For the next month, Kyle finished his work on redesigning some of his Methods.
The sudden attack of the five assassins had interrupted his work.
During that month, the birds had gotten used to mining.
By now, they had made a hole that was over a kilometer wide and over seven kilometers deep.
At that point, Kyle had to help them fortify the walls of the hole since some cave-ins were starting to happen.
Usually, Kyle would just tell them to make a wider hole, but he couldn't do that.
His personal territory was only so big.
At such a depth, Metal Elementals were no longer rare.
In fact, they were quite abundant.
The birds had probably killed over a hundred of them already, but even they were starting to reach their limits.
When working together, the birds could even take out a Late Metal Elemental, but sometimes, even two Late Metal Elementals were popping up at the same time.
Luckily, the Late Metal Elementals were busier fighting each other than the birds, which allowed the birds to win the fights.
As Kyle looked at the hole, he became a bit nervous.
He felt like they were digging towards a wasp nest.
Eventually, Kyle decided to join them.
Many people in the world were searching for opportunities to increase their Momentum, and Kyle wasn't any different.
'Kinda funny. You just have to dig straight down to find all the True Battles you will ever need.'
The birds continued digging, and Kyle mainly focused on the Metal Elementals.
Mid Metal Elementals were not dangerous to Kyle. One or two quick strikes with the hammer got rid of them.
Late Metal Elementals were a bit more dangerous. Kyle actually needed to use a couple of his Methods to kill them.
And then, they unearthed the first Peak Metal Elemental.
The birds were completely useless against this thing.
They were slower than it, one hit would kill them, and they couldn't even scratch it.
Kyle's fight with that Peak Metal Elemental was quite dangerous.
It was not as dangerous as his fight against the three Mid Metal Elementals, but it could still be considered a True Battle that was a bit on the easier side.
His Momentum even increased a bit. Not a lot, but a bit.
His second fight against a Peak Metal Elemental was a bit easier, but his Momentum still increased just the tiniest bit.
Starting at the Third Peak Metal Elemental, Kyle's Momentum no longer increased.
The Peak Metal Elementals all fought the same way, and Kyle had gotten all of their moves down.
It was like killing a very difficult boss in a video game for the third time.
It still required a lot of skill, timing, focus, and effort, but as long as all of that was present, the boss would fall.
During Kyle's third fight with a Peak Metal Elemental, he realized something.
He was learning a lot of new things related to metal.
More specifically, the metal's hardness, toughness, strength, ductility, and elasticity.
Yes, those were all different things.
'There's a Fragment there somewhere,' Kyle thought.
After that fight, Kyle started to change his approach.
When fighting Late Metal Elementals, Kyle would start to watch and learn from them.
Metal Elementals were the best teachers when it came to metal.
Sadly, Kyle didn't have the luxury to watch Peak Metal Elementals since he was busy "doing the dance" with them, which was essentially just his go-to procedure of Methods to kill them.
The hole became deeper and deeper, and Kyle's Soul Space was already overflowing with Rank A Materials.
While he wasn't even close to having as many Rank A Materials as the Forthing Family, he still had more than anybody else, excluding the Skysand Kingdom itself.
By now, the wildlife and the people of Theodor's Rest had gotten used to the constant quakes coming from the north.
Quite a lot of them were unhappy with the quakes, but there was nothing they could do about them.
One positive aspect of these constant battles was that nobody even tried to keep watch over Kyle anymore.
What was the point?
This guy was killing Peak Metal Elementals!
The only people who even had a slight chance of hurting Kyle were Advisors, and those were not willing to risk their lives like this.
Two months after Kyle started fighting Metal Elementals, the kingdom contacted him.
They asked him to contribute to the war effort.
In more plain terms…
Go fight on the frontlines or give us money.
Kyle just gave them a couple of cubic meters of Rank A Materials, and they fucked off for another year.
18 months after the ambush of the assassins, the Forthing Family sent someone to talk to Kyle.
He was producing too many Rank A Materials, which dropped the prices.
The Forthings could produce even more Rank A Materials if they wanted, but they didn't.
Supply and demand.
Too much supply hurt profits.
Kyle told them to fuck off, and they fucked off.
What were they supposed to do?
They couldn't kill him, and he wasn't doing anything illegal.
The best thing they could do was to complain to the kingdom about unsafe mining.
What if Kyle died? The Metal Elementals would go crazy and destroy all of Forest Haven Cradle!
However, the Skysand Kingdom wasn't stupid.
None of these complaints even reached Kyle.
The Skysand Kingdom dismissed them without even investigating.
Kyle was giving them an insane amount of Rank A Materials for free!
They were not about to execute their golden goose that laid golden eggs!
By now, the hole had reached depths of almost 70 kilometers, which was unimaginably deep.
However, for some reason, the number of Peak Metal Elementals dropped at that point, without an increase in natural metal.
This meant there was no natural metal at this depth and also no Metal Elementals.
There was just very hard stone that even the firebird found difficult to melt.
'Wonder if I'm close to the Deepwind,' Kyle thought.
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