The Crafter's Defense: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 2) Jonathan Brooks (large ebook reader TXT) 📖

so that we can make one of these “Haulers” you told me about.  This wagon isn’t going to pull itself, after all. *

“Right, yes, we can do that,” Violet said, after watching with fascination how easily Sandra’s Apes were moving the thick wooden bed of the wagon around, as well as the thick steel braces and wheels.  Sandra didn’t really have the best grease for allowing the wheels to turn without too much friction, but she figured that the thick oily grease from all the Bearling meat she had cooked earlier would have to do for now.

Now that she had access to wood, Sandra hoped that she could make paper for the Gnomes to help create a blueprint of sorts to draw what was needed.  Alas, it was apparently an object that needed to be created first, as it didn’t appear when she thought about making it via her Mundane Object Creation; she figured it was the same as not being able to make cloth now that she had Thread – both were essentially next-stage products and needed to be created first.  Therefore, instead of paper, she provided them with a various sizes of pure Maple wood boards, which had a very even blondish color to it, making it easy to see marks left by the small coal pencils she also provided to the Gnomes.

None of them were artists – or even particularly good at drawing – but when there were eight of them trying to draw the same things, Sandra got a fairly good idea of what it was going to look like.  In the end, it was fairly simple in design, but she thought it was going to be difficult to execute.

In its simplest form, a Hauler was a box attached to two rotating spiked metal bands on either side of it.  The somehow-flexible bands – which also had holes in them periodically -- were affixed to smaller gears that stuck into the holes and propelled the machine forward.  There was a platform for a Gnome to stand on cut into the backside of the box, with two vertical rotating “steering wheels” – or at least that’s what the Gnomes called them.  When the operator on top of the box wanted to move the Hauler forward, they would rotate both wheels forward at the same time; if they wanted to turn left or right, they had to rotate just a single wheel; if they wanted to back up, they rotated both wheels backwards.

The way the enchantment worked was through what Violet called an “input feedback system”, which was completely new to Sandra – and she was eager to learn what it was all about.  If she understood the theory behind it, two Spirit-based enchantments would be paired together in a uni-directional matter, where what you did to one object happened to the other – but not the other way around.  Therefore, as you turned one steering wheel, it would rotate the paired gear connected to the band, which would then rotate the band forward – and thus the machine.  It only worked one way, however, so that anything happening to the gear below wouldn’t transfer back to the steering wheel.

Frankly, Sandra thought it was genius.

“In its very basic form, the input feedback system is what allows our other combat-oriented creations – like the War Machines you saw before – to work, though those are done on a massively complex scale.  It would be like trying to compare a shoddy iron dagger that a novice blacksmith attempted to make, to a masterwork mithril short sword that a master at their craft could present.  While I’m not exactly a ‘novice’, I’m nowhere near being able to create that kind of complexity yet.  At best, I can help maintain and repair what’s already there, but designing and putting together something like that boggles my mind,” Violet explained.

* But you think you can put the enchantments on a Hauler together? *

The little Gnome hesitated only for a moment before replying.  “Yes, I believe so.  I know the basic principles behind it, and I was able to put together a simple feedback system on a model back at the ELA.”

With that being just about all the reassurances she was going to get, Sandra got started creating parts for the new Hauler.  While she was at it, she spat out parts to make two more wagons; she figured if the Hauler worked the way it was supposed to, then she could link all three wagons together so that they could take as many supplies as they could.

Sandra’s father always said that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression; she was just hoping that providing everything she possibly could would negate some of the bad that came from her first meeting with the Gnomes.  And if it worked, she wasn’t above using the same “gifting” tactic with the other races.

Chapter 30

Fortunately for them all, everyone except for Violet knew the band or “track” system on the Haulers fairly well.  They were frequently called upon to replace worn or broken segments of the track, so they were able to describe and partially draw what they looked like.  It took a bit of trial and error, but they all breathed a sigh of relief when Sandra was finally able to make a piece that looked exactly like what they needed.  The fact that it was made out of pure steel of dungeon-loot-quality meant that it was less likely to need repairs in the future; from her limited knowledge of their construction, Violet didn’t think the precious resource had ever been used for Hauler tracks.  They were usually made from iron, which had a greater tendency to crack and break than steel would.

The amount of steel in the tracks alone amounted to nearly a year’s worth of culling and harvesting the resource from the nearby forest.  Unless they