Chương 10: The Slag Reduction Loop

Ethan did not take his green crust to the public forges. He tracked the stench of rotting flax down into the lower city drainage ditches, away from the prying eyes of Pixel Rex scouts. He sat on a limestone slab, his fingers digging into the moist silt until he found what he was looking for: a discarded charcoal pit left by the city's brick-kiln workers. The embers were cold, but the black ash remained. [System Prompt: Material Interaction Detected] Primary Agent: Unrefined Copper Slag Crust (3. 2 kg).

Catalyst Material: Hardwood Charcoal Carbon Ash (Public Waste). Thermal Level Required: 1, 085°C (Smelting) vs. 300°C (Chemical Reduction). Ethan's inner math engine hummed. The corporate player syndicates spent thousands of shekels on bellows, stone crucibles, and firewood to melt ore into ingots. That was standard video game logic. But Bereshit Online operated on authentic Bronze Age chemistry. You didn't need to liquefy copper to separate it from the slag.

You just needed to strip the oxygen out of the oxide crust. Carbon monoxide reduction, Ethan calculated, his eyes fixed on the chemical properties panel of the ash. If I mix the crushed slag with charcoal dust inside a sealed earthen jar, the carbon will rob the copper oxide of its oxygen at less than half the melting temperature. No bellows required. No expensive fuel bills. He reached into his inventory and pulled out one of the empty, cracked clay vessels he had borrowed from the alleyway widow.

Using a flat river stone, Ethan manually pulverized the greenish slag until it was a fine, dark powder. He mixed it with the discarded charcoal ash in a strict two-to-one ratio, pouring the gritty mixture into the earthen jar. He didn't buy expensive sealing resin; he scooped wet clay from the edge of the drainage ditch and packed it tightly over the jar's mouth, forming a crude, airtight seal. He buried the jar directly beneath the dying embers of a nearby communal baking oven used by the lower-city slum dwellers.

The heat from the public bread-baking was entirely free, continuous, and carried a zero percent structural tax. System Alert: Chemical Processing Initiated. Reaction type: Sub-Surface Carbonaceous Reduction. Time remaining: 15 minutes. Ethan sat under the thin shade of a wayside thorn bush, his stamina bar recovering passively for zero cost while the public oven did the heavy thermodynamic labor. Fifteen minutes, he thought, checking his real-world dashboard link.

His mind drifted briefly back to the dull science labs of his secondary school days, where he used to memorise chemical reduction tables just to pass his O-Levels. He had hated the exams, but the logic remained flawless. The Singapore smart-meter balance was at S$1. 04. The seconds were ticking down toward the zero-dollar threshold. He needed this flip to clear fast. When the baking timer on the communal oven expired, the NPC women cleared their flat loaves and walked away.

Ethan used his wooden trowel to dig out his buried clay jar. The clay seal was baked white and brittle. He smashed the vessel against a limestone rock. Crack. The jar shattered, spilling a cloud of black ash onto the dirt. Inside the debris sat a cluster of porous, glittering, heavy reddish-brown sponge nodules. [System Alert: Processing Complete] You have produced: [98% Pure Sponge Copper Pellets x1. 2 kg] Quality Grade: Industrial Merchantable. Operational Cost: 30 Copper Bits (Fuel Outsourcing).

Ethan swept the heavy metallic pellets into his leather pouch. He didn't march to the merchant quarter. He walked three lanes over to a low-tier NPC silversmith who manufactured cheap jewelry and votive amulets for the poor. He dumped the copper sponge onto the smith's wooden counter. The silversmith didn't display a static menu. The advanced AI squinted, picked up a pellet, and scraped it against a testing stone.

His weathered face shifted into a look of genuine surprise as the bright, raw pink of pure copper gleamed through the dark crust.

"This isn't brittle palace bronze," the smith muttered, his voice gravelly.

"Where did a landless beggar find copper this soft? It takes no fire to hammer this into wire."

"It's pure sponge," Ethan said, leaning over the counter, keeping his voice thin.

"No iron impurities to dull your chisels. I have over a kilogram. I don't want your shekels. Give me the raw silver scrap weight." The smith hesitated, his digital calculation processing the time saved on refining. He reached into his leather apron pocket, pulled out a small iron shear, and clipped a thin, jagged ribbon of uncoined Hacksilber —scrap silver—from a coiled ring, tossing it onto his small hand-scale. System Alert: Trade Finalized. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen.

Report the violation. You have received: [Hacksilber Scrap — Weight: 12. 5 Grams] Currency Conversion Equivalent: 6. 25 Silver Shekels. Ethan gripped the cold, jagged piece of scrap silver in his fist. He had started his day with zero shekels. By exploiting a biblical gleaning law, outsourcing labor to a local player named Loban, and utilizing secondary school chemistry inside a public baking oven, he had cleared six shekels of pure, tax-free profit without a single scratch on his default tunic.

"Transfer balance," Ethan commanded his master interface, his heart pounding.

"Convert 6. 25 shekels to Singapore Dollars. Immediate deposit to Chinatown Grid Node, Block 52." Processing currency arbitrage... Transaction fee: 0. 05 shekels. S$2. 97 SGD credited to your residential utility node. Oxygen throttling delayed by 1 hour and 39 minutes. Ethan let out a long, shuddering breath as the system confirmed the deposit. One hour and thirty-nine minutes of clean, unthrottled air for Grandma Tan, bought straight out of the dirt of Hazor.