The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4) by Jonathan Brooks (e book reading free txt) 📕

not having to worry about any deception or betrayal on the part of the older Elf, as the Elder still looked entirely drained – but alive, at least.

There wasn’t much difficulty in getting them strapped into the harness, and with a quick explanation of the enchanted plaque and how it worked, they were ready to go.  Before they left, Sandra also placed the – now closed – box of Large Energy Orbs that had been left over after the Rangers had been bonded, so that they could deliver them to the capital directly.  Sandra watched them leave her Home room as the giant bird ran through the tunnels on its way out of her dungeon, with the sun just barely over the horizon.  They lifted into the air after some brief practice by Echo, with both the young Elf and the Elder not seeming to be fazed by the height like Violet had been.

Truth be told, their entire departure was a bit anticlimactic after the events in the workshop.  I suppose I shouldn’t complain; I could use a little anticlimactic every now and then.

When they were out of range of her view outside of her Area of Influence, Sandra turned her concentration back to her dungeon…and got back to work.

Chapter 15

The rest of the morning was relatively quiet, as Gerold and the other Shieldmen were going to sleep until at least the early afternoon before they headed out again.  The other Dwarven villagers – despite not being able to actually see the sun – woke up a little bit after the two Elves left on top of their Aerie Roc, and started in on the fields which had now been completely planted.  From the small plots of Wheat, Barley, Hops, and Potatoes that Sandra had originally planted in order to acquire their Origination Materials, there were now long rows of each type of grown foodstuff in two different large growing rooms.  Now that they were all planted and the Natural portion of the trap that she had set up in the two rooms had grown them all to maturity, the villagers were starting to harvest it all with the help of a veritable horde of Sentinels she had originally provided the Dwarves to help out.

While her constructs were able to pull the Wheat and Barley out at the root, the villagers used some Steel sickles that they had brought with them from the village; though they didn’t bring a whole lot with them when they fled, they made sure to bring their important tools. The sickles were unique tools that had short wooden handles with a long Steel blade that was drastically curved, making almost a “U” shape; the inside of the curve was sharpened, and the blade came to an almost hooked point.  Theoretically it could be used as a weapon in a pinch, but what it excelled at being used for was harvesting – and Sandra got to see it in use for the first time in her life; she had never been very interested in the actual harvesting process back when she was a merchant and learned about crafting, though she did learn how to craft a sickle.

The Dwarves crouched down with their sickles, pulling at the stalks of Wheat and Barley – but not to rip them out of the ground.  Instead, they gathered up a small handful and used their tools to almost wrap around the lower stalks, pulling at the same time to cut through the stalks near the ground with ease.  They kept doing this until they had a large handful, where they would then use a few of the stalks to bundle them all together, depositing them on the ground to be collected later and moved on to the next area – where they would do it all again.  They were fast and extremely efficient, and by not ripping the stalks out of the ground, they would regrow again without having to be reseeded.

Therefore, instead of her constructs helping to harvest them directly, they instead transported of all of the sheaves of Wheat being harvested by the much more efficient Dwarves to the threshing area.  Since the harvesting was being taken care of, the threshing was done by Sandra’s constructs; it was similar in practice to how she had harvested flax, though in slightly different ways.  With the Wheat and Barley, all it took was smashing the sheaves of stalks against the floor or wall using her Sentinels, where the grains would fall out and be collected by the various Automatons there and put to the side.  The chaff covering the actual grains needed to be removed, but that was much easier to do by the small hands of the automatons in rapid succession.  Unlike the Dwarves, who had to rest, her constructs could constantly do the threshing and chaff-removing without stopping, which meant that they got through it very quickly.

The grains of both the Wheat and Barley had to dry after they were harvested and threshed, because they had too much moisture to make proper use of them.  That required additional rooms – created with her Bulk Elimination ability – that would each serve as both a storage and rapid drying facility. Her constructs separated each type of grain and transported them to the different storage rooms using simple stone buckets where they would dump them inside.  The drying function was added using a variation of the heated drying air in the bath room Sandra had created higher up in her dungeon.  In the Wheat room she made the Air and Fire-based trap in there heat up the air so that it was quite hot while circulating rapidly. The Barley room had the same circulation, but she set the temperature of the air much lower after being informed by the Dwarves that low-heat drying produced better Barley grains.

While they were drying, Sandra created another room that would do