Optimizing my abilities meant learning to use them according to the laws of physics.
Learning tricks that let me lift more, throw farther, and last longer without burning out.
I’d already created tentacles with stones at their tips, letting me accelerate objects without spending much energy.
I could learn to do the same with literally every ability that Earthbenders, or rather master architects, had honed over years.
I wasn’t trying to show off or claim I worked better than the honest workers.
There were too many subtleties I could learn from all of them.
I’d learned that truth back in the desert, when Ba’el and Hamri taught me the basics of combat, sharpening, and survival.
The first few days, they just made me use the abrasive correctly.
Because of my wrong technique, it wore down too fast.
Turns out the disks themselves could be reused.
It wasn’t that hard a trick to sharpen the abrasive grains and keep using them until the disk vanished.
Completely.
The workers who’d praised my fast but wrong approach tried to correct my technique.
Putting my hands in the right position, they showed me how it was really done.
It was hard to describe, but I managed, adding to the library’s collection with a strange scroll full of Earth Kingdom workers’ swear words.
Falling asleep in the room Koal had given me, not far from the forge, I could feel Wan Shi Tong, somewhere far away, covering me with those very same words.
In return, I read the books Afka brought from the library.
They helped deepen the practical knowledge I’d gained all day.
“I don’t get it,” Koal said one morning when I arrived early, as usual.
He was drinking tea.
“You come here like it’s school.
Even when I was a brat, I never came to learn with that kind of smile.”
“Morning.” Next to him stood Coal.
He didn’t greet me, but Afka, whom he loved to feed.
Spirits could eat too.
All the sly little fox had to do was nuzzle the giant’s head, making him coo and want to pet her.
“Don’t show off too much.
Or people from Factorio will come, and you’ll agree to work for them.
What will I do then?” Koal gave me a suspicious look.
Since I was boosting his revenue, he’d started grumbling about my passion for outworking everyone else.
But he was doing everything he could to keep me there.
“I wanted to ask,” I leaned against a pillar and tilted my head.
“What’s Factorio?”
“…A production facility.
Deep in Omashu.” Koal studied my eyes and sighed.
“Underneath our city is a huge crystal deposit.
There are Jennamites, edible crystals.
And other varieties processed in Factorio.
They’re used to make glass, mirrors, and other shiny things they love in Ba Sing Se.
Oh, and they also mine coal there.” He nodded toward Coal.
“And metals.
Working in Factorio is like being a miner.
But I wouldn’t go there if I were you.”
“Why?”
“Dangerous,” Coal finally spoke, raising his serious gaze.
“Dust storms from cave-ins poison and bury a lot of newbies.
Lose your legs and you can’t use earthbending anymore.”
“Yeah, those guys are skilled, but I’ve seen so many cripples I’ve lost count.” Koal sighed and turned toward the men arriving for work.
They quickly stripped off their outer clothes, showing off huge muscles, and put on their aprons.
They shook each other’s hands, muscles practically creaking from the strain, and all stared at me.
The repetitive days kept improving my skills.
For heavy strike work, which happened constantly in a blacksmith’s forge, the guys taught me to shape stone objects properly.
Pulling well-shaped stones from the ground, cylinder, cube, or simple circle depending on the task, and then putting the right force behind them.
It was surprising how much more dangerous a well-shaped projectile became.
As Anubis said, this was intense training in strength and transformation.
“You can do it, Dagot!”
“Don’t give up.
Tense your muscles like a man!”
“Raa!” Feeling huge hands holding my shoulders, surrounded by cheering men, I gritted my teeth and lifted the heaviest tray of compressed coal off the ground.
I had to toss it into the superheated furnace that powered the entire forge.
Lifting giant weights was a requirement for forge benders.
You couldn’t get far lifting rocks your own weight.
You had to work with massive volumes.
And that was just the beginning…
“Now get to work!”
“Hurry up while the fire’s blazing like a dragon!”
The supportive men made me stop at the anvil and start forging.
Using measured strikes with stones against the red-hot metal, shaping it while pushing myself harder than ever.
Loosen your grip, strike weaker than the others, and you’d ruin the quality.
You had to become a literal machine, maintaining consistent high performance.
All to create quality armor for Earth Kingdom soldiers.
After just one day’s work, I started looking at the workers like heroes.
They couldn’t adapt to battle conditions.
Probably couldn’t handle Fire Nation soldiers one-on-one.
But they learned to maintain high standards.
Unwavering standards.
“Do they really not try to recruit such skilled benders into the army?” I asked during lunch break.
The men were eating from small containers with healthy, high-calorie food.
Hearing my question, they exchanged glances.
“If we have to defend the city, we’ll be the first to run and do it,” Coal said seriously.
“Our skills are for building strong structures.
The speed of projectile throwing that soldiers need?
We’re not built for that.
We’re strong but slow.”
For a second, I remembered the tournaments from Avatar Korra’s time.
In those heavy battles, they relied on skill and speed.
That wasn’t these slow guys.
“Besides,” one of them whispered while the others flexed, “we all have families.
I want to protect my loved ones.
I genuinely want this war to end, but protecting my family matters more.” He smiled warmly at his lunch container.
“Speaking of, Dagot.
Do you have anyone?” For some reason, all the observant looks turned to me.
When I silently shook my head, they all laughed and insisted that sooner or later, someone would come along.
I sat without smiling, watching people whose luck let them live peacefully.
I had to keep improving.
The most important secret, abrasive production, I still hadn’t learned.
That’s where the secret of mastering a new element, a whole new branch, crystals, was hidden.
Even though the guys had grown attached to me and Koal didn’t want me to leave, I deliberately improved and boosted the forge’s revenue, waiting for a specific day.
My open Earth Chakra let me develop my bending a little faster.
This bypassed any possible failures.
Word of the forge’s revenue spread through the city, and soon someone came to us.
“Recruiting for Factorio.
Anyone want to help the city with real work?” An ordinary man with a stack of papers, looking like some bureaucrat, walked into the forge and fanned himself to beat the heat.
All the men turned to him with barely concealed anger.
Coal stood and loomed over the man, staring with that monstrous intensity of his.
It seemed like his broad back was protecting his friends.
Or maybe just trying to scare the visitor away, because the man flinched so hard he stepped back, ready to bolt.
“Understood.
I’ll say no one’s inter…”
“I want to.” I stood up and stepped forward.
My muscles had grown more defined, hardened from lifting heavy weights.
Knowledge from books had already prepared me for mining work.
I’d read so much about extraction methods and mining that I probably knew more than everyone here combined.
“Dagot…” Koal opened his mouth, looking at me with the same heaviness as Coal.
“Why?”
“You’ve learned to defend yourselves perfectly.
You think these walls will be an impenetrable fortress for your loved ones.
I won’t say how naive that is.
Defense doesn’t always depend on wall height, but also on luck.
And luck can only be outplayed by strength.”
I pulled my cloth hood back on, adjusted my mask, and walked toward the bureaucrat.
“That outfit…
you said you were from the desert?” Koal squinted, while the others slowly opened their eyes.
“Isn’t that…
a sandbender’s uniform?
And from the side, he looks like the one from the rumors.” Heavy work had made me grow.
The labor made me seem even harder.
“And that control…”
“The Sandbender himself,” they murmured, watching my retreating back.
The bureaucrat tried to hurry out of the forge.
I followed at a measured pace, not looking back at the workers’ complex expressions.
I did one thing for them, out of gratitude.
Afka, walking beside me, took a scroll from my hands, returned to Coal, and gave him part of my work.
When they unrolled it, they saw a huge list of techniques I’d optimized.
A fusion of library knowledge and practice.
Understanding how to deliver stronger strikes.
How to accelerate objects even faster.
And most importantly, my Magnum Opus, the first chapter on opening the Earth Chakra.
They didn’t need my personal guidance.
They’d already come as close as possible to opening it.
They just needed a push, which I gave them.
When I finally looked back, seeing the stunned men gathering together to read, a smile spread across my face.
“There’s a way to get rid of embedded coal dust!” the guys shouted, looking at Coal.
The path to opening my second chakra had begun.
Joy for what I’d done started replacing the guilt.