From Stone to Iron
I rose early, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I stood before the hearth. Tearing off a strip of the jerky I kept stored, I struck a spark with my flint and got a fire going. Once I'd made a rough breakfast of the seared meat, I set straight to preparing for alchemy.
Today's material was stone—something scattered everywhere around us, yet with a little skill, it might just turn into something worth money. After some hard thought, that was the ingredient I'd settled on.
Of course, I hadn't simply grabbed any rock off the ground. These were stones with a metallic sheen, the sort that looked heavy with iron content.
At first I tried combining nothing but the stone and water to serve as a medium.
No matter how much Holy Power I poured in while stirring, the hard stone refused to change. The combination made no progress at all.
After further deliberation, I added sand. The idea was to bind like with like—same attribute, clumped together.
As I stirred the stone through the sand-laced water and flooded it with Holy Power, the two seemed gradually to mix.
I saw hope in that change—until, after a while, the contents exploded. It wasn't a violent blast, but the materials in the pot went flying in every direction, and the stone itself shattered.
I cleaned up the ruined ingredients, put the tools back in order, and prepared to try again.
I didn't dive straight back into the work. First I needed to think through what approach might actually succeed. Just tossing in sand had been a lazy idea…
"Maybe the water's the problem?"
Every combination I'd managed so far had hinged on water. You couldn't mingle forces with solid objects alone, so water served as the medium that let those forces blend. This time, though, the solid was simply too large and too hard.
What if I crushed the stone fine and then combined it?
But it was stone… Maybe I needed a completely different perspective from the one I'd used with plants and herbs. In alchemy games, a suspicious item called a neutralizer often went into the recipes.
"Hmm…"
In those game recipes, neutralizers showed up everywhere. Thinking about it that way, maybe a neutralizer played a critical role.
"The problem is, I have no idea whether anything like that even exists in this world…"
I might be able to craft something with a similar effect myself, but that would take trial and error. I groped through the fading memories of my past life, trying to recall the recipes I'd used in those games.
No good! Every game had slightly different recipes! Most used water as a base, but when the neutralizers were split by color, some recipes didn't use water at all!
Come to think of it, neutralizers had been divided by attribute and color, hadn't they? And when you combined things, you matched the neutralizer to the attribute. So if I used a medium of the same attribute, wouldn't the effect be similar?
Haa… I'd wanted to make something out of stone, but it looked like I'd have to create a neutralizer-like substance first. I looked over the materials I had on hand again.
"A medium, a medium…"
This was hard! Since it was a medium, a liquid state would be best for combining, right? And if it carried an attribute as well, even better…
"Should I try combining water first?"
I set a small pot on the alcohol lamp and poured in water. Stirring with a stick, I began to inject power.
No rushing. I kept stirring with the quiet conviction that I could do this.
Ten minutes… twenty… roughly thirty? The flame was too weak to bring it to a rolling boil, but the warmed water kept evaporating away. There was no rainbow shimmer, no shift in form—none of the signs that alchemy was truly taking hold.
"So water alone really isn't enough?"
I kept pouring Holy Power into it until every drop had boiled off. Nothing changed.
"Failure."
I'd wasted precious time and Holy Power for nothing. I let out a long sigh, snuffed the alcohol lamp, and sank into thought.
"Done already?"
"Wah!"
I stumbled backward at the sudden voice. Good grief—that nearly stopped my heart!
Well… of course it was my sister.
"Sis? When did you get here?"
"While Yuli was working on that."
So she'd waited without interrupting…
"Thanks for not getting in the way. And I'm not going out today."
I planned to spend the whole day combining at home. My sister's face fell a little.
I ignored her and went back to fretting over how to make a neutralizer.
"What's the problem?"
"Huh?"
Her sudden question caught me slightly off guard. Well… she wouldn't understand any of it, but sometimes a complete outsider's perspective sparked a brilliant idea, so I explained. I was looking for a special medium for combining—and if one didn't exist, I meant to make it myself.
"Hard."
As expected, my sister understood none of it.
"Yeah, well."
With a let's-just-try attitude, I started combining again.
I'd begin by changing the ratios! I drastically cut the herbs and loaded the mix with water, then attempted the combination. Wouldn't that produce water that held at least a little mana?
Of course it failed.
"Not this either…"
"What about muddy water?"
"Muddy water…?"
"Yeah. If dirt goes in, attributes…?"
Listening to her, I felt a flicker of possibility.
"Shall we try?"
I decided to mix the sand I'd collected with water. A two-to-one ratio of water to sand, maybe…?
I combined them lightly, just to test—
"I-it worked?"
A bright light flared, the telltale phenomenon of a successful combination. When the glow faded, the pot held not muddy water but a yellow liquid.
Probably… a medium of the earth attribute. Should I call it a neutralizer? Or give it some other name?
That hardly mattered right now. First—notes. Notes.
I poured the finished liquid into a spare cup for safekeeping.
"I can feel something like mana."
My sister, whose senses were sharper than mine, seemed to pick up something from the liquid.
"Really? Then we can call it a proper success."
The problem was that even after making it, storage would be difficult… Should I try scaling up the quantity first?
I filled a large pot with a generous amount of water, added sand in roughly the right proportions, and combined! Maybe because of the volume, the Holy Power drain was heavy.
I poured power in hard and stirred for thirty minutes, and of course the combination succeeded. Without delay, I dropped the stones into the yellow-tinted medium.
"Just putting in stone alone feels like a waste…"
Call it instinct.
A strong feeling told me stone by itself wouldn't be enough. I added the little sand I had left, and a bit of dried mud as well.
Looking at the volume of liquid, it seemed I could fit more stones too.
Once I'd loaded the materials while carefully remembering the ratios? Straight into combining, Holy Power flowing.
"Let's do this!"
I stirred and poured Holy Power for a full hour. The hard, bulky stones gradually wore down, shrinking and blending. It looked like proof that this method was the right one.
As more time passed, the sand and mud that had floated like impurities began to vanish, merging into the liquid.
The problem was that I'd been combining for over two hours and still saw no sign of completion.
Even so, given enough time, all the materials did melt into a thick slurry.
"How much longer is this going to take?"
While I worked hard at the combination, my sister watched from beside me.
"Aren't you tired?"
Was that even a question? Of course my arms ached.
"Tired or not, I have to keep going."
If I stopped and the combination failed? That would be a catastrophic waste. I couldn't throw away the time or the Holy Power.
Four hours since I'd started stirring the pot… My arms were going numb, and exhaustion was setting in. Fortunately, I still had more Holy Power left than I'd spent, so that wasn't an issue. I wouldn't fail for lack of power—but my concentration was steadily fraying, and that was the real danger.
In the end, injecting power was a matter of will. If I lost focus out of sheer fatigue and let it slip for even a moment? Instant failure.
"Ugh, this is rough."
"Can't I take over?"
My sister watched me with a worried face, fidgeting restlessly. She clearly wanted to help, but right now I had to keep going myself.
"No. If I stop injecting power, it fails immediately."
I'd already confirmed that in earlier experiments. So I focused even harder.
Honestly, even my sister talking beside me was a distraction. I needed every scrap of concentration I could muster, and her voice kept fraying it.
"Hold on. Just hold on!"
When lunchtime came, my sister chewed on some of the jerky we had in the house.
"Here."
I took the strip she held out and ate it. I'd been getting hungry anyway—and she'd thought to feed me! Honestly, I was grateful.
Chewing the jerky, I kept my arm moving and Holy Power flowing.
I no longer knew how much time had passed. Still, I repeated the same motion over and over.
I kept my arm going until the combination succeeded. Again and again.
Giving up wasn't an option. If it had been, I'd have quit being an adventurer long ago.
"Uooooh!"
I roared a battle cry and snapped my mind back into place.
Gradually, gradually, light began to rise from the pot, growing stronger. That meant the end was finally near.
"You can do it."
My sister's encouragement from the side gave me strength. I stirred the pot with everything I had, and a fierce light—rainbow-hued—flooded the entire house.
"Is it done?!"
Until moments ago, I'd been stirring something thick and viscous. Now there was no liquid left in the pot. The contents had fused into a single solid mass.
I snuffed the hearth fire first and pulled the pot free. When I grabbed the handle of the searing-hot vessel, I heard the sound of leather scorching. After so many hours of heating, even the handle had grown ferociously hot.
"Ow-ow-ow."
I was gripping it with sturdy monster hide, and still the heat came through. My sister, with perfect timing, laid wood on the floor, and I set the pot on top of it.
Sizzle—the wood began to char.
"Let's see."
Looking into the pot again, I found a solid lump glowing cherry-red.
I poked it with a stick. It felt hard.
"What does it look like?"
"Dunno."
My sister couldn't place it either. I was sure I'd seen something like this in my past life…
What was it…
While I fretted, the contents cooled and began to change color. Gradually black—no, a deep gray.
"Ah! Iron!"
It looked just like the molten iron I'd glimpsed briefly on television. And as it cooled and shifted color, the resemblance only grew stronger.
"Iron?"
Startled, I grabbed a water bucket. Pouring Holy Power hard into a magic tool, I made water gush out and fill the bucket.
Then I seized the pot's handle and tipped the iron into the water.
Hissss! Water sprayed in every direction as the iron began to cool.
"Is it real?"
I lifted the quickly quenched iron with the monster hide and set it on the table.
"It really does look like iron."
From every angle, it was iron. Of course, as low-purity Scrap Iron, the color wasn't clean and the luster was poor.
"Still, if you can make iron from stone, the efficiency looks pretty good, doesn't it?"
The problem was that our village had no forge… A blacksmith—one of the most specialized trades there was—didn't live here. There was a forge at the border garrison two hours from the village, and anything the village needed was ordered from there.
"I might have to visit the forge…"
The combination had been grueling, but if this truly was iron, it was creative economics in action. I'd been wishing I had a sword—gathering a lot of iron and commissioning one didn't sound half bad.
"Is this really iron?"
My sister seemed fascinated too.
"Probably?"
Ah—this wasn't the time. I sat down at once and began recording the recipe in my notebook. I had to get it down before the memory slipped away. Once the notes were finished, I'd rest. Roughly five hours? That seemed about right…
I finished the notes and stretched long and hard. Stirring a pot for that long had left my arms aching.
"Is your mana all right?"
"Huh? I've got plenty."
I'd used a lot, true… but more Holy Power remained than I'd spent.
Whether the goddess had been especially generous with her grace or not, the sheer volume of my Holy Power was extraordinary.
My sister tilted her head, not quite understanding.
"I guess I just have a lot of power."
"I see."
That seemed enough for her to accept it. I'd found two new combination methods today—time to rest.
Having discovered a new recipe, I spent the next several days making nothing but Scrap Iron, over and over.
I could only produce about four to five hundred grams in a single batch, but constant work piled it up, and the quantity grew.
"I've gathered quite a bit."
Looking at roughly four kilograms of accumulated iron, I felt thoroughly satisfied.
Deciding I'd collected enough, I picked a day and set out for the border garrison's forge.
Fully armed and carrying the iron, I stepped out of the house to find my sister waiting out front. Of course she meant to come along.
"Let's go."
"Yeah."
On the road to the border garrison, my steps felt endlessly light.