The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) Jonathan Brooks (books that read to you txt) 📖

people hold secret over everything else, First-shield Parten.  The knowledge of how to create your special armor for your Shieldmen.

Parten sucked in his breath, looking shocked and angry.  “How could you—”

That was the price for my help, First-shield.  Both for saving who I could from the nearby village, as well as providing them sanctuary and a way to produce the same crops they were cultivating in the village – only more expeditiously.  And for all of the mithril your people would ever need, as long as I’m around.  But don’t worry, Parten – I’m not going to be spreading the secret around to everyone; this is for my own use.

“Your own use?  So you can use it against us?  Is that the game you’re playing? To conquer us and fold our people into your dominion?”  The Master Blacksmith could only shake his head at the armored Dwarf’s accusations, but Sandra had already heard that and more from most of the other races, so it flowed right off of her.

I think that if you talked to anyone around here, you’ll see that the thought of anything remotely like that is sickening to me, and I’ve done all I could possibly do to mitigate the damage my presence has caused.  But I will admit that everything I do is for selfish reasons.

“Aha!” Parten shouted, as if he had won the argument.  Sandra couldn’t tell if all of his power, strength, and responsibility had gone to his head, or if he was just naturally dense, but it was more amusing to her than annoying.  “Wait—what selfish reasons are you talking about?”

 The one thing I want to do more than anything else.  It isn’t to expand my dungeon, kill people indiscriminately, or become powerful for power’s sake – which is how most Cores tend to operate.  No, all I want is peace around this area so that I can concentrate on one singular thing: crafting.

“Crafting?  What—?”

Yes, crafting.  She was tempted to explain in more detail, but she quickly realized that it probably wouldn’t be worth her time.  Whether you believe me or not is – as Jespin mentioned – irrelevant.  Right now, we both have something that each other wants: I need help keeping these local Dungeon Cores in line while I think up a proper strategy to ensure the safety of everyone around here; you need mithril, which I can certainly provide.  Oh, and to sweeten the deal, there’s a little something down below that you’ll probably be happy to hear.

“What could you possibly have that—”

Jespin interrupted him, still working on his own crafting without much of a stop.  “Ale, Parten.  And, better yet, whiskey.  Or so Sandra mentioned at one point.”

That seemed to give him pause.  “Truly?  How—oh, never mind.  I don’t even want to know….”  The Shieldman stood there, at war within himself; Sandra was only slightly worried about him, because if he decided to go crazy and try to kill her, she had some things lined up that would protect her Core.  She hoped that wasn’t going to be needed, however, because it could end up hurting some of the others in the dungeon as well.  “Fine, I agree that we can work together up to a point—but that doesn’t mean I trust you!  I will do it for my people, if that is what it takes.”

He stomped away after that, following the pathway down to the Dwarven community below.

“Don’t worry about him too much; he’ll fall in line soon enough.  He takes his responsibility very seriously, and he wouldn’t want to risk the lives of others without cause.”  The Master Blacksmith was silent for a few moments while he worked.  “He’s endured a lot of loss over the years for someone in his position, and it’s hard for him to trust something that embodies what has taken away many of his loved ones.”

I can’t say I blame him – it would be difficult to just accept me as a benevolent dungeon, when all he has known is what all of the others have done to those he cared for, either personally or through his line of work.  As long as he doesn’t do anything to jeopardize what I’ve built here, he can think and believe whatever he wants.

Jespin just nodded, not saying anything more on the matter.

It wasn’t long before everything settled back down inside and outside of her dungeon, as the attacks had still ceased and nearly everyone was asleep, exhausted from whatever they had endured over the last day.  Only Master Blacksmith Jespin was still awake, working on the King’s armor, of course, and even Kelerim hadn’t woken up despite the noise the Master Blacksmith was making.  That left Sandra to concentrate on her own project: manipulating the Titanium-Mithril alloy she decided to use for Gerold’s Deep Diver suit.

The black and blue-tinted metal was extremely difficult to work with; she hadn’t really understood how difficult it would be, mainly because it was highly resistant to heat.  Sandra was used to being able to heat metal up in the forge so that it could be softened and shaped into whatever she desired, but this new alloy defied all of the rules.  At its highest temperature, even her forge couldn’t soften the metal up enough to manipulate “normally”; it would heat up, even glowing with the sheer amount of heat pumped through it, but it didn’t soften at all.  Everything had to be done with Earth elemental energy at that point.

The basic concept was to bring forth a quantity of Earth energy from the body and transfer it to the metal through the fingers of said body.  The energy would then infuse a small section of the alloy, “softening” it up just like heat would do, allowing it to be manipulated either by hand or through the use of tools.  Different metals required different amounts of Earth energy to work with