talking about clay and bricks and I jumped straight to the brick making methods that I've read about."

"Hey, I missed it too, until just now anyway," I tried to comfort her.

"But it's my magic," she insisted.

"And you've never used it anywhere close to like this before," I reasoned. "As a material production method. That's very different from using it as a weapon or tool."

"I guess…" she allowed. "I just feel like we wasted so much time."

"Oh don't worry about that," I said. "We would have saved… What, half a day? We still want the kiln after all, to make other clay stuff. Besides, trial and error, figuring out better ways to do things as we go along, that's the whole Skyblock experience. We've got all the time in the world, we don't need to aim for peak efficiency."

She looked at me then, and I wasn't sure what her expression was, but she relaxed and smiled. "You're right, of course. If nothing else, it was fun!"

I smiled back at her. "That's the spirit. Now, the important question- can you make enough B-Bricks to make a bathtub? Or is that too taxing on your magic?"

She shook her head. "No, I could make hundreds of that size in a day, especially if I pace it out throughout the day. Though it is inefficient in terms of mana use compared to making our own out of clay since we're not using the full word."

"Well set the other letters aside and we might be able to do something with them," I said. "The 'i's can maybe be used as smaller bricks, or connecting B-Bricks by sticking them in the holes. And the 'C's can be stuck together to make a pipe-like structure. We'll have to drain the bathtub after all. We can maybe figure out a way to use the other letters too, or break them down and use it as a kind of gravel or something."

Levy nodded. "Right. We'll just set them aside for now then." She grins. "This means we can get started on the tub immediately!"

"If we work fast we might even finish it tonight," I replied.

We didn't though. I definitely underestimated just how much work it would take.

Levy used her magic to make hundreds of the bricks, leaving us with a large pile of the other letters. I'll have to organize those later. But we used the ones she made to start making the tub. We decided on a small above ground tub, and started with the bottom layer. By placing B-bricks so that the curved parts rested on the ground, their smooth sides faced upward, providing a pretty nice surface to lay on.

Or, well, it looks like it will. They're still individual bricks. As we placed them down though, and Levy connected them with a thin layer of clay, gluing them together. She also used the excess that squished out from between them to smooth out the seams as best she could. I questioned the logic of using finished bricks only to add non-fired clay to it, but she said she'd be able to fire it with her magic once it was done, so I dropped my protests.

We then did the same thing, slowly building a frame layer by layer. We left a gap in the bottom layer so we could drain the water, essentially just skipping a brick. When I asked if she had any plans for how to plug it, she used her magic to make 'Cork' and used the 'C' to seal the hole. It was large enough that she had to squeeze it slightly to make it fit, meaning it should be water tight but still be easily removable.

Even with two pairs of hands, we didn't quite manage to finish before the sun set. There's still at least two more rows we have to do, but I could tell Levy was exhausted, so I insisted we stopped. The combination of magic and physical labor was taking a toll on her.

In fact, she's asleep right now, having gone to bed almost immediately after washing her hands of the clay. I decided to stay outside the tent a bit and enjoy the night sky while I write today's journal.

I didn't realize it last night, but looking up now and thinking about it… there's no moon. I've looked at the sky a dozen times the past couple days and not once have I seen any sign of anything but the sun and the other more distant stars.

… I really am far from home, aren't I?

I think I'm gonna end the journal entry here. I'm getting tired too.

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AN: Writing journal style is pretty interesting. Not every entry will be the same length, the tone is very casual and conversational, though when it comes to dialogue it shifts back into being pretty prose-like. And the tense is both past and present tense depending on the sentence, flowing back and forth very organically.

But the most interesting part is how I represent Roland. Roland is writing this journal, not me- that's what I'm trying to keep in mind as I write. This influences tons of little things. Sometimes he's not entirely truthful, or there are things he doesn't realize or recognize. He doesn't use his own name often, because how often do you refer to yourself as your own name? The things he focuses on and the way he focuses are key factors as well. Keep that in mind while you're reading, see if you can decipher the subtext.

Roland is also one of my less immediately gung-ho characters. I've tried to take a bit more of a realistic and non-power fantasy tone with him. I want to get across just how much of a normal person he is placed in a strange situation. Why? Well, because power fantasy is nice and all, but this unique perspective into his character also presents a terrific opportunity to see how he grows over his journey, something he can't do if he starts out with a complete handle on things. Roland as he's presented here is the starting point, but it won't be long before he's grown and changed a significant amount. So please don't judge him too harshly for his hesitance and insecurities, they won't last forever.

And if you're impatient for lewds… Well, it won't be long.