The empty room designated for the Toolroom has been waiting for this moment. For the last five days, we've been taking out the occasional ranbi without any true hassle.

We also realized a new flaw in our defenses thanks to the house's slanted roof: ranbi can run up the slope and leap into our defensive area.

To fix that, we adjusted the ring to block the backside of the grassy slope and adjusted the western end of the traps closer.

After that, the cut-open pathways to the Pond and Great Statue were included in our defenses. We now have four openings but we're so much stronger and have the numbers to defend more than the two chokepoints.

The DCT is primarily to slow down or deal with the more mindless attackers anyway. Until I earn more traps, it's more about using them to deter and channel enemies into kill zones.

But I'm getting ahead of myself and off-topic; today isn't about the changes I've made over the waiting period.

Today is about finally getting access to tools to improve my status. And hopefully, I pick up a title or a dungeon edge.

Or at least a Production upgrade.

Select: Toolroom. Confirm.

[Notification] Room isolated...

Placing Toolroom.

The blue glow of the Mana Bonfire and the pastel yellow light of the Favor crystal above cast an interesting look across the room's shifting walls. One of the walls without a doorway began cutting away and etching out tables, storage racks, and a work station that took up most of its length. In the corner between the doorways, however, the floor and wall let loose a familiar crystal: blue-burning mana crystals. Each one of the crystals rose only three feet high but quickly vanished behind a handle-lifted stone grate. Beside it was an even more interesting stone spout, settled above a bucket-shaped drainage bowl. The final touch for the room was adding seating near the work station and the pseudo furnace, just the right height for a bush or even my ghost form with a pillow on top of it.

[Notification] Toolroom established.

Modifiers activated for the following:

+ Basic Manaflame Forge (Mana Bonfire)

+ Cooling Spout (Washroom) Production Stage has improved.

New Production Stage: Basic+ (Mana-Cooked Stone)

Nice. Placing the Washroom nearby actually ended up being a good idea.

The fact I'm still considered basic is odd but I guess there is a difference between Basic and Basic+. DCT being cooked on the Mana Bonfire had a chance to change it so I guess the idea of it applying to stone is probably true. As far as resources go, though, I don't think I have a means to-

[Toolroom Notification] User Kaden detected with Skills, Magic, and/or Abilities related to creation.

Granting access to Toolroom controls.

Huh?

Wait... I did pick up Craft, but I can't even use the skill currently. The system just needs me to have it just to grant me access?

Now that I look, I'm noticing the Toolroom has strange orbs of light floating beside the workbench and the forge.

... No point in not looking at least. While messing with the Manaflame Forge sounds fun, I don't want to try crafting or doing anything around a fire of any kind with my current body.

So for now, let's touch the light orb near the workbench.

Welcome to the Toolroom of Dungeon of Kaden.

What would you like to make?

Current Dungeon Resources: 15/0/0/0

There's no menu? That's a first.

Ignoring the fact I'll need to figure out how to rename my Dungeon, for now, I guess I should try to figure this room's functionality out. The list beneath the question is definitely accurate: 15 Mana and 0 on every other resource. It looks like I'll be able to craft using my extra resources from now on.

But I think I understand why the list is so short. Magic Theorist definitely isn't a bad title if it means I understand this much.

If it's not obvious, anything that isn't wood, stone, or metal... or maybe is a specific kind of those, to be more generic?

I can create it through mana.

Thinking about it, this isn't just going to be a way to help me expand my items. It's also a place to harness and utilize my magic. For example, I have another slot for Affinity and I have a good hunch that Nature itself being related to plants means that I can create flowers and herbs.

Create Lumber.

Operator's Nature Affinity detected.

Converting 2 Mana into 1 Lumber.

All around me, the air chokes and grows stiffer; although I don't breath like a normal creature, I can still feel the mana all condensing around the dungeon toward the room.

Mana particles glimmer and hue green, stringing along and swirling down onto the workbench mere inches from my hand. Each of those strings slides flat across its surface, stacking atop one another and slowly changing from mana into physical form.

It takes merely a minute for the magical process to channel around me, using my body as a conduit to create a simple, five-foot-long log.

Sorry if I don't know what type of wood it is. I might be smart but I don't fucking understand trees at all. Maybe this life will force me to learn some tree names in the future.

Send to resource storage?

Relocating Lumber to storage.

Current Dungeon Resources: 13/1/0/0

It's official, I really like the Toolroom. I don't generate much mana daily but this removes a lot of my worries about Mana falling out of use.

List conversion rates for Mana into other resources.

[Toolshop] Dungeon Resource Conversion Table The following table does not include an alternative conversion of resources into other objects. It solely covers the conversion of Dungeon Resources from one state to another. In Out 2 Mana 1 Lumber 4 Lumber 1 Stone 8 Stone 1 Metal

... So it'd take...

It'd take me 64 Mana to create 1 Metal.

Or for the price of 1 Metal, I could create 64 Mana.

The only issue with that hypothesis is that I'd need to have the Affinity related to metal. I don't know what its name would be, though... and I'd definitely not want to make a mistake and choose it even though I can't make use of it without the Affinity for Stone-production.

Truthfully, I might just spend the day using the Toolroom to further my understanding of mana. Creating stone tools instead of bone tools should be more than possible with my current mana supply but it'll be better to just wait until tomorrow to do my real crafting.

For now... I want to try something.

Summon Lumber.

The system dings and summons the log back, clunking back down atop the workbench unceremoniously.

Craft Options.

ERROR://404

Command not found.

Looks like I'll need to either start writing down crafting recipes or hope that there's a skill or ability to give me lists of crafting choices. While I'm able to use my magic to handle the crafting, I still have a disadvantage when it comes to physically creating things.

Maybe the solution lies in that: instead of trying to make it by hand, why don't I just try using magic? After all, I know a way I can do it.

My only magic so far has been using thorns either in defense or as projectiles for attacking.

But I've already seen that thorns come in different shapes. All I need to do is make the bladed thorns that come out of the Mana-DCT and make it something I can carry.

[Notification] Spell crafting completed.

Granting spell Cutter Thorn. Cutter Thorn Created Nature-type A Basic Spell; derived from the flexible Thorntwist, the user forms a bladed thorn. It can be carried or thrown.

Costs 2 MP per minute sustained.

Cutter Thorn.

The mana snaps and solidifies in my vine grasp, form-fit perfectly between them better than any tool I had carried so far. It's not much longer than a carving knife but its blade is more accented; it's not meant to be a crafting tool but purely for killing.

Unfortunately, I don't have many options right now besides this. Based on my current maximum MP, I have about 16 minutes of crafting at a minimum. That's not counting for my regeneration rate possibly working during the spell cast; so far, I'd not had a spell that sustains so there's no real way yet to know just how long I can carve.

But... now that I have this wood and a knife...

... I'm going to make myself a weapon.

...

It took a lot of the day, but I made a ton of progress.

Working a large log like this wouldn't be easy even with the right tools, but I had an advantage; unlike a real knife that might catch and break at bad angles, the Cutter Thorn is made of mana. Anytime I get stuck, all I have to do is pull the knife back and it molds just enough to come free.

It also actually cuts through wood a lot more easily than I thought it would. At one point, I made a clean cut that actually went from back to front without catching and let a huge chunk fall away.

So far, I've shaped it into a clunky-ish pole. Making a spear out of this won't be very easy... and honestly, as much as it might be my favorite survivalist and isekai weapon?

Spears are... actually a lot harder to create properly.

Entirely wood spears are of course a lot easier, but their power is often much lower.

So... instead of working it into a spear, I think I'm going to wash up in the washroom tonight. In the morning, when I come back, I'll instead turn it into a much better weapon for me.

I'll make it a staff.

Magical or not, a staff isn't just easier but it's often thicker and better suited for combat in a field like this. Spears can't swing and bladed polearms are too beyond my ability. Staves aren't just better for swinging, either; I'm a mage, so a staff could actually become the basis for focusing my mana.

Hell, at this point I actually think I somewhat understand the principle of focusing mana. The Dungeon's Toolroom uses me as a catalyst to turn mana into lumber, right?

So logically, I can channel my mana through a catalyst to create something else.

Like, say, channeling my mana through a Favor Crystal that originally was meant to create light. What would happen if I was able to influence its affinity from producing light and overwrite it into a font of Nature mana? If such a thing is possible, then creating magical items should be incredibly easy in Brogdar.

At least it is for Dungeon Masters.

As nice as the idea sounds, though, this is still leaping far ahead in Magic Theory and making multiple assumptions based purely on how my dungeon has been operating. That's before even addressing the fact that my Dungeon and myself have been fairly independent so far in functionality. It isn't easy earning Dungeon Edges, for example, but I've earned a plethora of upgrades.

If Bomber and Ivy weren't already sleeping, they'd have been bored hearing my thoughts racing over just how complicated this is. I'm pretty sure Ropert actually dozed off a few times but he's a plant and hard to read even now since he still won't talk with me.

For now, I shall abscond from my crafting project and settle in for my own relaxing. Tomorrow is just another day in experimentation...

Or at the very least going to let me make a fool out of myself for everyone to laugh at.