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

try.  Based on what she was learning, however, it was going to take some trial-and-error on the Dwarves’ part to get it completely right.

With a lot of her other crafting projects, she could tell instantly whether or not something was done correctly; a sword or an enchantment appeared…off…if the process wasn’t done the way it should have been.  Even things that she couldn’t necessarily evaluate herself – such as cooking and tasting what she cooked (which she had tried while controlling one of her Unstable Shapeshifters, but everything was basically tasteless) – she knew how they were supposed to look and even feel, so it wasn’t that hard to see if she had made it right.  For the brand-new crafts of brewing and distilling spirits, she had no frame of reference to work off of, so she was going to have to leave the fine-tuning to the experts.

She just had to ensure they had the tools to do that, which meant a lot of customization on Sandra’s part.  Which just makes it more fun!

Chapter 20

Sandra started out her crafting experiments in brewing and distilling with small-scale models that Glencha and Teving approved before she went full-scale.  She was glad she didn’t try to create everything large-scale first, because there were multiple things that the two Dwarves suggested to improve her design. Experience using her abilities allowed her to perform most of the steps with a single container; the original thought was to use a different container for each step of the process because that was what the Dwarves usually did – but Sandra was anything but normal.

Starting with brewing with the brewing process, the first thing that Sandra needed to do – which was nearly impossible to accomplish in the single container she was designing – was to convert the Wheat and Barley into a malt mixture.  She left the exact portion sizes of each grain in Teving’s capable hands, while Sandra figured out how to turn the grains into a malt; this was normally done with a time-consuming process of drying the grains (which had already been done), rehydrating them, then allowing them to germinate so that they produced the necessary growth that aided in the production of alcohol later.

Sandra being who she was, however, simply made another open area near the drying room that was like a miniature growing space; there was a water trap in a small room above, which produced the moisture the grains needed, and inside the growing space was a combination Natural and Air trap.  The Natural trap would activate just enough to start the growing process in the grains when they were hydrated, but cut off quickly soon after; there were slots in the floor where the water could drain while keeping the germinated grains in the room.  Once the mixture was drained and germinated, the Air trap would slowly dry them off with cool air at first, before ramping up to higher temperatures.

Once it had been completely dried and therefore malted, the Wheat and Barley mixture could be moved to a container that Sandra took a long time designing.  For each step of the process, another aspect of a trap or an enchantment had to be activated – which was difficult but not impossible to achieve.  The hardest part was convincing the two Dwarves not to freak out when 6 of her Unstable Shapeshifters arrived to do all of the enchanting.  She could have brought even more, since she had expanded her stable of Shifters to 40 by that time, because they were extremely useful in so many ways.

“Wha-what is that?” Glencha exclaimed, backing away when the multi-colored amorphous masses rolled into the expanded room she was going to be using for brewing.  The first two rooms nearest her Home room had been meant for the two crafting stations – the Brewery and Distillery – but with the knowledge that the container she was going to make was quite large (and that she would likely make multiple of each), she decided to make the “rooms” a lot wider by adding additional offshoot rooms accessible via tunnels.  This allowed her to make traps for additional brewing or distilling stations, instead of trying to tie them all together into one giant room.

The hard-spirit-enthusiast Dwarf backed away with obvious shock and worry, not quite as scared as she was when she saw the Aerie Roc, but uncomfortable at seeing the Shapeshifters.  Sandra couldn’t blame her, though – it was still hard to look at them for her when they were in their unshifted states, so she could sympathize.

None of the Dwarves had seen them in their natural state; when she needed to set up Stasis Fields on the two meat boxes, they had arrived already in the form of two identical and clothed Violet-copies.  She didn’t do that here, though, because she had a feeling she was going to need every minute of the hour – where each Shapeshifter could maintain their shifted shape – before they were kicked back to their natural form.

* These are my Unstable Shapeshifters, who will be assisting me in enchanting this vessel.  You’ve seen them before in their shifted states, I’m sure, but this is their natural form.  Don’t be alarmed when they shift, however, because it can be a little unsettling.  Oh, and they’ll be naked, so hopefully that doesn’t bother you too much. *

“Wait—what?” Teving asked, before he too stepped back in shock when her Dungeon Monsters changed shape and shrunk down into the naked forms of two Gnomes: Felbar and Violet.  Sandra chose those two because she was accustomed to using them the most, plus they were actually smaller than the two Dwarves; she figured having some tall Elves suddenly appear might alarm them more than a little bit.

“Th-that’s disturbing.  Can they take any shape?” Glencha asked, suspicion flavoring her tone.

Sandra went on to explain the limitations of her Unstable