Other than that, the tour had been relatively normal until the very last room she showed him, which contained her distillery. “Wait, you distill spirits here? Whiskey?” he asked, his eyes wide and pleading as he took in her relatively simple still. “How about brewing? I’d kill for a nice ale right now,” he continued, looking around the room.
* No, not really; I was using this for steaming some Cedarwood to obtain some Cedar Oil and hadn’t really had a use for it. Besides, I don’t possess any of the required material for that…and I have to admit that – as extensive as my crafting knowledge is – it didn’t really extend to the creation of hard spirits or beer. *
“Not beer—” he said, putting specific emphasis on the word— “but Ale – they’re two completely different things.” Sandra really didn’t have enough knowledge to contradict him, so she took him at his word. He was silent for a moment as he stared at her distillery set-up, before seeming to come to a decision.
Gerold’s voice was soft and a little despairing at the same time as he continued. “I don’t know if you have much knowledge of our land, but it isn’t a secret that we’re running out of available land aboveground to grow things. Much of it used to be used for food, but we’ve learned to cultivate other sources that can be grown in our mountain strongholds to supplement our diet; instead, we raise some livestock out here for our own purposes and have some sent back home, but most of what we actually grow on the farms near the village is used for another purpose: alcohol.
“Yes, it sounds funny even to me when I say it, but we have yet to find a way to grow wheat, barley, and hops underground consistently. We Dwarves can live without alcohol, of course – but that’s not really living, is it? In fact, the shortages of anything good to drink has been attributed to the drop in both our population and the number of us willing to actually leave the safety of the mountains to fight back against the dungeon monsters out there. We’ve kept a fairly stable supply line out to the few farms we have left, but without the biggest farm near Nurboldar being there – if those undead overrun it – then that’ll be another massive blow to our people’s morale.”
* How do you know so much about the whole situation? Is it common knowledge to all of the Dwarves? *
Gerold laughed shortly, before saying, “Oh, no, not at all. My mother is on the King’s council back in Grandhall, one of the biggest mountain strongholds still existing today. She tended to tell bedtime stories that were politically and economically based, so I kind of grew up with that stuff.”
Hmm…now this is an interesting development.
* So, what do you think about my invitation from earlier? Do you think your people would be willing to live here in safety while we attempt to destroy the dungeon threatening them? At this point I can’t guarantee that even if we succeed in eliminating that threat that the Golem and Goblin dungeons won’t take advantage of your absence, but I’ll do everything in my power to try to get your land back if that happens. I don’t particularly want to spend all my time and Mana destroying Core after Core, however, so if there is a way to maintain the status quo that has already been established I will try that route first.
* As far as your farm and what you need for your…alcohol…goes, you’ve already seen that I can grow things down here that aren’t normally meant to be grown. Perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement that will allow that to continue, as well as possibly brewing and distilling your drink. *
Gerold definitely looked interested, though he tried to appear as if he was thinking it over. Despite looking quite different from a Human, years of working with her father as a merchant let her see signs in his face and posture that indicated she had him hooked. Now all she needed to do was complete the transaction, getting as much as she could out of him – and his people, of course. She generally didn’t like to take advantage of those with a less-than-stellar negotiating ability (like Gerold obviously had), but the Dwarves had something she wanted. All she had to do was wait for him to initiate the conversation—
“What kind of arrangement are you talking about?” he asked when she didn’t elaborate.
There it is. Sandra had initially proposed that the Dwarves in the village come take refuge in her dungeon while she dealt with the Undead Core with nothing expected in return; now that she was proposing putting in some work to continue their farming and even start crafting beer—Ale, apparently—and other alcoholic drinks, she wanted to get something in return. Secretly, she was excited to learn about new brewing and distilling techniques from them – but Gerold didn’t need to know that.
* I can safely house all of the Dwarven villagers and even your Shieldmen here, provide a place to grow your food and ingredients for your spirits and whatnot, and even create a large distillery and brewery so that you can create it here instead of having to deliver it back to your strongholds and hope that you’ll get some product in the future. Not only that, but I can even provide a quick transport system for your people to bring everything that is produced here back to the rest of your population – and I’ll even throw in some Energy Orbs for whoever wants them.
* Like I also said, I will eliminate the Undead Core threatening your people, but whether or not it comes too late to save the land your village is sitting on from being overrun by the other dungeons nearby is another matter; regardless, I’ll pledge to do everything I can to get it back to you.
* And I’ll do all of that for two relatively simple things; the first is a promise to cooperate in the future with the other races on something important. I already have a tenuous agreement with the Elves and I’m working on getting help from the Gnomes, but I need all the races around here to be on board or it won’t work. The second…well, the second thing is something that only your people can provide. *
Now he started to look a little worried, especially after hearing all that Sandra was laying out to him. Gerold had looked down at his hands at the mention of Energy Orbs, but now his eyes appeared to be unfocused. “I…think my people might agree to some sort of future cooperation – if it isn’t something that will endanger our people or strongholds, but what is it that only my people can provide? You want to rule our Kingdom? Do you want to make every Dwarf your slave? I can’t think of anything else, since it seems as though you can just…create everything you want to here. What could you possibly want?”
* Oh, it’s nothing material, I can assure you of that. No, what I want is something completely different…I would like to learn how your Blacksmiths make your armor and weapons absorb your elemental energy to make them more powerful. And unless you know precisely how it’s done it’ll probably entail having one of your Master Blacksmiths come here to teach me. *
Gerold’s face seemed to lose all of its color and his mouth opened and closed repeatedly. “Uh, well,” he finally managed to get out. “I’m…not sure about that. The secrets of their production are passed down from Blacksmith to Blacksmith and very few outside of their little community know how it is they’re made. I certainly do not, and I’m almost positive no one in the village knows, either – not even Second-shield Bregan. As much as I think your help would both be much-appreciated and may even be highly beneficial, I can’t see a way to convince any Master Blacksmiths to give up their secrets—”
* You know, if I learn how to make some, I can make you some replacements for the ones you lost earlier. *
His mouth shut with a snap at her words, and Sandra could see something in there that just sealed the deal: hope. Gerold had mentioned that he likely wouldn’t ever be getting replacement armor or axe for the ones that were destroyed by the Sphere, and she was dangling that hope of…being whole again…in front of him. She wasn’t deceiving him, of course, and she would absolutely create another full set of everything for him – nothing soured a relationship like deception, even inadvertent deception. What he didn’t realize was that – because of her unique access to quite a few different techniques as a Dungeon Core – she was fairly confident she could not only crea
te some of the special armaments once she knew how it was done but could improve on them as well.
“I’ll see what I can do. It might take a while to convince them to share that knowledge, and I may have to lean on my mother and her political influence, but I will do my best. If you can convince all of the other Shieldmen in Nurboldar that it’s the best for everybody, that will certainly go a long way towards bringing a Master Blacksmith here.”
* That is all I needed to hear. I trust you to see that through, but you have to take things one step at a time. You’ve got another task before that could ever happen, you know. *
“Don’t remind me; convincing everyone from the village to abandon everything and move into a dungeon because of a threat they undoubtedly aren’t even aware of is going to be tough,” he said, before shaking his head. “Actually, tough isn’t the right word; impossible is more like it.”
* I have no doubt you’ll figure it out, because it’s their lives on the line if they don’t listen to you. Or, to be more accurate, it’s all the alcohol they’re going to miss out on if ignoring you seems to be the way they’re going. It’s up to you to do it, though, because I have no way of communicating with them. Let me know how I may be of help, as limited as that will probably be. *
“I will; I just have to figure out what kind of help you could possibly provide other than sending your monsters—” he started despondently, before he tilted his head to the side. “Actually, I think there might be something you could do…”
Chapter 23
Sandra knew that Gerold wasn’t going back to the village right then, however, because of two very important reasons. One, it was nearing the end of the day and it was already starting to get dark; two, the fatigue from being horrendously injured and then miraculously healed finally hit him all at once. She could only guess that he had been fighting the fatigue while he was still adjusting to where he was and exploring the potential refuge for his people; once that was all over, he practically sleep walked up to the dining area to get something to eat, before flopping down on the bed Sandra had hastily created for him in a nearby empty room.
The thought of beds made her realize that she hadn’t even asked how many Dwarves were in the village; she had seen at least 50 of them out in the fields and around some of the buildings from afar, but she knew there could’ve been twice that many still inside those buildings and she wouldn’t know it. Not to mention the Shieldmen who seemed to house themselves separate from the villagers, which were hard to get a count on because they were constantly moving in and out of the immediate area as they culled the Dungeon Monsters in the nearby forests.
Regardless of the numbers, before they arrived – she had no doubt the village Dwarves would eventually escape to her dungeon for protection once they had visual proof of the threat – she had to prepare places for them to sleep and, well, live. It was one thing having a place to lay down their heads to sleep and that might be enough for Echo, Violet, and Felbar at the moment; they had other things they had been doing like enchanting, working on the War Machine, teaching Sandra how to cast spells, and delivering Energy Orbs to the Elven village. The Dwarves, on the other hand, wouldn’t likely do any of that; the villagers’ jobs had been farming and things related to farming, while the Shieldmen were used to culling and killing Monsters.
If Sandra was going to help them farm – and she had already decided she was going to start doing that, even if no Master Blacksmiths ever came to teach her (though for how long she would do such was dependent on that eventuality) – she needed to start finding a place they could do that. Before she did any of that work, however, there were more important matters to attend to.
Namely, figuring out a way to destroy the Undead dungeon.
Her Rolling Forces were still slowly making their way around much of the open space and just inside the trees, destroying everything they were easily able to. More Undead were slowly coming out from where she sensed the dungeon was, though, and the new ones she was seeing were tending to be just a little too much for her constructs out in the field to easily handle – or reach. Specters were suddenly the popular way to go for the Core, mimicking the way her Shears stayed above the ground and consistently moved around; they were obviously much more expensive than skeletal rats so she didn’t see hordes of them, but it was probably only a matter of time before the sky above the trees was filled with mist-like Monsters.
Other than that, she saw the more-powerful zombie beasts, a few random Ogre Skeletons, and scattered sightings of the ghouls she had seen before. Her Rolling Forces proved to be able to kill one of the latter, but it required all 100 of the ones she had in groups to sacrifice themselves in their bombardment to do enough damage to them. The first skirmish she had between her constructs and the ghouls proved that they could be injured, but it took a lot more hits before they went down, and the Undead itself was quite adept at quickly slicing through the pieces of her Forces with its sharp claws. After that, she knew it would be better to leave them alone and hunt safer targets.
However, she estimated that by the time the next day dawned that there wouldn’t be many more that she could eliminate. To top it off, there was still approximately 3 square miles of the other Core’s AOI that she couldn’t even reach, as it was now too far past the dungeon itself to access. If the Undead Core was smart – and Sandra had seen enough evidence so far to assume that it was – then that area she couldn’t reach right now was likely packed with monsters.
Even if they were only those rats, it was enough space to let the Undead Core accumulate massive amounts of Mana – and there was nothing she could do about it. By the amount of “new” Undead (she assumed they were newly created, instead of just being sent out from the defenders already stationed in the dungeon) she saw, Sandra thought this was indeed the case.
She was still filtering through all of that information as she looked around the entire Area as night set in. Her Visitors were already asleep – or feigning sleep, in the case of Echo – so Sandra had some time on her hands to figure out what she wanted to do. She already knew that she wanted to enchant some Titanium warhammers that her Steelclad Ape Warriors would be carrying into the fight against the Undead, but she wasn’t sure where to go from there. Since that was really the only construct that could reliably wield a weapon, the Dungeon Core was at a loss for what to do to enhance her existing Monsters.
Of course, she had her Unstable Shapeshifters, which could wield their elemental energy and cast spells like the ones that had been so effective against those robe-wielding Undead. After consulting with Echo who seemed to know quite a bit about them despite never actually seeing them before, she discovered that they were called Liches. Apparently, they were the most despised of the Undead – as far as the Elves were concerned – because they were originally purported to be the reanimated remains of Elves that had turned towards using “necromantic”-type spells as their focus. Whether that was true or not, Echo was almost spitting with obvious hatred and barely restrained violence when she mentioned them earlier.
Nevertheless, the ability to cast spells from a distance – and relatively powerful ones, at that – was a great addition to her forces. She was already adding quite a few of them to her eventual army that would eventually be sent to the area around the dungeon, as well as inside when the time came, but there were a few downsides to using them. The first one was the most obvious one – their time limit; they could only hold their shape for an hour before they had to revert to their normal form, which had proven not to really have any offensive capabilities when it was a multi-colored blob. Other than possibly suffocation if it were allowed to envelop an enemy, but that really wouldn’t do much to Undead Monsters that didn’t have to breathe in the first place.
Second, giving them some sort of armor to protect them or weapons to attack with if they ran out of elemental energy was technically possible, but there was no real easy way to bring them along; she’d have to assign some sort of transporters for the sole
purpose of carrying their gear, because the Shifters themselves couldn’t carry more than something small in their blob-like appendages they could extend – and poorly at that. Not only that, but she had also found that if the Shifter was wearing something in, say, Echo’s form, if the “shift” time ran out before it could remove the clothing it was practically shredded as the Unstable Monster ballooned up into its “normal” shape. Sandra wasn’t sure if something a little more durable than just cloth would act the same as well, or if it would hurt the Shifter as it suddenly became too large for its protection.
The third thing – and it was the most worrisome of the entire situation – was that she wasn’t sure if she could even have her Shapeshifters cast spells while in the other dungeon. During the battle outside her dungeon entrance, it was proven that they could take orders and cast spells that Sandra knew how to easily create without her having to directly control each and every one – which would’ve been virtually impossible in that type of situation, regardless of how much practice she’d had at it lately – so that wasn’t necessarily the issue. The problem was that during her assault on the Reptile-based dungeon not so long ago, her response time and ability to give detailed orders to them was severely hampered by their presence in a foreign dungeon.
Sandra wasn’t sure if they would – or even could – react to threats in the way that she wanted them to; her other constructs seemed to have a natural battle instinct to them that worked pretty well, but there were times when death came to them in the form of a trap that they basically stood still for, despite the danger. Whether those two things would apply to dozens of “Echos” traipsing through the other dungeon was something she couldn’t even test without going there directly.
The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) Page 26
