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Regardless, this work of trying to stop tidal waves felt both familiar and totally new. He was certainly no stranger to materializing giant slabs of iron in order to wall areas off and protect people--not to mention all his sparring sessions with the Water Dragon of Sair--but this was also on a scale that was entirely unprecedented for him.

The sheer amount of seawater that he was dealing with was almost unfathomable.

Try as he might, he simply could not materialize enough iron. Never before had he run into the problem of his volume limit like this. It had been a long while since he’d even had to think about that in the first place, but here and now, he was being made keenly aware of just how weak he truly was in the grand scheme of things.

And to think, he’d actually been growing somewhat confident in his strength, recently. What with the victory over Banda Toro, the acquisition of this new armor, as well as the Living Core...

All of his training and techniques and artifacts of power...

None of it was enough to stop just a really big wave. Not completely, anyway.

He learned quickly that he had to be more precise with the use of his iron. He needed to be efficient with his volume limit. Trying to protect every coastline was a futile endeavor. But a coastal hamlet? Or an island with a few houses on it? Or a poor tugboat out in the middle of all this?

Those deserved the entirety of his efforts. As much iron as he could muster. Truly colossal walls or platforms to divert the oncoming water.

It also reinforced the importance of geometry to him, as well. He was glad he’d been studying that more, as of late. Just making the walls flat would’ve made them much easier for the waves to batter down. Better to make them angular and pointed so that the waves would hit them and then split apart, sent off in different directions. And from there, he could focus on trying to manage the overall flow of the seawater.

Making hills was another valuable strategy, he found. Rather than trying to endure the ridiculous impact forces of these neverending waves, it was often better to pull them upward for a while and let those forces gradually weaken as they fought against gravity.