“I think you need to work on exactly how much you are bringing out from your body; a little goes a long way, you know,” Echo said testily, before heading off to bed. Sandra had improved her room down below with her better leather for the bed itself and Finely Woven Cloth sheets for her, but as the Elf – and the Gnomes, who had made even more progress on their War Machine model (it was almost finished) – left in a disgruntled huff complaining about working conditions to get some sleep, the Dungeon Core knew she needed to find some way to make it up to them. When she saw Felbar scratching at something underneath his clothes as he walked away, Sandra had an idea.
Using another one of her excavated rooms, she divided the space into two equal halves with a stone wall that stretched nearly to the ceiling. Then in each divided area she created a large stone basin that was almost the entire length of the room at 20 feet and just under 10 feet wide; building it up so that it was over 6 feet deep towards the center of the basins, she created a series of steps a foot and a half wide that ran around the perimeter, getting deeper the closer to the center it went. When that was done, she added another narrow set of steps outside of the basins leading from the entrance of the room to the top of each basin.
When that was done, Sandra used her Mana to fill both basins in with water until they were close to full, the water perfectly contained inside the large stone tubs that were assembled without any joins or cracks. Next she created some traps that only involved Air and Water Mana, with only about a quarter of her maximum Mana used to complete it. With the Water portion of the trap, she made one pool stay consistently warm – almost bordering on too hot – and the other slightly on the cool side. Some of the Air portion of the trap caused little bubbles to erupt from the bottom of the hot pool, floating up to the top and agitating the water; she also took one of the traps she had seen in the Water-based Reptile dungeon and downgraded it severely – and switched the element. All along the edge of the stone steps inside the water, she had delicate air jets shooting out, creating a nice relaxing pressure against the water that slowly swirled the water around until it looked like a very safe whirlpool.
In addition, at the entrance/exit she also placed a hot Air trap that would blow powerfully downwards, so that anyone stepping out of the pools could walk over to it and get themselves dried off fairly quickly, with little slots in the stone floor that the water could run off into. Lastly, she concentrated on the room and its natural light source; while she couldn’t shut it off completely, she could dim the lighting so that it was much softer than it was before.
Looking at her handiwork, she was pretty proud of what she had created; it didn’t quite match the bath houses or hot springs she remembered from when she was alive as a Human, but it was close enough. In reality it was better, because it was controlled by Mana alone and had some extra characteristics to it – like the hot air dryer – that she hadn’t seen before. She didn’t really have any type of soap at the moment but given enough time she could maybe make some, though it wouldn’t smell very pleasing. Regardless, she had made a place where her Visitors could bathe and relax if they wanted to; she couldn’t smell them, of course, but weeks stuck down in a dungeon – at least as far as the Gnomes went – probably didn’t bode well for personal hygiene when there wasn’t anywhere for them to wash.
She tied the entire thing to a small Hyper Automaton who acted as a catalyst for the dual-element trap, who could trigger the entire trap just by walking over a specific spot. When it was triggered, she estimated that it would last for just under two hours – which was plenty of time to get clean or even just relax.
Amazingly, she got all of that done within two hours and it was just barely dark outside; her Visitors had gone to bed early after the whole “blinding” incident – which she couldn’t blame them for – so now Sandra had most of the night to work on other projects. The first thing she did was finish her experimental crafting with Titanium, creating a single warhammer made exclusively from the metal; after giving it to one of her Apes, she found that it could indeed swing it faster and it didn’t appear too much lighter than the Steel ones it was using earlier.
The Titanium, however, was stronger and would hold up to the abuse it would likely see in battle; a few of the warhammers she had given her previous eradication force – before it was destroyed, of course – had started to show some damage and dents, though none of them had been rendered ineffective. If Sandra equipped them with the new warhammers, though, they would probably be able to fight longer with the weapons before they failed under the extreme abuse they’d be under. That was, of course, before she enchanted them.
She wasn’t exactly sure how to go about that yet, but she had plans; Sandra needed Violet’s help initially to get started because of the Dungeon Core’s inexperience, but she was hoping she’d be able to take over the enchanting after that with her Unstable Shapeshifters. There were a few things she thought she could add to the weapons to make them more powerful – and suited to taking out the Undead Dungeon Monsters – though it was going to have to wait until the War Machine was done.
Speaking of that, since she was on a Titanium kick lately, Sandra started replacing all of the Steel components on the Gnome construct with new Titanium parts. It was actually fairly easy since the structure was already there, she just absorbed the Steel sections one by one and placed the new metal in its place. That took another couple of hours of quick work, and by the time it was done the inoperable War Machine was stronger and lighter – all it needed was the enchantments to make it operate. The main thing that Violet was missing was the linking enchantment, which she was planning on working on the next day with Sandra’s input.
With the itch to craft with Titanium scratched, she turned to creating the Elemental Cubes in elements other than Fire and Spirit, which took another hour of intense concentration and most of her Mana; she didn’t have quite enough to unlock the larger sizes quite yet, but it was enough for her to at least have access to the smallest of them at the moment.
She was knocking things off her list one-by-one and she was feeling extremely productive; she was occasionally glad that she was a Dungeon Core sometimes because she didn’t have to sleep – she got so much more done than she would’ve otherwise. Of course, that was before the thought that she was only in her current position because she had actually died and didn’t actually have a body to get tired – and that kind of made it a wash.
Next on her list was to complete the Lemon and Lime Fruit-producing Trees on her Transmutation Menu, as well as finally acquiring Redwood and Yew as usable wooden material; the trees required to unlock the two new fruits had fully grown a couple of days ago, but she had neglected to follow up with them. After acquiring the two woods by absorbing a portion of the trees, she opened up the Menu and started to select the Lemon option…before she paused in shock. Some of the mysterious requirements were now visible and some of the verbiage was slightly changed.
Organic/Inorganic Material Elemental Transmutation Menu
Transmutation Options
Elemental Source Required (Size/Qty)
Mana Required
Additional Seed Material (Size/Qty)
Unlocked (Y/N)
Fruit-producing Tree Seeds
-----
-----
-----
-----
-----
Lemon
Air Orb (Large/5)
50000/50000
Redwood (Large/4)
N
Lime
Natural Orb (Large/5)
60000/60000
Yew (Large/4)
N
Coconut
Spirit Cube (Small/4)
0/100000
Ironwood (Large/6)
N
Elderfruit
Natural Cube (Large/5),
Holy Cube (Large/5),
Spirit Cube (Large/5),
Air Cube (Large/5)
0/1000000
Elderoak (Large/10)
<
br /> N
Ambrosia
?????
0/25000000
?????
N
She looked at all of her options under the other categories and found that they were similar – with the new “Elemental Source Required” as one of the new Elemental Cubes she had just discovered. In addition, the “Additional Seed Material” showed one of the now-accessible materials that had been revealed with the addition of the Cubes, such as Ironwood for a Coconut requirement; Ironwood was now available to unlock because it needed Titanium as an Additional Seed Material.
Organic/Inorganic Material Elemental Transmutation Menu
Transmutation Options
Elemental Source Required (Size/Qty)
Mana Required
Additional Seed Material (Size/Qty)
Unlocked (Y/N)
Metals
Titanium
N/A
N/A
N/A
Y
Platinum
Spirit Cube (Average/3)
0/5000000
Fire Clay (Large/6)
N
Orichalcum
Nether Cube (Large/7),
Water Cube (Large/7),
Earth Cube (Large/7),
Fire Cube (Large/7)
0/20000000
Ball Clay (Large/5),
Fire Clay (Large/5),
Kaolin Clay (Large/5)
N
Mithril
?????
0/50000000
?????
N
Fibrous Plant Seeds
Bamboo Seed
Natural Cube (Small/3)
0/75000
Yew (Average/2)
N
Ramie Seed
Natural Cube (Average/3)
0/100000
Ironwood (Large/3)
N
Clays
Ball Clay
Earth Cube (Tiny/3)
0/25000
Steel (Small/3)
N
Fire Clay
Earth Cube (Small/3)
0/40000
Steel (Average/3)
N
Kaolin Clay
Earth Cube (Average/3)
0/50000
Steel (Large/4)
N
Non-Fruit-Producing Tree Seeds
Ironwood Seed
Natural Cube (Average/3),
Earth Cube (Average/3)
0/500000
Iron (Large/7),
Titanium (Large/7)
N
Elderoak Seed
Natural Cube (Large/4),
Holy Cube (Large/4),
Spirit Cube (Large/4),
Air Cube (Large/4)
0/1500000
Steel (Large/10),
Gold (Large/10),
Titanium (Large/10),
Platinum (Large/10)
N
Magewood Seed
?????
0/5000000
?????
N
Ancient Silverpine Seed
?????
0/10000000
?????
N
Precious Gemstones
Topaz
Earth Orb (Large/6)
0/400000
Tin (Large/5)
N
Ruby
Fire Orb (Large/6)
268000/500000
Copper (Large/5)
N
Emerald
Natural Orb (Large/6)
0/1000000
Bronze (Large/5)
N
Diamond
Holy Orb (Large/6)
0/10000000
Steel (Large/5)
N
Moonstone
Spirit Cube (Large/5),
Air Cube (Large/3),
Holy Cube (Large/3)
0/20000000
Titanium (Large/15)
Platinum (Large/15)
N
Dragon’s Eye
Fire Cube (Large/8),
Earth Cube (Large/6),
Nether Cube (Large/4),
Natural Cube (Large/2)
0/50000000
Dragon Glass (Average/5)
Platinum (Large/20)
Orichalcum (Average/10)
N
Magistone
?????
0/100000000
?????
N
This is…unbelievable! It appeared as though with enough time – and enough Mana – she could unlock nearly everything on the Transmutation list. There were a few of the more incredible options that were still a mystery as far as what they required, but there were plenty of other things to work with already. Some of the things she now had potential access to were things she never thought she would see, let alone work with, such as Orichalcum and Elderoak; others were so legendary that she had largely ignored them previously because they seemed so far out of reach…but not anymore.
As much as Sandra wanted to funnel all of her Mana for the next few months – or perhaps years – into unlocking everything, she still had obligations she had to take care of first. To that end, she went ahead and unlocked the Lemon and Lime Tree Seeds – like she had originally been doing – and then planted them inside her growing room. They were already “paid for” earlier, so it didn’t require any more investment on her part.
After that, Sandra spent the rest of the night working on her Enchanting skills with her Shapeshifters, making more of the Large Elemental Orbs for them to work with, and planning out the linking sequence that was going to be needed for the larger War Machine in order for it to work. Upon some reflection of what was likely going to be needed, she made some alterations to the body of the War Machine; she wanted to make sure that the Gnome construct stayed powered for a long time without having to worry about replacing faded runes that were out of energy. As a result, she hollowed out two square areas of the wood-and-metal contraption that were just big enough to put a Large Energy Cube into.
Since there were Spirit and Natural elements in the enchantment sequence, it only made sense that they would need both Energy Cubes to power them; while the Stasis Fields over the RRPs could only take a single Cube because there was only Spirit energy within them, Sandra assumed that the two connected to the War Machine’s enchantment sequence wouldn’t interfere with each other, since they were two completely different energy sources.
At least, she hoped so, because if they ended up amplifying the amount of energy being pumped into the enchantment, then she didn’t want to be anywhere within a mile of the War Machine when it exploded.
Hopefully the model will tell us if it will work or not; if that explodes, however, I may need to rethink my strategy.
Chapter 16
“Wait…you want to…what?” Violet asked, shock running through her at the implications of what Sandra was saying.
* I want to power all the enchantments with Large Energy Cubes, so that the War Machine can run for a lot longer. It should theoretically stay operational and won’t have to be serviced to replace the runes very often. And, if it works like I’m thinking of, the additional elemental energy feeding the various rune sequences will allow them to be used to their fullest potential. That is, if you don’t think having two Cubes attached will cause any problems? *
She had briefly thought about adding a smaller Energy Orb to the War Machine to help with the linking rune sequence, because it was what used most of the energy for the entire enchantment. The additional energy feeding into it would help maintain the entire sequence structure for longer periods, especially since it wasn’t likely to be as efficient as the ones made by Master Enchanters; the division of separate enchantments all over the construct meant that more was needed to tie it all together. She was planning on having to maintain the Natural runes and replace them as they wore out, but with what Sandra was proposing, there wouldn’t be any problems at all making sure it was all operational for a long time.
&
nbsp; “I don’t believe having two different elemental Energy sources will have an adverse effect, because they shouldn’t interact with each other. As for their ‘fullest potential’, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
* Absolutely; without having to worry about depleting the Natural rune sequences too quickly, Felbar should be able to move much faster than he was previously able. Essentially, the only limit will be how much the materials the War Machine is made of can withstand what is being done to it. *
Normally the War Machine pilots were limited to only moving at a certain speed to ensure that the energy in the runes weren’t depleted too quickly; it was only in an emergency that they could and would speed their constructs up to escape potential disaster. There really wasn’t a limit to how fast the Machines could move, but the wood and metal material it was made from could only handle so much stress before it started to break down. Slower movements negated most of the wear-and-tear they would experience over time – as well as using much less energy –but the potential was always there to move much faster.
Violet and Felbar had already noticed that the larger War Machine had been altered quite a bit while they were asleep; there were some strange areas around the base of the torso that Sandra explained as compartments for Energy Cubes, but that wasn’t the only change. The steel it had been made from before had been replaced with Titanium, which was much stronger and a little more lightweight, making the entire construct better able to withstand the stress it would be under if its enchantments were pushed to the limit. It was just a shame that the wooden parts of it were made of sturdy oak instead of something harder and more durable, but there were no special trees nearby that could provide that type of strength, even in the other races’ lands – or so she’d heard.
The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) Page 18
