Between a combination of casting and forging, using Iron Knife from the Create command as a source of material, Franklin has been able to produce a variety of essential items over the last week, bringing his total time spent as a dungeon to just shy of a month. These items include a hammer to smith with, an anvil to smith on, and a forge to soften the iron to make smithing possible to begin with. This, in turn, has led to a rapid expansion of his toolbox, which now consisted of things like nails, a saw and a shovel. More complex components that require lathing or extruding, like screws, are still beyond his capabilities at present, however, so nothing like gears yet, but he has managed to smith the all important pickaxe. Of course, as his venture into pottery has shown, he is not exactly Michaelangelo with his hands, and so the end product is less a traditional pickaxe and more a big, long nail attached to the end of a stick, but then, what works, works, as the saying goes…

With his acquisition of a pickaxe, this has also opened up the ability to start chipping away at the limestone walls of his dungeon, finally beginning the all important process of dungeon construction. Having used Decompose to quantify the amount of limestone he was having Cy shuttle out to Paradosa Swamp, which has begun to serve as an industrial landfill of sorts, Franklin discovers that he is roughly able to mine out 6000 cubic feet of limestone per day if he spends about half his AP on the task. And given that his dungeon tunnels are around 10 feet tall, the math behind what his dungeon looks like after a week is as follows:

6000ft3 / 10ft = 600ft2

600ft2 / 4ft2 blocks = 150 “blocks” per day

150 blocks x 7 days = 1050 additional blocks mined

With the before and after of his dungeon looking as such:

And a full view of current dungeon looking as such:

One thing that Franklin has found interesting about the whole dungeon construction business is that there apparently exists a command to relocate the portal leading to The Outside, namely, Set Entry. And while it did not seem possible to move his dungeon core or the portals leading to The Wilderness, using Set Entry, he was able to move the adventurer spawn location far from the other two, to the very northwestern corner of his dungeon. And having done so, a rather devious thought initially occurred to him, wherein he could exploit the mechanic to set the portal above a pool of acid or the like, killing any adventurer that might enter his dungeon. But then it occurred to him that doing so might earn his dungeon a rather poor reputation, potentially discouraging any future adventurers from arriving, which would ultimately result in a net negative, hence why he had dropped the idea.

“Though speaking of future adventurers,” Franklin mumbles to himself, “Where has that adventurer Wendell been? It’s been nearly two weeks, and he hasn’t returned yet. Didn’t he say it would only be five days from Bristle or whatever…?

And for that matter, no other adventurers have come to visit during this time either… Well, Wendell did say that the portal here was a bit in the middle of nowhere… Hm, that’s going to be a problem though… if I can’t get more adventurers to arrive, I won’t be able to gain any more experience… I’ll have to think of a plan to solve that… maybe I can try that exploit idea I had with the portal. I do have the spell point now from leveling up… Hm, still missing a critical piece though, a humanoid agent...Perhaps I can find a suitable one in The Wilderness…? Well, at least the dungeon is shaping up nicely…

Actually, speaking of Shape, I’m curious now… When I first tried it out, I thought the AP cost was rather ridiculous, hence why I opted for the iron working into pickaxe route, but now that I’ve actually done mining with a pickaxe, I wonder if my original assessment of the command was accurate. Let’s see, I think the cost was 30 AP for 10 cubic feet? [Shape].”

Immediately, he is greeted by the familiar top-down view of his dungeon, and he goes through the interface, selecting a small chunk to remove, the prompt indicating the following once he is complete:

10 ft3 selected for Removal. This action will consume 30 AP. Proceed?

“Yep, so 30 AP for 10 cubic feet, meaning 3 AP per cubic foot. So, basically, I can mine the same amount with a pickaxe for, quite literally, a fraction of the AP cost, since it’s like, what… 6000ft3 for 1000 AP? So 0.16 AP per cubic foot using my pickaxe? That’s a... twenty-fold difference. Guess I was right, Shape is a total ripoff… I mean honestly, it’d take what… decades at my current level to get any moderate amount of dungeon construction done with the command? That’s insane... Actually, now that I think about it, it feels like most of the System commands are a ripoff when it comes to AP costs… Like Craft included… what’s up with that…? Why are all the AP values scaled like they’re intended to be used over decades…?” Having no particularly good answer, Franklin just shrugs, returning to his prior vindication, “Well, thank goodness, like I said, that I went the pickaxe route… though even then… it’s still a tad bit tedious for me. I mean, granted, I’m not pissing away AP like I would be using Shape, but… spending half of my day mining isn’t exactly fun either. There should be a faster way, right? A more... “ He pauses a moment, trying to think of the right word, “Explosive means of mining?” As the words leave his mouth, they draw a smile to his face, for an idea suddenly comes to his mind.

Black powder.

“Now, how do I go about making it, is the question, I suppose,” he wonders aloud, tapping a finger to his chin, “Well, maybe some walking around in The Wilderness will get blood flowing to my brain, open up some new ideas. I’ve been so caught up in other things lately, that it’s been a while since I’ve done any exploring. I think there’s still two other portals left to check. Alright, let’s go with that.” Path decided, Franklin heads to Cy’s room and knocks, on the only door in the entire dungeon, saying, “Cy, want to go exploring with me?”

A muffled response emerges, “...slime…”

“C’mon, Cy, you’ve been cooped up in there all day,” Franklin protests, fingers reaching for the handle, swinging the door open as he continues, “What could you possibly be doing-?”

He takes one glance inside, then with face impassive, immediately recloses the door, slamming it shut.