The rise of the pervert primordial - Chapter 729 - 729: The second day of the development trial (part 8)
The second day of the development trial (part 8)
Now that the black horse was assigned to one of the “big sisters”, Espi let go of its neck to then jump into the air, landing on Aster’s back to then hang from his neck, she was basically hugging Aster the same way Kana did a second ago.
“Hissss~”, naturally that earned the little wyrm a head pat from Aster, which made her cutely hiss in response, unfortunately for the black horse at least, seeing others getting spoiled by Aster while she has to be separated from him, stirred Alice’s jealousy, luckily, she now had someone to vent her anger on.
After Espi had let go of his neck, for a fraction of a second the black horse thought of making a run for his life, but before he could order his legs to move, his instincts made his body freeze on the spot.
“Hey, I have the incredibly important mission of creating a comfy love nest before night comes, so if you slow me down even for a second, you are dead meat”, casually said Alice with a smile that wasn’t smile as she approached the horse whose body’s shivering only stopped when Alice tied a rope around his neck.
That’s right, the black horse only stopped fearing for his life when he was being restrained again, for a good reason, only then did he escaping became difficult, which meant that Alice didn’t have to worry about getting distracted from what she’s been working on since morning, so her killing intent finally diminished, which allowed the black horse to breathe again.
As to why Alice was so terrifying for the black horse that’s simple, half of it was caused because the black horse had started to feel afraid of Espi who is a dragon, and his instincts reacted to Alice who is also a dragon, which combined with her killing intent, made the black horse’s instincts prevent him from doing anything that could anger her.
“That’s more like it”, said the wild dragon princess as she left to continue with her work, not without her attitude taking a 180° as she threw a kiss to Aster, which made both Guardian and the mare to gaze at Aster, who tried to divert the attention from the previous by clearing his throat as he said.
“Ahem, that guy won’t even dare of thinking about escaping now, there are still a few hours left before we have to stay within the vicinity of the camp, so let’s go gather those resources we talked about earlier”, he said to the lynx, through Mira.
Guardian nodded but before she could answer, the mare communicated something to her, which was then explained by the lynx to Mira.
“That filly wants to help gather food for the foals and the other horses, she is asking permission to go to the area where the strawberries grow”, said the ligress girl, to which Aster shook his head in response.
“Entering the forest is not a good idea, even if it’s the border, just her silhouette seen from afar by a random animal that it’s not one of the snakes might attract attention, however she can wait near the forest and carry bags with fruit that the girls of the sect will be collecting, back to the camp if she wants”, he said, which Guardian translated for the mare, the answer from that filly was an immediate nod.
Besides that, very much to the displease of the young eagle, he was told to stay put in this area outside of the forest, the eagle was not unconvinced just because he was told to stay put, but because Espi was going with the group.
Unfortunately for the poor eagle, Guardian had the last word when it came to his situation, according to his mother, and after the lynx firmly growled at him, the discussion ended with the now slightly downcast-looking young eagle leaving with the mare to where the other horses were.
With that matter settled, Aster turned around and started walking towards the forest without looking too much in the camp’s direction, for a good reason, those girls from the blacksmith peak were doing their best to hide the amount of charcoal they were working on, because they wanted it to be a surprise for their senior brother.
Naturally if Aster wanted to, he could have more or less guessed it with a single glance, but he didn’t want to ruin the fun for those cute competitive girls.
“Which stop is the closest to where we currently are, the resource or the food gathering one?”, asked Aster to Guardian through Mira, to which the lynx softly growled in response.
“She says that she has three stops in mind, a hunting area which is close to another area where edible and usable plants and herbs for humans grow and one where we can find the ores we need, out of them all, the ore one is the closest”, said Mira, which took Aster by surprise.
“Tell her to take us to the where the ores are first, I’ll decide what to do after taking a look at it”, said Aster after a moment of contemplation.
Maybe it sounded strange to put ores over food in terms of priority, but Aster chose this because this way in the worst-case scenario, where the forest becomes too risky to explore due to the black horse going on a rampage before predicted, tonight’s dinner will just consist in fish and fruit, in other words while lacking a bit, they will still have food to eat, since they have access to the lake and there are trees that give fruit at the border near the camp.
However, there is no way to get ores without entering the forest, so that had to be crossed from the list first and formal.
Speaking of the ores, Aster was full of doubts about it, the reason as to why he put so much focus in going to the rocky mountainous area of this territory, even after they had confirmed that there was a crazed bear that frequented it, is because that’s where ores were basically guaranteed to exist.
‘She’s probably seen goethite, also known as “swamp iron” which can be found in forests where there are water bodies like this one, it requires a bit more processing than hematite, but it’s not a bad option’, thought Aster as they moved through the forest guided by Guardian, however his previous conclusion became less and less probable as the lynx took them through drier parts of the forest after making a lot of turns and deepening into hidden paths.
How did Aster know it, the color of the vegetation lacked that especially green luster that could be seen in the thicker parts of the forest, though the number of plants and trees remained similar in terms of numbers and size.
“Grrrr!”, with a slightly louder growl, Guardian stopped advancing, signaling the end of the journey to the first stop, the group had arrived to an area surrounded by trees with green-yellow leaves, which’s tops blocked the sky, meaning this area wasn’t visible from above.
That being said, there was a large empty space in between the trees which was empty of trees, and had only slightly longer than normal grass growing on it, needless to say but there was no water body in the vicinity, so Aster had discarded the theory of the swamp iron at this point.
However, based on the claw marks that he could see on basically all the trees in the vicinity, this was one of the areas were Guardian lived, which made sense as it was incredibly hard to find, based on how much in a hurry has Vivian been taking notes until this point, only now did she start drawing the respective directions on the map.
“It would have been easier to make the map if I was riding on her…”, mumbled the white-haired girl with a slight pout, she of course wanted the mount the lynx, but Guardian made a “counteroffer” to Aster, saying she’ll instead help them transport more of the ore.
All this started because the lynx could feel the curious gazes of the foals and the other horses, when they saw Vivian riding on her, so while she didn’t feel uncomfortable with Vivian, she also wanted to keep her image as a figure of authority, at least that’s how Mira explained it to Aster and the others.
“You can rest and focus on drawing the map, the rest will help with the ores… which I guess are buried somewhere around here?”, said Aster, the first part of his sentence was for Vivian and the others, while the last was for Guardian, well, before that it was for Mira who translated it for the lynx.
Guardian nodded in response, after seeing Aster being able to see the king of flying beasts while she was flying at a higher height than normal, to prevent being seen by the black horses, she had realized that the eyes of the black haired young human which seemed to be the leading figure among the group of humans she met, were unlike any let alone human she has seen, but also any animal.
So, she wasn’t surprised that Aster knew the ore couldn’t be found in the surface, the lynx made a few turns around the vicinity and after positioning in different angles, she used her claws to make cross marks on different parts of the ground.
The cross marks made by the lynx even had different sizes and the largest one was placed in the middle of the grass-filled area.
“Erick, your turn”, said Aster which made that barbarian-like friend of his to crank his neck as he took out the shovel out of his backpack.
“Leave it to me brothe… ouch”, as usual Erick was about to thunderously laugh as he started digging big chunks of dirt, but he was stopped in time by Tiana who “gently” slapped his head with her right hand, it was gentle because she didn’t send her younger brother flying like usual.
“We are trying to not draw attention here, so don’t scream”, said the energy constitution daughter, making Sophia sigh, as she was reminded of the times they were discovered while spying on an enemy because Erick’s loud voice, during their first missions before.
“Okay, okay, don’t bother paying me too much attention sis, didn’t mom tell you to spend as much time as you could with brother Aster since none of my sisters in law tagged along this time?”, said Erick, which made Tiana feel the urge to throw Erick into the ditch he was making to then cover it up with dirt, as she felt both Agnes and Vivian’s obvious gazes landing on her, while others also looked her way.
Luckily for Erick, he unexpectedly hit something with the shovel a second after he made Tiana give him a killing glare.
“Clang”, it was a clearly metal clashing against metal sound, that didn’t travel too far thanks to the dirt that was still covering the object that Erick had found.
“Huh, did the shovel get stuck in that rock”, said Erick, his arms tensed as he used a lot of strength before he was able to take out the shovel from the ground, revealing the black object that was painfully notorious when compared to the light brown color of the dirt that was surrounding it.
“Magnetite, now that’s unexpected”, said Aster, the color, shape and the fact that Erick whose brute force is high enough to break through large rocks with a tool, and yet he had trouble to take out the shovel, made it simple for him to conclude the previous.
And as if to confirm it, Erick moved the shovel close to the rock and it was immediately pulled towards it, demonstrating the magnetic properties of this ore, but while the previous was really interesting for Guardian, Aster was more surprised to see the size of the ore as Erick removed the dirt that was covering it.
The thing was as large as one of the adult horses and was full of dark gray parts, with a single gaze Aster could tell that thing contained even more iron than the best pieces of hematite he saw at the mountainous rocky area, which didn’t make sense.
‘How did such a fine piece or iron ore appear in the middle of a forest…’, he thought before a realization struck him like a bolt out of the blue.
“The volcano, this thing was expulsed by the volcano that is far northwest, past the plateau, right?”, he said to the lynx, who nodded before Mira even finished translating the question to her, another word she understood from human language was apparently “volcano”.
“Thanks”, limited to say Aster, which made Guardian slightly smile at him, he didn’t mention it in the open, but this piece of iron ore had much more deep meaning to it, than just being an excellent source of high-quality iron, that will be used for the final products while the hematite has been moved to be used for the learning curve of those girls.
Why you ask, well, the magnetite wasn’t buried too deep and Guardian knew where it was, so chances were that she was the one to cover it with dirt, which would mean the volcano erupted during the time when there were cultivators in this place, because Guardian had to have stopped being a regular member of her race at that point, otherwise why would a lynx bury a piece of rock that fell from the sky.
In other words, the trials were basically confirmed to include environment changes, like a volcano erupting, and though Guardian didn’t specify, there is a change this caused the death of a lot of the participants back then.
Of course, Aster doubted the blue flaming board would do something like that and the one supervising the development area at the time was a black smoke pillar according to Guardian, but the possibility of annoying environmental changes being a part of the trial, remained.
‘I’ll be sure to make enough preparations to deal with drastic changes in the environment’, he thought.
A wise leader is prepared for drought in a time of flood and Aster had learned his lesson after what happened in the road, on the other hand he was surprised that Guardian gave him such an important piece of information, though through an indirect way, after she had specified that she won’t be speaking about certain matters since she didn’t want to mess with the ones supervising this place.
This went past what a deal between strangers represented, she wouldn’t have taken this risk if she didn’t find Aster and the others trustable, probably her impression of them highly improved after seeing how the whole situation with the horses was managed by Aster.
“Okay, let’s make two travels and bring as much of the ore as we can along with us, we’ll leave the ores at the border of the forest and ask the girls from the sect to transport it to the camp”, said Aster as he took out the pickaxe and started breaking pieces of the magnetite, while the others did the same using hammers and chisels, of course it took them more time than with a pickaxe but the idea was to have everyone work at the same time so that they ended faster.
Once they had broken what Aster calculated was enough ore to replace what they would have found in two days of exploration, they started filling the backpacks with it, they were able to take an extra dozens of kilograms thanks to Guardian helping transport it as well.
There was a difference though, this ore contained from 80% to 90% of iron, unlike the hematite, so they would be getting way more refined iron out of it.
All in all, travelling back and forth the border of the forest and the place where the ore was buried, as well as covering the remaining piece of it with dirt once again, took them around an hour and a half, but with this they should be able to make at least one metal weapon for each member of the sect, if they focused in spears, daggers or arrows, which was enough for initial self-defense.
Besides the swords they will be making with the hematite found before of course, leaving the ore aside, Aster asked Guardian to take them to the hunting and herb rich areas now, luckily thanks to the high quality of the ore that the lynx has presented to Aster, they had to work less for more iron, so they also saved quite some time.
Just think about it, with the same number of travels, Aster will be obtaining around 60% more iron, and the ore was also way closer to the camp than the rocky area where they found the hematite yesterday, which means that they’ll have more time to hunt.
Speaking of that, Aster couldn’t help but ask.
“I’m planning to hunt three or four boars, is that okay with you?”, to which the lynx nodded as she softly growled to answer him.
“She says that there is no problem, there are almost a thousand adult boars spread through the forest and she thinks they are a good prey since we don’t need to kill too many of them to have enough food for ourselves, so it’s better than killing many smaller animals, she only asks us to not kill for entertainment, of course if an animal targets us we are in all our right to kill it in response”, said Mira.
Guardian kept the balance of the forest, but she of course didn’t interfere unless it was needed, every race had to fight in order to survive such was the law in the wild.
The place to where the lynx took the group was actually almost in the exact contrary direction to where they had found the boars they ate before, for a good reason a rival pack of boars lived that way, it was an open area with a clear and narrow creek, which was perfect for animals to drink water or wash themselves, but not big enough for the main predators that could be found in the transition between the middle and inner areas, in other words the wolves to appear.
Which is why it was one of the favorite’s hunting areas for Guardian, since for some reason wolves seemed to hold a grudge with her, considering how she killed those guys before, but only took one to eat when she is not one to kill unless it’s for defense or to eat.
What Aster found strange is that he didn’t find any signs of lynxes in the vicinity, even though this was a perfect place for them to obtain food too, since smaller animals would gather here.
‘Perhaps other lynxes avoid any areas that are marked with her presence out of fear’, thought Aster to then gaze at Vivian.
“I’ll leave the herb gathering to Mira, Vivian, Nerissa and Lieze, the rest of us will divide in pairs to hunt a boar each, Erick will go with Sophia, Agnes will go with Nina, I will go with Tia and I leave Espi under Guardian’s care”, he said, causing different reactions for the afore mentioned pairs.
For starters, Tiana saw the teasing light in Aster’s eyes and she softly snorted, knowing this was caused because Erick had to open his mouth about what Felicia told her before they left.
The ligress girl knew full well that he was assigning her to the herb gathering group because that’s not her strong point, and she couldn’t say anything against it because it’s responsible from Aster to make her improve in her weaker areas of expertise, but he was giving her an openly teasing smile, which made Mira softly growl at him.
Erick and Sophia were fine with their assigned job and had gotten used to work together so they were fine with the arrangement, if anything Sophia had the usual troubles when dealing with that boyfriend of hers, but that was normal.
As for Agnes who wanted to hunt with Aster, she self-convinced herself to not push it because it was only right that she was paired with the youngest member of the group, also she already planned to have Aster accompany her in her morning exercise routine tomorrow, given that they had easy access to iron ore now, he should be able to spare her ten minutes of his time, it was amusing that she who is the oldest of the group, had such a childish “demand”.
And then there was Guardian who saw with interest how the little wyrm smiled in her direction as she slid into the distance, to then be followed by the lynx.
“Let’s take some distance to not affect each other’s tasks, we’ll return here in an hour”, said Aster as he saw the others leave in different directions.
