Inside the Endless Sea Observation Room at Valley View Academy, every pair of eyes remained glued to a single projection.
Ever since Reed Newt surged into first place on the standings with terrifying momentum, a crowd of instructors had gathered around his screen.
They monitored his every move, constantly on edge, terrified he might quietly trigger yet another chaotic incident.
“Look!
He’s at it again!
He’s just wandering around the island!” a tutor shouted, pointing directly at the display.
The room stirred.
Instructors jostled for position around Reed’s island projection, studying the feed with hawkish scrutiny.
“Every single time he does this, it ends the same way,” one mentor muttered, crossing his arms.
“He wanders aimlessly, quietly unearths tons of hidden gunpowder, and vaporizes the local sea monsters.”
“He just cleared a massive wave, though,” another pointed out.
“There barely are any monsters left on his territory right now.
He isn’t in any actual danger.”
“That’s what makes it so absurd!” a third teacher grumbled, throwing up his hands.
“The other top candidates are out there risking their lives to slay beasts, while this guy is practically taking a casual afternoon shopping stroll!”
The instructors bickered in frustrated amusement.
They felt a volatile mix of admiration and absolute headache toward the boy.
Reed firmly anchored himself at the very top of the rankings, completely suppressing the top talents of his generation.
But he didn’t achieve it through the traditional path of an evolutionary, he was doing it with raw, unadulterated black powder!
“What in the world is he planning this time?” Meinhard Janek murmured, leaning closer to the projection with narrowed eyes.
The Island Holder trial had barely entered its second day.
Every other candidate scrambled to track down sea monsters, fighting tooth and nail to bolster their combat power.
Reed, on the other hand, treated the trial like a resort vacation, working for three days only to slack off for two.
His main focus seemed to be figuring out how to optimize his domestic comfort on the barren land.
On the screen, Reed finally halted after several hours of pacing.
He stood directly at the center of the island, retrieved a sharp chunk of white stone, and strode toward a thick grove of towering ancient trees.
With deliberate strokes, he carved a single word into the trunk of every colossal tree: DEMOLISH.
A careful eye could quickly see that the marked trees outlined a massive, perfectly symmetrical square.
Before Meinhard Janek could even process the odd sight, Reed turned on his heel and resumed strolling across the terrain. Get faster updates on g.com.
Hours ticked by before Reed eventually halted before an exposed ridge of solid, dark boulders on the outskirts of the forest.
Without hesitation, he began carefully burying thick caches of gunpowder at key stress points along the stone face.
“Is he…
setting up another trap?” Meinhard’s brow furrowed, his expression tightening as he tried to anticipate the boy’s strategy.
“Is he trying to lure in another massive wave of sea monsters?”
Before anyone could validate the theory, Reed casually pulled out a chunk of flint, struck a spark, and detonated the fuse.
BOOM!
A deafening explosion shattered the stillness of the island.
Shockwaves rippled through the dirt as the massive boulders fractured and burst apart.
When the smoke finally cleared, it revealed a vast, glittering vein of dense brown ore exposed at the bottom of the crater.
“Wait…
that’s iron ore!” Meinhard’s eyes widened in sudden realization.
“It really is iron ore,” a mentor chimed in, bewildered.
“Don’t tell me he’s planning to smelt iron right here?”
“Smelting isn’t just basic survival, it’s high-tech metallurgy!” another argued, shaking his head.
“Refining raw iron ore and stripping away slag requires precise knowledge.
Most students wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“Besides, what’s the point?” another tutor added.
“Even if he manages to forge crude iron swords or spears, they won’t match the destructive power of his gunpowder against high-tier sea monsters.”
The observation room dissolved into confused chatter.
While iron weapons could pierce monster hide, the sheer labor required to mine and refine raw ore made it an inefficient choice.
The smelting process was far too complex for a standard candidate to execute under field conditions.
Yet, right before their disbelieving eyes, Reed launched into a textbook-perfect demonstration of primitive metallurgy.
Working with methodical precision, Reed grabbed heavy hand-stones and smashed the high-grade ore into fine powder, carefully separating the rich iron dust from useless grit.
Next, he located a heat-resistant, bowl-shaped rock structure, packed it with the refined iron powder and crushed coke, and sealed the primitive furnace.
He kindled a roaring blast fire underneath, stoking the flames continuously.
For seven grueling hours, the fire blazed.
Slowly, the contents inside the stone crucible softened, liquefied, and turned into a glowing, brilliant orange stream of molten iron.
Reed moved without a single wasted motion. Find the original chapter at g.com.
He quickly packed damp sand into a tight square mold and poured the liquid metal directly into the frame.
Before long, a crude, steaming iron pot cooled on the grass.
Without taking a break, Reed leveraged his newly forged iron pot to process the remaining raw powder at twice the speed.
With proper cookware, his refining efficiency skyrocketed.
Batch after batch of incandescent liquid iron boiled over the fire.
In rapid succession, a complete arsenal of functional tools emerged from the sand molds: heavy hammers, iron spatulas, axes, hunting knives, shovels, saws, and structural rods.
Once the primary hammer was forged, Reed use advanced folding techniques to forge the metal again and again, he worked the hot iron until he transformed the soft metal into hardened steel, exponentially improving its strength and durability.
The entire procedure was fluid, rhythmic, and shockingly professional, like a master craftsman who had practiced the trade for decades.
The instructors stood frozen in dead silence.
“Holy shit?!” a mentor blurted out, breaking the quiet.
“Where did he learn iron-smelting?!
And folding steel techniques?!”
“Does…
does our academy curriculum even cover this?!” another asked, frantically looking around the room.
“Look at the screen!
He picked up the new iron axe and went right back to the marked grove!”
While the faculty struggled to process the shock, Reed marched back to the center of the island, brandishing his newly forged, razor-sharp steel axe.
He set to work clearing the forest.
The giant trees marked with the word DEMOLISH began to crash down one after another with thunderous thuds.
Compared to his old, fragile stone tools, his clearing speed had increased by ten-fold.
Tree by tree, an enormous clearing emerged from the dense jungle, a perfectly level expanse measuring a hundred meters long by a hundred meters wide.
As soon as the timber was cleared, Reed hauled several crates of gunpowder over to the rocky quarry.
He initiated a relentless campaign of controlled blasting.
Explosions echoed rhythmically across the island as boulder after boulder shattered into uniform stone blocks, piling high around the excavation site.
“He…
he isn’t trying to forge weapons at all…” Meinhard Janek swallowed hard, his mind reeling as the full scope of the plan clicked into place.
First, forging durable iron and steel tools.
Next, clear-cutting a massive square plot of land.
And now, systematically quarrying tons of structural stone using high explosives…
“He’s preparing to build an entire fortified fortress”