I pushed my way into the workout room, ready for the day’s adventure, and found a very busy space. Several new hires ran around clearing the last of the debris, while others sat beside a pile of wood and metal bits, hammering some contraption together. Bent Plate sat amidst the chaos, like a stoic lighthouse standing tall against the stormy waves.
“Hey Bent, what’s up?” I asked, waving to him. I tugged on my new thin shirt Rolada had given me, and it felt strange to be walking around in something besides my armour. The familiar weight of the dragon scales had become a comfort for me. As I got closer to Bent I noticed something shiny in his hand. “New dumbbells?”
The powerful bodybuilder ogre raised a shaped block of stone that was roughly in the shape of a dumbbell, the thing probably weighed over a hundred pounds, yet he did so with ease. He lifted the mass of rock up to his shoulder and grunted in greeting. “Need to work harder, and the set we had before didn’t survive the siege.”
Bent set it down and absently traced a finger down the scars on his arm, the ones he gained from the undead bear. He turned his hand into a fist, and clenched hard enough I swear I could hear the chalk on his hands meld together by the sheer strength he had. A minion nearby handed him a cup of water, and the ogre slammed it back to quench his thirst.
“Have you seen Yara?” I asked, looking around the cleaned up fight ring. I stretched out, feeling towards my toes with my finger tips. The last battle I had was still in my memory, if I could fight two doll girls at once and then a vampire I was sure I could at least give Yara a run for her money. “I think I feel ready for today.”
“Nope, but if you're going to fight her then you might as well do a warm up,” Bent said sternly. He nodded in approval of my stretch. “Stretches are good to do too, we can do more of those.”
I held up my hands and looked at the fierce glare of the ogre fearfully. “I don’t want to waste all my energy before my fight-”
“Warm up starts now,” Bent said calmly, and that was that.
Bent started me off by critiquing my push ups and sit ups, followed by walking me through bench pressing weights. He started me off on the low side, and worked up to the limits of my strength, which I guessed was over a hundred and forty pounds. Stacking heavy boxes at work had drastically helped keep me in shape, and the constant battles here had helped me maintain it. After a few more attempts I felt my arms wobble, and I huffed, admitting defeat.
“Hmm, more weight,” Bent said, sliding on more weighted discs.
I felt my sweat course down my brow and sting my eyes. “H-Hey man, I can’t-”
“If you can complain, then we need more weight,” Bent said, adding more.
A wave of new drones surrounded me, watching me intently with their piercing red gazes. In unison they raised their arms, opened their jaws and as one they began to sing.
“See, they want you to succeed,” Bent said, giving me a thumbs up. At least that’s what it looked like through my teary eyes. “Come on Josh, you can do it!”
The minions chanted, their voices raised and in unison they screamed. “Waaagh!”
Their guttural cries sounded like they were trying to sacrifice me to a dark god. I held the bar up with the added weight, unsure how much I was even holding at the moment. To my dismay I heard one of the minions chirp an approximation of, “more weight?”, which several copied and asked too. Even worse than that, I heard Bent agree.
My arms turned into jelly, and I pushed with my back, keeping the mountain of weighted stones over my head. The awful feeling of dread washed over me as my arms shook, and the bar made its way down, threatening to crush my chest. I gasped and dug deep, burning whatever reserves of stamina I had left. My body desperately burned, grabbing energy from wherever it could find it.
The looming sense of doom lessened, and the weighted bar moved away. The minions cheered, pushing me on, and I pulled through. I pushed it all the way up, and let it drop onto the holder with a degree of finality as it rattled. The ends of the bar twisted down from the great weight, and something broke, spilling the shaped stones onto the floor.
Strength has increased to 13!
+10 XP gained.
Bent Plate led the applause as the minions went ballistic. They ran around with their hands waving over their heads as they cheered for me. Or maybe they were just really hyper today. I could barely make out Bent calling for a minion to fetch me a cup of water. He placed a hand on my shoulder and looked down at me proudly.
I gave him a thumbs up and grinned tiredly while my arms shook. “Just a few more weeks of that and I might catch up to you, right?”
“Ha! Not a chance,” Bent chuckled, slapping his belly hard enough I could feel the floor quake. “Now we work on your cardio. We can jog while you carry weights, it should train your constitution.”
I flexed my hand, wondering if I should use my new spell to give me the stamina boost I would need to survive Bent’s gauntlet. Sadly for me the ogre might have picked up on that and he wagged a finger. “No magic, if you cheat your stats will never go up.”
“Alright, alright,” I sighed, waving off his concern. “No cheating during training time.” Bent seemed pleased by that and I wiped my brow with an offered cloth. “I assume if your stats are higher it gets harder to train.”
“Right,” Bent said, flexing his arm. “It takes a lot of work for me to get my strength higher as I’m getting near my limit, so I’ve been working on stretches to get my dexterity higher.” The ogre chuckled and showed me some of the lines he cut on the floor for jump training and the like. “I doubt I’ll ever get close to Lin’s level, but an extra point would be possible after a few dozen sessions.”
“That many huh?” I asked.
Bent plate gestured to his tall stature. “Ogres are not exactly graceful eh?”
We shared a chuckle and one of the drones walked up to me, handing me a fresh clay cup full of water. His shirt had the usual tag, ‘My name is Drone 11, how can I help you?’. The minion grinned and gave me four thumbs up. The expression was short lived as the minion’s eyes went wide and his head snapped towards the contraption the others had been trying to assemble. All the minions were staring at it now. A red notification appeared in the corner of my eye, and then all hell broke loose.
The minions nearest the contraption went wild, and tore it apart with their claws. They snatched up any metal bits they could, and ran for the door, only to get tackled by the others. One minion had the bright idea to add it to their inventory, but two other drones grabbed his feet and shook him while he was upside down. The grappled minion flailed and summoned the pieces, dropping them onto the ground. Four drones grabbed the metal bits and sprinted out into the hall.
“What the f-” I said, lost for words. I downed my water and went to follow them. “What is up with them?”
“Hang on, hang on” Bent said, laughing to himself as he placing a hand on my shoulder to stop me in my tracks. “Are you trying to get out of cardio?”
I glanced over my shoulder, and Bent saw how confused I was. He let go and let me lead the way. I checked the minion work page and saw a flood of orders, cancellations and new ones appearing, asking minions to kick Dan or someone called Melvin. I followed the threads of orders and managed to follow the trail.
“Something is going on in the mine,” I said.
Bent was even more curious now, and we went back to the top floor of the dungeon, and went towards the gate so we could head out into the nearby mine. The primary staging area was a massive warehouse for all the raw stone, wood planks, and tools we needed for the farm. Pallets of drying sugar spikes were neatly organized, and a series of wooden bins held onto a mix of compost and dirt. One part of the warehouse contained a recent experiment led by Frank. Large tracts of gravel and dirt had been packed together and soaked to create a dense mud mixture the minions had been relying on in the farm, and I could see we had enough to bury a house in. There wasn’t a minion in sight, so we headed out the main doors into the caverns beyond.
The mine itself was a series of dug out caverns from the previous residents, with two spaces that had been built up the most beside the dungeon entrance. The farm was a huge rocky room with glowing moss on the ceiling, a few powerful dungeon lights to help the plants grow, and orderly rows of crops we were growing. There were root vegetables, some kind of bone white grain that was called ‘cave wheat’, the sugar spikes and one patch of our highest quality tilled mud that was fenced off. A sign above it read ‘Sten’s precious oats, care for at all cost!’ written by a minion’s hand.
The oats looked healthy and the most cared for, and behind it was a series of clay drums, barrels and the remnants of Burn’s original equipment that had escaped the explosions. It took me a moment to put it together, Sten had convinced the minions to build him a makeshift brewing still.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
There was only a single minion inside the farm, Frank the farmer. The minion was reclining against a water barrel while sitting on a tiny stool, with his head dipped down, his hat low on his face and a plant stalk in his teeth. Beside him he had a shovel, a trowel in his belt and a hand on a rusted handaxe from the skeleton warriors. A fat bug crawled out near him, heading towards the oats, and in one smooth motion Frank looked up, threw the axe at the bug splitting it in two, killing it in the blink of an eye.
“Keep up the good work Frank!” I shouted as we moved on.
“Ye-eeup,” Frank chriped, tapping his hat to salute me.
We followed the sounds of two minions hissing at each other and entered the smelting cavern. Piles of sorted ore were packed off to the side of a new construction, a tall lined clay tower with two of the dysfunctional heating cubes pointed at a series of tubes at the bottom of the construction. A new minion wearing a makeshift welding mask on his head was in a heated debate with Dan, pointing at the low quality nails, cogs and gears we had.
Sten and Burn kept the two minions separated as they seemed ready to come to blows. The dwarf easily held back Dan, which strangely involved his beard holding two of Dan’s arms, while Burn struggled to hold back the other minion. I filtered the minion work tab and tried to put together what was going on. It seemed Dan and ‘Melvin the metalcrafter’ had been going at it for nearly an hour now.
“J-Jo-sh ord-ders!” Dan hissed.
Melvin growled and slapped his mask down. He pulled on a makeshift leather apron, Rolada’s oven mitts and pulled a lever on the clay tower. The heating cubes were pulled away, spewing out a torrent of flames until they went out, while a chute opened in the bottom of the tower spilling out a wave of hot air. The keeper crystal used its powers to shape the vents we had installed to allow more air flow, venting out the incredibly hot dry air. Melvin grabbed a pair of new looking tongs to reach into the chute and he took out a hefty clay crucible.
He set it down on a stone table and flipped the lever again, while turning a crank. The heating cubes stayed away, cooling off while the chute closed up to trap the heat inside the clay tower. Dan tapped my leg and waved a hand towards Melvin as if to say ‘can you believe this guy?’.
Once the work area had cooled down the minions holding their metal bits threw them into troughs by the ore and then retreated to go back to their jobs. Sten and Burn wiped their brows having been in the hot room too long. I mentally added getting cooling crystals to my own list of things I need to do. Having heating was great in the winter, but I could see us needing some air conditioning soon, especially in the work areas.
Melvin handled the crucible with the tongs with a great deal of care, placing it into a sand pit. He used an iron dagger to tap around a vent hole set in the sealed top of the crucible, and seemed pleased. He then picked up a hammer and struck the side of it, shattering the clay and freeing a red hot chunk of metal so it could cool in the sand.
Knowledge World : Partial Success!
With the process handed down from generation to generation, the dwarves can always fashion up a makeshift forge to start hammering out steel gear. While using an old traditional method they are able to create usable crucible steel in small quantities while they work up to their great forges.
Scholar Livy
Ah, crucible steel. My forefathers were actually involved with the discovery of it. The dwarves were having trouble keeping a consistent high temperature and the proper amount of carbon in the metal, so they employed my family as they were skilled transmutation mages. While not overly powerful they were known to have stable magic allowing them to aid the dwarves in their experiments. As a result the dwarves shared the secrets with my family and we became the number one weapon manufacturing family in my country. Great times…
Side note from Scholar Versona
You bastard! Your family was the reason my country got conquered by steel wearing warlords that crushed my people and caused a dark age! Everyone else had bronze, and were just getting their foot into the iron age. Maybe if your family kept to their own business the Great Library wouldn’t have been burned down-
Scholar Versona has been sent to a private study hall and will be unavailable for a short time.
Okay then. I turned my attention back to Melvin, who was using the tongs to show Sten what he made. Sten held up a leather bound book and carefully inspected the rapidly cooling metal ingot. Melvin waved his hand at it, and I got a prompt to see a message from him.
Steel ingot
Moderate quality
This unworked piece of material has the potential to become almost anything. The quality of material is vastly superior to iron, and being forged with aid from magical items has made this item permeable to enchantments. With a skilled smith this item has a low chance of turning into a masterwork item.
Melvin set the ingot down on a table beside two others. I could see in the minion tab that they were marginally successful experiments, yielding a lower quality steel. Still, that sounded good to me, and I could see Sten was very pleased. What I was looking forward to was making magic items. I could already see myself helping Melvin forge swords like Lord Gastov’s. The next siege on my dungeon would go very differently if every single one of us could brandish a blazing sword while wearing fully enchanted armour like Snowflake had. I just had to get my damn magical crafting skills up.
“In all my years, I never thought I would actually lead a proper forge,” Sten said with a proud smile. The end of his beard wove together, forming a fist, which he used to high five Melvin. “If we end up having spares I would love to take a trophy home.”
Bent tapped me on the shoulder and leaned down. “I thought Sten’s beard was always messy like a crow’s nest. Is it magical now that he cleaned it?”
I smiled. “I got a boon from the gods and since I can’t really grow facial hair I thought Sten could make more use out of it. I must admit, he seems to be having fun with it.”
Bent shook his head. “More cool god powers and you don’t give any to ol’ Bent Plate.” Bent tapped on my bicep. “Look at that, even got your strength up today!”
“If I get one that causes your fists to throw lightning bolts at people I know who to give it to, don’t worry,” I said.
Bent smiled at that and looked down at his arms. He formed a fist with his scarred arm, and he jabbed the air. “Now there’s an idea.”
“Hey!” Burn shouted from across the room. He was face first into the trough with his feet in the air. “Some of these are mine!”
Burn grabbed an arm load of metal tongs, knives, measuring cups and other odds and ends. He stuck them in his tool bag and shook his head. “Damn crazy bones over here are melting everything that isn’t tacked down.”
“Hey, have you two seen Yara?” I asked. “She was supposed to duel me, but I ended up hitting the weight bench with Bent when she didn’t show up.”
Sten broke away from the ingots and walked over. His beard’s ‘fist’ scratched at his chin as the dwarf looked deep in thought. “While you were in the shower I saw Lin, Rolada and Yara following Sliva into the shrine room. The three of them looked ill, and I assumed she was going to cure them.”
“That’s what they get for eating all the fudge.” I pulled on the sides of my face and sighed in defeat. “I was going to give them out as a festival gift.”
Bent and Burn broke into laughter behind me and Sten chuckled. Bent clapped me on the back and gave me a blank stare. “Did you really think fudge was going to last more than a day around here with three beast-kin? Did you see how quickly the chocolate fountain went dry?”
“Alright, alright,” I said, admitting defeat. “Wasn’t my best plan, I’ll admit it.”
Dan fumed beside me, staring at the pile of scrap metal. I checked and saw we were missing the new spellcasting minion, lacking only the metal. I looked at the ore pile again, and saw a mix of strange colours there. Browns, bands of green, purple and reds. I didn’t really know anything about rocks, so I figured I’d ask an expert.
“What kind of ore do we have, Sten?” I asked.
Sten’s beard made a hand to wave at me as the dwarf chuckled. “I have no idea! We found one that looked like iron and we have been melting them to see what we get!”
“Let’s get some of the lesser quality stuff when Melvin is finished and get our new minion friend. Does that sound alright Dan?” I asked. Dan didn’t move, but he did hiss. I patted him between the ears to loosen him up, and I turned my attention towards the caverns in the mine. “Now, I have something I want to show you guys.”
Dan chirped a goodbye to us, and gave a hard stern glare at Melvin. Dan went his way and we went ours, reaching a wood wall to separate the cavern in the control of my dungeon and the wild unknown. So far we hadn’t run into any trouble with only the occasional bug or cave fish in the underground river spooking the minions. The dungeon opened the small gate for us, and we entered the proper mine.
The mine had been slow to expand on account of the minions having a strange quirk to their abilities. They could burrow into rock and dirt like it was made of butter, but as soon as ore was present in the rocks they couldn’t really do much to it. We had ended up carving around the ore as much as we could and letting Sten smash the ore to bits with his weaponized pickaxe. The dwarf claimed it was a good workout and let him work on his poetry since Mike the miner minion and him could bounce ideas off each other. As it turned out however, Mike had recently got a special talent allowing his minion claws to affect some ores, namely iron and copper veins.
I followed the magical lines of the dungeon’s tendrils powering dungeon lights until we reached an area it couldn’t pass. A wall of minion concrete mixed with copper ore blocked the way. I narrowed my gaze and remembered my meeting with Icharn, because I now had a good guess of what was there. The keeper crystal certainly wanted to get over there too.
“What’s a goblin engineer tower?” I asked Burn.
Burn scratched his head. “Can be a lot of things. I’m technically an engineer as an alchemist. I went to school for it and everything. Usually it would be a group of goblins working together to achieve a goal. They can be underground or above ground, they usually have some magical and mechanical protections and can hold out against a small siege.”
Sten scoffed. “Sounds like a ripoff of a dwarven fort.”
Burn held up a finger and seemed ready to protest, but then he nodded. “Yeah, you have a point. Why do you ask boss?”
I pointed ahead towards the wall, and I heard Mike running up behind us. Mike had already dug in at a few spots to test the waters, and I could see he made some good progress with his new talent. “Because I think we have one, right about…here.”
I mentally sent off the command, the work order queue picked it up, and Mike accepted it. He first used his small pickaxe to little effect, then swapped to his claws, tearing through the rock. He dug upwards for a short distance first, then clawed his way down onto even ground with the cavern to make sure the passage would be tall enough for Bent. In less than a minute Mike made more progress than a human team with dynamite could manage.
“Merp!” Mike shouted triumphantly on the other side.
We followed the short passage and entered the bleak scene of a massacre.
“Holy hells,” Burn said, covering his mouth. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Sten craned his neck up, and his beard made a hand to cover his brow. “How did that goblin get stuck up there?”