Tyranomaster

[Vol.2] Ch.42 Bathhouse

The first four months back at the cave have been pretty standard work.  I worked on growing the crystal after checking everything was intact from winter.  Zeb worked on building the path out further, while keeping up with my charcoal demands.  Zaka visited periodically, and left with 7 new goblins.  The work has gotten so repetitive that if this crystal can't survive the surface, I'm done with it.  I'm already regretting not being done with it at the 4 foot crystal.&n...

[Vol.2] Ch.41 One Whole Year

It's been a little less than forty days.  Zaka didn't arrive last month because we left the village so recently, but he did visit yesterday.  There wasn't much to report on, other than he's hasn't particularly enjoyed cleaning out the branches that had settled into the reservoir once the stream had let up.

Progress has been steady for growing the extra large crystal, and I've started expanding the exploratory tunnel again.  After the first ten days, I'd cleaned out all fo...

[Vol.2] Ch.38 New Shops

When we return to the goblin village, there are a few things that have changed, but not quite as drastically as the last time I was here.  It seems the basket backpacks have become quite the popular item, and I see a few goblins out and about with backpacks carrying various items about, and a few are wearing plant fiber clothes.  There are two new shops as well in town.  One looks like there is a picture of a vase above their shop, the other has an offset square from the sign.&...

[Vol.2] Ch.40 Finally, An Answer

Three days to build the bridge, which might seem like a lot, but I really wanted to make sure it'd be fine through floods, so I ended up building a bit of path on either side as well for good measure.  We had a small bit of rain earlier today, so I imagine the snow will start melting any day, and we'll start getting a much larger amount of rain.  I've decided to only open the bottom valve on the reservoir for while I'm here, just to see how it handles the water during the melt. ...

[Vol.2] Ch.36 A New Face?

I've been hard at work for the last four weeks growing an even larger crystal in the new apparatus.  I'd say I'm about a third of the way to getting it to four feet tall.  Zeb doing other work alongside this process has been a big help as well.  In the evenings when I finish with my set of crystal stuff for the day, I've been cutting stone from an exploratory tunnel we're mining out from in the cavern.  It's already about 50 yards long, and at a slight decline in the mount...

[Vol.2] Ch.39 Road Work Ahead

One week and the salt evaporation pond and channel are done.  Rather than show random goblins how to operate it, I show Zaka, and he can figure out who should know how to use it.  Ultimately, salt can be used for a lot of things, but it can drastically increase the shelf life of smoked meat, and it improves the flavor of a lot of foods.  I'm certain the goblins will put the pond to use.  I did decide to make one additional change to my initial design.  Namely, it has ...

[Vol.2] Ch.37 What’s Another Year?

Draining the crystal took a bit of time, but once we were done, Zeb and I moved it up to the surface in a cart with a bit of effort.  Thankfully, it didn't break right away, and actually made it to the surface.  The bad news however, was after about two hours in the vacuum chamber on the surface, it broke.  When it broke, I felt what I can only describe as strong magical pressure from the area for a short while.  It reminded me somewhat of a sudden emptying of a pool of wa...

[Vol.2] Ch.35 New Chambers

Zaka's visit yesterday brought with it the new basket backpacks we requested and one was filled with lizard meat.  According to Zaka, it was meat from the lizard we killed on the trip up here last time.  His visit itself was pretty uneventful, but I noticed something that I missed in the first month of being back.  I hadn't looked closely at the mystery metal pucks we made since we came back here.  I only noticed because I was moving things in my workshop to make a space f...

[Vol.2] Ch.34 Regrowth

Our return trip up the mountain actually did have a little excitement.  Part of the way up, we ran into a lizard.  Between me and Zaka, we killed it pretty quickly.  Then he asked Zeb and I to wait there with it, while him and the other goblin went back to the village to get some people to harvest it and bring it back to the village.  Thankfully, we were less than a third of the way up the mountain, so it only delayed our travel a few hours.  The delay did cause Zaka ...

[Vol.2] Ch.33 Ocean Observations

Another three weeks, and we're closing in on the top of the dam, at 34 feet tall now.  With the snow melt coming down the mountain the past few days, the water level in the reservoir has been steadily emptying out at the 5 foot valve.  The first valve didn't quite let enough out to keep up with the melt, but the second valve is keeping up.  If I closed the top valve, the bottom valve would keep up eventually once the depth gets only a few feet higher, but right now, I'd like to...

[Vol.2] Ch.32 Dam Construction

Another eleven days of hard work, and I've got the remaining houses finished, as well as Kaga's storage shed behind his workshop.  Now that I've finished up all the outstanding works that needed finished in the village, I need to tinker with making a stone plug valve.  Until I get plug valves figured out, I don't want to start working on the dam for the reservoir.

To test plug valve designs, I'm going to build a mini-dam in the stream and embed the test valves in it.  I w...

[Vol.2] Ch.31 Specializations

When we reach the village, I'm a little surprised.  I had done so much setup and work on the village, that I sort of just expected the goblins to stagnantly just live their lives as before.  Instead, I'm greeted by multiple changes that have taken place.  When I left the goblins nine months ago, they had a fledgling carpenter in Kaga, and some goblins who were making rope by hand, and some hunters.

Now, Kaga seems to have really gotten into his work, as there are various ...

[Vol.2] Ch.30 A New Path

Today, Zaka should arrive.  Other soaked liquid tests weren't as successful as the initial one.  Non-bark wood behaved similarly to the bark wood, if a little less viscous.  Other plants didn't seem to produce any meaningful results or interesting effects.  So, for today, we've got some of the boiled bark water set up so that Zaka can experience that as well.

A little later in the afternoon, Zaka and one other goblin arrive.  This time they didn't bring any extr...

[Vol.2] Ch.29 Magical Material Properties

After letting the crystal recharge overnight, it's time for more testing.  This time, the first test is going to be with the boiled wood.  For good measure, we actually have two separate sets of wood.  One is the bark, and the other is the internal wood.  Both were broken into small pieces before boiling as well.  The boiled water of both have a nearly identical color, although the bark one seems slightly darker.  We'll start with the bark, and move on from there...

[Vol.2] Ch.28 Feeling the Burn

Zaka arrived with two goblins other this time.  One was carrying a rolled up lizard hide, the other and himself carrying dried lizard meat.  I asked him how lizard hunting has been going, and he said that they've actually started to have to travel for hours before they find any.  This left me slightly concerned about the population of lizards as a whole.  Although it also probably means that the goblins are much safer than they used to be.

After making sure that the ...

[Vol.2] Ch.27 A Hot Topic

I need to make a decision on the crystal project.  First, it seems like it might be dangerous to make the crystals larger than they already are if someone uses them to regenerate mana.  The existing artificial crystal clearly is already on the precipice of that being an issue.  So, what I need to check is whether the existing crystal will deteriorate at the surface.  In case it deteriorates, I'll embed it in a vacuum container, like the previous crystals were.  It'll ...

[Vol.2] Ch.26 A Crystal Test

Zaka arrives tomorrow, and we've been hard at work.  Although the crystal isn't quite to the maximum capacity of the current apparatus it is in, I think it is large enough to move into an even larger apparatus if I want to make one.  The current artificial crystal is a little less than twice the size of the largest natural crystal I've found.  From top to bottom its about a foot tall.

To get to this point, we've used lots of small crystals.  We've also have a working...

[Vol.2] Ch.25 The Growing Process

Between the work area and the initial two apparatuses, it took us seven days.  A large part of which was actually rebuilding the apparatuses after doing some tests on them under vacuum.  The apparatus chamber shape needed to be changed and thickened because one cracked when I tried to stone shape a new container onto it, which would normally be part of the attempt at growing crystals.

So we've reached the point of doing our first attempts at artificial crystal growth today.&nb...

[Vol.2] Ch.24 Artificial Growth

There are a few reasons crystals may not have formed.  Some of the reasons won't be too bad to rectify, and some will be nearly impossible as things are right now to fix.  Some of the bad reasons include having to boil the solid crystal material, or missing some fundamental component unknown to me that acts as a catalyst.  Both of those would be nearly impossible to rectify as current things stand.

Thankfully, there are also things that I can try which aren't too bad.&nbs...

[Vol.2] Ch.23 Crystal Experiments

After all the metal work yesterday, I want to take it a little easier, and not do as much physical labor, and I'm sure Zeb feels similarly.  Today, instead, I'm going to collect small crystals with Zeb.  Sure, it's still work, but it's pretty relaxed.  I already have quite a few of the smallest size in the warehouse, but I've decided to gather more of the smallest ones.  The reason being, I want to do more experiments with them.  I discovered some basic principles bef...

[Vol.2] Ch.22 Metallurgy

Only a day after Zaka left and we're at another attempt at smelting the copper.  I've brought a bucket of water to drop slag into as well, since I'm hoping to scoop that out of the crucible if I can.  I've actually got two crucibles to work with this time.  One to put into the tray above to cool, and another to attempt to pour into the small ingot cast.  I load the first crucible into the furnace, and then put the ingot cast in beside it.  After both get up to a healt...

[Vol.2] Ch.21 Learning Process

Getting the storage area expanded has turned into quite the hassle because compared to other projects, it's not nearly as fun.  That said, some benefit of the past four days of expanding it have yielded good results between Zeb and I.  We've felled a few of the trees we were cutting, and now we've begun chopping down trees along the path to the goblin village, with the intent to build out stairs with stone down that way.  By no means will it be a fast process, but as I've reali...

[Vol.2] Ch.20 Survey Results

The last three days have been spent digging out the other major points of interest from the survey.  Namely the two layer changes that I identified before.  The large one near the entrance revealed a less dense stone which seemed to be composed of a larger percentage of lightstone that I was working with before.  Initially I wasn't sure if it was lightstone or just a similar color, but after doing some manual separation, and doing some basic tests like density and hardness, it ...

[Vol.2] Ch.19: Status Windows

The trip up the mountain was fairly uneventful.  A lot of the areas that had mudslides have started to grow plants through the wreckage.  It'll still be a long time before it's fully healed, but it's at least starting to recover.  I noticed some small lion roots as we ascended in altitude, so I know there is at least a single food source available already.

The imp summoning went fine as well.  Two more goblins for Zaka to return to the village with.  Zeb and I t...

[Vol.2] Ch.18 Dammed Plans

It's been another month, and the quarry and houses are coming along well enough.  I've gotten about half the stone out of the quarry that I intend to remove.  It's become quite sizeable now, and the goblins actually have to travel up and down stairs in the quarry to remove stone that I've cut.  I'm actually a little concerned about the surplus of stone now.  Realistically, we've already excavated more stone that I'll need to build all the houses, workshops, roads, and wall...

[Vol.2] Ch.17 What Makes a Village?

The imp summoning went fine, although we only recruited two goblins this time.  When we returned, I tried to recruit the goblins to help with stone hauling for these projects, but they didn't really want to participate even if I, or rather Zeb, explained the usefulness of the project to them.  Which means I'll need to figure out a different way to get them to help.

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I've spent the last four days working with Zeb hauling stone that I've cut, and I'm now certain that I'...

[Vol.2] Ch.16 Public Waterworks

For the past two days, I've been fixing the bridge, and finally completed it.  The goblins have been fairly demoralized by the destruction of their village.  Digging out damaged property and rebuilding their small huts has kept them preoccupied, but the destroyed huts that no longer have goblins in them leave a pretty depressing feeling over the town, and reminds the goblins of those they've lost.

At some point, I think we should probably build a monument to those who lost the...

[Vol-2] Ch.15 A Wild Storm

Zaka left later the next day with two new goblins in tow.  There was an interesting commotion at one point in the night when an imp made its way up to the exit door, and started making noise and trying to break some of vent slits I had put in previously.  Long story short, there was one less imp participating in the battle royale.  Once Zaka left the next day, Zeb and I got to work on processing imp bodies and preparing to cremate the rest of them.  For the next while, we'...

[Vol-2] Ch.14 Renovations

I wake up in the morning, ravenously hungry, and check my stats as I go to stuff my face with food.

<UNCOMMON LESSER EARTH DEMON>
Level: 0
HP: 911/911
MP: 353/353
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation
Magic: Improved Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense, Earth Spike

Well, I can stone shape four times as fast now, and my stats are looking pretty good, I mean compared to when I was an imp at least.  After I eat, I record my stats in my records, and go to use a...

[Vol-2] Ch.13 Old Routines

When I return to my sub-cave that I once called home, I'm greeted by a putrid smell.  It seems that one of the toilet pots I sealed broke.  I'm not sure if it was pressure buildup or something else, but it reeks in here now.  Well, I was planning on moving up to the surface house I was building soon anyway.  There was also some leftover food that has been rotting.  I suppose I should use some new buckets to clean up before I leave again, and dispose of all this waste ...