The Man Picked up by the Gods – Volume 3 Chapter 116: Searching the Forest III (1/2)

We ran for the Elder Treant while brushing aside the roots that attacked us.

 The surface of the elder treant was dark and the circumference of its trunk was greater than 10 meters. Being around 20 meters tall, it was a large tree and had a grace about it appropriate for its great stature. But because of the swollen lumps and cracks on its trunk, it looked more sinister than majestic.

 On top of that, the face on the trunk of the elder treant was an ellipse as big as an adult and was positioned near the roots. The texture and the size of it only served to make the whole tree appear spookier.

“Ryouma, Raypin! Stay away from branches and support us! Syria, you support them!” [Asagi]

 We confirmed that we received our orders and stayed where we were just as we were ordered to.

 While the ground was paved via Pavement, I turned my iron slimes into axes and threw them at the slow treants to wipe them out. Raypin-san supported me with his magic, while Syria-san cut the roots that approached me and Raypin-san.

 …Asagi-san and the others were attacking the elder treant, but it was a lot more tenacious than expected. On top of its large body, the wood magic, Grow, was particularly troublesome.

 Originally, Grow wasn’t a healing magic, but because the elder treant was a plant type monster, Grow could make it grow, thereby causing an effect that’s essentially the same as healing. Right now, we have the advantage, but we can’t let our guard down.

“OoOOOO!”

 I heard a strange sound I couldn’t make heads or tails of. I don’t know if it it’s supposed to be a groan or a scream, but when I looked to the side, Mizelia-san had struck the face of the elder treant with her axe. They’ve been hitting the elder treant for a while now, but this last attack was deeper than anything they’ve dealt to it yet. Without a moment’s delay, Wereanna-san and Miya-san attacked the elder treant again.

 But…

“Tch!” [Wereanna]

“Nyaa!?” [Miya]

 The elder treant suddenly counterattacked. A black ball appeared from its mouth and shot toward Wereanna-san. Despite being taken by surprise, she was able to dodge, but because the elder treant followed up with an attack from its branches, she had no choice but to stop attacking.

 That spell just now… That’s the darkness-type spell, Dark Ball! 

 Wereanna-san was forced to stop, but Miya-san was still continuing. This time the elder treant released a black mist from its mouth. When Miya-san saw that, she jumped back.

“What is going on, nyaa!?” [Miya]

 She cried out in surprise. When I took a closer look, I saw that her axe was quickly rusting.

“What was that just now!?” [Wereanna]

“That was a dark ball! This elder treant can use dark magic too That effect is probably from dark magic as well, de aru!” [Raypin]

 …Hey, hey, this wasn’t written in the intel.

“There are too many unexpected things surrounding this elder treant! Retreat for now! We need to come up with a plan first, de gozaru!” [Asagi]

 At Asagi’s behest, we didn’t try to forcefully defeat the elder treant and instead decided to retreat.

 
 
 

 After leaving the attacking range of the elder treant, we rested while talking.

“Miya, how’s your arm?” [Mizelia]

“My arm’s fine, but this axe is a goner, nya..” [Miya]

 When Miya-san showed her axe us, the metal part was clearly rusted and the edge of the blade was already crumbling.

“When that black mist touched it, this happened, nyaa.” [Miya]

“This is terrible.” [Asagi]

“If our weapons get turned into this, there’s no way we’ll be able to fight.” [Mizelia]

“Raypin, can’t you think of a way?” [Wereanna]

“I’ve never heard of an elder treant that can use any magic other than wood magic. I’ve also never herad of a darkness-type spell that can cause weapons to rust. One way to deal with dark magic is to use healing magic as light magic to purify the mana, but… That’s not something we can regularly rely on during battle, de aru.” [Raypin]

 So the effect of that darkness-type spell is rust? …Could it be that’s the reason why the metal slimes were so scared? But in that case, then why? Wait, now that I think about… It’s still a hypothesis, but I should mention it to the others.

 
 
 
 
 
 

 When I told everyone my hypothesis, we decided to go back and fight the elder treant.

 There’s a lot of unexpected things surrounding this elder treant, but it’s not actually that strong. And even if things do get dangerous, we can easily run from it, so it wasn’t all that risky to try out my plan.

“Let’s go!” [Asagi]

“Pavement!” [Ryouma]”

 I turned the road into pavement again to block the elder treant’s root attacks. When we neared the elder treant, the elder treant started releasing black mist. Looks like it’s wary of us.

“It’s here!” [Mizelia]

“Let’s try it!” [Ryouma]

 I threw an iron slime throwing axe. I aimed at the face of the elder treant and threw it with all my strength.

 The axe drew a parabola in the air as it plunged into the black mist.

“OOOOO!”

 The iron slime axe splendidly landed on the forehead of the elder treant.

 Due to the effects of the contract, I could tell how the iron slime was feeling. Because of that I knew that it was alright.

“It’s unharmed! As I thought, that spell can’t affect the iron slime!” [Ryouma]

“Good. Now, let’s finish this treant, de gozaru!” [Asagi]

 As Asagi-san said that, he moved for the elder treant’s face. Miya-san, Mizelia-san, and Wereanna-san followed too. The last to follow was me, as I was casting Fire Arrow while attacking.

 

 The plan I proposed to everyone was to use the iron slime weapons and armor to fight.

 When I recalled how the metal slimes were so scared before fighting the elder treant, I figured that the metal slimes must’ve naturally feared it because it was metal. Raypin-san could see where I was coming from.

 As such, since the iron slimes weren’t scared, then I figured they must’ve had some way to resist that mist. But it wasn’t all conjectures too. Another reason for my plan was fueled with a piece of otherworld knowledge, which I taught to them under the excuse that it was my grandpa who taught me.

 The purer the iron is the harder it is to rust. And the iron slimes evolved after eating nothing but the iron produced from my alchemy. In other words, they possess a body of super high purity iron.

.


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31 responses to “The Man Picked up by the Gods – Volume 3 Chapter 116: Searching the Forest III (1/2)”

  1. twinnnn100 Avatar

    thanks for the chapter

  2. G Avatar
    G

    I can’t remember, but isn’t it the other way around, pure iron rust easier than things like steel due to the extra ions or w/e being connected and not free to be swept away in the air ?….

    Thanks for the chapter, and all the previous ones, and future ones.

    1. CCaprice Avatar
      CCaprice

      Yep you are right.

  3. ShimizuA Avatar

    pure iron is harder to rust? are you kidding me?

    1. Berpol Avatar
      Berpol

      It is a fantasy novel…

      1. jalil29 Avatar
        jalil29

        You should check the Iron Pillar of Delhi apparently 1600 years old and still going strong

        1. Phoenix Avatar
          Phoenix

          Good example. The Iron Pillar of Delhi doesn’t rust because of the phosphorus impurities. If it had been purer, it would have long rusted away.

          But conversely, slag particles can increase the rate of corrosion. In that case, being more pure would have slowed it down.

          So, impurities might increase or decrease the rate of corrosion, and it depends entirely on what the impurity is. Being more pure helps in one case and hurts in the other.

          I think the author did a quick search and only saw one case and wrote based on that. (Similar to yeast for bread in that chapter way back then)

          In the end, we’re here for a story, not a chemistry lesson.

          1. Dancer Avatar
            Dancer

            When you only have samples of two materials, you will have a maximum of two result sets.

            The author only has to say “for unknown reasons the metal slimes fed aluminum and iron corrode when exposed to dark magic and iron slimes fed only iron don’t corrode”

            No explanation of why required. Experimental results are sufficient for the immediate need.

            Leave it up to dark magic experts dabbling in metallurgy (or vice versa) to determine why these results happen🐶

    2. CBC Avatar
      CBC

      I actually can’t believe I’m saying this, but that’s true. Compared to Carbon Steel, pure Iron doesn’t rust as much as one would think it does. It seems like it has something to do with electro-chemistry as the process of rusting on its own is a component of that (where the Oxygen bonds with Iron to form Iron Oxide), Carbon Steel is a composite material of Carbon and Iron, meaning when moisture is introduced, there’s a flow of electrons, making it easy for Oxygen to jump in and ntr whatever Atoms it fancies at any given time.

      I prolly got a few things off, but that’s the general idea, because pure Iron is homogeneous, it’s harder for the processes that result in rusting to be kickstarted.

      1. Cake Avatar
        Cake

        That’s interesting. We only used bronze instead of iron because iron decayed too rapidly so I automatically scoffed for a moment, but of course that wouldn’t have been pure iron, and cast iron (or even proper steel) would definitely be easier to get than pure iron. After that we must’ve gotten gud at alloying iron to the point it was better than raw iron in every possible way.

        It still doesn’t make sense that what you just described somehow manages to overcome magically induced oxidization… but it also didn’t make sense that a rubber person was immune to lightning strong enough to overcome the resistance of hundreds of meters of air and it turned out to be a pretty cool fight scene anyway.

      2. TD Avatar
        TD

        Even if it’s wrought iron, it’s less susceptible to rust than structural steel, if that’s the type of metal that the metal sounds are. Early structural steel buildings in the US from the 20s actually ran into corrosion problems faster than their older iron counterparts.

      3. Lucio Avatar
        Lucio

        Damm it man i can’t stop laughing now, why did you have to put ntr in a scientific explanation? The “gap moe” is killing me Kkkkk

    3. hb98rml Avatar

      I was googling it and it seems to be true.

    4. Mahfudz Dying Avatar

      I think bronze is had the most high resistant to rust

  4. Belkar Avatar

    Thank you!

  5. aditue Avatar
    aditue

    thanks for the chapter

  6. hb98rml Avatar

    Thank you for the update. Tiny typo: “I’ve also never herad of a darkness-type spell that can cause weapons to rust.“ herad ➡️ heard

  7. Zax Avatar
    Zax

    Those slimes have quite the instinctive survival ability to detect that. Thanks for the chapter

  8. WillTell Avatar

    I would understand stainless steel not rusting, but it’s a very specific alloy.

  9. Tokanya Avatar

    Wow, today I learn something new.

  10. sweepberry Avatar
    sweepberry

    I’m pretty much guess and imagine all the party on Iron-man Suit, pun intended. :p
    Thank you for the updates!

  11. Matti Avatar
    Matti

    LOL, his Iron Slime turned out to be a Permalloy Slime.

    1. awsdert Avatar

      Can’t be an Permalloy, for one alloys are compounds (ie a mix of 2 or more metals), second the only permanent “things” are Eternaty, God, Christ, Laws of Mathmatics and existance – note I do not say the universe & time as that was created by God, anything existing with those particular 2 will always have an end eventually

      1. Hollow_like_the_O_in_gOd Avatar
        Hollow_like_the_O_in_gOd

        Oh great, we have a religious fruitcake here now…

  12. sfcipher Avatar

    Thanks for the treat.

  13. kariageweb Avatar

    Thanks for the chapter! 🙂

  14. cydra Avatar
    cydra

    Thanks for the chapter. Here is a link from Kiel university about corrosion and iron for whom are wondering: https://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/kap_9/advanced/a9_3_1.html

  15. CCaprice Avatar
    CCaprice

    Thanks for the chapter.

  16. darkloki2 Avatar
    darkloki2

    Thanks for the chapter, interesting know edge

  17. V4NQU1SH Avatar
    V4NQU1SH

    nice comment section we have here.

    thanks for the chapter!

  18. Dancer Avatar
    Dancer

    He’s wrong about the reason, but right about the result
    Facts trump theory every time

    When facts and theory don’t agree, good scientists go “Uhm, that’s not right. Time for a new theory”

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