Franklin sets one final piece of wood onto the pile, then stands back, giving Cy a dubious look. “You okay there?” he asks.

“...slime…”

The gelatinous creature is pressed thin against the muddy ground, a board of wood laid across its back, atop which the fallen tupelo branches Franklin has collected from the swamp are stacked. When he had encountered Wendell days prior, this had been the setup he had used as a means of self-transport, kind of like a hoverboard, moving around while conserving the AP that would have gone into walking. Now, he is using it as a means of shuttling large quantities of materials between Paradosa Swamp and his dungeon, to reduce on the number of trips required, again, with the intent of conserving his precious AP. At present, the “vehicle” is stacked with about two dozen pounds of wood, for making charcoal, alongside a significant quantity of clay and mud, the wet mass of the latter being the factor weighing Cy down.

“If it’s too heavy for you, I can remove some of the-” Franklin begins, but a protest from his minion cuts him off.

“Slime! Slime!”

“No, of course I’m not doubting your capabilities, Cy. I was just trying to-”

“Slime! Slime!”

“Okay, okay. You’re the strongest, most awesomest, bestest minion a dungeon core can summon. Did I miss anything?”

“Slim~e.”

“Right, slimiest too. Now, can we finally get a move on?”

“Slime.”

Franklin watches as the gelatinous monster stretches out a pseudopod, letting it attach to the ground ahead. Then it detaches the rest of its body before allowing its body to contract. This has the net effect of “slugging” its entire mass forward, and through repeated adhesion and detachment to the surface below, Cy begins to carry itself and the materials on its “back” towards the portal. Franklin follows after, then overtakes his minion, disappearing first into the violet shimmer.

Emerging on the other side, his own arms full of firewood, he waits for Cy to appear. The monster does so about a minute after, and in the dimness of the dungeon, something about Cy’s arrival suddenly catches Franklin’s observation. He probably did not notice this when watching Wendell portal, for at the time, his mind had been preoccupied by the mechanisms surrounding experience, but as he watches Cy, he notices the slightest of temporal desync between the Swamp Slime and its load, for there is a small delay between the manifestation of his minion’s form, which happens first, and the outline of the wood and clay which it carries, which happens after. The delay is perhaps less than a half of a second, however, and so Franklin is not quite sure if he is just imagining it.

Turning to his minion, he says, “Cy, go back into the portal and come back again.”

“...slime…?”

“Just… just humor me.”

Franklin watches intently, his eyes more trained this time around, and indeed, he once again notices the desync occur. Feeling more confident about his observation now, he senses his mind begin to wander. That’s strange… Why should there be a delay…? Unless… for some reason, the two are being processed by the portal differently...? Suddenly, an idea occurs to him. Wait, why have I never tried this before...???

He sets down the wood in his arms, picking up just one branch instead. Then, he throws it against the portal with moderate strength. In truth, he has no expectations as to what might happen, the matter being wholly unknown, and so when he sees the stick hitting the amorphous substance, but disappearing before it can reach the ground, he can’t help but let out a shout of excitement. “Oh, interesting!” he exclaims to himself, his crystal blue eyes suddenly lighting up with glee. Derailed by the mystery, he quickly portals himself, returning to Paradosa Swamp, eager to see where his stick has landed. What he finds just adds to his exhilaration, for the branch lies at the foot of the portal, having not traveled any distance at all.

“The portal removes the object’s velocity???”

He picks up the stick once more, throwing it back into the portal, trying to match the strength of his toss as best he can to the one prior, and upon returning to his dungeon, he finds that this attempt too has landed the stick at the base of the wall, with no distance traveled. “So it’s symmetric,” he concludes, and as this thought occurs to him, yet another arises in his mind, one that is perhaps of even greater curiosity, “Hold on. If it works for portals to The Wilderness… I wonder…”

Completely sidetracked at this point, he takes his stick and makes haste to the western end of his dungeon, to the portal that leads to The Outside. Then, as before, he chucks the branch against the shimmering amorphous substance. When he sees the results, he can’t help but let out a wide grin, for he spots that the stick, similar to before, has disappeared. Of course, he cannot prove that the outcomes are exactly the same, for when he tries to enter the portal to check, he is once more spammed by messages that read:

You cannot go here.

You cannot go here.

You cannot go here.

“So, it’s still unclear if The Outside portal behaves exactly the same,” he begins, tapping a finger against his chin, “but at the very least, the stick’s gone. Interesting…Hm, might have to wait for Wendell to return. Maybe he can check the other side of the portal for me…And if The Outside portal does indeed behave like The Wilderness’ one, well…” A mischievous grin spreads across Franklin’s face.

...There will be much exploits to be had!

****

Returning to the central chamber of his dungeon, Franklin finds that Cy has already dropped off the collected materials of wood, mud and clay. Freeing itself from the transport-contraption then, the slime is at present patiently awaiting his return, offering a jiggle upon spotting his arrival.

Franklin gives his minion a pat of gratitude, then gestures it over to the slowly growing mess that is their workshop- piles of failed experiments in constructing bloomeries and kilns, toppled mounds of clay and mud, with straw-grass and branches scattered about. “Hm, probably need to clean up a bit first,” he mumbles to himself, eyes scanning the disarray, “Heave ho, there we go!” He shoves everything into a corner. “Ah, much better,” he observes with a satisfied smile, “Now, let’s see. First on the to-do list is probably making more charcoal.” More, because he has already created two batches. The first, made several days ago, has already been consumed in the initial test of his bloomery, wherein the tuyeres had failed to produce the appropriate temperatures. The second, burning away in a nearby mud kiln, is in the process of pyrolysis; he’ll check on that one in a bit. And so this will be his third batch, though he highly suspects it will not be his last, charcoal being one of those things that feels like it’ll always be in short supply. He picks up a few sticks to get started.

“So, you begin by stacking the branches as such,” he mutters to himself. Again, his point of reference is a video he has seen, of a nearly naked man out in the boonies, and as he recalls the tutorial, a thought occurs to him, “Are shirts beyond the scope of primitive technology or something?" The idle musing passes, and Franklin returns to his task. One by one, he carefully props up each stick against the others, creating a tipi shape, a cone similar to what might be the start of a campfire, though the wood is more densely packed for this particular application. Once the tinder is set in place, he next goes to retrieve the mud, slathering it all along the outside, building it up layer by layer from base to tip, leaving a small opening at the top. This results in a mud dome about five feet long at its widest point and about three feet tall. Then, using a thick branch, he digs out several holes along the base of the mud mound, revealing the wood within.

“Slime?”

The interruption causes Franklin to look up from what he is doing, and he spots his minion, having come up beside him, its sole eye bouncing to and fro, evidently curious.

“I thought I did explain it, Cy. You… weren’t paying attention, were you?”

“Slim~e.”

Franklin sighs. “Okay, listen up then. So, this is called a kiln. We’ll be using it to make charcoal from wood through a process called pyrolysis. See this hole at the top? That’s where the pilot flame goes. It’ll catch the inner wood on fire, allowing it to slowly burn its way down to the base.” Franklin demonstrates by setting a stick ablaze using the already burning campfire nearby, transferring the embers to the branches just poking out atop the mud dome. A few seconds later, and the wood within the kiln likewise catches fire. “See? Now, the reason for the holes at the bottom is to allow for air intake while the initial fire is still traveling down the kiln, otherwise, it’ll go out before reaching the base, leaving wood unconverted. Makes sense?”

“Slim~e.”

“Good, and now we just wait until we can see embers through the holes at the bottom. This’ll mean the flame has traveled all the way through. Last time, this took about two hours, but that was also a smaller kiln. This one’ll probably take four. In any case, once we see the bottom glowing red, then we can just use mud to cover up the air intakes as well as the hole at the top of the kiln, creating a sealed, low-oxygen environment for the wood to burn in. The whole process should take about twenty-four hours, to convert the biomass into charcoal. This is the essence of pyrolysis, literally, separating (lysis) with fire (pyro).

Now, as to specifically what’s being separated from what, and why this process is even worth doing, well, that’s where it starts to get a bit technical, but also quite fascinating. I mean, Cy, have you ever considered why charcoal is a ‘better’ energy source than wood, even though they derive from the same thing? In fact, the very notion of burning wood to make a better fuel source is a concept that, in itself, appears rather counterintuitive, no? You would assume that by burning wood, you should have less energy remaining in the material for future use. And yet, while the max temperature of a wood fire is probably around 350°C, a simple charcoal sourced flame can reach 1000°C while also burning for a longer time. Curious, no?

Well, the answer lies in the equation for combustion as well as the mechanism of pyrolysis. You see, by burning wood, what happens is that a lot of the volatile elements get removed, things like hydrogen and carbon monoxide. But most importantly of all, it removes the water. This is key, because in wood burning, a lot of the energy and heat generated by combustion is absorbed through the evaporation of water from liquid to gas. By preemptively removing the water then, charcoal fires yield more energy directly as heat, resulting in higher temperatures. The second thing to note is the sealed, low-oxygen environment. Why is low-oxygen a requirement? Because of the way combustion occurs, namely:

Carbon source + Oxygen → Carbon dioxide + Water

So you see, by removing the oxygen, we don’t allow combustion to fully take place, thus allowing for the creation of a denser energy source through the removal of water without losing significant energy to unnecessary combustion in the process. That is why charcoal, a partially combusted product, ends up being a ‘better’ energy source than the wood it’s derived from.

Neat, right?”

Hearing no response, Franklin turns away from the mud kiln, eyes scanning the cavern. He finds the chamber empty, however, his minion nowhere to be seen.

“Uh, Cy? Cy, where’d you go?”