The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4)

by Jonathan Brooks

  “Okay, okay – she doesn’t need to know all about your different flavor blends you’re so proud of,” Glencha cut in, shushing the other Dwarf. The female dwarf was a bit on the smaller side and seemed like she was a little shy – until it came to talking about distilling hard spirits. “Let’s get everything set up before we mess with any of that; Sandra’s a dungeon, after all, and she can’t taste the Ale you’re going to be making.”

  Teving just snorted and crossed his arms across his chest, though he didn’t say anything to contradict the other Dwarf. Then…well, then came a long explanation of a seemingly simple yet complicated process. While the two were explaining exactly what was needed, Sandra kept one part of her concentration on trying to learn all she could about brewing and distilling, while another kept crafting swords and armor, and yet a third part was observing the plundering of the two remaining collapsed dungeons.

  She had reached both dungeons a few hours ago, and she was pleased to see that she had arrived before the new, replacement Cores expanded their Areas of Influence enough to reach them – though it was close. She briefly thought that if she had waited even another 6 to 8 hours, she might have been too late for either one. Their rapid expansion was so great that she thought that within the next few days they would likely be opening up to the world…and like she had told Delarthe, they all needed to be ready for when that happened.

  Sandra also shut down production of new constructs for her Nets, as she wanted to start using the Mana going into it for other purposes; in addition to the Ape Warriors, Dire Wolves, Jaguar Queens, and even a third Titanium Anaconda she wanted to create for the Shieldmen, she knew she needed to start stockpiling Energy Orbs. They were the one thing she could create that could benefit all of the races equally, and would be an important part of the overall strategy in the future.

  Fortunately, splitting her concentration between many different projects was getting easier and easier every day. Whether it was because she had so much practice or if it were due to her upgrading her Core Size, but ever since she emerged from her upgrading isolation it seemed as if she could handle even more going on before her focus started to suffer. When doing routine tasks around the dungeon – such as creating more constructs for her Nets – the process was almost automatic; when she was crafting something she had a lot of practice at – for instance, the swords she was still creating for the Orcs – it was almost as automatic. Newly created crafts, such as the chest armor she was creating for the Orcs as well, took a lot more of her focus – but after creating a few dozen of them it was getting to the point where it wasn’t a challenge to nearly automate as well.

  Even the enchanting of Elemental Orbs to convert them into Energy Orbs, which had at first been extremely difficult to get right, was simple enough to complete that Sandra found she could control up to 6 Unstable Shapeshifters at a time, each doing their own enchantment on separate Orbs. It was amazing and a little disappointing at the same time, especially considering how easy it seemed to be now; it wasn’t a challenge anymore, which was one of the things she enjoyed about crafting.

  Oh, she still enjoyed the crafting process, even with every sword she hammered into shape or Orb she enchanted, but it wasn’t the same as discovering something new or trying her “hand” at a new craft. It was the same driving force she had lived by when she was Human; the need to learn about all aspects of crafting was what kept her going, as there always seemed to be something new to learn, and she was excited by even the most mundane tasks if they related to crafting.

  Therefore, with the “automatic” tasks taken care of, she had plenty of concentration left over to learn about brewing and distilling – which was exciting to learn about. Even though, as Glencha had told Teving, she couldn’t taste what was going to be made, that didn’t bother her; it was wonderful learning about a new process, and developing solutions using her special abilities in trap-making and enchanting to do something that would normally be done manually made her excited to try. Based on what she was learning, however, it was going to take some trial-and-error on the Dwarves’ part to get it completely right.

  With a lot of her other crafting projects, she could tell instantly whether or not something was done correctly; a sword or an enchantment appeared…off…if the process wasn’t done the way it should have been. Even things that she couldn’t necessarily evaluate herself – such as cooking and tasting what she cooked (which she had tried while controlling one of her Unstable Shapeshifters, but everything was basically tasteless) – she knew how they were supposed to look and even feel, so it wasn’t that hard to see if she had made it right. For the brand-new crafts of brewing and distilling spirits, she had no frame of reference to work off of, so she was going to have to leave the fine-tuning to the experts.

  She just had to ensure they had the tools to do that, which meant a lot of customization on Sandra’s part. Which just makes it more fun!

  Chapter 20

  Sandra started out her crafting experiments in brewing and distilling with small-scale models that Glencha and Teving approved before she went full-scale. She was glad she didn’t try to create everything large-scale first, because there were multiple things that the two Dwarves suggested to improve her design. Experience using her abilities allowed her to perform most of the steps with a single container; the original thought was to use a different container for each step of the process because that was what the Dwarves usually did – but Sandra was anything but normal.

  Starting with brewing with the brewing process, the first thing that Sandra needed to do – which was nearly impossible to accomplish in the single container she was designing – was to convert the Wheat and Barley into a malt mixture. She left the exact portion sizes of each grain in Teving’s capable hands, while Sandra figured out how to turn the grains into a malt; this was normally done with a time-consuming process of drying the grains (which had already been done), rehydrating them, then allowing them to germinate so that they produced the necessary growth that aided in the production of alcohol later.

  Sandra being who she was, however, simply made another open area near the drying room that was like a miniature growing space; there was a water trap in a small room above, which produced the moisture the grains needed, and inside the growing space was a combination Natural and Air trap. The Natural trap would activate just enough to start the growing process in the grains when they were hydrated, but cut off quickly soon after; there were slots in the floor where the water could drain while keeping the germinated grains in the room. Once the mixture was drained and germinated, the Air trap would slowly dry them off with cool air at first, before ramping up to higher temperatures.

  Once it had been completely dried and therefore malted, the Wheat and Barley mixture could be moved to a container that Sandra took a long time designing. For each step of the process, another aspect of a trap or an enchantment had to be activated – which was difficult but not impossible to achieve. The hardest part was convincing the two Dwarves not to freak out when 6 of her Unstable Shapeshifters arrived to do all of the enchanting. She could have brought even more, since she had expanded her stable of Shifters to 40 by that time, because they were extremely useful in so many ways.

  “Wha-what is that?” Glencha exclaimed, backing away when the multi-colored amorphous masses rolled into the expanded room she was going to be using for brewing. The first two rooms nearest her Home room had been meant for the two crafting stations – the Brewery and Distillery – but with the knowledge that the container she was going to make was quite large (and that she would likely make multiple of each), she decided to make the “rooms” a lot wider by adding additional offshoot rooms accessible via tunnels. This allowed her to make traps for additional brewing or distilling stations, instead of trying to tie them all together into one giant room.

  The hard-spirit-enthusiast Dwarf backed away with obvious shock and worry, not quite as scared as she was when she saw the Aerie Roc, but uncomfortable at seeing the Shape
shifters. Sandra couldn’t blame her, though – it was still hard to look at them for her when they were in their unshifted states, so she could sympathize.

  None of the Dwarves had seen them in their natural state; when she needed to set up Stasis Fields on the two meat boxes, they had arrived already in the form of two identical and clothed Violet-copies. She didn’t do that here, though, because she had a feeling she was going to need every minute of the hour – where each Shapeshifter could maintain their shifted shape – before they were kicked back to their natural form.

  * These are my Unstable Shapeshifters, who will be assisting me in enchanting this vessel. You’ve seen them before in their shifted states, I’m sure, but this is their natural form. Don’t be alarmed when they shift, however, because it can be a little unsettling. Oh, and they’ll be naked, so hopefully that doesn’t bother you too much. *

  “Wait—what?” Teving asked, before he too stepped back in shock when her Dungeon Monsters changed shape and shrunk down into the naked forms of two Gnomes: Felbar and Violet. Sandra chose those two because she was accustomed to using them the most, plus they were actually smaller than the two Dwarves; she figured having some tall Elves suddenly appear might alarm them more than a little bit.

  “Th-that’s disturbing. Can they take any shape?” Glencha asked, suspicion flavoring her tone.

  Sandra went on to explain the limitations of her Unstable Shapeshifter, with it needing to come into contact with another living being, the time limit imposed on them making them “unstable”, and their inability to verbally communicate. The explanation, as well as the fact that they also appeared fairly non-threatening because of their current small stature and unclothed state, helped to settle some of the fears that the two Dwarves seemed to have about them. Not completely, but enough that they didn’t look like they would run from the room screaming anytime soon.

  The first thing that her container being used for the brewing process – which was a closed, cylindrical, round-bottomed, copper vessel 5 feet tall and 10 feet wide with access ports near the top to view the process inside and to add materials – needed was to add water to the malt when it was poured inside. This was easy enough to add with a Water-based trap that was adjustable and able to be regulated by simple activation triggers along the outside of the vessel that just needed to be touched and it would add the designated amount. There were 10 different amounts of pure water that could be added, from just a bucketful to an amount that would fill up half of the container, so it would be easy enough to add a little more if it were needed.

  When the water and malt mixture was inside, then came heat which had to be regulated closely to produce something called wort. The wort was a liquid that would emerge from the malt mixture upon heat being applied, and required a few hours to fully extract all of the special liquid, with a large portion of the water boiling away as steam, leaving (for the most part) just the leftover grain and the wort.

  The heating process was a difficult proposition because it also needed to be used in other stages of brewing, as well as cooling. In a later stage, in fact, a certain temperature needed to be maintained for weeks, which was extremely difficult to achieve with a Fire-based trap using Mana. Therefore, she went the enchanting route using a similar enchantment rune as what she had used to protect the riders on the back of her Aerie Rocs: Felbar’s warmth enchantment.

  In truth, it was two enchantments that did the trick, though they were very similar. Each was inscribed by her Unstable Shapeshifters over the entire vessel, though they did separate things; one warmed up everything within the container, while the other cooled it down with an additional Invert rune added to the sequence. It took quite a lot to enchant the entire container, which was why she needed so many Shapeshifters – though that wasn’t the hardest part. The hardest part was that she did each of them 3 times with separate activation areas, and then designing the accompanying Fire and Spirit Energy Orbs that would supply the energy to the enchantments.

  The basic principle behind them was that the brewer – in this case Teving – could place paired Energy Orbs of six different Limiter rune settings on one of the three activation spaces that were clearly marked out on a low shelf attached to the bottom of the vessel. If Teving placed the strongest paired energy source on one of the activation spaces and it wasn’t quite hot enough inside, then he could place another pair of Orbs with the lowest power output on a second activation space, bumping up the temperature a little more. Conversely, with the inverted warmth enchantment, he could cool it off just a little bit if he placed one of the paired Orbs on the spots designated for those enchantments.

  This way, he could adjust the temperature to hundreds of different levels, depending on which paired Energy Orb he placed first and adjusted it with either more heat or cooling. To further aid in that, she created a second set of Orbs – that were just copies of the original six – so that they could be used to adjust the temperature with even finer control. Sandra thought it was adequate for what needed to be done, but both Teving and Glencha were ecstatic.

  “This is genius! With the ability to make so many adjustments to the temperature, I should finally be able to perfect my recipe!” Teving was overjoyed at the prospect, and Sandra was happy that he seemed happy. Glencha was excited as well, though apparently distilling wasn’t quite as temperamental as brewing was; regardless, she seemed more than pleased.

  Once the wort was extracted from the malt mixture, the most complicated part of the brewing process was next: removing the solid remains of the two grains from the liquid wort. Fortunately, Sandra had powerful Mana on her side, which was applied through the use of an Air trap. At the bottom of the large container from the inside, she had a trap made entirely of hardened air that was basically like a fine mesh of individual air strands woven together like cloth; during the initial process of removing the wort from the malt, an external trap activation could bring the mesh up and down a few inches fairly rapidly, which helped to move everything inside the container around so that it was mixed up and circulated.

  A separate trap activation at this stage could be started, however, that would slowly bring the air mesh upwards, pushing the malt mash together up against the top of the container. This resulted in acting as a type of strainer that would squeeze out the liquid, and it could be repeated multiple times to ensure most if not all of the liquid was being forced out and through the Air-based trap. Sandra also made sure to reinforce the top and upper walls of the container, because the force of the trap could be quite impressive.

  Once the liquid was extracted, removing the waste malt mixture (which was no longer needed for the brewing process) was as easy as opening up one of the access panels near the top that led off to one side, and a third Air trap activation was used to push the spent mash outside of the container. Unless there was something to catch it the results could be quite messy, but Sandra could absorb the waste product easily if she needed to. She was told that it was usually used as feed or even reused for baking, but there was really no need for that at that point.

  The next step was to boil the wort via the warmth enchantments and to add in Hops at some point during the boiling process. This was, again, a point of contention between brewers, as when you added it depended upon who you asked.

  “Those fools back home add it at the beginning, which tends to make the Ale really bitter – and they tend to like it really bitter for some reason,” Teving noted, before continuing. “However, if you add the Hops later, it has a much better flavor and aroma, without all of the bitterness. There’s still some, but at a certain point I think it becomes too much.”

  Sandra couldn’t really comment, as she had never tried it before. Glencha was one of those that liked a more-bitter Ale, but as she wasn’t going to be in charge, she didn’t have a say.

  * Well, you know, I aim to make multiple brewing vessels, so perhaps you can convince Teving to make some for you. *

  “Sure, I can make some of that…swill…for you,
if that’s what someone of unrefined taste wants to drink,” he said in an effort to disparage Glencha’s preference.

  Unfortunately for him, the female Dwarf didn’t care what he thought; she only smiled at his words and said, “Thank you.”

  Next was another straining stage, where all of the solid Hops and any solid particles that hadn’t been removed earlier were taken out via the Air traps again. The last real stage – and the lengthiest – was the fermentation step, where yeast (which was acquired from the bakers) was added and allowed to ferment, which converted the wort into ale over the period of at least a week, but could take up to 6 weeks. When Sandra asked if that could be sped up somehow, she was told that trying to speed it up would be a mistake – and possibly deadly.

  “You want to make sure to leave an outlet at the top of the container where poison gas produced by the fermentation can escape. If you don’t have that there, it’s quite possible that the entire vessel will…explode,” Glencha informed her.

  That was definitely problematic; luckily for everyone living there, the natural Mana infused into her dungeon automatically filtered the air, so she didn’t have to worry about them all succumbing to this “poison gas” they were talking about. This was also the reason she was advised not to speed it up artificially, because they were worried that might result in another explosion, and it would be hard to regulate exactly how much it was being fermented and they might end up with a spoiled batch.

  Sandra was used to being able to get things done quickly, so the stall in the process was a bit of a setback, but she was inclined to believe what the Dwarves were talking about. The fermentation process was the main reason she was forced to use enchantments for heating and cooling of the container because the vessel needed to be kept relatively cool, and the alcohol-making process produced a lot of heat. The way it was set up now allowed them to keep a constant temperature no matter what was going on inside of the container.