Five days passed.
Five days of a rhythm that became the new normal.
The immediate fear of the Ursaring hadn't vanished, but it had been buried under the urgency of work.
The beast's return was inevitable, like a storm on the horizon. You couldn't stop it. You could only build a shelter strong enough to withstand it.
Seiko's refuge transformed.
The cave, now protected by the chevaux de frise barricade, had turned into a workshop. Seiko and Acies had dragged the largest flat stones from the ruins to create a level floor. Patrat hides, three a day, hunted by Acies with chilling efficiency, were stretched out to dry, and the smell of woodsmoke and hot metal clung to everything.
The pit furnace, repaired and reinforced with a thicker clay lining, was the center of their existence. Seiko kept a low fire burning through the night to preserve the charcoal, then fanned it to a roaring blaze by day.
The 'CLANG... CLANG... CLANG...'. of his stone hammer striking newly forged iron became the only clock that mattered.
Seiko had mastered the spear. Now, he was diversifying.
'A spear is a king's weapon', he thought, pulling a red-hot lump of iron from the crucible. 'But an axe… an axe is the weapon of empire builders'.
He was forging an axe head. It was a far more complex task than the spear. The blade needed to be hardened, but the "eye", the hole for the handle, had to stay soft enough to absorb shock without cracking. He failed twice. The first attempt split during tempering. The second wouldn't hold an edge.
Acies watched the process with infinite patience. The Pawniard sat in a corner of the cave, methodically polishing his own arm-blades against a whetstone Seiko had found. The dents from their fight with the Ursaring remained, but the edges gleamed sharper than ever.
'He's learning from me', Seiko realized. 'I refine metal through fire and force; he refines his through patience and friction. Two methods, one purpose'.
On the third attempt, Seiko succeeded. He punched the eye of the axe head with an iron spike he'd forged the day before, then shaped it carefully, following the grain of the metal. When he quenched it, the sound was sharp and clean.
He chose a length of wood from the ruins, carved it with a small iron knife (he was getting quick at those), and fixed the head in place.
He stepped outside. Acies followed.
Seiko selected one of the remaining charred logs. He hefted the axe. It felt heavy, but right. The strike landed with a solid THWACK, a massive chip of wood flying free.
It wasn't brute strength like Borin's. It was physics. The weight of the head, the leverage of the handle, the angle of the edge, everything working in harmony.
Acies gave a short click of approval.
"Now," Seiko said, "We can really build. Wooden walls. Firewood. A spare shaft for the spear".
But as he held the axe, his mind wandered, as it often did, to his higher purpose. To faith.
He had spent his nights staring into the fire, contemplating the theology that had burned in him since childhood in Aethelgard. His old faith, the memories of cathedrals and sacred texts, felt hollow here. It belonged to another world.
'But here... faith is tangible'.
He looked at the pile of hematite ore, the red, lifeless earth. At the furnace, the roaring fire. At the axe in his hand, a tool of strong, deliberate purpose.
'Arceus is the Creator God. The "Father"'. The thought formed, clear and sharp.
'He made the world, the laws of physics, the chemistry of iron and carbon. And He gave us the mind to understand them'.
Seiko swung the axe again.
'THWACK'.
'He didn't give us tools. He gave us components. He gave us the challenge. And the act of creating, what is that, if not worship? Taking the dead earth He gave us, using the mind He gave us, and shaping it. Giving it purpose'.
This was not a faith of pleading. Not a faith of asking for miracles.
It was a faith of making. A faith of engineering.
"We honor creation and life". he murmured to himself. "And life demands shelter. Warmth. Tools. The work of our hands is our prayer".
It was theology for a pragmatist.
A faith that could build a civilization.
He was so deep in thought he almost missed Acies' warning.
It wasn't a click. It was a sharp hiss. Pawn, SHAAA!
Seiko looked up. Acies was bristling, blades flared, staring not toward the plains—but toward the stream.
"What? The stream?"
Then he saw it.
The beast.
The Alpha Ursaring.
It stood in the creek bed, a hundred meters away. A nightmare given flesh. The left side of its face was a ruin, infected flesh and matted fur. Seiko's first knife, his earliest creation, was still lodged deep in its eye socket, a dark monument to its agony.
It was thinner now, gaunt from hunger and pain. And all its attention, all its hatred, was fixed on them.
"To the cave," Seiko said, voice dangerously calm. He gripped his axe tight. "Acies. Cave. Now."
They didn't run. They stepped backward, eyes locked on the monster.
The Ursaring didn't roar. It opened its drooling mouth and released a low moan, a sound of pure misery and rage. Then it charged.
It was fast. Terrifyingly fast, even while limping.
"Push the barricade!" Seiko shouted.
He and Acies dove behind the chevaux de frise, shoving it into the cave entrance. It slammed into place with a dull thud, sharpened stakes pointing outward.
Seiko grabbed his two-meter spear. Acies took position to his left, crouched and ready to strike through the gaps.
They didn't have to wait long.
'CRAAASH!'.
The Ursaring slammed into the barricade with all eight hundred kilos (Seventeen hundred sixty-three point seven pounds) of its weight.
The wood groaned. The sharpened points bit deep into its chest and shoulder.
The Ursaring howled, a sound so loud dust fell from the cave ceiling.
Seiko's design held. The barricade stopped the charge. It didn't shatter. It absorbed the impact, distributed the force.
But the beast wasn't dead. It was impaled, but alive and mad with pain. It began tearing at the barricade, ripping stakes loose with its claws.
"Acies! The legs!" Seiko shouted.
While the Ursaring shredded the upper barrier, Acies darted through a lower opening. His claws gleamed, Metal Claw.
'SKREEE!'.
The Pawniard slashed through the tendons of the Ursaring's rear leg. The monster dropped to one knee, roaring. It turned to crush Acies, but the Pawniard was already back behind the barricade.
That was Seiko's opening.
The Ursaring was down, tangled in broken stakes, its head and neck exposed through a gap in the shattered barrier.
Seiko didn't hesitate.
'One strike', he thought, channeling logic, fear, and his new faith. 'Pivot point. Maximum force'.
He gripped the iron spear as history had taught him, both hands, body braced, not a throw, but a Roman thrust.
He stepped forward and drove it home.
The cast-iron spearhead, forged from the ore of Arceus, pierced the Ursaring's throat just beneath the jaw.
There was no resistance. Seiko's iron, superior to anything in Aethelgard, tore through flesh, muscle, and vertebra with a sickening, wet crack.
The Ursaring's roar cut off, replaced by a choking gurgle.
Its claws twitched weakly. Its eyes, one ruined, one wide and glassy, met Seiko's. No hatred now. Just a terrible, hollow shock.
Seiko didn't let go. He held the spear, all his weight behind it, pinning the dying beast against the wrecked barricade.
"Acies," he gasped. "Back."
The Ursaring convulsed once more, and went still. The dead weight nearly toppled the barrier.
Silence.
Seiko stood there, trembling, the spear still buried in the monster's throat. The stench of blood and fur filled the cave.
Acies approached, touched the Ursaring's unmoving paw, then turned to Seiko.
'Click'.
It was done.
Seiko finally let go of the spear and dropped to his knees. The ebb of adrenaline left him weak and sick. He had killed, not in blind panic, but methodically.
He drew a long breath, lungs full of the iron tang of blood.
It took minutes before he could stand again. Together, he and Acies carefully dismantled the broken barricade. The Ursaring's corpse collapsed outside the cave entrance.
It was enormous. A mountain of flesh and fur.
Seiko stepped closer to the ruined head.
There, still embedded in the ruined eye socket, was his first knife.
He gripped the rawhide handle and pulled. It came free with a nauseating sound.
Now he had a spear, an axe, and his original knife.
He looked down at the corpse. He felt no triumph. Only the weight of it.
'We honor creation and life', he thought. 'But survival is the first requirement of life. And creation… sometimes demands destruction'.
He looked at Acies. At the furnace. At the iron in his hands.
"We have meat," Seiko said, his voice steady now, the voice of an engineer facing a solved problem. "Enough for weeks. And hide. Enough for a better shelter. For clothes."
He picked up his axe.
"But first, we'll need a smokehouse. And a tanning shed. There's work to be done."