Chapter 24 - Forging

*Clang! Clang! Clang!!*

Brad has spent many days trying to forge anything from the metal nuggets he had gathered in the cave tunnels. He made a makeshift anvil with a large piece of bone he found which he felt was a part of that wyvern that died. It was found along it many bone parts he felt were the spine of the large beast, it was so hard that even the bone pickax he made could leave one dent on the bonce.

Brad shivered at the thought of how monstrous the thing that killed such a beast cause from what he can tell the piece he used as an anvil seemed like a piece of the spine of the Wyvern and yet it was cut clean through like it was made of butter. Only the eagle claw he had could leave a scratch on it. It is also very heat resistant, which is why he used it as an anvil.

It is quite convenient too as the large bone has a hole in the middle where he could let heat pass through from the furnace into the bottom of the bone anvil which he placed besides the furnace. He made a small passage where the heat inside the furnace could travel into the small passage and into the bottom of the bone anvil then come out in the middle where Brad could make the metal he was forging hot again and continue hammering.

He made a hammer grinded down wyvern teeth attached to finger bone of the wyvern. He discovered that every part except the meat was fire proof including the tendons which he used to fasten the teeth on the finger bone. Even the meat was hard to cook and mostly came out rare when Brad ate it before.

He hammered and hammered as he shaped the metal into a bowl shaped thing. Brad had gathered many metals and he found out after identifying them that he had gathered about five kilograms of tungsten. Now he spent two days trying to shape this very hard metal as he was not able to design a furnace hot enough to melt this metal.

Thus he spent most of his time hammering just to slightly shape it into a crucible. He knew this metal is very hard to melt and would be very useful if he could make at least three crucibles with it. One consisted of about half a kilogram which took him four hours to shape, another with a one and a half kilogram tungsten which was made after ten hours of grueling work.

The last one he is making was about three kilograms , he planned to make various tools too later with tungsten so he saved small nuggets of it to mix with any alloy he planned to make later. Brad spent about twenty hours of constant hammer and shaping. The tongs he is using is also made of wyvern bones that might have come from the wing of the beast.

Brad mused as he hammered that he wouldn't have gotten this strong and far if that wyvern had not burst into pieces in front of him. He knew he couldn't have any hopes of killing the wyvern by himself even when he had become this strong. That's why he must have metals to make tools that would help him.

And with his memory improved he now knew how to make the tools needed and even has a blueprint of how to make a revolver. Even bullets were possible now that he could extract nitrates from the dodo poop, speaking of Dodos. These bastards could really procreate like crazy in such a safe environment.

Brad felt he needed to gather more feed later for the dodos, these buggers loved the isolated place Brad had made for them. He had redesigned some cave rooms before by carving out the walls to make it look aesthetically pleasing to the eyes. Every pen he made for the animals he had expanded and redesigned in a systematic way.

He did have a hard time carving the wall cause it was so hard that he was able to do so when he used a wyvern tooth as a shovel. But the for the boars pen, Brad decided to break down a wall besides it and made it wider. The rubble he made became something like landscaping the pen by making it into a makeshift burrow.

The Boars behaved now and didn't try to escape cause when Brad had entered before the male boar tried to attack him. Brad wasn't sure at that time but he punched the boar in the head which made it unconscious in one punch. Brad realized he had become so strong he could stop a two meter tall boar with his current strength.

He might not be nearly as strong as those large Earth Bear or the steroid Gorilla but be felt he had enough to ensure his own safety in these jungle. Brad stopped hammering and looked at the crucible he had made, He then put the crucible down to cool on a pool of water nearby. Brad knew he would have to spend some days into making a motor hammer so he could forgo the laborious job of hammering to the waterwheel.

He rested soon enough after he took a bath in his home made jacuzzi, or so Brad like to call it. He improved his daily life when he made a series of gears and mechanical wooden parts to create a pulley system. He had made something to act like a chain or rope from tendons he had gathered from the Elks he had killed. They were numerous that Brad had hunted down at least a hundred because they were large targets for his harpoons.

He had made an atlatl with a large curved antler of the large Elk he had killed and it has upped his game a lot. Terror Birds were also easy prey as they were noisy and large targets too. He did try to hunt the Boars but the larger one was quite alert and could block his harpoons with its very thick skull. But he hunted other animals in large numbers thus resulted in large quantities of tendons that were dried and used as rope substitute.