The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) by Jonathan Brooks (e ink epub reader .txt) 📕

at the bottom, which seemed much more suited to holding a paired Orb set than any other piece of jewelry she had created up until then.  For this necklace, however, she had other plans.

Grinding a gemstone was much harder than she thought it would be.  Even with the Goblin Crafter’s deft fingers, holding up a Ruby to the spinning wheel – with a crossbar and a piece of iron literally melded into the side of the gemstone for leverage – it was hard to achieve the correct angle she needed.  It took nearly a half hour of constant practice, do-overs, and concentrated effort before she thought she had shaped the lump of Ruby into what she thought she needed.  Whether or not it would work for the Minor Flame Shield she was planning to enchant it with was something else entirely.  Regardless, she placed the cut Ruby on the necklace using a pronged set of “claws”, leaving it relatively exposed compared to the paired set of Tiny Fire and Spirit Energy Orbs in a cage next to it.  It seemed a bit lopsided, but if it did what she hoped, then she could work on improving its appearance over time.

Seeing as this was generally more of a proof of concept than a completely finished product, she was okay with that.

Looking at the necklace, however, she was happy to see that she was right in her hopes; there was plenty of room to place another PEE on it, utilizing its Gold construction.  In fact, the plates were large enough and there were 5 wire rings connecting each of the plates together that she could theoretically put 5 PEEs on the necklace, in addition to the Flame Shield on the Ruby.

Placing that many pairings on the necklace was more than possible, utilizing the larger plates to put the caged Orbs on there, but then it would become heavier with the more Gold that was added.  Besides that, Sandra was hoping to find a way to place just “normal” Energy Orbs on her jewelry that wouldn’t be used for powering PEEs, but for passive energy regeneration.  Right now, the people she was giving the Energy Orbs to – if they didn’t have them inside their palms from the Bonding – were usually carrying them around with a crudely fashioned leather necklace that stayed near enough to their skin to work.  As she wanted to start distributing Energy Orbs to the Orcs soon, to prepare them for what was already happening, she wanted a more permanent, multipurpose solution.

The major problem was that most of her Energy Orbs she was enchanting for the population were Large instead of these Tiny Orbs she was using.  Not only that, but she would have to make many different combinations of any type of jewelry she decided to use, because some would need one with just a singular element type of Orb, while others would need 2 elements – making that a total of 8 for the single element and 28 for the dual elements.  For those that had more than 3 elements they could manipulate, those would have to be made on a case-by-case basis.

There has to be an easier solution. 

“An easier solution to what?” Winxa asked, obviously interested in what Sandra was working on, as the Dungeon Core had been relatively silent while she was concentrating on crafting.

Hold on, I’ll explain in a moment.  After seeing how adept the Goblin Crafter could be at crafting (which made her happy, as it had lived up to its name), she started to create a veritable horde of them to take over some of the crafts she had going in her dungeon.  A group of them went to the leatherworking shop, taking over for the few constructs and the Shapeshifter she had inside, crafting armor used by the Orcs when trading Warband members to be used as Sandra’s mercenaries.  She also used them to fetch and carry different things for the Shifter Enchanters, so that they could concentrate on doing that exclusively.

Then she had to warn Kelerim, because he was about to get some help.

“What?!  No, no, no – I can’t work with Goblins!” he protested, shaking his head.  “They’re so clumsy-looking and are no doubt useless.”  His reasoning was sound when it came to the previous incarnations, but the Crafters were a different matter altogether.

 

* Look, just try them out for a little bit, and you’ll see that they can be a big help. *

“Fine, I’ll do it if you ask.  Where are—oh, they’re here already.  And they even have little aprons on.  They look like tiny weak Orcs, so I guess they aren’t all that bad.”  The half-dozen Goblin Crafters got near the half-Dwarf/half-Orc for orders, and Kelerim looked as if he had been slapped in the face.  “They still stink, however.”

 

* Have them work apart from you; just give them orders and I’m thinking that they should be able to accomplish whatever you set in front of them. *

Nodding, he put them to work doing the little tasks that needed to be done, such as wrapping sword hilts with leather strips for better grips, grinding and polishing the large stack of forged swords that needed to be finished off, and carrying supplies back and forth.  The one time he tried to have one of them try to actually forge a sword didn’t work that well, as the Goblins were quick, not strong; they couldn’t hit a piece of metal hard enough to accomplish much.  But for everything else, the little details, they were more than adept at doing those kinds of things – and without much in the way of supervision.

Lastly, she scrapped the traps in the Jewelry workshop for a moment; making 4 more workstations, she created copies of all of the tools, the buffing and grinding wheels, and the Dragon Glass forges and set 5 of the