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

the milling of the wheat grains into flour.  The Dwarves only had a small millstone that they used to feed their village; they shipped the rest of the grains that were originally grown in the village back to their mountain strongholds instead of milling it beforehand because the grains traveled better and lasted longer in their original form.  The millstone they used in their village was similar to ones Sandra had seen before, which was basically two circular-cut stones on top of each other that would be turned by hand, grinding the grains into flour as it gradually pushed the powder out to the edges of the stones.  From there, it usually fell into some sort of box or container where it could be collected.

She’d seen larger stones that were turned by harnessed beasts or by a waterwheel if the millhouse were on the edge of a river, but all of them used basically the same principle.  Regardless of how large or heavy the stone was, though, the ground-up grains were almost always coarse after the first pass through the millstones and had to be re-fed through at least once – or sometimes three or four times – through the hole in the middle of the top stone, where it would fall down again between the stones and become finer.

Fortunately, she had something else in mind; Mana-fueled traps that could do the work without having to turn them manually.

She started with creating a large smooth stone basin that was 10 feet across and had a steep slanted base to it, so that any flour falling into the basin would automatically funnel itself down to a point on the front where it could be collected.  In the middle of the basin, she placed a set of circular millstones one on top of each other, with a hole in the middle of the top stone; the stones themselves were approximately 3 feet wide and 6 inches thick, which gave them some hefty weight – perfect for milling.  Above that set of millstones, she created a circular smooth stone funnel attached to the wall, of the same dimensions as the basin down below; this would concentrate anything that fell into it through the central point of the funnel, so that it would fall down into the millstones below.

Above this stone funnel, Sandra placed another set of millstones, which was a difficult process in and of itself.  She had to first attach six long Steel poles through the stone of the nearby wall, which extended out above the funnel; to the point where they all intersected, she fused them all together using her Mana and created a platform where she could place the millstones.  These ones were a little thinner than the ones on the bottom, but they were still more than heavy enough to get the job done.

Then, she just repeated all that she had done three more times until they stretched almost to the ceiling.  In order to reach the top, she removed a portion of the nearby wall behind the milling station and created a set of stone steps that wound up and behind it, where a short ramp fed right into a large funnel-shaped hole in the top millstone.  All that anyone or anything had to do to deposit grain in there would be to tip their bucket or whatever into the short ramp, and the rest would take care of itself – especially once she added the Earth-based trap to the millstones.

The Wheat grains were finished long before the Barley grains, because those would take a day or more to dry out to where they could be used; as a result, a few hours before mid-day Sandra had the first of the loads of dried Wheat grains brought into the milling room and deposited into the top set of millstones.  The grains fell into the hole, which activated the trap Sandra had placed earlier; all of the stones began to rotate in place, including the bottom stones of each pair, though they rotated the opposite direction from the one on top.  Unlike the smooth stone of the funnels and collecting basin down below, the millstones had a rougher texture, so that they could really dig into and grind the grains down to a fine flour.

It took about 10 minutes for the first bit of Wheat to fully pass through every millstone, and started to collect on the bottom basin.  By that time, the once-coarse grains were now a fine whitish-beige powder, which would be perfect for being made into breads for baking – or for whatever else the Dwarves wanted to use it for.

Thankfully, one enterprising villager had thought to bring some dough starter from their village as they fled, which had the necessary yeast inside of it to allow the bread to rise.  Sandra had an idea where to get more yeast if it were necessary – from the outside rind of older fruit left out to decompose – but thankfully that wasn’t required.  With the Wheat flour and starter – and with the Wheat and Barley fields completely harvested – some of the villagers came to help with the preparing and proofing of the dough, which meant letting it sit and start to expand and rise from the yeast.  Once it had risen enough, they would bake it, but that would be at least a few hours.

Meanwhile, the Hops were harvested by hand—Shear, actually.  The way Hops were grown, the Rhizome was planted under the ground with a tall rough wooden pole sticking straight up from the ground; when the bines grew from the Rhizome, it would wrap itself around the wooden pole and grow all the way up to the top, twisting around and around while securing itself into place using tiny little hairs on the bine against the pole.  When they were ready to be harvested, little green pinecone-looking berries were grown and had to be