The Crafter's Dungeon: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 1) by Jonathan Brooks (literature books to read TXT) 📕

had the opportunity to test the skill out, she tried to make a large kitchen knife – which did nothing as well.  In fact, any type of bladed implement she tried to create, whether it was for mundane purposes or not, accomplished nothing.  Sandra even tried to make a small representation of a warhammer that she had seen before – with a spike on one side – but that didn’t work either.

Running through her memories for nearly every type of weapon or armor she could think of, nothing materialized when she attempted to create each one.  She figured that the skill must’ve automatically known if it was something that could be used as a weapon or armor and negated the creation of it instantly.  Although the small blacksmithing hammers and even the tongs she was able to make could theoretically hurt someone, the thought of using them for that purpose never crossed her mind.  As for the kitchen knife – as well as some types of skinning knives that she tried to make – while they were tools for crafting, she knew in her mind that they could be used as a weapon; as a result, her skill wouldn’t allow them to be created.

Her block of Bronze was still near the forge, mainly because Sandra hadn’t seen the need to absorb it yet; that, and it was almost like a symbol of her success in discovering a new Monster Seed material.  But now, with the aid of her new Armored Sentinel, she was going to turn that symbol into her first actual crafting piece.

The block, though, was a little large for what she was intending.  Therefore, she split the 4inX2inX2in chunk of bronze in half by eating away at it lengthwise, leaving two equal blocks that were now only an inch wide.  Controlling her new Sentinel construct was much easier to get used to – mainly because it was even more humanoid than the Clockwork Golem – so she was easily able to use the tongs to grab the block of Bronze and placed the front half of it in the forge.

Based on how the Copper had completely melted at six flame jets, Sandra avoided activating that many and instead went for three.  Based on her memories, she remembered that the Bronze alloy had a lower melting point than Copper because of the introduction of the Tin, and she didn’t want to melt the bar. She was hoping that the heat from three flame jets – half as many as she used to create the material in the first place – would just soften the metal up enough so that it could be shaped.

Her estimation was fairly accurate, and as soon as the Bronze was a nice soft-red color in the area closest to the flames, she pulled it out of the forge with her tongs and set it on her new anvil.  Still holding the edge with her tongs, she grabbed her hammer and started to beat on the glowing hot bar of metal, steadily shaping it the best she could with her strikes.  It was a little difficult to do because she couldn’t bend her construct’s wrist – only rotate it – but most of the pounding she had to do was a simple up and down motion.  The rotating wrist came in handy when she needed to strike the opposite side of the bar, as all she needed to do was twist it and it flipped over effortlessly.

It took a few times in and out of the forge to complete the basic shape of the knife, which essentially was only tapered on one side, where it would be filed and sharpened later.  The whole process was a lot more difficult than she thought it would be; while she had the knowledge of what needed to be done, she didn’t have the experience.  She hadn’t realized how much of a difference it would make actually doing it herself rather than just watching; by the time she was done and considered that the forging process was as complete as it was going to be, she figured that she would need a lot of practice to get it looking the way it should.

Nevertheless, as the crudely shaped Bronze knife cooled, Sandra was proud of her creation.  It wasn’t by any means great, but it was still progress.  Her construct had worked fairly well, though some of the more advanced techniques she knew about required a bit more finesse than it was capable of.  Regardless, the fact that she was only Core Size 7 and had access to the Armored Sentinel made her hopeful that an even better construct would be available in the future.

Filing and sharpening the knife didn’t work as great, as it required that finesse she was thinking about earlier.  Simple adjustments to a wrist would’ve been enough to get an adequate edge on the weapon, but without that, all she was able to do was clean it up a little.  The cutting edge was essentially blunt, the handle was a hammer-marked circular cylinder, and the tip was more a dull spike than a point, but it was her first crafting success.

Success might be a bit strong of a word, though, but it was at least recognizable as a knife.

As Sandra looked at it laid out on her anvil, a swelling of pride suffused her mind.  I did it!  I crafted my first weapon!

“Nice job, Sandra!  Though, it does look a little…shall we say…crude.  No offense, but I thought you were some sort of crafting master or something, by the way you spoke about it,” Winxa broke into the Dungeon Core’s reverie.

Honestly, Sandra forgot the Dungeon Fairy was even there while she had been working, as she had been so absorbed in her project that everything else essentially faded out around her.  Thankfully, the partitioned part of her mind was still at work excavating the