A hero was just one more thing to worry about later.
Right now, he was drowning in milk, 720 thousand bottles an hour, and nothing to do with it really.
Not for long though. If collecting enough mana glass allowed him to make mana cubes, then collecting enough milk should unlock something. He gave Forge and Smelter a break and passed a bottle of milk to Smittee. With Smittee's eyes, he looked at the forge menu.
[Lunar Forge]
[The light of the Moon has kindled a subtle fire. Use the forge to shape and improve magical implements, gear, and weapons.]
[Items:]
[
Living Stone - (5 Stone, 5 Mana Core Levels)
Mana Core Level 2 - (3 Mana Core Levels)
Mana Core Level 5 - (6 Mana Core Levels)
Mana Core Level 10 - (11 Mana Core Levels)
Mana Cube - (100 mana glass)
]
Nothing. He had been sure the milk would unlock something awesome. Then he mentally smacked his forehead. Mana had to be refined in the smelter to make mana glass. If Divine Milk worked the same way, he was looking in the wrong place.
He walked Smitee over to the smelter and had a look there.
[Lunar Smelter]
[Use the purifying glow of the Moon to extract the essential essence of materials.]
[
Refine Tempered Stone (10 stone, 1 mana)
Refine Mana Glass (1 stone, 10 mana)
]
Stat-o-Vision™ gave him a flowery description for the smelter, but that was all. Maybe it was weird to expect to refine milk in a smelter anyway. You would just get burnt milk, right? No one wants to smell that.
He had been so sure. Now he had milk crates stacking across the plains and nothing to spend them on. He would just have to hire more cats.
He was about to call Boo and Socks back from the swamp, when he had an idea. Eira's kitchen had a [Roasting Spit], [Cookpot], and [Baking Oven] that seemed to work very much like the stations in the Lunar Forge.
Courier 1 had just arrived outside the door of Eira's residence, so Stew let Smittee get back to creating mana glass. He wanted to have at least one cabinet full for future experiments.
When he swapped to the golem, he could feel Romero watching him from around the corner of the mausoleum. He didn't even want to know what the ghoul had been up to while he was away.
He knocked on the hidden door to be polite, but also sent a message to Eira's mind to make sure she knew it was him.
"Enter" Eira called from inside.
He walked into the residence and found Eira sitting in the kitchen with a glass of wine and loaf of bread. A revenant wandered around the kitchen with a broom, not really sweeping, but staying busy. It creeped Stew out, but he decided not to say anything.
He handed Eira the false dungeon core. "I've brought something for you, just as we agreed." It glittered in his hand and pulsed with a purple glow when Eira touched it.
Her eyes widened. "This." She looked up at the golem. "I know we agreed, but I didn't really expect you to give me something this powerful." She trailed off looking at it. "My magic destroyed the last one. I thought that I had…"
"This won't degrade like the one you had before as long as you keep it here in the dungeon." Stew didn't mind revealing more details now that she was under contract, but he still didn't want to tell her too much, like how easily he could replace these. "I'd be interested in learning more about how you use this to amplify your magic, but right now I need to use your kitchen for a moment if you don't mind?"
Eira's brow furrowed but her lip curled in a smile. "Why would you need… Nevermind, it's yours anyway. I'm just a tenant."
"Thank you." Great, Stew thought, now I'm the kind of landlord that drops in to borrow the oven. He realized belatedly he could have just created another kitchen next to the forge on the fifth floor. Maybe he would later, but right now it made more sense to just use the one he had until he was sure this worked.
He passed a bottle of milk to Courier 1 and took a look at the menu for the [Baking Oven]. There was a new option, but probably not the one he was looking for.
[Baking Oven]
[The smell of fresh baked bread can brighten any day. Provided you have the right ingredients, this oven can create breads, pies, and pastries.]
[
Loaf Of Braided Bread [1 Mana]
Flatbread - Unleavened [1 Mana]
Salted Bread And Olive Oil [1 Mana, 1 Flatbread - Unleavened]
Small Cake [1 Mana, 1 Milk, 2 Eggs]
]
That wasn't how cake worked, but it made a sort of sense if the logic was that mana replaced flour, water, and sugar. He had no idea where to get eggs, maybe he could trade for them with the town once it was up and running.
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The [Roasting Spit] didn't seem likely to be much help, so he looked at the [Cookpot].
[Cookpot]
[A bubbling pot of hearty stew can be deeply satisfying. Provided you have the right ingredients, create soups, stews, and other cooked items]
[
Porridge - (1 Mana)
Fish And Vegetable Stew - (1 Mana)
Purified Water - (1 Mana)
Wine - (1 Mana)
Cheese Wheel - (10 milk)
]
Really. Cheese? Like the cake, it made a sort of sense, but not from a pot bubbling over a fire. He shrugged the golem's shoulders and gathered two crates of milk, creating two cheese wheels with two bottles left over. He set one of the cheese wheels and the two extra bottles on the table for Eira. The cheese wheel was about twenty centimeters across, dark yellow, almost brown on the sides and lighter on the top and bottom. It looked delicious. Using Stat-o-Vision™ he found it was probably better than delicious.
[Divine Cheese Wheel]
[1024 servings]
[One of the great culinary achievements of the gods, best served with Ambrosia and a side of Mana]
[One serving of Divine Cheese heals all injuries, restores all mana, and cures all diseases.]
"For me?" She asked.
"Um. Yes, sure, enjoy." Stew decided it didn't make much difference since he could do all of those things for her as part of the minion contract, but that was probably some ridiculously tasty cheese.
He checked the [Cookpot] and [Baking Oven] menus to see if the cheese wheel unlocked anything. He wasn't surprised to see the [Baking Oven] now offered three kinds of pizza for one bread and one cheese. Ironically, he'd have to explain what pizza was to Eira and the Romans, but it gave him ideas for his market.
"I was just thinking it would be nice to have something more for lunch. Thank you again." Eira sat back down with her staff and the false core. She pulled a cord from a satchel and began winding it around the crystal and the end of her staff. When she finished she raised the staff in one hand and the crystal thrummed with power, seeming to draw the light out of the room with its deep, deep, violet glow.
"Sweep," she commanded the revenant.
It straightened and looked at Eira, then at the broom in its hands. It nodded and began to sweep the floor gracefully and efficiently.
The nod gave Stew some concerns. Were these revenants empty shells, machines like his golems, or did they still have some awareness? They might have been bandits here to kill him, but that didn't justify keeping them bound and alive if they were still aware. He was going to have to talk to Eira and her grandmother about that, but he could tell he would have to approach the subject carefully to get a straight answer.
At the same time, Stew wondered if the forge might be able to make her a staff with a better mounting than the cord. He realized he hadn't even tried bringing any weapons to the forge, despite its description mentioning weapons specifically. He should try some armor too. For right now though, he was going to see if he could forge…
Some cheese?
He swapped back to Smittee who had already finished 52 mana glass. He gave Smittee the cheese wheel and checked the smelter.
Nothing. And it was the same for the forge.
He found it both disappointing and comforting that neither the forge or the smelter had anything to do with cheese. But it still left him back at square one.
Was it possible to still turn cheese into actions? Maybe?
He swapped to Johnny Five and tried feeding the cheese wheel to Fluff, but Fluff wasn't interested.
He looked at what was quickly turning into a vast field of milk crate pyramids, like the ruins of some weird civilization with a thing for calcium. He could make a boatload of pizza. Possibly divine pizza. Cake too, if he found some eggs. Not terrible, he decided, but still not solving any actual problems.
He swapped back to Courier 1 and brought the cheese with him. Thinking that there might be a new build option like a holy cheese cave that produced [Divine Cheese] on its own or something, he poked around in his own menus. There was no cave, but there was something more mysterious.
[Font Of Divine Encouragement - (10,000 Divine Cheese Wheels)]
That seemed promising. He set Courier 1 to work making cheese until he had enough. He decided to create the font down on Level 5 in the old arena to avoid cluttering Eira's kitchen.
At 100,000 milk, it made a significant dent in the accumulated crates. The font was a small white pedestal, topped with a basin full of milk. The milk glowed with a warm light that felt like concentrated nostalgia.
[Font Of Divine Encouragement]
[Sometimes it just takes a little motivation, a kind word, a smile, or an endless stream of divine energy.]
[Generates 10 Action Points Per hour]
A serious magical artifact made from cheese. He didn't know whether to praise Bossy or Sheogorath.
This was nothing like a [Mana Cube] but it seemed to be exactly what he was looking for. It was expensive, but each font would be a passive source of actions, and that was just what he had hoped he would find. Thinking of cubes he decided to see what happened if he put multiple fonts in close proximity.
He quickly generated four more, placing them close together. It didn't seem to make any difference.
The fonts were small, but his current milk production was 720 thousand per hour, so he could make 7.2 fonts per hour. He didn't really want to put them on the plains with Bossy and her herd, but that seemed like the only option for now. It turned out a golem could only work with items on the same level, and he wanted to automate the process. He moved the fonts he had already created to Level 4 on the far side from the entrance, tucked away in a corner.
Then, he tinkered with Johnny Five for a few minutes before finding the right cadence to keep the new kittens fed as fast as they could go as long as they were awake, and generate a font every time the milk surplus hit 100,000.
There was no need to keep Fluff on milk duty, so he sent the panther up to the swamp to join the others, to Fluff's delight. Each of the Panthers was eager for a chance to pounce on a delver, and they seemed to be fine with being on a different level from Bossy as long as they were between her and the entrance.
While he was automating things, he updated Smittee's instructions to have Forge and Smelter create mana cubes and stack them in the six and four pattern. It was obvious he was going to quickly run out of room in storage, so he expanded the room using some of the tricks he had learned with the other floors and made a one acre warehouse.
He took a moment to settle back in his own core to rest his mind and look at his stats.
[Unnamed Core] - Category 1 Gray Core
[Levels: 5]
[Minions: 6]
[Monsters: 151]
[Mana: 1,182 / 10,500]
[Average Reaction Efficiency: 0.05]
[Cumulative Mana Recharge: 180 / hr]
[Actions Remaining: 1,211]
[Action Fonts: 7]
[Action Recovery: 1,690 / day]
[1. Generate Mana]
[2. Monsters And Minions]
[3. Build]
[4. Customization]
[5. Inventory]
[6. Consume Mana Cores]
[7. Press The Button]
Maybe he was the villain, maybe not, but this did give him the urge to rub his hands together and cackle.
Time to build a town.
And an army.