Chapter 191: Discovering Iron Ore

Chapter 191: Chapter 191: Discovering Iron Ore

Kelly didn’t expect Ophelia to propose such a condition. She bit her lip and clenched her fists tightly. "Alright, I agree."

"Good, then we’ll give it two days," Ophelia agreed readily. She wanted to see how Tiger would react.

Now that they had cleared the air, Kelly left the room. By this time, the sky had turned completely dark. She wasn’t in a hurry to find Tiger and decided to wait until the next day to tell him everything.

It wasn’t until the moon was high in the sky that Tyler and Klein returned to the stone house. Seeing them rush back covered in dust, Ophelia hurried to serve them two bowls of clear water.

"Why are you back so late? Did something happen?"

Tyler downed the water in one gulp and wiped his mouth. "Nothing happened. We found the mine."

"So fast?" Both Zerev and Ophelia found it somewhat hard to believe.

Klein patted the pouch on his waist that held the Gold-seeking Rat. "Don’t underestimate the abilities of my Gold-seeking Rat."

Ophelia nodded, looking at the pouch with fervent eyes, as if she were staring at shining gold. She then told Tyler and the others about Kelly’s situation.

"It seems Budar can’t wait any longer," Klein deduced, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Zerev completely agreed.

"Tomorrow, we’ll take our men to gather Iron Ore," Ophelia said. "If all goes smoothly, we’ll be able to make what I need in two days."

Ophelia had a rough idea of how iron forging and smelting worked: high-temperature forging. Coupled with the Skill Book in her possession, she felt that forging refined iron wouldn’t be a problem.

The next day, Tyler and Klein took the earliest members to join the Fuzu Tribe into the mountains to mine Iron Ore. Meanwhile, Ophelia and Zerev found an empty clearing near the three-story stone house to build a furnace.

The construction method for the furnace was quite simple, so Ophelia went to find Samo.

"I want to build a furnace," she told him. "We need to light a fire inside it, so it needs air vents and an inlet, plus it can’t crack under high temperatures. Samo, can you make this?"

Samo stroked his chin. "What you’re describing requires a special type of clay. Ordinary soil will crack under extreme heat."

"Alright, I’ll have someone look for it."

In truth, this type of earth was terracotta clay, which was capable of withstanding high-temperature baking.

By that evening, the furnace was completed. In order to put it into production as soon as possible, Ophelia had someone light firewood inside to dry it out. She also asked Zerev to carve out a small stone bucket to hold the molten iron.

Once everything was prepared, Tyler and Klein brought back the Iron Ore under the cover of night. They also brought back a massive amount of firewood to fuel the smelting process.

"Since it’s dark and the smoke from the fire won’t be easily noticed, let’s start tonight," Ophelia decided after a glance at the sky.

"Sounds good," Tyler and the other two agreed unanimously.

"Once this furnace is lit, it can’t go out," Ophelia explained. "Someone needs to keep watch over it at all times. The four of us will take turns."

"No need. Keeping watch at night is a job for us males; you don’t need to do it," Zerev immediately rejected the idea.

Tyler and Klein shared the same sentiment.

Seeing that she couldn’t convince them otherwise, Ophelia relented and began instructing them on how to smelt the Iron Ore.

The furnace wasn’t tall—only about half the height of a person—with an opening at the top and ventilation holes at the bottom. Ophelia had Tyler and the others place firewood into the furnace and light it. Once the fire was burning steadily, they could begin.

"First, break this Iron Ore into small pieces and put them in the furnace," she instructed. "After burning for a night, the impurities inside will be removed."

"Alright."

Tyler and the others obediently split the large chunks of Iron Ore into smaller pieces that could be dropped into the furnace.

After two hours, crackling sounds echoed from within the furnace. Ophelia knew this was the sound of the Iron Ore cracking apart.

Because this was their first time forging, Ophelia was unwilling to leave. She stayed up with Tyler and the others to keep watch, waiting for a successful result. According to the Skill Book, traditional high-temperature forging required five to six hours to melt Iron Ore into iron.

Throughout the night, none of them slept much as they continuously fed firewood into the flames.

By the next day, as the sky gradually turned a pale grayish-white, Ophelia yawned and stopped Tyler from adding more wood. Seven hours had passed since the furnace was lit, and the smelting was almost complete. Now, they just had to wait for the firewood to completely burn out before opening the furnace.

After waiting another half hour, the heat of the fire gradually subsided, and the firewood turned to ash.

Ophelia instructed Tyler to clear out the small hole at the bottom of the furnace. "Tyler, scrape out all the ash inside. Be careful not to burn yourself."

Hearing Ophelia’s concern for Tyler, both Zerev and Klein felt a twinge of sourness in their hearts. However, they knew what was most important right now, so they suppressed their jealousy.

Once Tyler had pulled out all the ash, Ophelia crouched down and began sifting through the wood ash on the ground with a branch. Soon, she scraped out some small, black iron beads. These iron beads were extremely small; combined, they were only about the size of a fist.

"This is too little," Ophelia said, somewhat disappointed. Despite putting in such large chunks of Iron Ore, they had only yielded this tiny amount of iron. Trying to make a kitchen knife out of this would probably be a bit difficult.

The Iron Ore yield in the Beast World was even lower than she had imagined.

Feeling slightly dejected, she poked at the little iron beads with her branch. One of the beads was poked so hard that it got embedded into the branch.

Seeing this, Ophelia’s eyes lit up. "That’s right! If we can’t make a kitchen knife, we can make arrowheads!"

Meaning, real, functioning bows and arrows.

Tyler and the others had no idea what Ophelia had just thought of, watching her suddenly perk up from her previous slump.

"Zerev, hurry and bring the small stone bucket over. We’re going to continue smelting."

The iron beads were placed into the teacup-sized stone bucket, and the furnace was ignited once again. However, the smelting time wouldn’t be as long this round.

In the downtime during the smelting, Ophelia had Tyler carve out the shapes of arrowheads and an iron plate on a rock to use as molds.

After waiting for about four hours, the iron beads were completely melted into molten iron. The molten iron was poured into the iron plate mold, and water was splashed over it to cool it down. Before long, a finger-thick, palm-sized iron plate appeared before everyone’s eyes.

Zerev picked up the iron plate and examined it. "This looks similar to the City Lord Token."

Klein also took the iron plate and struck it against a rock a few times, producing a crisp, ringing sound. "It will still crack like this."

"Obviously," Ophelia said. "We’re not completely done yet."

Ophelia asked Tyler to put the iron plate back into the furnace, but this time, they didn’t melt it down into molten liquid. Instead, they took it out as soon as the iron plate was heated red-hot.

"Tyler, use a rock to hammer this iron plate." This was true forging—striking it with a rock to hammer out the impurities inside the iron.

"Got it."

Without questioning her, Tyler followed Ophelia’s instructions and began hammering the iron plate. This process was repeated many times until the sound of the impacts changed, marking the completion of the forging.

"Alright, next, we melt this iron plate back into molten iron and pour it into the arrowhead molds."

The molten iron was poured into the molds, splashed with water to cool, and one by one, rough arrowheads were successfully popped out.