Iron found himself at the entrance to a rock fissure. The walls of the dead-end were covered with massive, scaly outcroppings of burgundy and black.
Iron stepped closer, picked up a sharp stone from the ground, and dragged it across the rough surface of the rock. A red streak was left on the gray granite.
"Hematite," Iron said quietly, evaluating the weight and density of the deposits.
The ore sat deep within the monolithic stone, firmly clamped by a tectonic shift. Iron reached out his hand and focused a narrow physical resonance in his palm. The emitted vibration destroyed the molecular bonds of the surrounding rock in seconds—the stone around the ore vein crumbled into fine dust, freeing massive chunks of hematite.
He caught the ore with force vectors, and space warped once again.
Appearing in the central plaza, he dumped the hematite right next to the pile of limestone and quartz sand.
Iron cast a glance over the bustling work and said quietly:
"I'm done with the cave. Now I need some living organic matter."
He headed to the edge of the forest and eyed the nearest trunk, but immediately stopped. The tree was too thin, and it wasn't worth felling the outer defensive perimeter right by the camp.
"Lumon, matter density scanner," Iron commanded.
A translucent scale appeared right before his eyes. All the surrounding vegetation took on different colors: ordinary trees glowed green, denser ones yellow and red, while the sturdiest and most woody trunks were supposed to be marked in black.
Iron ventured deeper into the forest, carefully studying the canopies, but only green and yellowish tags hung around him.
"Lumon, filter the visualization and highlight only the black markers," he frowned.
"Filtering is unavailable," Lumon replied in an even tone. "Your internal resources are depleted due to excessive mana expenditure during the transportation of rocks."
"Alright," Iron said with a sigh.
Passing by a damp hollow near a fallen, gnarled stump, he froze. A group of green creatures was slowly rolling around in the shade of the bushes.
"Then I'll gather you guys for now," Iron muttered.
He lowered the temperature of their outer shell, then picked up the frozen slimes and made them levitate behind him.
Iron walked through the forest for about half an hour. His eyes were already getting tired of the green, yellow, and rare red markers.
And then, as he passed through another thicket, a black marker suddenly flashed into view above the canopy, over the top of a thick tree.
"Finally," Iron exhaled in relief, approaching the giant trunk.
He reached out his palm and applied a vector shift. The shear stress passed exactly through the base of the trunk.
The felled log smoothly lifted away from the stump and hovered beside the frozen slimes. After that, Iron activated a spatial jump.
And once again, he was standing in the central plaza. The heavy log and the frozen slimes descended smoothly to the ground next to the mountain of hematite, limestone, and quartz. Iron exhaled and lightly stretched his neck and shoulders, preparing for some heavy engineering work.
At that moment, Clerk was walking by, hauling another bundle of dry branches. Noticing the mountain of strange materials, the frozen carcasses, and Iron, he stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the scene with wide eyes.
"Whoa... What is Iron up to?" flashed through Clerk's mind.
After watching for a little longer, he adjusted his grip on the firewood and swallowed quietly:
"Alright, I think it's best not to bother him right now..."
Clerk cautiously skirted around the plaza and disappeared into the forest as quickly as he could.
Iron unfurled the blueprint before him, mentally cross-referencing the capsule's parameters with the gathered materials. The time for calculations was over—it was time to move on to assembly.
First, he tackled the hull. Reaching his hands toward the felled log, Iron applied a point shift, and the log split into several perfect, thick planks. The same vector method carved out tongue-and-groove joints at the edges in seconds. Iron heated the joints, fitted the planks together, and let the wood cool. The contracting wood sealed the seams, forming a bathtub-like capsule large enough to hold half a human body.
Next came the glass window. Pouring quartz sand into a mold on the upper lid of the capsule, Iron focused a heat flux, drastically raising the temperature. The sand instantly melted, turning into liquid transparent glass. Iron completely nullified any air vibrations nearby, and the melt settled into a perfectly smooth mirror. With a sharp blast of cold air, he tempered the glass, making it durable, and permanently mounted it into the lid.
The third stage was the energy circuits:
Left circuit: Iron took a sturdy living vine, created earlier by Elyria, and braided it around the left half of the capsule. At the end of the vine, he attached a large crystal receiver made of transparent quartz.
Right circuit: Focusing the temperature on the remaining hematite, he smelted thin, pure metal veins from the ore. Braiding them around the right side of the tub, Iron led out a second quartz crystal for Noah's energy.
Next up was the work with the slimes. Iron poured the congealed mass inside the wooden capsule and thawed it out. To prevent the aggressive gel from soaking into the wood or leaking out, Iron sharply increased the slime's surface tension at the points of contact with the walls. The outer part of the mass instantly covered itself with a thick, elastic "skin," sealing the inside of the tub.
To finish, Iron clenched his palms over the remains of the stalactites and hematite. Under immense pressure, the minerals crumbled into the finest powder. Pouring this powder directly into the slime, he stirred it, turning the gel into a nutritious biological broth, saturated with calcium and iron.
At that moment, Iron's vision suddenly went dark. A sharp pain pierced his head.
His legs gave way, and he collapsed on his back right onto the ground, staying there, breathing heavily and staring up at the clouds over the camp.
Meanwhile, Eliza was emerging from the forest with another bundle of firewood slung over her shoulder. Approaching the construction site, the girl dumped the logs on the ground and accidentally glanced over toward the capsule.
Next to it, Iron lay motionless on the ground, his chest heaving heavily.
"Iron!" Eliza exclaimed.
She ran over to him and dropped to her knees beside him, peering into his face:
"Are you okay?! Why are you lying on the ground?! What happened?!"
Iron slowly opened one eye, tried to force something resembling a reassuring smile, and exhaled quietly, struggling to find the words:
"Don't worry... Everything's fine. I just used up too much energy."
Eliza looked at the capsule and then back at Iron, saying:
"Alright... But! If you need anything, tell me. I'll do whatever I can."
Iron thought for a couple of seconds, catching his breath, and then said quietly:
"If you really want to help... Call Noah and Elyria. Tell them I need them here urgently."
"Okay," Eliza nodded quickly.
She got to her feet and immediately dashed deeper into the forest to find the spirit and Noah.
Literally three minutes passed. During this time, Iron managed to recover a bit, overcome the crushing nausea of overexertion, and slowly get to his feet, dusting off his clothes.
Elyria was, of course, the first to arrive. The spirit materialized right in front of his face, circling around him anxiously.
"Iron! Did something happen to you?! Are you alright?!" she blurted out, looking into his eyes.
"Yeah, it's all good, don't panic," Iron replied, stretching his stiff neck.
At that moment, Noah and Eliza emerged from behind the trees. Noticing that Iron was already standing quite steadily on his feet and even talking calmly, Eliza visibly relaxed and breathed a sigh of relief. Realizing her help was no longer needed, she gave them a slight nod and silently returned to her chores.
Noah, on the other hand, approached unhurriedly, stopping a couple of paces away from Iron and the strange wooden capsule.
Iron gestured toward the constructed device and said:
"This is the Bio-Matrix. The technology I'll use to get my arm back."
"Whoa, cool! You made it this fast already?" Elyria marveled, flying right up to the capsule and closely examining the glass window and metal veins.
"Yes. I hope it works just as well as it looks. But now I need your energy."
"I can give you my power, of course," Elyria immediately warned him, hovering over the left circuit, "but I don't want you draining me to the very last drop!"
"Don't worry, I won't wring you dry," Iron reassured her.
He shifted his gaze to Noah. Elyria's words from their recent conversation instantly popped into Iron's head: "Under no circumstances should you tell Noah about his mana!"
Iron sighed mentally, realizing that now he would have to explain everything in the simplest terms possible so that Noah wouldn't suspect a thing.
"Alright, I'll explain how this will work in simple terms," Iron said, pointing to the left and right circuits. "Elyria, you'll use your magic to send invisible energy 'roots' toward Noah. Your 'roots' will gently latch onto him and begin carefully pulling his energy. Imagine how a tree drinks water from the ground—it's just like that. Then you take this extracted energy and channel it through the capsule's veins."
"Gotcha!" Elyria twirled around.
Iron paused and continued:
"Inside the capsule, both energies will mix. If we leave it at that, your mana will start sprouting branches straight out of my stump, and the other energy will cause internal bleeding. That's why I will intercept these flows inside the slime: I'll break down Elyria's mana into the physical thermodynamics of cell division, and your energy into the hydrodynamic pressure of the blood."
Noah listened to this and asked:
"Are you both completely nuts? I don't want her roots inside my body! And besides, what kind of energy are we even talking about?"
"Don't worry, everything will be fine and under total control," Iron calmly waved him off. "I've pulled this off with Elyria a hundred times already."
Noah gave him a hard stare.
"Well, just multiply that part by zero," Iron tossed out, and, with a straight face, started making up complete nonsense on the spot: "In our world, there are two types of energy. The first is magical, the second is physical. Magical energy is purely for mages. It isn't suited for you, and you don't have any of it anyway. But physical energy is exactly what swordsmen use. And swordsmen, meaning you, currently have an abundance of this energy."
Hovering behind Noah, Elyria couldn't hold back and clapped her little fists over her mouth. A second later, she was already laughing hysterically in the air, almost falling over from laughter.
Iron shot her a sideways glance and said sternly:
"Maybe you could stop laughing, huh? Am I saying something wrong?"
"No, no!" Elyria exhaled, barely suppressing another fit of laughter and wiping away a tear. "You're saying everything right! Absolutely right!"
Iron turned back to Noah:
"So, what do you say?"
Noah let out a heavy sigh:
"If I die, it's on you."
"Okay, it's on me," Iron nodded, adding quietly: "Though I'm not even sure if I'll survive this myself, so it's more my life we should be worrying about here... Alright, let's get started."
Once Elyria had finally calmed down, she asked seriously:
"And what are you going to be doing? A wild, unstable flow is going to rush straight into you!"
"Well, I just told you that I'll simply be stabilizing it," Iron stated.
"Ah... Right, exactly!"
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