It was slow, patient grinding. The great flame bird writhed its way into the four-legged half-wit thing, a flame monster, and under the Locust-Plus Mushroom-Bug Swords it was carved down, bit by bit, into a smaller flame monster.

All around the valley, flaming chunks of rock had fallen. At first the chunks kept spraying bright yellow material, burning like fire.

As time went on, the flames gradually went out, revealing what the chunks really were: white rock.

The smaller flame monster's aura began to weaken sharply too. It could no longer keep up the vast pressure of a particle-grade. Its emotions couldn't settle. The chaos was full of savagery, and through the savagery came weakness.

The Vajra kept wearing the flame monster down, a shield blow, then a sword stroke.

Steady and sure.

The Third Eye covered everything within ten-odd kilometers, keeping watch at all times for any danger lurking nearby and for whether something would draw stronger evolved beasts in to make trouble.

"Once their flames go out, the fallen chunks are white rock. This material structure works on the same principle as the white fire-spirit medium on the White Dragon King. It looks like my earlier deduction was very likely right. This monster is an evolved form of a Firestarter Spirit."

With everything under control, Shen Cong's mind came alive again.

That a Firestarter Spirit could evolve wasn't anything earth-shattering. Long ago, Shen Cong had concluded that Firestarter Spirits were only the lowest level of metal life. If you compared metal life with organic life, a Firestarter Spirit was the lowest of single-celled organisms.

Later, the White Dragon King had used a Firestarter fragment to help itself evolve, revealing some of the proto-Firestarter's secrets.

That had given Shen Cong a clear understanding of the Lv5 — Firestarter Era.

It was exactly that clear understanding that had kept Shen Cong from stopping after he finished the Lv4 — Nebula Era. He'd kept climbing toward a higher level of life until he finally broke through the Life Wall and his biological brain evolved into a proto-Firestarter. Other humans hadn't realized…