The Trial of Steel begins with a nightmare as Ezra is dragged from his warm bed into a cold, clinical chamber of death. Locked inside a glass box, he is forced to participate in the family's sick ritual of survival, where he must assemble a revolver and shoot the boy across from him. While other children freeze in terror or scream for mercy, Ezra uses his childhood training to piece together the weapon, but his bullets scatter across the table. His opponent fires first, cracking Ezra's glass shield, but misses. Realizing he has only one shot left while his opponent has four, Ezra calculates the angles, adjusts his aim, and shoots through the cracked glass, killing the boy instantly. The trauma of his first kill triggers a violent mental explosion, flooding his mind with the memories of a past life as a veteran soldier and gunsmith. These memories provide him with advanced knowledge of modern weaponry and physical training, giving the sickly boy the ultimate foundation to survive. However, his victory quickly draws the wrath of Pamela, a high-line noble whose brother Ezra just killed. Pamela and her goons corner Ezra in the bathroom, beating him brutally and attempting to drown him, only for a stern guard to intervene at the last second. As Ezra limps back to his room and collapses into darkness, he realizes that he is no longer just a ghost of the Ashenlocke family, but a survivor armed with the forbidden secrets of another world. When he awakens, he begins a grueling routine of physical conditioning and intense library study, learning the secrets of Gun Alchemy and the levels of Cognis. He realizes that his past-life knowledge of firearms is far more advanced than anything Britannia has ever seen. But as the three weeks of preparation draw to a close, the horn blares once more to signal the start of the second trial, throwing the candidates into a frozen wilderness where they must form teams to survive, leaving Ezra to face the freezing cold alone.

The second trial drops the children of Ashenlocke into a freezing, snow-covered forest where they must survive for seven days while avoiding deadly Silverback Dire Wolves. Ezra uses his military survival knowledge to find a hidden cave, build a water filtration system, and trap food, living in relative comfort while other teams descend into chaos and tribal warfare. His peace is shattered when a group of battered lower-line children, led by Marcus, begs for shelter, claiming they were hunted by wolves and rival factions. Ezra reluctantly allows them in for one night, but his sharp analytical mind quickly notices inconsistencies in their behavior and terminology. He deduces that they are actually spies sent by the mainline prodigy, Vera, on Pamela's behalf to isolate and weaken him. When Ezra confronts them, the group panics, and Marcus stabs Ezra in the side with a sharpened wooden stake. Believing they have won, the traitors prepare to signal Vera, but Ezra uses his superior body control and speed to turn the tables. He drives the stake through Marcus's own hand, shoots Gena's hands with a precise arrow, and knocks out the remaining attackers. Just as he prepares to flee, Vera and her elite squad arrive, surrounding the cave and cornering the injured Ezra. Vera offers him a cruel choice: die by a barrage of arrows or be torn apart by the approaching wolf pack. Ezra boldly chooses the wolves and leaps into the dark forest, leading the relentless beasts on a terrifying chase through the canopy using his core balance training. After a desperate struggle where he kills two wolves with traps and a makeshift bamboo gun, Ezra falls off a cliff into an icy river, his blood staining the snow. He barely drags his freezing, blood-soaked body onto a riverbank, using a bitter stimulant herb to stay conscious while masking his scent with crushed flowers. He collapses under the roots of a giant tree, leaving his enemies to believe he has perished in the freezing wilderness.

After recovering in his hidden tree shelter, Ezra discovers Gena collapsed nearby, battered and bleeding after being abandoned by Vera's group. Despite their past hostility, Ezra's core humanity drives him to save her life and dress her wounds, forming an unlikely alliance. As they prepare to return to the base, they stumble upon a horrific scene: the sadistic mainline heir, Felix, and his gang are brutally torturing Peter and assaulting Mary. The sight triggers a traumatic memory of Ezra's past life, where his closest comrade was violated and killed by privileged elites who escaped justice. Fueled by righteous fury and cold tactical precision, Ezra steps out of the shadows to confront the seven attackers. While Felix sneers at the lowly insect making demands, Ezra moves like smoke, dodging arrows and blades with effortless grace. He cuts the throat of a giant bully, throws a dagger directly into an archer's forehead, and decimates the remaining goons in hand-to-hand combat. Terrified by Ezra's demonic strength, Felix cowers behind his own men and flees into the forest. Ezra gives chase but is ambushed by Felix's full squad, who unleash two captured Silverback Dire Wolves to tear him apart. Using his pre-prepared bamboo traps, Ezra kills one wolf with an impaling log and traps the other in a rope snare, but his arm is severely mauled in the process. He barely manages to trap the final beast in a pit of sharpened stakes before the trial's ending horn blares. Ezra collapses onto the blood-soaked snow, his body broken but his spirit unbroken, having proved that even a sickly ghost can bring down the proudest predators of Metallica. He is rescued by medical teams and spends two weeks comatose in the infirmary, awakening to find himself ranked seventeenth among the survivors. His survival and mysterious strength draw the attention of the family's most dangerous players, setting the stage for a massive political clash.

Upon discharging himself from the infirmary, Ezra realizes that the third trial has already forced the candidates to undergo their full Alchemist awakening using the dangerous elixir, Ese. Rather than relying blindly on the family's traditional methods, Ezra uses his library research and past-life meditation techniques to secretly cultivate his Cognis beforehand, creating a perfect half-formed star in his mind. This risky, self-taught breakthrough nearly kills him, but it gives him unprecedented control over his energy. Soon after, he witnesses a spectacular public duel between the proud Priscilla and the enigmatic Vera. Priscilla, desperate to prove her worth, uses an alchemy scroll to summon a fully formed revolver, firing a barrage of bullets at her rival. Vera effortlessly evades the shots using advanced body reinforcement, closes the distance, twists the gun back toward Priscilla's own head, and delivers a brutal knee to her stomach, demonstrating the terrifying gap between genius and hard work. Witnessing this displays of peak Gun Alchemy, Ezra realizes he must hide his true strength and develop his own unique weapon strategy. He enters a high-tech seclusion room, spending eighty-nine thousand points won from clever arena bets to purchase rare metal ores and advanced alchemy books. Inside the vault, Ezra pushes his physical limits through thirty hours of continuous training and begins designing the Colt 1911 and a specialized Harpoon Cannon, merging modern ballistic science with mystical metallurgy. He masters the art of joint alchemy and body reinforcement, preparing himself for the deadly challenges ahead. As the doors of the Hell Maze slide open for the fourth trial, Ezra steps into the darkness alongside Bobby and Aliya, ready to unleash a new era of firearms. Little does he know, the maze is a trap designed to weed out the weak through instant-death traps, forcing him to lead his team through a slaughterhouse where one wrong step means absolute annihilation.