Into the Civilized Age
Feeling satisfied with his sword design Lukas turned his gaze back to Terra, looking as the army dispersed each going their own direction. The five stood in a circle and with a smile and handshake left with their people, ready to lead them down a new path. Not the path of chaos, destruction, and carnage but one of civilization and advancement.
The two lizardfolk subspecies alongside the red ant army tracked across the forest and eventually reached their home in the great desert. The red ants went back underground, most likely to report to their queen while the lizardfolk went their separate ways and immediately started rebuilding their shattered homes. While the purple humanoids went back home alongside the black ants. The black ants mimicked the red ants perfectly going back underground to report to their queen. The purple humanoids instead of rebuilding started digging holes into the ground and burying their people.
As all 4 to 5 races went on with their lives, there was an air of peace, not one of constant fear and rage. Between the lizardfolk subspecies, they began merging their villages together, and slowly started hybrid families started forming. With hybrid children of all kinds being born and playing with both the draconian and dinosaur folk. Even the red ants started trading certain materials with them, gathering more food than they had before.
On the other side, the purple humanoids were still evolving slowly removing most of their excess fur. Becoming more similar to the humans of earth, and finally earning their species name. Looking at their horns and purple skin, and tall figures Lukas decided on the species name "demon" and was a little disappointed they looked more demonic than human but he was ultimately satisfied with the "final" stage of their development.
Going back to the red ants, and going underground one group of them was digging deeper into the earth expanding their home and colony. Eventually, they reached a vein of a dark blue ore that was slowly absorbing the mana around it. Seeing this the red ants began digging it out with a few going back to their home base. As time went on more red ants came down this time with primitive stone pickaxes and began digging it out forming a primitive mine.
Eventually, they approached the lizardfolk with the ore trying to figure out how to better refine it. The lizardfolk took a few of them and began studying it, trying all manners of ways to melt and refine it. The first to try was the dinosaur folk who simply broke the rocks off it at first and then tried burning it over a fire and then shape. Unfortunately, it didn't work and the next to try were the draconic folk who used their natural fire breath to try and melt it but they simply absorbed the mana adding it to the miniature pile within it.
Even the red ants tried hammering it into shape only to create a crude metallic dagger that was only a little better than the stone daggers they used. They even tried getting the mana out of it, but it only dispersed into the air, being sucked in by the nearby Yggdrasil tree. Seeing this they abandoned the project and went back to either digging, making/building, or hunting. On the other side of the continent, the black ants were burrowing further into the earth as well, eventually finding a new type of ore themselves. It was a black lump of metal and seeing this the group who found the ore sent a few back to report their findings.
Rapidly they began to turn the small ore vein into a full-blown mine and started searching for more of the mysterious ore. At first, they got the rocks and other non-metallic substances out of the ores and tried refining the ore itself, and discovered that it was very hard and could repel mana naturally. So they first began hammering it straight away, trying to shape it into a weapon of some sort. The stone hammers they were using instantly shattered unable to bend the metallic ore. Seeing this the black ants chattered amongst themselves before going to the surface and approaching the Demon species.
The demon species traded a few of their prey to them in exchange for the heavy dark blue ore and immediately tried refining it. The first thing they tried doing was melting it using a simple campfire, but the only thing it did was make the ore itself extremely hot and burn a few hands. They next tried hammering it using stronger materials and other types of metallic substances they found. This failed too as the metallic substance simply shattered and split into various pieces.
Like the lizardfolk and red ants they too gave up after a while and simply piled the substance up and try to figure out a use for it. In a realm made up of nothing but fire, metal, and a single large forge in the center. Vulcan saw all this and at first, he did nothing but wait for the various species to figure out how to refine the ore. Slowly he came more frustrated as they gave up and after the finally humanoid species gave up he burst into a torrent of blue flames, melting all the metal around him, except for five papers nearby that remained unscathed.
"I CAN"T BELIEVE THIS!"
"How is that they haven't figured out the basics of blacksmithing yet, it's pretty obvious when you think about it!"
Sitting down Vulcan calmed down and rubbed his metallic face trying to calm himself down. As his flames settled he got up and grabbed a nearby black hammer and held it over his should as a blue portal appeared in front of him.
"Looks like I have to do it myself."
Just like that Vulcan stepped through the portal with his eyes turning a light blue as both frustration and passion burned inside him.