Michael carried a bag full of charcoal toward their base’s crude forge.

The forge was already hot. It had fuel in it but Michael continued to add more fuel so that the forge could reach the appropriate temperature.

Without bellows to help him heat the forge, Michael had to devote a lot of energy to keep the heat at a high and optimal level.

Michael continued this task for hours on end.

He looked at the remaining supply of untouched iron ore. If he failed again, he would have to go back into the cave.

Michael grumbled at the thought of asking Evelyn to cover for him again. He was 100% sure that Evelyn would get angry, especially after the deception he pulled. When they went home, he had to endure a lot of shoulder punches from Evelyn.

They were also on a timetable.

Michael internally sighed as he continued his task.

While Michael worked, Evelyn was outside.

After the deceptive cave adventure, Evelyn lost the clothes that Michael sewed for her so she had to go back home naked, an experience that the two humans did not fully enjoy. Once they got back, Evelyn immediately put on leaf clothing and left to hunt for an animal to skin and wear.

Michael was supposed to come with her but she reminded him that she was still naked and would like some privacy. She also added that she was still annoyed that he lied about the night beasts. Lastly, she added that he needed to learn forging since they had to kill the Draco’s offspring before they matured.

While Michael was confident that the Draco didn’t mature fast, he couldn’t risk it. Evolution was too erratic and the Draco’s offspring might have some form of accelerated growth, a risk that Michael and Evelyn couldn’t take.

Looking at the extremely hot forge, Michael sighed.

He needed to succeed tonight or else their schedule will be delayed. If the Draco’s offspring matured, it would be game over for both Michael and Evelyn. They would be pushed out of their home and they would lose everything they built here.

Starting from scratch would take a large amount of time since the two of them will have to get reacquainted with the new environment, which included looking for a new source of salt, something Michael stumbled on entirely due to luck.

And if Michael intends to continue improving their tools and technology, he would need to create another forge, an extremely time-consuming effort. This doesn’t include the effort and hassle of looking for a new cave with iron deposits. Lastly, Michael didn’t know how dangerous the animals were in the areas he hasn’t explored yet. The worst-case scenario meant that there was a creature out there that more dangerous than the Draco.

He was annoyed but this was no time to be emotional. Michael forcefully clears his mind. Despite his best efforts, his thoughts return to the difficulty of the problem.

And even if they somehow managed to rebuild elsewhere, who’s to say that the Draco wouldn’t expand there?

So, they had to kill the Draco no matter what.

While Michael was preoccupied with horrible thoughts, it wasn’t his biggest fear. As he and Evelyn continued to hunt, the Draco’s powerful evolution forced other creatures to evolve faster in a sadistic biological arms race.

By having an extremely powerful apex creature in a specific environment, the creatures that lived in the apex’s territory had three main choices.

As Michael observed, the animals in the Draco’s environment could get wiped out which is a very unlikely choice due to the rules of evolution. The animals would rather evolve than get wiped off the face of the planet.

The second choice would be to evolve in a way that would allow the creatures to survive despite being devoured. The muckat, a creature Michael finds extremely adorable, is already in its 19th iteration. Slowly but surely, it was establishing itself as a long-lasting creature.

The third choice would be to evolve equally to or past the Draco’s capabilities. The Batan Titan was an example of this. It was an extremely powerful herbivore that could kill the Draco if it had the numbers advantage.

All three choices were horrible results for both Michael and Evelyn.

The first choice entailed an extinction event in the long run as the lack of animals would eventually destroy the ecosystem. Fortunately, Goddess made sure that the planet wouldn’t break so easily.

The second choice was also horrible because it meant that the animals would develop defense mechanisms that could kill humans without much effort. Michael as of now could eat Muckats but it didn’t mean he wouldn’t be incapacitated for a few days. Evelyn hasn’t evolved into the next stage of humans so she would flat-out die if she ate a Muckat, something that Michael already told her about.

The third choice simply meant putting another hyper apex creature at the top of the environment which would cycle back to choices 1, 2, and 3.

Michael gripped his tools.

Despite his stress, he had to shoulder on.

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Eventually, the forge’s temperature became unbearably hot. Michael takes a large wooden shovel and carries the iron ore. He quickly shoves it inside the forge. After pulling out the wooden shovel, Michael immediately puts it in one of the buckets full of water.

He checks the shovel to see if it burned. Seeing that it was fine, he nods with satisfaction. In the process of creating the forge, Michael realized that he didn’t have metal tools to create metal tools. To create metal tools, he needed to start somewhere.

Stone tools were good. They were tougher, and far more durable than wooden tools but they were too brittle. In fact, Michael purposefully used a wooden mallet when he used the stone chisel. This allowed Michael to suppress his strength when he meticulously hammered the iron ore from its enclosure.

Instead of creating a stone shovel, a task that surely would be, if not impossible, extremely difficult to make, Michael gathered information from the log and decided to use a type of wood that was very heat-resistant. After a few days of looking around, Michael found a tree that was similar to Earth’s ironwood variant, except that it has evolved to live in hotter environments.

Using the evolved tree, Michael carved a heat-resistant shovel. In addition to the shovel being naturally heat resistant, he also used a resin that made the shovel even more heat resistant. Despite this, the resin-coated heat-resistant wood shovel could only last a minute at most without burning to a crisp.

Seeing that the wooden shovel was not burnt, Michael nods approvingly.

He sits in front of the forge as he watched the metal heat up. Michael felt the heat but his thick clothes and a few more layers of fur acted as a safety apron.

Time passed and Michael saw the metal slowly become more fluid-like. Michael did his research and metals usually released a lot of slags, which is the glass-like by-product left over after the desired metal has been separated from its raw ore.

In ancient times, slag was used to create glassware and jewelry products. Michael contemplated using the slag to create some jewelry for Evelyn.

As the metal slowly becomes more liquid-like, Michael opens a faucet at the side of the forge.

At first, nothing happens but eventually, the molten slag slowly comes pouring out. Michael subconsciously bobs his head up and down in excitement.

This was the stage he failed the most. He either couldn’t keep the fire hot enough or he couldn’t remove most of the slag.

The molten slag continued to pour into the ground. Michael looked at the slag and nodded. He intended to melt it again later to remove any remaining metal. And since Michael was working with charcoal, he intended to make steel.

Iron by itself was weak. Iron easily dulled compared to steel and it had a large number of drawbacks compared to steel. It’s a shame that Michael can’t create modern industrial steel.

If Michael made iron weapons, he wasn’t confident that it would be enough for the Draco.

On the other hand, steel weapons didn’t need testing. Michael was confident that steel weapons could do the job and kill the Draco.

After a while, the slag stopped pouring and Michael uses a tong made out of stone and wood. It was crude but it could do the job fine enough.

The process that Michael described in his head was extremely crude but he was basically trying to create steel. It was extremely complicated but Michael’s evolved mind was able to process information faster than even the most talented people on Earth.

Skills that would take months and weeks to learn could be resolved in a few days if Michael pushed himself. And in the aspect of forging, Michael really pushed himself.

He’ll never admit it but Michael always fantasized about blacksmithing since it was a skill that was the polar opposite of what he knew in his previous life.

In his life, he was an average person who landed an obsolete job that could be handled by any drone at the time. But in Teremarae, Michael was not an average person and blacksmithing could be considered an extremely important job that couldn’t be done by drones, as there were no drones in Teremarae.

Michael continued his steel-making process for the whole day. It was grueling and very tiring but he knew that it would be worth it.

Eventually, Michael manages to fish out molten steel. Despite being pathetically weak compared to modern variants, this small chunk of steel could be what closes the gap between Michael and the Draco.

Michael smiles to himself as the possibility of slaying the Draco increases tenfold.

Once the molten steel was out of the forge, Michael takes out a stone hammer from a nearby container. He puts the extremely hot piece of steel on a flat stone surface. It wasn’t as good as an anvil but this will have to do for now.

He then starts hammering the piece of steel to mold it into something useful.

After a bit of hammering, the stone hammer shatters which annoys Michael.

Without any metal tools, Michael had to make do by using stone hammers to slowly mold the metal. He puts the broken stone hammer by the side.

Well prepared, Michael pulls out another stone hammer from a stock of stone hammers just for this specific purpose.

He then proceeds to hammer the metal.

After a few minutes of switching hammers, the metal cools down due to the air. Michael puts more coal in the forge and he uses his tongs to shove the slightly molded metal inside the forge. Michael watches the metal as it heats up once more.

After a while, the metal’s color changes to a bright orange sheen. Michael pulls it out and starts to hammer the heated metal once more. After the metal cools down, Michael returns the metal to the forge to heat it again.

He continues this laborious task for hours on end. Eventually, the metal looked more symmetrical. It was still a lump of hot metal but now it was shaped into a useful object.

Michael smiles to himself.

He heats the metal once more.

While the metal was being heated once more, Michael looked at the other failed lumps of iron ore. He would use them later after he finished his first creation, a steel hammer.

The steel hammer would allow him to finish work quickly and with better results. A steel hammer would almost be unbreakable unless Michael exerted an amount of strength that would break it, something that he knows he currently can’t.

After the metal is heated, he takes it out and quickly quenches it in water, which will immediately cool the metal and make it tougher.

Michael internally sighs in relief as he finishes his current task.

He then turned his mind towards finalizing the hammer.

As he took out a sturdy piece of wood for his handle, he hears the elevator moving.

He smiles to himself as his companion has finally come back.

He stops his work for now and stands up.

Before walking to the elevator, Michael removes the thick layers of fur covering his body, revealing his sweaty muscular body.

When Evelyn reaches the top of the waterfall, she sees Michael undressing. Michael’s eyesight was covered since he was removing his cloak which gives Evelyn some time to stare.

“Nice!”

Michael removes the cloak and looks at her with a weird face. She just smiles at him with a happy face. He looks behind her and sees a large bounty of skinned and butchered animals on the elevator.

“Hello! I just got back from an insanely good hunt.”

Michael nods approvingly.

Bob jumps from Evelyn’s shoulder towards Michael. He almost slips due to Michael’s sweat but Michael supports him.

Michael looks at Evelyn’s body up and down. She was covered with the fur of the animals she skinned. They weren’t sewn so they acted as an oversized and smelly blanket.

Michael pats Bob’s head and the monkey relaxes on his shoulder. Michael then signs to Evelyn.

+You seem happy?+

Despite the grime and muck, Evelyn felt proud. She managed to hunt large animals on her own.

“Yeah! Look at these!”

Evelyn gestures to the meat and fur on the elevator.

+That’s a lot of animals.+

“You’re right! I stealthily tracked all of these ones!”

Michael noticed that Evelyn was really excited and she was going to go on a long tirade about how she tracked all of the animals she brought home.

He smiles.

+Alright alright, tell me about it during dinner.+

“Sure!”

Michael helps Evelyn unload the meat and fur. Despite agreeing to wait till dinner, Evelyn kept talking about her exploits the whole time which just made Michael smile the whole time.

They spent the night talking and relaxing. After Evelyn talked Michael’s head off, she eventually went to sleep.

When Evelyn was gone and Bob was tucked in, Michael returned to the forge.

He continues his work.

As long as there were no mistakes, he would have a metal hammer by the next dawn.