Exiled Villainess: They Threw Me Out, Now Every Beastman Wants Me novel Chapter 107

Chapter 107: Playing With Fire

Tera needed stones more than clay, and in greater quantity.

Flat stones for paving, smaller stones for filling gaps, and finer fragments for mixing into the sealing paste. The clan members were sent to the lake and the stream to collect as many as they could carry.

They returned with armfuls of rocks in varying shapes and sizes, and Tera’s heart sank a little when she surveyed the haul. Many of the smaller stones were round and irregular, not the flat pieces she would have preferred for lining a channel floor. The medium to large stones were solid and heavy, good for anchoring, but far too big to use as they were.

Breaking them down was another problem entirely.

A beast’s strength was formidable, but strength alone didn’t crack stone the way Tera needed. The males smashed rocks against other rocks, and while it produced some usable fragments, the results were inconsistent. The large stones barely even shattered at all. The rest barely chipped despite being struck with enough force to dent the earth beneath them.

Tera needed rough fragments, and she needed pieces she could pack tightly into gaps and press into the clay paste.

The smashing method was producing more frustration than results, and the deadline was not getting any further away.

It took Tera one night to come up with a solution.

She laid with her husbands and children in her shelter, her mind cycling through everything she knew about stone, heat, and the physics of thermal stress. It was dangerous. It was the kind of idea that, in her old world, would have required safety equipment, controlled environments, and at least a form of liability insurance.

Here, she had hoes, beast men, and a system.

The next morning, she gathered the clan and explained her plan.

Some of the males went pale. Others leaned forward with the wide-eyed excitement of creatures who had been told they were about to do something that might explode.

Which they actually were.

Xavi and Ermin were neither pale nor excited. They were insanely alarmed.

Obviously, they refused, and Tera spent the better part of an hour explaining, reassuring, and eventually pleading. She promised to keep a safe distance. She had the system on her side, she would be able to use it to safely interrupt the process before its breaking point.

And she promised she wouldn’t be anywhere near the fire when the water hit the superheated rocks.

They agreed, reluctantly and with visible displeasure that lingered on their faces for the rest of the day.

The fires were built deeper in the forest. Medium to large stones were placed directly in the hot flames and left to burn for hours until the heat soaked into them thoroughly.

The burning flames went on till the following day, closely monitored by Tera and the beasts in batches. The rocks had been pulled from wet environments, the lake and the stream, which meant they held moisture deep in their cores. When heated, that trapped moisture would expand. And when cold water was poured over the superheated stone, the rapid temperature change would create thermal shock.

The stones would crack.

Or explode and release shrapnel if one was too late.

It especially did not help that there were more than ten flames heating numerous stone batches.

Most importantly, Tera had the system working overtime to monitor the flames and the breaking point of the rocks.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify