The branch, thick as James' arm, struck his thigh with a ringing crash. James was slow to react, but he did manage to bring out his shield and swing it around to block the following strikes.

From afar the bushes had looked short, but in fact they were almost as tall as James was. Unlike the tree-monsters of the first floor, they didn't seem to have a central tree trunk that could be smashed, so he simply swung his Earth War Hammer.

Several of the branches were smashed off the bush and blew away in the wind, but it made little difference to the overall bulk of this new kind of tree monster.

James backed away steadily, keeping his shield up, watching the bush to see how fast it would follow, but it didn't. After he got far enough away, the bush monster stopped thrashing and failed to give chase.

The Smith, however, was angry. The strike had hit him right on the remains of the bruise from his battle with the crab boss and hurt quite a lot. He returned his Earth War Hammer to his magic bag and silently withdrew his Red Iron War Hammer, the one with the [Heated Blade] enchantment.

Time to see how effective the enchantment really was.

He poured all his frustration and quite a bit of mana into the hammer. The head began glowing a dull red, like iron left in the forge. The handle remained dark, thankfully, or James would have risked burning his hand with each use; thankfully, the enchantment wasn't that strong.

He stepped forward again, shield up, and the bush lashed out again, branches pinging against the Green Iron, and in between strikes James countered, swinging his red-hot hammer through the dense tangle of wood and leaves.

The results were astounding.

The physical response was the same as the Earth War Hammer. His hammer smashed through several of the branches and continued on through the plant. But the plant itself caught fire in a blazing line left behind in the wake of his hammer strike, and it thrashed even harder. James continued swinging, feeling his mana chunk down with each strike, and the fire spread throughout the bush, until eventually the entire bush monster was burning, flames kicked up by the wind, and it eventually stopped thrashing.

James watched it burn for a time until the strong winds put out the fire, burnt branches scattering as they detached from the base of the bush. He pulled his mana back from the Red Iron War Hammer, but the head of the hammer still glowed hotly, so he set it down on the ground with a sizzle and withdrew a shovel to dig through the bush monster's remains.

Near the base he found a green magic stone.

"Serves you right," he whispered to the dead monster, his words carried away on the wind.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Surely nothing could hear him over the constant whipping wind?

His leg still hurt, and he might have a new bruise, but at least he had learned that the bushes were dangerous, and that he could handle them.

Still, he didn't exactly need more magic stones, and he had plenty of tree monster wood stockpiled from the first floor, so he figured he would just give the bush monsters a wide berth from now on. Fortunately they were scattered around the rolling terrain and easy to avoid.

Feeling more confident, but also more wary, he scanned around his surroundings and continued on, reaching the stone outcropping and small copse of trees growing in its lee. The stone was only about seven yards tall, and the trees a touch shorter than that, but it would make a good campsite.

If only the trees weren't also monsters.

James pulled his shield out again, and readied his Red Iron War Hammer, ensuring the enchantment was at full power.

The trees were odd, nothing like any tree he had ever seen. They had bare trunks until the very top, where it was like a bush sprouted from the trunk. Broad leaves spread from the branches in all directions, whipped about by the wind.

The Smith approached cautiously but in the end, it was all for naught. They were just trees. Even when he lightly knocked the trunk of one with his Earth War Hammer, there was no response.

With a sigh of relief James stepped out of the wind and examined his surroundings. There were tree trunks every few feet, crowding into the rare space not constantly subjected to the winds, and then there was the rising stone some ten yards wide.

To start, he placed down warding stakes covering the entire lee. Then, he withdrew a pick-axe from his magic bag and dug into the stone. The stone itself was similar to the stone from the first floor, and there happened to be a big vein of Green Iron Ore just sitting there for the world to see.

[Ore Identification]: Green Iron Ore, Sylph Essence

And it was brimming with sylph essence.

The ore came free from the stone as easily as ever, and James finished mining it quickly, but he kept digging, tunneling into the stone, expanding until there was a large enough area for him to lay down and sleep.

He just didn't think he could sleep comfortably if he was too exposed. Not anymore.

Once his sleeping area was set, he stopped for lunch and ate some of his smoked crab monster meat and bread. He was running low on bread, and would need to bake some more soon.

But first, to set up his forge.

Like usual, he used stone for most of it, and mortared it together with the soil nearby…

But the soil here just wasn't nearly as good as the clay from the second floor had been.

It wasn't bad, in fact it was better than the hard packed dirt from the first floor, but James had been spoiled by the wonderful clay on the second floor.

With a sigh, he double checked his equipment and trekked back to the stairs to the crab boss room.

It was an uneventful if mildly annoying walk, being battered around by the wind.

Back in the crab boss room, the same as it had been several hours ago, he dug down through the pebbles on the beach to the layers of sand and clay and filled several buckets with the materials. Luckily, buckets of the material had no trouble entering his magic bag, and he had found that he never had enough buckets, so he had forged plenty.

An hour later, he was back in the warded lee setting up his new home base on the third floor.

With plenty of Green Iron Ore and green magic stones, it was time to make a new set of armor.

First, he constructed his smelter and forge using the clay and sand he had collected, as well as the stone he had just mined out.

Then, he pulled out his quenching buckets and--

He stopped, and looked around.

He needed water.

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