@jimmyclear Don't forget our systematic destruction of ancient knowledge over years because it's 'heretical', like one of the purges that happened with the library of alexandria, or a lot of stuff the 'pagans' used to know how to make or understand that got aggressively blanked out and overwritten by christian 'missionaries'. We're still trying to figure out techniques that were commonplace back in the day, honestly - we only recently figured out how to make roman concrete by realizing the 'water' put down was actually seawater.

Looking back at this chapter, I found out that a small concept-hole with the alchemy circle... The circle should be drawn on the container instead of on the ground if the container is to be used, or don't use a container at all, otherwise the container would be included in the alchemy process if it's put on the circle drawn on the ground.

@CountryMage

Not impossible to make in our world. If you get the methods right, you can mass produce pure iron or pure iron crystals that can be used for products. We did it before, before we screwed up and lost it in the Great Flood, along with 1000s of other techniques.

@fuadhika If I remember right, Ryoma gives a chemistry lesson in a webnovel chapter, so maybe in a later manga chapter.
Spoiler

Edit: I remember wrong.

Instead of relying on Alchemy, they could have also smelted that dirt the "conventional" way, and still gotten some okay iron. It's what made the Japanese sword smiths so famous to begin with, taking their materials from dirt and sand.

My favourite part of this manga is at the end, where Ryouma is always back at the forest and starts to look for more staff to recruit

I never really worked with pure iron, for obvious reasons, but I'd bet it's terrible to forge thanks to it's brittle nature. We use pure iron for high grade steel and alloy casting, things a medieval civilization has absolutely no clue other than bronze and brass. You could theoretically smelt "average" iron with the pure, but it's a hit or miss, not to mention the fuel and time investment. In my opinion, pure iron would have a bad reputation and would cost far less.

@Equilibrium with the forging capacity of their time id assume they would accidentally make pigs iron out of it

@Equilibrium
Well, considering that he made an ingot from just a few handfuls of sand, I suppose it is very rich in iron already.

> 100% pure iron has terrible qualities compared to common iron
Wouldn't forging reintroduce carbon into it anyway?

@kuhaku007 Yes, it's just you, this manga is healing my soul, and is as comfy as the one of "the Bloody Bear" girl.

@Equilibrium

The bane of having expert knowledge about something...

The soil would be very rich in iron if you could see it with the naked eye, at that level you could wash it out with water, but that would need an industrial scale to be worth it.
Bauxite on the other hand is very red even in low concentrates, looking at red soil and calling it iron is very ignorant when there are half a dozen different things that could cause red discoloration.

Also 100% pure iron has terrible qualities compared to common iron. Impurities give iron it's different properties. A civilization with basic metallurgy would have no use for it, not to mention that by it's nature it would corrode extremely fast making it worth less than trash before being reprocessed. Just a little trivia.

page count seems a bit low this time...

@greatninja3 from what i get, he first separated the soil from the iron sand. then he purified the iron by separating the oxygen atoms from the iron atoms, thus making 100% pure iron as depicted. but normal refined iron from iron ores are never 100% pure iron so it would be too obvious if they inspected it with magic (which will show it as 100% iron as shown). that's why MC had to re-add in some impurities to pass it off as something more normal. you could say that he accidentally over-purified the iron sand, so perhaps next time MC would just go straight to making "normal" iron bars instead of the initial 100% pure iron bar he did, since this MC isn't stupid.

Poor Elia lol

Why waste mana if you can just melt that thing and it can be passed as normal iron and far more accessible.

is it just me, or this manga does look a little bit cringey?

@fuadhika

Chemistry would be bounded by the rules of the universe, Magic usually ignore those rules. Rather than being about tangibility, accessibility would be the dominating factor.

Wow i didnt notice, but the mom is very stacked. Daughter stands no chance.

Make gold! Gold~!!