Of course, Aster wasn't going to leave right away, sure they had manuals now, but to get even the smallest results to show it would require hours of training, since meditating won't be useful in the short run now that they can't access any kind of energy.
Hence, they had to rely in what normal humans would have relied to defend themselves, weapons, and as previously stated none of the tools which would have perfectly worked as weapons, like axes, hammers or even kitchen knives for example, was allowed to be used in such a way.
With the word "penalty" explicitly written in the description of all the tools, the rules were clear, if they wanted weapons, they had to make them by themselves, and of course that would lead the participants to think on blacksmithing.
Especially because there were objects needed for blacksmithing, such as anvils, hammers, tweezers and even a furnace, on display at the exchange monolith.
