By the time the second day began, the heat had started seeping into his bones.
It wasn't just the temperature — though the volcanic air shimmered visibly in the sunlight — but the relentless, clinging exhaustion that came from breathing sulfur and walking through soot. Riku's clothes, already half-shredded from whatever transfer had dumped him here, now stuck to him with sweat and ash. His eyes burned. His muscles ached. But there was no time to adjust. No time to hesitate.
The forge had to be reclaimed.
It had been built into the slope of the inner crater — a half-sunken chamber, reinforced with blackstone and riveted iron. At least, it had been. Now, half the roof was gone, collapsed inward after what looked like years of corrosion and weathering. Steam vents hissed low along one wall. The air inside smelled like burnt copper and animal grease.
Riku stood in the center, his foot on a cracked forgeplate, and looked at the warped frame of what had once been a working smelter.
"It's not as bad as I thought," he lied.
Beside him, Tharn grunted. "It's dead. The vents are clogged. There's no tongs. No fuel. No heat control."
"Then you improvise," Riku said. "Claws instead of tongs. Carve channels. Use molten pitch if you have to."
Tharn stared at him with those slit-iris eyes, unreadable, unmoving.
"We're not builders," he said.
"No," Riku replied. "You're survivors. So adapt."
The older Draganoid didn't speak. But when Riku turned away, he heard the muttered curses start, then stop, then shift into orders. Stone scraping. Ash being pushed aside. A slow rhythm of resistance giving way to necessity.
Riku moved out toward the edge of the keep, farther from the smell of sulfur, and let the wind—hot as it was—cool his skin. He sat on a high, flat rock that overlooked the crater basin and opened the logbook he'd been issued with the Starter Pack. Pages of heat-treated leather, slightly curled at the edges. Blank except for his own scrawls.
He flipped back to the first inventory list and began updating by hand:
Hardwood: 37 units (original 50, 13 used for barracks support beams)
Cut Stone: 49 units (original 50, 1 used for door repair)
Tools: Hatchet x1, Pickaxe x1, Dagger x1
Rations: 4.5 days (3 meals per day, 10 tribe members)
Then he paused.
He frowned, turned the page, and checked the line again.
Tools: Pickaxe x1
That wasn't right.
He leaned over and opened the cloth-wrapped supply roll beside him.
There were three pickaxes now.
Same length. Same cracks. Same dull iron heads, notched and heat-discolored in the exact same places.
He hadn't crafted them.
He hadn't asked anyone to.
They were just there.
He touched one gently, testing the wood. No illusion. Solid. The weight balanced the same in his palm.
As he stared, a new message flashed briefly in the lower corner of his vision — almost imperceptible, like a whisper catching on the edge of hearing:
[Pickaxe | Original: 1 | Fold Multiplier: x3 | Final: 3]
The message blinked once and disappeared.
He looked around. No one else seemed to notice anything strange. Kael was halfway across the clearing, recording stone counts with a piece of charcoal and scrap bark. Tharn was barking at two of the forge team to move a collapsed support beam. Sira had climbed onto the broken tower again, watching the horizon.
No one had seen.
Riku picked up one of the new pickaxes, gripped it tightly, then tucked it away under the hidewrap. He didn't say a word. But inside his chest, his heart was thudding like someone had just slammed a hammer against an anvil.
It had happened again.
He remembered the spear yesterday. Now this.
He didn't know why it was happening. He didn't know the conditions. But one thing was certain:
It only happened to things that were his.
Only things he held. Owned. Claimed.
He added a new page to the back of the logbook and titled it simply: Replications.
Underneath, he wrote:
#1 – Spear (quantity unknown – yesterday)
#2 – Pickaxe | Fold x3 | Final Total: 3 | Confirmed 2 added (time unknown)
Then he closed the book, exhaled slowly, and sat for a while in silence.
Even with the absolute barrier around the territory, even with the global system claiming thirty days of protection, Riku knew this world wasn't calm. It was waiting. Watching. And whatever this ability was, it wasn't part of the rules everyone else had been given.
He wasn't going to ask questions on the chat. He wasn't going to test the system in front of others.
He was going to build.
Late that afternoon, Kael came running from the forge mouth, breathless.
"We found something under the slag," he said. "Old metal. Not melted. Intact."
Riku followed him into the half-cleared forge where a group of Draganoids had uncovered a solid black plate buried beneath years of ash. It was flat, rectangular, about a meter across, with faint grooves inlaid in geometric patterns.
"It's sealed," Kael said. "But not damaged."
"No one touches it," Riku ordered. "Not yet."
He waved them back, then brushed his fingers along the top of the casing. It felt warmer than the forge floor. But it didn't react.
No prompt. No fold. No glow.
Just silent potential.
That night, after rations were passed out and the fire circle was lit inside the barrier's edge, Riku sat with the logbook again and marked the stone slab's location.
He glanced once toward the forge where the slab lay.
Then to the three pickaxes lined up in a neat row by the wall.
The fold had happened without warning. Again.
He didn't know when the next one would come.
But it would.