Chapter 5: Yes!!! I have copper

Once at the stream, the boy began to walk along the shore, picking up some stones from the ground, examining them, and although he threw most of them back, occasionally, some rocks showed green or blue hues or had yellow or golden shines in certain parts, which he put in his basket.

After spending several hours collecting stones, the boy filled the basket on his back completely, so he returned to his hut, where he unloaded everything and went back into the forest. There, he gathered a lot of clay and dry logs, repeating this operation several times and even creating more baskets to speed up the process until he had accumulated a good amount of material.

"Phew, this 'chi' is really amazing; without it, who knows how long it would have taken me to gather so much material."

With all the materials at his disposal, the first thing the boy did was cut the dry logs into pieces of different sizes, making a pile with them in the forest not far from his cabin, with the largest pieces at the bottom and the smallest at the top, which he filled with branches and dry leaves, ensuring that air could pass through the entire pile.

After finishing the woodpile, the boy took the basket again and went to the stream, where he made a large amount of mud, which he brought back to the camp. He then started covering the entire pile of logs with it, remembering to leave ventilation holes, one at the top and several at the base.

"Well, I hope the wood carbonizes well..."

With everything ready, he started a bonfire and used it to ignite the logs underneath the mud through the ventilation hole at the top of the small pile. He waited for all the logs to be properly ignited before sealing all the ventilation holes with the leftover mud. After checking that everything was as it should be, the boy went back to the forest to hunt a couple of rabbits.

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After feasting on rabbit meat and water, the boy smoked the remaining rabbit meat, salted the skins carefully, and stretched them on bamboo frames to dry in the shade. Even though they were small, they would still be quite useful if he managed to tan them correctly.

Noticing that there were still several hours of daylight left, the boy began to build a clay oven using clayey soil, water, and dry palm leaves, shaping it like a bottle with a wide base and a narrower neck, ending up about 70 cm high.

With the basic shape of the oven ready, he made two holes at the bottom, where he placed two small bamboo sticks that he hollowed out with the help of a rod. At the ends of the small bamboo sticks, he made a small clay base and quickly cut in half a large bamboo he had brought from the forest, about 15 cm in diameter and nearly 2 meters long. Then he hollowed out the two halves with the help of a stick, placed them on the clay bases, and covered them completely.

Next, he took a couple more bamboo sticks about 3 cm thick, hollowed them out as well, and made two clay 'plugs' at their ends. Then, he inserted them into the 'towers' of clay with the bamboo inside that he had made previously, ensuring the 'plugs' left the air entry through the small bamboo clear but prevented the air from escaping through the sides.

After that, he started grinding the rocks he had brought from the stream with the help of a stone he had hardened with 'chi', making the work much easier and resulting in a very fine powder, which he stored in one of the baskets before going to sleep until the next day, as the sun was setting.

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The next day, after his usual coconut breakfast, the boy began to dismantle the mud mound containing the logs inside, where he found a good amount of charcoal, which made him smile. Wasting no time, he started placing it in the clay oven he had made the day before.

After lighting the charcoal with a small bonfire, he began moving the bamboo sticks protruding from the clay towers to the side, ensuring to uncover the hole at the tip of these when he lifted them and covering them with his thumb when he lowered them. This caused a large amount of air to enter the oven, making the flames grow stronger.

With the oven properly ignited, the boy quickly began adding the powder made from the stream stones, then going back and blowing quickly with the bamboo towers, repeating this operation several times until the fire started to show a ghostly green color.

"Yes!!! I have copper, damn it!!! HAHAHAHA"

The boy continued throwing the rock powder into the oven and blowing while replenishing the charcoal from time to time until he finished all the rock powder. Afterward, he just kept blowing the oven, maintaining a mental calculation of when to stop.

After some time, the boy stopped blowing and, once it cooled a bit, made a hole at the base of the oven with a stick. Using a pair of long tongs he had made from bamboo, he started removing everything inside.

After sprinkling water on the glowing embers and waiting for them to cool, the boy began to pick up several golden metal nuggets from the ground, putting them into a basket until he had collected them all. Then he stored them near his shelter.

"Well, I should cook the clay pots. It's about time…"

After stretching lazily, the boy went for the clay pots he had been drying and cooked them in a large bonfire. Although several broke, a good number survived the firing, so with a satisfied smile, he placed them in a safe spot to cool down before going to sleep.

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The next day, the boy set out to tan the rabbit skins that had been drying. He took them to the stream with his spear in hand, washed them thoroughly, ensuring all the salt was removed, and left them to dry in the sun on an improvised clothesline made from some sticks and ropes near his camp.

After that, he hunted a few more rabbits, smoked their meat, and salted their skins. But this time, instead of burying the brains as usual, he put them in a large clay pot he had made and boiled them until they dissolved in the water.

By that time, the skins had dried quite well, so the boy proceeded to apply the brain solution to all the skins, ensuring they were well covered. He then rolled them up and set them to dry near his camp, where he had made a small space for that purpose.

When he finished with the skins, he went to the stream again with his basket, collected more rocks, and repeated the same process to extract copper for several more days until he completely filled the clay pot where he stored the copper nuggets he had obtained.

During those days, obtaining copper was not the only thing he had done; he had also managed to make some shorts from the rabbit skins, a pair of wooden-soled shoes, not the most comfortable in the world, but better than nothing, and a pair of gloves, thanks to being small after all.

Another change was his camp, where now a bamboo cabin stood where his hut used to be. Although not very large, it had space for sleeping and a few places to store food, skins, and other things. He also created a couple of crucibles from clay, ensuring they were thick enough to withstand high temperatures without breaking.

On some wooden logs, the boy began carving different shapes using his stone knife hardened with 'chi.' Although he failed a few times at first, he got the hang of it over time and managed to carve what he needed, ending up with various wooden tools such as machetes, belt buckles, hammers, chisels, axes, knives, shovels, hooks, and some nails of different sizes.

With the wooden carvings ready, the boy started collecting fine sand from the forest, as the beach sand was too coarse. Using a sieve made from a bamboo frame and a fine mesh of plant fibers, he ensured the sand was as fine and uniform as possible.

In a large clay pot filled with the fine sand, the boy used the wooden carvings he had made to 'print' their shapes into the sand, then compacted the sand well with the help of a rock, finishing the sand molds.

After that, the boy proceeded to put the copper nuggets into the crucible until it was half full, then placed it in the lit oven and began blowing it with the bamboo blowers until the copper eventually melted.

On the surface of the molten metal, various impurities could be seen, which he removed with the help of a green bamboo stick, allowing them to cool a bit before reheating the crucible in the oven.

After repeating the process several times, no more impurities could be seen on the surface of the molten metal. The boy quickly carried the crucible to the sand pot and carefully poured the copper into the sand molds he had prepared.

After repeating the entire process several times, the boy ended up with various hammers, axes, small knives, large knives, machetes, chisels, large and small belt buckles, some shovels, and several nails of different sizes.

Using large stones hardened with 'chi', which made him feel like he was working with industrial sandpaper rather than a regular stone, the boy polished and sharpened all his tools until they could easily cut through thick ropes. He then moved on to creating handles from the trunk of a super hard tree, similar to ash, that he had felled in the forest.

With the handles for his tools ready, the boy began fitting them onto each of the tools, securing them with the various nails he had created. He then wrapped them tightly with strips of leather, which were leftover pieces from the rabbit skins he had used to make his clothes and gloves.