The Crafter's Defense: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 2) by Jonathan Brooks (top 10 novels txt) 📗

11 other holes she wanted along the outside rim and four along the band in the middle, she then used a second Ape she had nearby to start making rivets in the forge.  They were essentially long slender cylinders that had one end flat and spread out; when they were ready, she would head up the other end just enough to make it slightly malleable, hammer it straight through the holes made previously, and then finish it up by hammering the softer, heated side – so that it would be flush against the metal rim.

Using another rounded bar of Steel, she controlled one of her Apes at the forge and heated and shaped it until it looked like a wide U with flattened ends.  On those flattened ends, she punched another hole for another rivet, which would correspond to the holes previously made on the center Steel band.  Attaching the U-shaped Steel to the back side of the project she was working on, she pounded more heated rivets into the ends to secure it in place and then stepped back to look at her creation.

It wasn’t the best Steel-banded Oak shield in the world, but it wasn’t the worst either.  She could already see where she could improve her riveting to make it cleaner, work on the spacing between the holes, and smooth over the hastily welded parts; all in all, though, it appeared at least serviceable.  The wood grain was superb and unnaturally straight, which gave the shield an almost-striped appearance, which she thought was a neat addition to the otherwise relatively crude crafting job.  Though, it wasn’t exactly “crude” – not like the junk swords she had seen the Orcs wielding – but she knew she could do much better with practice.

Just like she had needed to practice with metal and improve her blacksmithing, she needed to practice with wood.  Back when she was alive in the land of Muriel, wooden “dungeon loot” drops weren’t very common.  In some areas, the higher-quality woods like Magewood and Elderoak were present – but they were few and far between.  Humans tended to like more of their premium crafted weapons made from dungeon-looted metal, as opposed to wood; bows and a few staves that were enchanted from some special woods were about all she saw used for weapons or armor, so working with such pristine “common” woods like Oak – as she now possessed – was fairly new to her.

In order to become a little better at working with the wood, over the next day she practiced creating more of the same shield she had just produced, as well as adding wooden components – like lightweight handles – to weapons such as swords, knives, axes, and even some short spears to help with balancing issues.  Since what she had produced before had been made entirely of metal, it was also the first time she had to really utilize some of the leather she had made shortly after Kelerim had arrived; when wrapped around handles – and even things like where an axe head joins the haft – it helped to hold everything together and even supplied a better grip for a person’s hands.

Sandra spent so much time utilizing her new material that she barely had time for anything else.  Crafting only took up a fraction of her incoming Mana, however, and since she had already completed the stages toward the next Core Size Upgrade, she spent everything she had on producing more Monster Seeds.  In an area past her Home where her core was located, she started hollowing out a massive room and used the Raw Materials from that excavation and her available Mana to fill it with…“loot”, essentially.  She didn’t want everything she was taking in to go to waste, so she filled up what she was now calling her treasury with various Orbs and other seeds of every size she had access to.

There were Copper Orbs, Tin Orbs, Nickel Orbs, Bronze Orbs, Iron Orbs, Steel Orbs, Silver Orbs, Gold Orbs, elemental Orbs from every element, Cubes of Salt, a small pile of Dragon Glass Flakes, stacks of Oak wood Planks, and even a small castle of Clay Cubes that she had her Tiny Automatons build as they transported them from her Home room.  She wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted to do with all of the Seeds she accumulated, but she didn’t want all of those resources to go to waste.

She was about to start work on trying to create a bow – which would take a little bit, as she needed the normally straight wood she could create to soak in a tub, making it slightly more flexible so that she could bend it into shape – when she realized she hadn’t checked on her Flax in a while.  She ate away the covering of the warm churning-water tub where her flax stems were retting and found that they were finally ready for the next step in the lengthy process.

The next step required the bark on the outside of the fibers inside to be scraped away – which was made much easier and prevented overall breakage from the retting process – and then the water squeezed out and dried.  Placing them on the heated tanning racks was the most efficient process, and within an hour they were dry and ready for the next step.  Normally, special tools that looked like a long thin grouping of spikes were used to break up the stalks and separate the fibers, but Sandra had something more efficient – or at least more fun.  Dozens of Segmented Centipedes crawled all over the dried Flax and used their mandibles to delicately separate the fibers until they were placed into a large pile for further work.

The next step required melding the fibers together to form one giant “rope”, which she accomplished by making a series of rollers inside her Textile Workshop that were essentially two large