Chapter Three-Hundred Six

    Thankfully, it doesn’t take Tula too long to wake back up, but she still seems pretty overwhelmed. She doesn’t give an answer yet, but I think once she gets a chance to calm down, she’ll take Rhonda up on her offer. They escort her out, which thanks to a Teemo shortcut means it’s only a couple minutes, and then they head for the lava labyrinth.

    I shamelessly look over the map they have while they go. I’ve been wondering if there’ll be people who speedrun the maze daily to try to get an accurate map of that day’s maze, but it looks like most people are going with a more generic map, with the changing sections written in different colors and leaving it up to the adventurers to figure out the layout on their own.

    I think it’d be a bit more difficult for those going really deep, but the melting pot area with the crucible ants isn’t that far into the maze. They have to backtrack a couple times, but once you get the hang of reading the map, it’s not hard to navigate. They fight a few encounters and Rhonda practices her telekinesis as she can. For a lot of the denizens in the maze, she has a pretty good combo of stealing the heat from the different encounters, converting it to kinetic energy, and slamming the critters with a solid attack. The others need to keep up their guards and help, of course. One on one, Rhonda could probably handle anything in there, but I’m not going to send a single denizen against the group.

    In the melting pot, the damanascus is getting pretty popular among my crucible ants. At first, it was just the one hill, but now there’s a good half-dozen to pick from. They go for a smaller one and don’t hold back much in their attack. I smile when I see them work together to haul off the chunks Larrez breaks off, glad to see them plan ahead and not go for something they wouldn’t have actually been able to carry off.

    They’re all pretty weighed down, but they have enough gas in the tank to fight through a couple more encounters and eventually head home. I hope they make some cool stuff out of the damanascus. It should work pretty well as armor, and should be easy to enchant for weapons. I just don’t know how well it will hold an edge. It’s been getting popular among the ants because it’s popular among the delvers, but nobody has come back in with anything made from it, or at least I haven’t noticed. Armoring and enchanting take a while, so I’m not surprised nobody has anything yet. The crafters need to learn how to work it too, I’m sure.

    Speaking of things that need work, I sit in with Teemo to hear what the nerd squad thinks of possible improvements for the composite armor. I’m surprised to see Poppy contributing, too, but Teemo’s translations makes it pretty obvious why. The resin is from trees, and they might be able to use a treated wooden core for the armor to help with rigidity. It also could give another surface for the easy layering of enchantments.

    They still need something to fix the delamination problem, though. It’ll be partially fixed by weaving the layers more properly. The first pass was barely more than taking two silk shirts and some mail, then gluing them together with resin. I probably shouldn’t be surprised they tend to come apart.

    Coda points out the design issue without me needing to talk through Teemo, and they brainstorm ways to work around that. They really like the metal honeycomb, but I think it’s just not going to be especially practical, at least on the scale of people. I’m pretty sure honeycomb is more for vehicle armor rather than personal. While it could work for breastplates, weaving the spidersilk through normal chainmail would be more practical, but I think there’s an even better way.

    If we use a thin wooden core, we should be able to perforate it and weave the silk through it without much issue. Metal wire should be theoretically an option, but we have an easier method than trying to get tension on metal without breaking the wood: the metal transmutation elixir. As far as I can tell, it makes ordinary steel, which should be a good way to add strength to the armor, and hopefully keep the whole thing thin enough that it can be made into something wearable.

    In the future, I’d love to weave orichalcum and mythril instead, but I think transmuting some of the silk will be the easier option. The nerds like the sound of the magical metals, but they also think we should try the easier method first. The transmuting process will give them time to apply enchantments, too, so it shouldn’t make the process take too much longer.

    “I am. I’m looking forward to it, in fact. I’ve done what research I can on Rocky, and I think I’m as prepared as I can get.”

    “Awesome,” replies Teemo, giving a thumbs up. “Are you guys going to do the full inspection first?”

    “I want to at least try,” speaks up Berdol. “I don’t think it should take too long, at least? Most of your various sections are pretty stable. The lava labyrinth will take the longest, I expect.”

    “The forest might take a while, too, depending on how in-depth you want to look around. It’s a lot of area.”

    “I’d like to get as close of a look as I can, please.”

    Teemo smiles. “That should be fine. It’s still a work in progress, but the Boss doesn’t have any problem with letting you see how things get made. We actually just finalized the plan for the big central tree, in fact.”

    “Oh?” asks Berdol, with Olander looking curious as well.

    Teemo nods and slips through a shortcut to sit atop Olander’s pack. “Yeah. I’ll explain while you guys start. The manor is pretty much the same it’s always been: a good place for the newbies to start with. You should be able to examine while I chat about the tree, yeah?”

    Olander chuckles and shifts his pack slightly to sit better. “I think so. If Berdol is too distracted, I’ll at least be listening. I’ve heard rumor the new forest is supposed to be for very experienced delvers, so you definitely have my attention with it.”

    The elf chuckles as Berdol smacks him with his floating metal clipboard for insinuating he can’t take notes and listen at the same time. Still, he smiles at the good-natured ribbing. “Then let’s get this inspection underway! The sooner we get started, the sooner I can watch Rocky knock you around some!”