The Silver Wolves' camp was neither a city nor even a proper village. It was a scar in the forest, a cluster of huts made from stretched hides and branches, surrounded by a palisade of wood blackened by damp and fungi. For Lukas, accustomed to the 4K graphics of his digital fortresses, the sight was outrageously primitive. The smell—a mix of dried blood, animal fat, and wet earth—assaulted him more fiercely than any enemy ever had.
Mathilde de Valois didn't release him for a second. She gripped his arm like a vice, dragging him down the central path under the sharp eyes of the other women. The men he passed here were shadows. They stooped, carrying carcasses or scraping hides with mechanical motions, their eyes empty. They were not warriors; they were disposable labor.
"Look what the storm spat out!" Mathilde shouted, tossing Lukas into the center of a circular clearing where a weak fire smoldered.
A dozen warrior women approached. Among them, an older woman, her face marked by a deep scar that closed her left eye, stepped forward leaning on a command staff.
"A foreign male, Mathilde?" Her voice was like two stones grinding together. "We need meat and muscle, not another mouth to feed with the Great Winter coming."
"He claims to possess knowledge, Mother-Warrior," Mathilde replied, her blue eyes fixed on Lukas. "He knows my blood-name. He says he can save us from starvation."
A mocking laugh rose from the circle of women. The Mother-Warrior approached Lukas, towering over him. She smelled of leather and bitter herbs.
"Do you even know how to hold a javelin, little one?" she asked with scorn.
Lukas stood slowly, ignoring the pain in his knees. He brushed off his modern clothes—a technical cargo pant and thermal top—that seemed alien in this world. His eyes swept the camp. He saw a warrior desperately trying to sharpen a bone blade with an unsuitable sandstone. He saw the fire losing heat due to poor insulation.
"The javelin is the weapon of those who have yet to master distance," Lukas said calmly, almost pedagogically. "Your people die because your technology is as primitive as your prejudices."
A deadly silence fell over the clearing. Mathilde growled, one hand on her dagger.
"Your words are blades, stranger. Care they do not turn against your own throat."
"Give me a chance," Lukas continued, fixing the Mother-Warrior with a steady gaze. "You say the Great Winter is coming. Your meat stores rot because your salt is impure, and your weapons shatter against the beasts of the Ether. If I do not show you something within three days that will change the fate of this clan, you may feed me to your wolves. But if I succeed… you will listen to me."
The Mother-Warrior exchanged a look with Mathilde. In this brutal world, audacity was either a sign of madness or divine favor.
"So be it," the old woman decreed. "Mathilde, he is under your watch. If he escapes or fails, your honor will be washed in blood."
Mathilde dragged Lukas to her own hut, slightly larger than the others, tucked in the shadow of a giant tree. She shoved him inside. The space was tight, filled with furs and the scent of warm leather.
"You play a dangerous game," she hissed, drawing close. Her proximity was suffocating. She was a predator, and Lukas felt the heat radiating from her warrior's body. Here, men did not negotiate—they served.
She placed a hand on his chest, feeling the beat of his heart. Her eyes glinted with a possessive, almost wild light.
"But there's something about you… You don't smell of fear. You smell of power. It's intoxicating."
Lukas smiled, a cold smile that took her by surprise.
"Power isn't just in muscles, Mathilde. It's here."
He tapped his temple.
"For starters, I need two things: fire, and access to your scrap ores."
While Mathilde, intrigued and wary, ordered her people to bring him what he requested, Lukas opened his mental interface.
[PROJECT UNLOCKED: BLOOMERY FURNACE (STAGE 1)]
[REQUIRED MATERIALS: CLAY, FIRE-RESISTANT STONE, CHARCOAL, LEATHER BELLOWS]
The obsidian he had picked up was only a beginning. He had noticed veins of silty iron near the river upon arrival. If he could forge even a rudimentary iron blade, he would become the god of this camp.
The rest of the day became a display of mental force. Lukas did not rest. Under Mathilde's close supervision, increasingly fascinated by the precision of his movements, he began constructing. He used no magic—only logic. He mixed river clay with dried straw and sand to make bricks.
"What are you doing?" Mathilde asked, sitting on a log, cleaning her nails with a bone shard. "Playing in the mud like a child?"
"I'm building the stomach of the world," Lukas replied without pause. "This furnace will eat the earth to sh*t metal."
Night fell, accompanied by a fine, icy rain. In Mathilde's hut, Lukas was exhausted. He sat on a wolf hide, hands trembling from fatigue. The warrior approached, removing her fur cape. Under the small firelight, her body appeared, marked by battle scars that told a story of violence and survival.
She crouched in front of him, gripping his chin.
"You work hard, stranger. Lukas… that's your name, isn't it?"
"Lukas Fischer."
"Fischer…" she tasted it on her tongue. "Tomorrow, you will continue. But tonight, you must remember who you belong to. In this clan, what is mine is protected. What is not… dies."
She pushed him onto the furs. Lukas did not resist. He needed this alliance. His strength was his mind, but in this world, he needed a shield of flesh and blood. The tension between them—a mix of cultural dominance and raw attraction—exploded.
Mathilde was a force of nature, her hands exploring Lukas' body with possessive curiosity. To her, he was the ultimate trophy: a male capable of creating worlds. To Lukas, she was the first step in his pyramid of power. Every caress, every bite she left on his skin was a contract sealed in the darkness of prehistory.
The next morning, Lukas was already at work before the first ray of sunlight pierced the purple canopy. His hands were blistered, but his mind was clear. The bloomery furnace was drying.
He began crafting a rudimentary leather bellows with the help of an old man from the tribe, Hans (a former captive from a distant Germanic tribe), who watched Lukas with a hope he hadn't felt in decades.
"You'll burn them," Hans whispered in German, thinking no one would understand. "They won't know what you're doing until the iron flows."
"Let them not understand, Hans," Lukas replied in the same language, surprising the old man. "Mystery is the first step toward godhood."
By noon, Lukas began the first heating. He stacked the charcoal and iron ore he had spent the morning sorting. He asked Mathilde to use her strength to operate the bellows.
"Me? Do a servant's work?" she protested, hand on her axe.
"Do you want a weapon that never breaks, Mathilde? Do you want the other Queens to bow before you? Then pump."
She growled but complied. The fire changed color, shifting from orange-red to bluish-white under the massive oxygen influx. The heat became unbearable for the curious onlookers. Lukas, sweat streaming down his face, monitored the simple chemical reactions he had memorized in Ancestral Wars.
After hours of exhausting effort, Lukas broke the furnace base with a stone hammer. A glowing, spongy mass emerged: a bloom of iron.
Silence fell again. The warriors stepped back, fearing Lukas had summoned a fire demon. Lukas grabbed a wet wooden tongs, placed the burning metal on a granite anvil, and began hammering with a dense stone mallet.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
With each strike, impurities flew in sparks. Under Mathilde's astonished eyes, the shapeless mass began to stretch and flatten. Lukas wasn't forging a sword—not yet—but a massive spearhead, wide and sharp.
Once roughly shaped, he plunged it into a bucket of cold water. The hiss of steam made the crowd jump.
Lukas drew the iron tip. Black, raw—but compared to the bones and stones the clan wielded, it was divine. He handed it to Mathilde.
"Test it on your practice shield," he said.
Mathilde took the tip, surprised by its weight. She affixed it to a wooden shaft and, with Herculean strength, struck a reinforced tree trunk. The iron penetrated deeply, splitting the wood cleanly, where bone would have shattered into pieces.
She withdrew the weapon. The tip remained intact.
The Mother-Warrior approached, fingers trembling as she touched the still-warm metal. She looked at Lukas not as a man, but as a national treasure.
"This is not stone…" she murmured. "Not bone. What is it?"
"It's the future," Lukas replied. "And this is only the beginning. I can give you tools to cultivate the land, cauldrons to cook meat without losing strength, and armor the claws of monsters cannot pierce. But for that, I need more than mud and fire. I need authority."
Mathilde turned to Lukas. Her eyes dark, burning with a mixture of desire and ambition. She draped an arm around his shoulders, marking her territory in front of the entire clan.
"He has succeeded," she declared in a voice that brooked no argument. "Lukas Fischer will remain with me. He will be my Royal Blacksmith. Whoever lays a hand on him without my permission will feel the cold of this new metal in their heart."
Lukas felt the System vibrate in his mind.
[MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: THE IRON AGE BEGINS]
[REPUTATION: SILVER WOLVES TRIBE — FROM "SLAVE" TO "CLAN TREASURE"]
[UNLOCKED: BLUEPRINT — RUSTIC GRIST MILL / CUT-STONE ARCHITECTURE]
[NOTE: MATHILDE DE VALOIS' OBSESSION INCREASED. WARNING: HER POSSESSIVE INSTINCT MAY BECOME AN OBSTACLE TO YOUR FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT.]
Lukas looked at the women around him. They no longer saw him as a man, but as a resource—a resource they would soon fight over. But Lukas didn't care. For now, he had a roof, a powerful protector, and the foundations of his future empire.
The Great Winter could come. He would turn it into the summer of his power.