An Easily Distracted Hero

I stared at the open forge with a contemplative expression, before looking over to Tinker.

"Hey, do you think it would hurt me if I dunked my hand in the lava?" I asked them.

Tinker just stared at me with a look that screamed 'Are you serious?' before sighing.

"Just try it." They said in defeat.

"Okay!" I said in a happy tone.

{You sound like a child that got to play with their favorite toy.} The Gods commented.

I just grinned and stuck my hand into the forge.

And immediately yanked it out.

"Fucking Hell!!!" I shouted, repeatedly shaking my hand aggressively in pain.

I turned to look at Tinker with an annoyed look on my face.

"You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?" I asked.

Their answer came in the form of a large smirk.

"I expected it to." Tinker answered.

I stopped swinging my hand around like a madman after a few moments, though the searing pain was all but gone.

I looked over the skull in my hand and looked back to Tinker, holding it up.

"You have any ideas on how I'm going to carry this thing around without using my hands?" I asked.

Tinker just looked over to me and gave a single answer: "Ask the clothier."

I raised an eyebrow at the short response, but I nodded my head in agreement, as I already had plans to get the old man to make me new clothes.

"Alright." I complied.

I turned my focus back to the forge and began pulling out the materials needed for hellstone bars.

I took out both the ore and the obsidian, tossing a few pieces in to see what the correct ratio of obsidian to ore was.

After I tossed in 3 ore and 1 obsidian, I was rewarded with a single bar.

"Okay, so it's a 3:1 ratio. I have more than enough materials then." I muttered.

And so I began to work through the materials I had in my inventory, ending with me having over a two hundred separate bars of hellstone.

I stared at the large pile of semi-molten metal in front of me and said nothing.

"You know, I think that the obsidian skull thing you made was extremely necessary." I said to Tinker.

Tinker looked at me and nodded.

"I wasn't sure if the skull would work, but it seems that it was more than effective for what you need." He commented.

{Are you going to make your armor or what?} The Gods said impatiently.

"Geez, you are quite impatient for a being that has existed for so long." I said.

Tinker didn't react to my response to the Gods, which I chalked up to the fact that it was a common enough occurrence that they had gotten used to it.

{Yeah well maybe we got tired of waiting for so long.} The Gods retorted childishly.

"You know, I can't say that that seems like something you wouldn't do, to be honest." I said to the Gods.

{Because it isn't something we wouldn't do.} They said.

"So many double negatives." I commented offhandedly.

{Well it's not like we wouldn't not do something we usually don't not do. It isn't that hard to understand.} The Gods said.

"In other words, it's not that you would do something you would usually do." I said.

{Exactly.}

"Makes sense, knowing you." I said.

{We feel like that was an insult.}

I sat down on the ground and stared at the sky.

"That's because it is an insult, you idiot."

{We see.}

I looked at the expansive blue sky, examining every cloud with interest due to my newfound boredom.

As I stared at the clouds, I noticed that a few were slightly different from the rest.

"Okay, so that one looks like... a face. A very detailed face." I said in both confusion and astonishment. "Why?"

{nature is weird.}

"Never have truer words been spoken by you."

I stopped focusing on the face in the sky in favor of looking at the separate point of interest: Te floating island.

"I completely forgot that those were a thing." I muttered to myself.

I decided to stop cloud gazing for now, as there were more important things I needed to do.

I looked around and widened my eyes slightly as I saw Tinker.

They noticed my slight surprise at seeing them and glared at me.

"Did you seriously forget I was here after staring at the sky for two minutes?"

I scratched the back of my head.

"Maybe?" I answered.

"Is your attention span that short?" He asked incredulously.

"I like to compare it to Schrodinger's Cat. Is it short? Is it long? I've got no freaking idea!" I answered.

Tinker just stared at me for a moment, before speaking.

"That would probably make sense if I knew who Schrodinger was. Or whatever a cat is." He said.

I stared back at Tinker for a moment before speaking as well.

"So cats don't exist in this world?" I asked.

"Based on the fact that I have absolutely no clue what a cat is, the answer is most likely yes." He explained.

I stared at the goblin for a moment before breaking into exaggerated motions once more.

"Damn you Gods!" {We can hear you, you know.} "How dare you deny me the pleasure of owning a cat in this world!" {Just ask the Zoologist. She sells permits that summon pets.}

I paused and blinked for a moment, before returning to my previous tone of voice.

"Blessed be the Gods!" I exclaimed happily. "They have granted me knowledge that shall bring me eternal happiness!"

I stopped my exaggerated motions and turned to Tinker.

"That was excessively dramatic, for absolutely no reason." He said flatly.

"Yeah, but it was slightly fun to curse at the Gods loudly." I admitted.

{We can proudly say that it was not as fun to get cursed at.}

Tinker just looked at me unamusedly.

"weren't you supposed to be working on upgrading your tools?" He asked.

I widened my eyes.

"Damn me and my paradoxical attention span." I said quietly.

"So are you going to work on your gear or what?" Tinker asked. "If you don't start now you're just going to forget again."

And so I went over to the pile of molten bars and got to work.