The next morning Andrew got right back to work with Rowan and Tyler. They each managed to complete one full brute dagger last night, and he left them to continue the work with minimal supervision for today. They were sharing an anvil, but each dagger required considerable inscription time, so it wasn't much of an issue overall. The materials required for mass production were another matter. They had enough of the pure silver-red ingots to make around fifteen more six-inch daggers, and that would use up their entire supply. They had regular iron ingots, but those would be needed for the construction of more mana rifles at the very least. The silver material wouldn't maintain it's shape for very long when exposed to high amounts of fire mana.

Alright, I need to get mass production of these ingots started then. Once I have the process down I bet I could snag one of the clearing team members to run it for me, or a former kitchen staff member, a bunch of them have fire affinity and resistance already. For now I think that means getting a larger forge/crucible set up. River stones probably aren't going to cut it.

Andrew spent the morning staking out a space by the river on the edge of camp near his workstation. The clearing team was still going strong, and they had a considerable clearing opened up along the river at this point. Andrew's new forging area was already a good twenty feet from the new edge of the clearing. They also had a pretty significant supply of dried logs to work with. They had four finished log cabins and the foundations for another four were already laid and hardened. The construction team was already well versed in the construction process now, and once they were done with this set of four, they would have the leeway to focus on furniture and walls. Only three people to a cabin would be an incredible luxury, and spirits in camp were rising with each building they finished.

He marked out three squares with eight feet to each side, lined up next to each other perpendicular to the river about thirty feet from the closest cabin, which he had slept in the night before. These would be the foundations for his three new mana forges, about four times larger than his river-stone setups. It would probably take him a while to get all three fully operational, but he wanted to leave room for future expansions. He planned on experiementing around with earth accumulation and concrete creation. From what Jason told him before, concrete was mostly just a variety of rocks mixed with water and a binding agent. Limestone was the base for what New Eden was working on, and they apperently found a good amount of it in the nearby riverbed. Collecting limestone was the only reason New Eden members other than Jason visited the camp these past couple days, so Andrew had a good idea of what it looked like. He wanted to see if he could recreate or even improve on the concrete using mana circles alone.

Andrew started by carving a bunch of small-scale circle tests into the earth behind the plots of land, each one only a foot or so across. The first was a single earth accumulation circle, the second a nested earth accumulation and water dispersal circle, the third used an air dispersal circle instead, and the fourth used fire. The next line of circles started with an earth accumulation, water dispersal and air dispersal circle, then water dispersal and fire dispersal, then air dispersal and fire dispersal circle. The third and fourth lines switched water and fire accumulation circles into the mix and the process consumed most of Andrew's day. When he was finished he went back through and imbued each circle with a hundred points of mana each, to keep the 'cook' time of each circle consistent.

[+1 Wisdom for sustaining constant mana control]

[+1 Wisdom for sustaining constant mana control]

[+ 1 Intelligence for pushing the limits of your mana pool]

He spent the remainder of the afternoon creating two more MK. II mana rifles in between helping Tyler and Rowan with their brute daggers. They both gained several levels in rune modification, inscription, and smelting over the course of the day, and managed to produce ten more brute daggers, bringing their total up to fourteen. They were also nearly out of silver-red ingots.

The day after Andrew showed the two of them how to smelt new ingots using the dirt from the nearby metal accumulation circles. It took most of the morning, but gave the concrete test circles plenty of time to finish setting. When he was finished he headed over to check on his test circles. A large number of them were clear failures. The water dispersal, water and air dispersal, and water and fire dispersal circles were riddled with a spiderweb of cracks across their surfaces already, the water accumulation circles each had soft clay-like consistencies, and the fire accumulation variants were speckled with silver sparkles that Andrew knew would melt easily. The rest were promising though, they formed into sheets of solid, stony material in a variety of grey shades. The water dispersal and accumulation circles might be workable with some fine tuning, but it would be unnecessary work if one of the other slabs did the job already.

Andrew scuffed up each of the circles, then used his chisel to carve a fire binding and fire accumulation circle into the face of each test slab. They would be a little less intense than a full forge, but it would weed out any immediate failures. He charged each circle with another hundred points of mana and sat back to watch. The simple earth accumulation circle cracked after about fifteen minutes, but the air dispersal, fire dispersal, and air-fire dispersal circles each remained intact and unmarred after a full hour of concentrated fire mana. When the glow of the fire accumulation circle finally faded Andrew slammed Carter's sledge hammer into each one. The fire dispersal and air-fire dispersal slabs shattered into dust and chunks, but the earth accumulation air dispersal circle simply cracked along the center line. That would be his first large-scale test then.

Andrew inscribed the nested earth accumulation, air dispersal circle around his first eight foot square and pumped two hundred points of mana into it. He planned on adding more than that later, but wanted to 'slow-cook' the circle. His previous experiments in this area resulted in a bump of stone forming in the center of the circle when he put a huge amount of mana in at one time, and that wasn't ideal for his purposes here. While he waited for that to cook he used one of the many shovels they scavenged from the hobgoblin camp to clear out the debris of his previous tests. He made short work of the cleanup effort, and filled the rest of the time by recruiting a couple construction team members to help him pull logs from their considerable supply and hack them down into flat boards.

It took until late afternoon for the accumulation circle to burn through it's initial supply of mana, and the stony plot underneath looked pretty much finished already. Andrew, Carter and Jason worked together through the evening to construct a four inch wide, six foot tall, square frame of wood boards, fused into a single inner and outer square and filled with soil from the surrounding area. Andrew carved a new set of earth accumulation and air dispersal circles around the mid point of the wood frame and pumped two hundred points of mana into it, then stepped off the plot and charged the exterior circles with another hundred points. They headed to bed and left the box cooking over night. Andrew was pleased to discover his cabin closest to the forge site was now furnished with three identical cots woven from plant fibers and lined with leather. Gifts from New Eden, clearly produced by Jack. They hadn't seen much of the New Eden survivors over the last couple days, and Andrew respected Jason's desire to remain ambivalent of the inter-camp politics enough that he didn't question him on it.

I'll have to send them something tomorrow. I've been too focused on crafting the last couple days, ah, I want to get this forge finished, but Jack's replication ability is way too convenient to be ignored. This much furniture would take ages for us to make, as simple as it is. Maybe George has chilled out a bit after that scare with Jack a few days back. Either way I need to figure out a way to build trust.