Gaia moved the boulder to the side of the cave's entrance to let me in before moving it back in place. I purposefully picked this boulder in order to have enough room left for the smoke to still flow out of the cave freely while letting new air in. This was accomplished due to the round shape of the boulder and rectangular shape of the cave entrance that had large holes at each of it's corner while the boulder was in place to allow proper airflow. The cave darkened up a bit since there was no longer much sunlight shining through but the glow of the fire gave me plenty of light to work with.-
Reaching into my bag I pulled out the few fist sized chunks of raw iron and chose the flattest one to be my anvil while the roundest small one was my hammer. With that taken care of I tossed one of the rough pieces into the fire and began to furiously fed said fire pine needles to keep the temp really high as I fanned the flames. It took a while but the chunk of iron in the fire got red hot so I carefully removed it from the fire with some sticks and placed it on the flat iron rock.-
Grabbing my hammer rock I struck the hot iron deforming it immediately and shaking the unsecured flat iron under it. I ignored this as I readjusted the hot iron on the flat one and struck it again deforming it even more. I was sweating heavily during this time as I relentlessly beat the metal flat. Once it was flat I used the stick to flip it away to cool and grabbed another piece of iron to toss into the fire.-
I repeated the process until I had three very rough plates of iron each with different sizes. I tossed them into the fire together and heated them up to working temperature before carefully setting them on top of each other on my anvil iron. I then began to strike them hard in order to try and forge weld them together. Forge welding was simply using heat and pressure to force two or more pieces of metal to fuse into a single one. Ideally I would have a furnace of some sort and an actual anvil and hammer for this but I will work with what I have available.-
It was hard for me but I eventually got the three plates of iron to roughly fuse together. I took a bit of a break after that to rest my sore muscles as well as to cool off. Hovering over a fire and red hot metal for hours on end in a squat while smashing a fairly heavy chunk of iron down over and over was very hot and tiring after all. Once I was no longer feeling like I was about to keel over I went back to integrating the pieces of metal together.-
When I was satisfied with my new solidish plate of iron I started to round the whole thing out into a very rough bowl shape. I was finally done with making my "pot" right at the same time Gaia returned with a giant chuck of milky white crystal and five dead Zigzagoon. My "pot" looked like a horribly dirty dented and all around beat up bowl big enough to fit on my head. Gaia raised a skeptical eyebrow at the terrible looking thing after she opened the "door" of the cave and came in.-
"Yeah yeah I know it's not very pretty but it should work , probably." I said half jokingly seeing the look she had. At this point a surprising thing happened that made me a bit excited to see. [Congratulations host for creating item "caveman pot" for the first time! +1x item ticket!] I was thrilled about this until now unheard of feature of the system since it meant my skills actually had a use besides making me decent at basically everything I had a skill for. I ripped apart the ticket without hesitation and claimed my prize eagerly before frowning deeply at what I got.-
A wok , I got a literal wok for making a primitive metal pot. The sheer irony of the fact I spent fucking HOURS making this shitty pot only for the system to give me a decisively superior cooking implement stung terribly. (A/N: I'm not fucking joking this actually happened with the roulette wheel. ROTFLMAO) I took a few deep breathes to calm myself after this happened so that I didn't rage out and do something stupid. Gaia just looked at me funny after seeing me get all angry after I tore the ticket from the system.-
Oh right I forgot to mention it but system items like the tickets weren't invisible or anything but were actual things that physically existed until I destroyed them and then they vanished. Thankfully as a pokemon from the system Gaia was also aware of it's existence which was a really good thing since I am pretty sure any other pokemon would have definitely confronted me about the crazy bullshit going on around me by now otherwise. This wasn't to say I was only limited to system pokemon just that they would be the most convenient in terms of accepting my system related weirdness.-
Anyways after I calmed down from the irritation of having my hard work spat on by RNG I got busy making our food. First I took out my new shiny black wok which made Gaia rumble in laughter as she figured out why I got upset. Then I had her grind up some of the frankly huge salt crystal she brought back into dust into the wok. After that I had her rip the Zigzagoon corpses into small pieces that went into the wok alongside some cut up sitrus and oran berries. I then placed the wok over the fire and tossed the ingredients together as the metal started to quickly get hot.-
A wonderful fragrance rose from the cooking food as the fat from the Zigzagoons rendered out and started to fry the ingredients together. Gaia actually drooled a little which I couldn't blame her for as it was the best smelling thing I'd found so far food wise since I got to this world. Still we held off on the temptation until the food was done at which point I portioned out a serving for me in my metal bowl/pot and gave Gaia the wok after specifying that she wasn't to eat it.-
You may think that was a given since eating metal was rather unhealthy but Gaia was a pokemon and pokemon spit in the face of such logic. She actually looked disappointed when I said that as if to prove my point. Still she ate her food with gusto and a happy little wiggle while I waited for mine to cool. I stirred it with my fork as I waited for it to cool down but like always she finished before I could even get started.