The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) by Jonathan Brooks (best english books to read TXT) 📗

eager to learn about was how it could be used as a crafting material. A few seconds after she absorbed the shiny, oily-looking metal, she spent nearly 10,000 Mana to create a large bar of it on the floor next to the Blacksmith; it was definitely expensive to create it as a material, but not too much more than Dragon Glass was to produce.

Master Jespin’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head when he saw it by his feet.  “Oh, Creator!  It’s true!”  Tears flowed silently down his cheeks as he picked up the bar, which appeared extremely lightweight; not only that, but it was soft – much softer than Gold, even.  Jespin held the Mithril up to his face as he looked at it intently, the tears having stopped running almost as soon as he held onto the bar, all business now; he sniffed and then licked the bar of metal (which was extremely weird, but Sandra wasn’t going to complain), before pinching the corner of the metal and tearing off a small amount like it was clay or something.  He rolled it around in his one hand like putty, forming a very similar orb like the one he had given to Sandra to absorb.

“It’s…perfect.  It’s also amazing and the answer to our prayers.”  He stood there apparently lost in thought as he rolled the Mithril around in his hand.

Uh…so, I can make a lot of Mithril, but it seems too soft to be a good metal for anything other than maybe jewelry; even then, it probably wouldn’t hold up well.

Her voice made the Master twitch in surprise, nearly dropping the bar of Mithril, but he held onto it with a little fumbling and smiled when she finished.  “That’s because mithril, by itself, is practically useless.  It’s only when used to create an alloy that its real properties come alive.”

How so?

“Allow me to demonstrate.  Is that a forge I see over there?  It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”  The Master walked over to the forge she had in her upper workshop, and Sandra quickly explained how it worked.

“It seems as though the wonders of your dungeon have yet to cease, my dear Sandra.  Do you have any small orbs of copper available?”  Gerold followed behind Jespin as the latter stared in wonder at the forge, which was certainly different from anything he’d probably seen before.

While she didn’t have any right there, she created a small bar of Copper near the forge.  All of the tools he would likely need were already there, laid out for anyone to use, and the Master Blacksmith went to work immediately.  The exhaustion on his face and in his posture seemed to disappear as he went to work at the forge, looking as if he was more at home in front of the heat and flames than anything else in the world.

“Normally, wasting mithril on something as mundane as this would be enough to exile me for life back in the strongholds, but with you able to create as much as we need, I think this is the easiest way to demonstrate the major principles here.”  So saying, he took a very small pinch of the Mithril off of the bar she had created, placed it in a crucible with the copper bar, and then placed it in the forge.  He jumped slightly when it activated, but he smiled when he saw how efficient and focused the heat was inside the Dragon Glass-coated forge, humming slightly to himself.  It was almost as if the world was forgotten – such as the unconscious form of the King in the middle of the workshop.  Sandra briefly thought about moving him somewhere more comfortable, but decided to wait until Jespin recommended it.

She watched with rapt attention that she remembered from her days as a Human, watching a Master of their craft demonstrate something for the first time.  The feeling of discovery never got old; it felt the same learning the 10,000th recipe or technique as it did the first.  If she had a choice, she would try to learn all she could from the Master Blacksmith, because she could see even in the way that he handled tools that he had centuries of experience around a forge.  That experience was invaluable, and Sandra drank in every drop of knowledge, every movement that the Master made; even something as simple as creating an alloy was a lesson in efficiency for her.  Without modesty getting in the way, Sandra had to admit that she was good – but she was no Master.

“So, you’ll see that Mithril melts at a much lower temperature, but never vaporizes into a gas; you could have heat that is hot enough to melt stone—hold on, is this?  No way – is this Dragon Glass?” Jespin asked, deftly continuing to melt the alloy while running his hand along the forge.

Yes, it is.  Nearly as expensive as Mithril, but worth it to prevent stone from melting, she added with amusement.

“I haven’t seen this much in almost four centuries; there are some excellent techniques in working it that I would love to experiment with…ah, I think it’s just about done,” the Master said, pulling out the melted Copper from the forge, looking at it intently without getting close enough to burn his face off from the heat.

“Do you have anything that will help cool this off quickly?”  There was a barrel nearby that she told him about, though right now it was empty; she quickly filled it with icy-cold water using her Mana.  Normally, placing such hot material inside cold water like that could result in cracks, especially in something like Copper, but the Master didn’t seem concerned.

Steam rose as the metal was rapidly cooled, and before long it was solid enough to see what the result was.  When he placed it on the anvil, it didn’t appear too impressive, though