Luca looked at the ants as they build the water wheels in the river. He intended to make forges that utilized them. Sure, he could have gone with food production like Theanore, but he had goblins, and they were notorious smiths.

Next to each waterwheel was the smithy. He intended to make blast furnaces in every smithy, cutting the workflow by half. The water wheels would pump the bellows and the goblins would hammer the metal. It was perfect.

Expect, the goblins were distrustful about the whole blast furnace business. They knew their old ways of forging, and they didn’t know how to regulate the stream of the bellows.

Which proved to be the case when the first smithy was completed and the goblins all but ran away from it. Luca didn’t know how to adjust the bellows either, and so he needed a master smith to come here and teach the goblins.

But who? There was the famous Edward Erickson, who was rumored to be able to make swords even in camp fires, but he would charge Luca too much and the dungeon core didn’t have any money.

One thing that his crystal wouldn’t produce was currency. So far, his only trade partner was Theanore as when the neighboring tribes and dungeon cores found out he could make things out of thin air they had demanded he give them stuff for free.

Which irked Luca to no end. It took mana out of him to create things. Just because the gold he made using the crystal was made from thin air, it didn’t make it any less real! It should be treated like any other gold is!

Luca had most of his cave filled with precious metals. He had promised Theanore he would make mirrors and pots and pans and the like out of them, but if the blast furnaces were unusable, he didn’t know how he would do so.

What was more, he had agreed to a deadline back when he didn’t know it would be so hard operating the smithies. He had three more weeks to give the first order. He could make the items with his crystal, but there was a certain buzz to the items he made that normal items did not have. And Theanore had requested manually crafted items, as what he usually made was really hard to enchant.

He had tested it with wood and had found that once the raw material was transformed into something else, manually, then it lost the buzz. What was more, it kept that pleasant shine the raw material had.

There was a shifty and very grumpy werewolf that was rumored to live in No Man’s Land that could teach the goblins how to use the blast furnaces, but he would want an arm and a leg for his services. Not to mention food and free accommodation.

But what choice did Luca have? His deadline was drawing ever near, and he was ready to pay any price. Well, not the one billion coins that Edward Erickson would demand, but some food, a nice hut and payment in raw gold was reasonably.

He took a parchment and began to write.

Dear Timothy Silvan,

I wish to offer you a job as a teacher and then a smith at my dungeon: Canyon Rush. I am constructing blast furnaces, but my goblins don’t know how to operate the bellows. Furthermore, I have three forges done and will make another hundred, as far as my dungeon grounds will allow.

You will be paid in raw gold, food and a charming hut within the borders of the canyon in a place of your choosing. Please respond within a day, as I have an order with a deadline that ends in three weeks.

I await your reply,

Luca,

Dungeon core of Canyon Rush dungeon.

With that done, Luca placed the letter in an envelope and a mana crystal inside and sent it to Timothy Silvan. With the werewolf, he would have another tenant. The man’s brother and a notorious vampire monster hunter, Duradel Silvan.

Which was good, considering Theanore had told him there was a fairy village nearby. He didn’t know how well goblins would be able to fare against fairies, but he didn’t like their chances.

With this done, he went and looked at his fields of clover that he had planted so that he could look after livestock in the future. So far, he had a couple of horses he used for scouting.

Luca had been sending goblins mounted on horses for days to see how far his dungeon grounds stretched. They send him letters constantly. So far, the goblins were fifteen days away from the main dungeon, and they could still feel the connection to the dungeon.

Which meant he could use the cliffs above for more farming. Theanore had told him, after a bit of research, that cold loving vegetables will be the best ones to grow. But he would still need a good layer of soil.

She had sent him a list with vegetables and had told him when to plant them. Not only that, but she had given him some of her seedlings to plant, free of charge.

Luca knew that the little nymph felt indebted to him for finding a connector and updating the teleport the Ogres have made to connect to Mirstone. He had made the connector with his crystal and he felt like he owed her for sheltering him after his rescue, so he had given it to her for free.

Maybe he could give her more connectors? It costed him only 100 mana to make, and he had more than Theanore now. If the grotto became a trading hub, then the stigma with him manufacturing items with the crystal could be curbed. Theanore wouldn’t tell on him, after all.

With that done, he went and saw the seedlings. He took the lettuce and went to the elevator he had made go up the cliff. There was a nice garden upstairs with a fence that would be his first salad garden.