Following the unprecedented success in the human capital, he left a considerable number of spiders there. He managed to secure the spiders a sizable spot in the Merchant’s Square where they will be able to sell the TomGrape and other goods of the Spider Kingdom. Moreover, just before he left, Aurelius II strongly encouraged him to set up an embassy, which was more than the King of Spiders could even ask for. The offers Aurelius II, Vumbeldor, and some influential merchants had made were interesting and often peculiar: in most cases, they were shady backroom deals, but maybe as a bonus or to just entice him even further – he wouldn’t need to pay any tax on any of the shady deals. Not even the trade of TomGrape was taxed as long as he kept the prices very low. He had to wonder if the Human Kingdom was making the right decisions there, such a thing would impact them badly in a financial way.
However, some of the items remained regulated. A few examples were the Blue Cloth and Slug Jelly. Also, Aurelius II demanded to keep the Magic Scrolls a secret while Vumbeldor insisted that armour and weapons should only be sold to him.
The potions the Lamia Queen pushed so hard, ended up not with one of the regular merchants, but with a youthful and apparently wealthy noble. The young man took it upon himself to resell and advertise the potions. Good luck, young noble, setting the new franchise and all that! – it was likely a dead-end enterprise since it was hard to compete with established alchemists. But hey, finally he’ll be able to sell the growing stock of potions.
Yes, all of this meant that he’ll have a continuous flow of human coins. It was nice in itself, but the real goal was to advertise his cute spiders and the kingdom’s goods. Currently, he wasn’t planning to make large purchases from the Human Kingdom so the gold coins will likely end up smelted and used for other extravagant projects, like that decorative armour the spiders wore. That, and purchases of Spirit Stones from Black Hand Covenant. He still needed Air, Earth and Water to progress in the magical experimentation.
Speaking of spirit stones, he had traded in a large number of centipede souls to the Great Ancestral Tree, and now had a small pile of Amber. He already had a small project in mind where he would need the equivalent of Nature Spirit Stones. But before that, there was another matter to finish first.
When he was finally in the comfort of home he went straight to the workshop. There were plenty of items to craft and potions to brew. Yes, he’ll finally try to capture the Undead Fortress.
The top of the mountain posed a variety of challenges. The first one was the frigid clouds of the IceShard Plankton. The clouds were unpredictable and random, they were as quick to appear as disappear and the danger was the debuff of Frozen. To battle that he already had a solution: Resist Frozen Potion. With the help of spiders mixing the potions was of no challenge. However, due to the diminished amount of plankton remaining in his inventory, the number of potions was limited.
To help with that he had a secondary solution in the form of better gear. It was a combination of Blue Cloth and IceShard Bird Leather. The resulting armour gave Ice Resistance: Medium. While potentially it solved the issue of the debuff the problem of actual cold, and the feeling of it remained. Yes, even his spiders could get cold, and unlike the mammals, they didn’t have robust thermoregulation abilities. He needed the craft a device to keep them warm.
The warming device proved to be a hard concept to achieve. He suffered from various limitations. 1, he didn’t have a way to store the power. 2, no easy way to conduct and regulate the heat. 3, issue of the fuel itself.
For this task, he went to the Drow Archive and drafted their sharpest minds to come up with the solution. At first, they experimented with FireAgave juice, but it proved to be too dangerous. A leak due to damage might turn the device into a Fire Bomb and cook the user. So the design was scrapped and they moved to a more novel but also more expensive options.
In the end, they achieved what they strived for in the shape of a Heating Plate. The plate was hammered out of Enchanted Currundum Ingot, the ingot was engraved with Drow glyphs to encourage it to produce heat. It wasn’t achieved just through crafting and enchanting but through Drow magic rituals where they had to sacrifice Fire affinity items like FireAgave and Spirit Stones to ‘convince’ the plate to convert the mana into elemental Fire and then channel it through the plate in the form of heat. The ‘convincing’ part was unscientific, relying on old Elven customs and tradition, but it was magic and if it worked it worked… In the end, Heating Plate took mana and converted it to warm heat. The use of such a device sapped not only mana but concentration, also not all of his spiders had access to mana so they altered the design to use Fire Spirit Stones.
He slotted a spirit stone into a designed slot and the plate slowly heated up emitting pleasant warmth. It was even possible to regulate it using a small metal knob. The Heating Plate ended up being a part of the IceWalker Suit. This was the item he would wear under his armour.
[IceWalker Suit: Reinforced +2. Ice Resistance: Medium.]
[Temporary buff Warmth obtained.]
He made the equivalent for the spiders but with a higher grade of protection:
[IceWalker Armour: Reinforced +3. Ice Resistance: Medium.]
[Temporary buff Warmth obtained.]
[Temporary perk Absorb Ice obtained.]
A bonus shield was made using the bones and leather of IceShard Bird. Why bones and not Corrundum Ingots? – because this metal became brittle when exposed to a high degree of cold, and especially Ice elemental damage.
[IceWalker Shield: Reinforced +2. Ice Resistance: Medium.]
[Temporary perk Deflect Ice obtained.]
The absorb perk had a low chance to absorb the elemental attack negating the damage, and somehow even empowering the armour. The deflect did just that: deflected the elemental attack (had to be activated, and only 3 uses a day).
Of course, supplementary gear was added to the set. The most significant item was the Bone Pickaxe. It wasn’t meant to deal damage but to help with the climbing. It even had a unique perk Ice Pierce enabling it to carve ice like butter; It was similar to the blue kobold’s perk of Ice Carve.
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The defensive aspect of the challenge was complete leaving the King of Spiders to consider the means to deal damage. Bringing Icy Axes and Icy Spears didn’t make much sense, especially against the Undead. From what he could tell Fire was the way to go. Hence the Fire Spirit Stone stock was further diminished. With the help of Drow, scrolls were crafted, and in addition to that they made Fiery Axes and Fiery Spears.
Ha! Now, he only had a tiny pile of Enchanted Ingots left and almost no Fire Spirit Stones. The war preparations were indeed expensive. A tiny pile or not, he decided to use it all instead of saving up the meagre amount.
“I want something special.” He declared to the Drow and the spider crafters. “I want something hot and sizzling so that I could grill those Undead to a crisp.”
“A fire bow? Similar to the Bow of Darkness but with fire enchantments?” The High Chief suggested.
“No, for that I’d need Fire Essence, I’m sure of it.” He had none. “But I like the idea of something ranged.”
“Fire. Fire Bomb.” Spider crafter suggested remembering the incident of exploding Heating Plate mark 1.
“Good thinking, but I already have Fire Grenades. I want something hands-on, but still with a lot of oomph!”
“You want to spit fire like a Dragon would, yes-yes?” A Kobold suggested wishing for the same ability.
He had no idea where from the Kobold Leader appeared so suddenly, but he had a good idea.
“A Flamethrower!” It clicked to him. “I want that.”
“A flame thrower?” The High Chief asked scratching his bald head. “How is that different from a grenade? A grenade throwing device?”
“A! That’s a grenade launcher. Good idea but no, I want FlameThrower. It spits fire, like a dragon would, not that I have ever seen a dragon…”
“If. The King. Desires So. We Shall. Make It. So!” The spider crafter declared.
“Yes-yes.” The Kobold Leader approved enthusiastically.
And so they began testing, experimenting, and drawing the first designs. The combined efforts of them all allowed them to beat various challenges and progress further than a single individual could. It took time, but here it was, in less than a day, the friends had a Masterwork!
[You have crafted FlameThrower of masterwork quality. Crafting +1000exp.]
[FlameThrower: Reinforced +3, Spew Flame, Fire Damage +50%]
It even dealt increased elemental Fire damage.
“Wa-wee! Double Whammy. The undead will be Toast!” He should be able to burn them to ash.
“Let me try! Let me try!” The kobold insisted jumping up and down.
[Congratulations! You have reached Crafting lvl. 4]
[Perk Comprehend obtained.]
He suddenly realised how to improve the FlameThrover, actually, he even had a rough design of how to replicate the Elven Ballista weapon and other weapons and engines he had seen so far. It’s like his mind was expanded and became better at reverse engineering complex items. Not only that but also he could feel that designing something new just became a lot easier.
“Actually, we can make the corrundum tank smaller but thicker, increase the compression ten fold and then it would fire even further.”
But no one was listening, because the Kobold Leader had the masterwork already strapped to his back and was currently burning the wall and all the furniture between himself and that wall to cinders.
“He-he-he. Ha! I’m a dragon!” The Kobold Leader roared turning a bookshelf into a ball of fire.
This wasn’t a room to test such weapons, they had a separate room… and anyway, he had to stop the maniac.
“Time Out!” He threw a bunch of ice grenades.
Frost spread out through the better half of the workshop, killing the flames and freezing the kobold like a statue.
“Sorry about that. You were distracted and he just…” The High Chief bowed apologetically.
“Why are you apologising? Please don’t, I should have kept it away from this pyromaniac. And it’s your workshop that got damaged. I’m sorry.”
The Drow just bowed even lower for some reason.
“No worries. We will fix!” The spiders were already on the task.
“Stay here and think about what you have done.” He scolded the kobold.
It would likely remain Frozen for a good while and he didn’t feel like wasting a potion on the troublemaker.
“I know this is the Masterwork we worked so hard on, but I know how to improve it. We’ll have to disassemble it…” He needed the enchanted metal.
“How can you even improve a Masterwork? It’s a masterwork for a reason.”
“Watch!” He began explaining the ideas swirling in his head.
The kobold slowly thawed and a new improved FlameThrower was undergoing a rebirth.
[Chaos Blessed: activated], he ignored the message like always.
He used a variety of items to produce what looked like a cylindrical backpack. The enchanted metal cylinder was covered in cloth made out of FireAgave to give it Fire Resistance. The cylinder itself had two compartments, one to store FireAgave juice (fuel) and the other was a magical pump to pressurise the fuel and propel it through the nozzle. It was done through magical means, and a significant amount of mana had to be injected. The use of the Air Spirit Stone, the one he bought from humans, further increased the power of the magical pump. The pressurised liquid would then flow into a nozzle, well actually a gun. The gun mechanism was there to ignite the liquid by using the Fire Spirit Stone, but also to provide the ability to direct and control the flow of the liquid. The gun in firing mode had quite a kick, the pressure was significant, so he had to add a support mechanism to counteract the recoil. There was a problem with heat and not everything could be solved with Red Cloth, he ended up using Enchanted Leather and enchanting it for Fire Resistance. To keep the weight to a minimum, a few pieces had to be made out of IronOak. Yes, it was wood, but it was many times lighter than metal; the burning risk was solved with insulation and enchantments. Of course, everything was Reinforced +.
Masterwork No 2 was made: [FlameThrower: Reinforced +5, Spew Flame, Range+, Fire Damage +100%], and by the looks of it the effort was worth it.
“King of Spiders…” The Drow struggled to find the right words. “This is revolutionary!”
“Revolutionary? Hmm… There is a reason the Protocol on Incendiary Weapons exists…” He alluded to a ban on said weapons in his previous world and the unfortunate reality that he brought this terror to this world.
“Incendiary?” The Drow looked confused for a moment.
“But what am I talking… Of course, this is revolutionary. The Undead will stand no chance against this.” He patted the red backpack with affection.
The Kobold Leader finished being Frozen and now was standing there with the appropriate apologetic look on his face.
“Here to apologise?” He summarized.
“Yes-Yes. I forgot. The undead are stealing the meat.”
He blinked once. He blinked twice. This was not the apology he expected.
“You mean my 90 tones,” or whatever was remaining, “of exquisite IceShard Bird Meat is being raided?”
“The storage looted. Yes-Yes.”
So that’s why the kobold came to the Drow Archives, to tell him that… but somehow it has gotten distracted and the rest is history. He didn’t know if to hug or strangle the critter. It was likely not much of the meat remained, after all he was so busy crafting the incendiary weapon, but, if the kobold had told him straight away it was likely that he would have overreacted and ran to save the meat, and as a result, never craft this revolutionary but atrocious FlameThrower.
“Let’s not waste more time. I think we are ready!”
He was tired, but not tired enough to fry some meat-thieving undead.