As the Shell Insect brought the people of the Tribe hope of the ocean,
Boer also began learning how to command the other Bobbit Worm, the one that symbolized the earth, under his older brother's guidance.
But he clearly didn't have Ned's talent.
The Bobbit Worm that belonged to him
responded to his commands like a dim-witted idiot, incredibly slow on the uptake.
Even after hearing an order, it took half a beat to react, and its movements were noticeably slower than those of its companions.
As a result, getting it to level land or dig into a mountain was out of the question.
Boer squeezed his eyes shut, furrowed his brow, and held out both hands toward the Bobbit Worm.
He seemed to be straining with all his might, and cold sweat ran down his face.
After they had remained in that stalemate for a while,
the dazed Bobbit Worm finally seemed to sense something. It twisted its body and wriggled toward its controller.
Ned could only shake his head.
"Is it really that hard?"
"First, do this... then do that."
"Finally, do this, and that's it."
Faced with his older brother's lessons, which sounded exceptionally abstract,
Boer could only smile bitterly and say,
"Brother, this really is difficult for me. I'm not like you, someone recognized by the Messenger of the Gods. Maybe..."
But Ned cut him off before he could finish.
Ned patted his younger brother on the shoulder.
"Don't worry. You'll get the hang of it with more practice."
He seemed to have been born with a knack for this.
Though he couldn't understand Boer's frustration,
he still offered him encouragement.
He hoped his younger brother could use this to change some of the stubborn elders' opinions, instead of always having Ned steal the spotlight from him.
Although Boer was making very slow progress at controlling the insects,
the Artisans of the Tribe had made a major breakthrough in studying the other two Bobbit Worms.
Chief Boer had already told the people not to offer the Bobbit Worms any tributes, since they didn't like that kind of food.
But some of the Tribespeople still placed fresh fish and Brown Rat meat in front of the giant beasts.
However,
the Bobbit Worms acted as if they hadn't seen the offerings. They weren't attracted to them in the slightest.
That was because these were strange insects that ate rocks.
The Bobbit Worms secreted a strange, thick, pale-blue liquid from their mouthparts and spat it onto rocks. The enormous stones then began to crumble.
Then they used the hooked claws on their sharp mouthparts to gobble down every last piece of shattered rock.
At first,
people simply thought the Bobbit Worms were gifts from the gods, helpers that could clear more farmland for the Tribe and make it easier to craft stone tools.
But after Chief Boer summoned the elders and Scholars to collect their droppings,
they noticed that the Bobbit Worms' waste had some strange properties of its own.
After eating several times,
the Bobbit Worms would return to the surface and excrete strange black substances that looked like rocks, one after another.
The droppings had no odor.
They were no different from ordinary stones, except for their color.
"Are their droppings stones too?"
Someone curiously prodded the Bobbit Worm's dark, lumpy waste with a finger.
It was clearly harder than stone.
"But they're so small. We can't exactly make tools out of them, can we?"
The person asked in confusion.
The tiny dark lumps couldn't be used to make anything, surely.
"I don't know."
The person collecting the droppings shook his head.
"But Chief Boer said that after Bobbit Worms eat rocks, they can turn them into an even stranger substance. So we have to bring their waste back for the Scholars to study."
After collecting all the droppings, the Scholars began their research.
One particularly bold Scholar remembered how the Rot Spirit Insect had once been used as medicine.
"Maybe it's edible?"
"Why don't we try it?"
The Scholars clearly couldn't rein in their curiosity. They dipped their fingers into the droppings and swallowed some.
Every one of them ended up lying with the Healer for a long time before gradually recovering.
Even so, some people remained convinced that the substance might be edible.
They thought it simply needed to be roasted over a fire first,
just as food couldn't be eaten raw.
So, by pure chance, they put some into a blazing fire fueled by charcoal.
When the flames died down,
they were astonished to see
that some of the tiny black particles had quietly fused together, forming larger clumps of dark material.
And so,
by sheer good fortune, the Tribe discovered that Bobbit Worm droppings underwent a wondrous change in fire.
This discovery filled the people with excitement.
Once they found the right direction, everything became much easier. The Tribe's Scholars and Artisans quickly threw themselves into related research.
At Boer's suggestion,
the large, hard lumps that resembled black stones and formed when the droppings fused in the fire were named [Black Stone].
[Your civilization has discovered and named a new material.]
[After undergoing continuous transformation inside the Bobbit Worm, chunks of ore have become a new and unusual substance.]
[They are harder than rocks.]
[At a sufficiently high temperature, they gradually melt. Once cooled, they become hard again.]
[A new industry has appeared on the Tech Tree.]
[Civilization Tech Tree unlocked: Smelting Industry]
[The beginnings of the smelting industry have taken shape.]
Mona noticed the movement on the Drawing Board.
He dipped the Paintbrush into the colored substance.
Just as he had expected,
[Black Stone] was actually a kind of metal.
After absorbing certain ores, Bobbit Worms could transform them into this strange metal and excrete it, as if extracting the metal from the ore.
Its melting point was probably lower than iron's.
It could fuse together in a fire.
But it was just as hard as iron, and it also had decent resistance to corrosion.
As long as the people continued their research and raised the fire's temperature, melting it into [Black Water] shouldn't be difficult.
"After insect Animal Husbandry, will another unusual industry, the Smelting Industry, appear?"
Mona smiled.
It looked as if the Tribe would undergo a complete Evolution before venturing into the ocean.
He used the Tech Points he had on hand to light up the corresponding nodes for the people in the [Temple of Eternity].
[Consume Light of Technology?]
[Consumption successful!]
[You consumed: Light of Technology *15]
[You lit up the Smelting Industry for the people of the Tribe!]
[Research soon to begin: Earthen Blast Furnace]
[Research soon to begin: Crude Bellows]
[Research soon to begin: Crucible]
[Research soon to begin: Mold]
After the god quietly lit the way ahead for the people,
the Tribe avoided many detours.
Once the corresponding tools had been developed one by one,
the long Stone Age in the history of civilization seemed poised to end ahead of its time.
The people's lives, too, were about to undergo a whole new transformation.
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