Gem found he was able to make simple bladed weapons—including the daggers from Mark and the shortswords from Tabeth—at the Forge, as well as simple metal armor. Tabeth’s armor was also something he could create, but Mark’s leathers or Lars’s cloth armor was out of the question.

Creating items at the Forge Room for his mobs to use required a certain number of mana, depending on the item. Armor was expensive, requiring nearly 100 mana per piece. It meant Gem couldn’t craft any metal armor yet, even at full mana. Daggers were also a bit pricey, considering the size of the thing, but shortswords were decent at 35 mana.

When Gem brought this up to Chesu, the wisp nodded. “Shortswords are a tank-class weapon, which means they do less damage overall. No DPS classes on Sleyn can use shortswords. Pretty sure there’s some other worlds where that’s a thing, but I haven’t been to any. Daggers, though, are a damage-class weapon. They have hidden attributes that make them do more damage, involving critical hit chance and damage in the form of finding places on the body that really hurt to get stabbed in.”

The wisp shrugged. “Thing is, kid? Anything’s possible. Weapons aren’t class specific. It’s just that they can be better optimized for one class or another. A Ranger without a bow is going to find some of their skills just aren’t available to them. A Swashbuckler with daggers would have a much shorter reach, which might make their footwork skills harder to execute. Can’t be an effective dodge tank if you’re too close to the mob.”

It was an interesting idea, and one Gem wanted to explore more. But there was so much to do.

“Once you get access to more Rooms and can make more parts of the kit, you might find you like certain combinations. But for now? Have at it. Make a thousand swords and no daggers, if that’s your thing. Your mob’s output might not be as high as it could be, but there will be some advantages, too.”

Chesu laughed. “I keep forgetting how quick of a learner you are, kid.”

Gem decided to let his mana build up, so that he could craft both a dagger and a sword. It would require almost every point of mana he had available as a Tin Four Dungeon Core, but he had a pretty decent stockpile of Mob Hearts saved up already, so he wasn’t too worried.

“Could,” Chesu said, but he shook his head. “You’ve got so much other stuff you could be doing, though.”

“And there’s always material grinding. You’re almost halfway to Copper, and if you get a few more quests done and adventurers killed, you’ll be knocking on that door in no time. Copper One is a great time to build a new floor.”

Gem hadn’t even started thinking of what his second floor would look like. He didn’t have access to all of his Tin mobs yet, and he assumed he’d get some more at Copper One, as well. But regardless, he would need to have some sort of idea of what he wanted to build before he got to that point.

He sent Chesu an image of a gem with swirling marks floating around its crown.

Chesu patted the side of his core. “Chin up, kid. You’re the hero of the world! Bastion against the darkness or whatever. Can’t get hung up on the details.”

Gem declined to point out the poor choice of idiom and instead created a mental task list. The wisp was right; he needed to plan for making a second floor. And, from the conversations he’d had with Chesu while finalizing the first, he knew it needed to be a bit more grandiose than the first. But before he could even begin to get there, he needed materials. And materials meant time in front of the generators.

There were also coins to be created, so he could use them as cheap loot.

He also needed to expand his tree farm, but he was running out of dirt blocks. He could gather wood from the ones in his dungeon, but it meant his Pylons would be even more obvious, and that wasn’t a thing he was interested in.

That meant he needed more dirt blocks, and that could only be obtained by finding more islands.

Which would mean more grinding for blocks.

Gem frowned and looked at his stockpile. Because Shriek and pals had been going this whole time, he had a pretty decent amount of cobblestone available.

Chesu looked up from Gem’s core, where he’d been watching the adventurers struggle with the pack that contained the Skunkupine. “Kid, I was shocked you didn’t come across one when you built towards the main island. Although… well, that might have been designed that way on purpose, to be fair.” The wisp shrugged. “Small islands are all over the place. Catastrophic events tend to have rippling effects, and lifting a whole chunk of the planet into the sky to avoid the corruption and/or death of its denizens is a whopper of a catastrophic event.”

Chesu looked uncomfortable. “I… wouldn't know. Was before my time here.”

That look of discomfort grew and Chesu took to the air, his wings practically vibrating with anxious energy. “Hey, so, kid? No offense, but you’ve got shit to do and I really don’t want to talk about it.” He motioned towards the generators, then towards the skies. “Pick your poison.”

Gem decided to choose both.

Or rather, all three.

Splitting his mind to do mindless tasks was exhausting, but rewarding. He established himself at the generator and focused on that until it became a reflexive action, like refining mana. Then he split himself and his second self went out to start building off the back of the island. At the last moment, he split off a third version who monitored the dungeon to make sure things were going well, as well as generated coins little by little as his mana grew closer to capping out.

Three consciousnesses was a lot. For a short time, Gem felt a pressure building in his core, like an itch he couldn’t scratch, but it faded with time. Chesu told him that sort of thing would happen less the more times he split himself, but Gem really disliked doing it.

He just didn’t feel right. There was something calming about the omnipotence of being a Dungeon Core and his ability to be everywhere at once. But splitting his mind meant he wasn’t really omnipotent. At least, not yet.

With all three versions of himself functional, Gem got to work.