Seeming to blend in with the falling pink blossoms of the tree was a particularly colorfully dressed student who stood tall with one hand in his pocket and the other tapping on his chin. "Hmm..." Aldous looked down at the tree... "I hope they realize that the process of making this sort of steel is only a way to circumvent the fact this nation had very small reserves of iron due to being a volcanic archipelago and the reason nobody else did it was because nobody needed to... not that other cultures lacked the knowledge to." The boy brushed his hair and took his hand from his pocket before casually walking closer to the tree.

The exact nature of the challenge, it seemed, was unknown to him as it was to the rest of the students. Still, the boy was not a stranger to the art of sword smithing, and thus begun his duties without a second thought. He knelt down before the tree to inspect the materials and seemed a little disappointed at the lack of variety of metal he had to choose from as well as the apparent lack of understanding for the inner workings and particularities of metal-working which were oh-so-important to the creation of a proper sword. Aldous scoffed, though brushed it off, picking up two different pieces of iron. It wasn't particularly easy to visually inspect the quality of a piece of metal, though such a thing was not incredibly important to Aldous. "Softer..." he whispered, placing a piece of steel on his lap. He then eyed a piece of black steel and seemed to almost keel over in disgust. He picked it up. "Oh, you poor baby. Left here alone where these foolish rubes might pick you up, not even knowing how to use you, but you're lucky." he whispered into the metal hunk, then placed it in his lap among the other pieces. Finished collecting his steel, Aldous looked for a proper place to actually work them in.

"I hope I can properly heat you" he said to the black steel piece, then looked around. "Though by the looks of things, it seems they expect us to bash rocks together until we get something resembling a weapon. It's like these people don't know properly how to run a forge." Aldous adjusted his glasses in a snobbish manner, then walked off.