Chương 485: B7—Chapter 61: Hammers, Nails, and Gnomish Descriptions

It wasn't planned, but we somehow ended up parking by the waterfall for almost two weeks. The original plan was to open my house, rest for a day, and continue, but Mahya wanted to take stock of all the metal we got from the golems, and that took a while. The contraption Al used to catch some of the lava balls kept them in a hot liquid state, so he had to drop them into Mahya's forge, and she had to wait for them to cool off. She wanted to pull the heat out of them, but we stopped her.

Neither Al nor I wanted her to get all fiery again, so she sighed, harrumphed, gave us the stink eye, and waited for the metal to cool. I was next, and that took three days. I caught a lot of lava balls. All told, she collected a mountain of metal and skipped around with a massive grin on her face. After all the lava cooled, she actually informed us, "I don't need any more mana-rich metal for the ship, only regular metal for the tech parts."

I was ready to close the house and continue, but Mahya wanted to play with her new malleable stone and the firestone. Strangely enough, Al also wanted to see how they worked together and supported the idea. For the next three days, Mahya played with her forge and stone. I had to admit it was fascinating. She first fed it mana until she felt the connection, then told it to become a forge. The stone expanded outward, and the center became hollow.

When Mahya placed the firestone inside, there was a surge of mana, and a wave of heat came from within. Mahya clapped her hands and jumped up and down, while Al looked thoughtful. Rue sniffed the forge, declared it boring, and went to swim. Inspired by the "amazing forge and stone," in Mahya's words, she got to work and hammered out some more partitions for me to engrave for the dead zones. I sighed and got to work.

Al explored the wooded area around the lake and found some interesting plants, but on our fifth day beside the lake, he dove in to examine the water plants and came up beaming. That was a strange and unfamiliar expression on his face.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The lake bed is rich in useful and rare minerals," he said, and his smile grew even wider. He took scuba diving gear from me and went to work collecting the minerals. And that was how we spent another five days. Al diving, Mahya banging on metal, Rue swimming and fighting the occasional fish or shark dude that spawned, and me engraving endless runes for the dead zone. When we worked in the city, I had already committed the dead zone lattice to memory, but I still followed Lis's blueprint to ensure accuracy.

After another two days of engraving in the dungeon, the lattice was so firmly engraved into my memory that I saw it when I closed my eyes and dreamed of it at night. By that point, I dropped the blueprint and picked up speed. Finally, we were ready to move on to the last "war." I estimated it was about a week and a half by the lake, but it was hard to tell. The dungeon didn't have a day-and-night cycle. It was always light. We basically counted the days by meals and sleep breaks.

But since all of us ate and slept less when we were engrossed, I suspected we'd spent longer there. Of course, I could've tried to use Rue's "lunch" requests to tell the time, but that was also inconclusive. He swam, ate "lunch," napped, fought, ate another "lunch," napped some more, played on the jet ski or the Skyrush, and had another "lunch," over and over. Yeah, very inconclusive. The hammers-versus-nails section was the weirdest so far.

I thought it would have hammers and nails jumping around, or maybe hammers marching, like in Roger Waters's "The Wall" video. It wasn't. The hammers were strange monsters that walked on two legs, had no arms, and had long necks with massive heads. Their heads were shaped like hammers, with eyes on the sides. The monsters couldn't see straight because of the eye placement, so they kept turning their heads left and right to see what was going on. The nails were short, worm-shaped creatures that looked like nails.

The head was the flat top, with two beady eyes and a line for a mouth, filled with small, vicious-looking teeth. Their primary weapon was the sharp tips of their tails. This time, the arena was the "usual" one, with dirt in the middle and engraved standing stones all around it. Mahya jumped into the center and activated it. With a cracking sound, the nail worms burst out of the standing stones, and the hammers rose from the earth with a sound like an earthquake, even though the ground itself didn't move.

Mahya cursed under her breath and lowered her hands. My head snapped in her direction.

"What's the problem?"

"I hoped the monsters would be collectible tools," she said, her mouth twisting as she looked around the arena.

"They dissipate anyway, so it doesn't matter," I said, trying to cheer her up.

"The golems didn't," she shot back, crossing her arms.

"Huh." I frowned.

"I didn't think of that. How did we get all this metal without it breaking apart?" She shrugged.

"It is not unique," Al said calmly.

"I have read about such dungeons. They are considered very valuable." Mahya's shoulders slumped, and she stared at the dirt.

"What's the problem now?" I asked. She looked downright miserable.

"It won't be fair to take the core of such a valuable dungeon." I stared at her in total shock. Mahya giving up a core! Unheard of. For a second, I almost reached out to check her temperature, then stopped myself at the last moment. She would have kicked my butt for it. While we were still talking, the monsters went right on with the fighting, and it was comical. The hammers kept twisting their long necks from side to side, trying to keep the nail worms in view.

Every time one spotted a worm, it swung its massive head down to whack it flat. The worms responded by leaping, tails snapping up like springs, and puncturing the hammers straight in the head with their pointy ends. Then it got really crazy. One hammer noticed a nail worm clinging to another hammer's head and immediately tried to help by smashing it. The smash landed squarely on the other hammer instead. That hammer didn't appreciate the help and swung back.

A third hammer, seeing movement, joined in and whacked both of them, just to be safe. Within seconds, it devolved into a full-blown, industrial-strength game of whack-a-mole. Hammers were turning, swinging, missing, and occasionally clocking each other with solid, echoing thunks. Nail worms jumped from head to head, stabbing anything they could reach. Every successful hit triggered another hammer to retaliate, usually against the wrong target. Heads swung. Bodies staggered.

Somewhere in the chaos, a hammer tried to hit a worm and instead started a three-hammer chain reaction of pure, uncoordinated violence. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. We just stood there and watched. After about two minutes of sheer chaos, Al said, "It may be prudent to choose a side before they eliminate each other."

"Which side are we taking?" I asked.

"Hammers," Mahya said.

"Nails," Al said at the same time. I looked between them, weighing my options, but the decision was made for us. Rue didn't bother consulting anyone. He shot up into the air, flew over the chaotic mess of swinging heads and jumping worms, and dropped behind the hammer lines. Al followed him with his gaze, paused for half a second, then shrugged.

"Hammers are acceptable." Once we landed behind the hammers, Mahya turned to me and gave me a stern look.

"No lightning. If we hit our side, no loot." I rolled my eyes at her.

"I'm not an idiot." She opened her mouth to say something, froze for a heartbeat, and closed it with a loud click. In the meantime, Al cast his freezing spell on the nails. Their movements turned sluggish, jumps falling short as if gravity suddenly increased. The hammers immediately took advantage and whacked about ten of them in one coordinated, extremely enthusiastic burst of violence. I gave Al a thumbs-up and got an idea.

I still had Thornbind Barrier, the spell I'd gotten from combining Verdant Grasp and Bramble Shield, and I'd never actually used it. This seemed like a good opportunity. When I cast it, thick, thorn-laden roots burst from the ground in a wide ring around the hammers. The roots twisted upward, forming a dense, spiked barrier, while smaller thorny tendrils shot out and grabbed every nail unlucky enough to be nearby. The roots snatched the nails off the ground and pinned them there, their tails flailing uselessly.

The hammers charged in to finish the job and got tangled in the roots. Mahya shot me a glare and opened her mouth to say something. I canceled the spell. The roots vanished instantly, and the barrier collapsed into nothing. The nails didn't recover fast enough. The hammers finished them off in a series of loud, deeply satisfying whacks. Mahya closed her mouth again with another click. I turned away from her and smiled.

Al and I continued in the same way, with Mahya occasionally cutting down a nail that got too close. Rue tried to help, but both times he did, a hammer whacked him. Once it caught him on the shoulder, a glancing blow that sent him spinning in the air. The second time, the hammer clipped him on the head. That one did it. Rue retreated and flew back behind me. He growled out loud, a low, offended sound, while complaining telepathically." Rue helping. Rue fight same side. Stupid, blind monsters not see.

They see tall thing, they whack. Not fair. Rue not nail. Rue not enemy." He huffed, growled and continued complaining." Monsters need eyes in front, not on stupid sides. Hammers bad at teamwork. Rue stay here." He stayed put after that, glaring at the hammers from a safe distance, clearly reconsidering the value of cooperation. The final two nails dissolved a heartbeat later, their mana pulling together into a solid shape. When it settled, a square metal box the size of a microwave sat in the dirt.

Al walked over and picked it up, examining it with interest.

Once Al was out of the blast zone, I raised both hands and fired lightning in quick succession, one strike after another, until the last two hammers finally went down. Their bodies broke apart into motes of mana that swirled together and coalesced into a hammer. Mahya jumped over, grabbed it, gave it a quick look, and returned to my side.

"What did we get?" I asked her. She thrust the hammer into my hand with an unhappy expression. Hammer of Situational Certainty (Also Known As "The Hammer That Is Correct") This hammer exists in a permanent state of knowing better than you. At the moment of use, the hammer carefully evaluates the task at hand, the user's intent, the surrounding materials, and at least three possible futures. It then becomes the exact hammer required for the job, whether you asked for that or not.

Need a tiny, precise hammer for engraving runes, tapping gems into place, or persuading delicate things to cooperate? It becomes small, balanced, and smug. Need a proper smithing hammer? Heavy head, excellent weight distribution, comforting sense of authority. Need a large hammer? Very large hammer? Ridiculously large hammer that solves problems by reminding them who is in charge? The hammer expands accordingly and feels very proud about it. The hammer does not change randomly. It changes correctly.

Attempts to force it into the wrong role will result in the hammer becoming heavier, lighter, or awkwardly shaped until the user stops being wrong. The hammer retains a single handle at all times, because consistency is important, but everything else is negotiable. Warning (Filed After Multiple Incidents): If the hammer becomes unreasonably large, reconsider your choices and the problem you are trying to solve. And know this: the hammer is ALWAYS right.

"Why the sour face?" I asked, tipping my head toward her.

"It sounds right up your alley."

"That's the problem," she said, lips pulling into a thin line.

"It sounds great, but I already have all the hammers I need." I frowned at her and spread my hands.

"So don't take it." She let out a slow breath and stared at the ground.

"Most of the loot in this dungeon is right up my alley, the way you framed it. That's the problem. I already gave up the egg, and now I might have to give up something else too." She glanced sideways.

"Al is practically drooling over the forge."

"We can always run this dungeon again," I said. She froze and looked at me. She didn't blink for almost a full minute.

"What?" I asked. She shook her head sharply, like she was trying to fling water out of her hair.

"You're sure?"

"Yeah. What's the problem?" She shifted her weight, fingers worrying at the edge of her t-shirt, then took a deep breath.

"You hate dungeons. So I was trying to do this as fast as possible and squeeze everything out of a single run." She looked up at me, and just like that, her face lit up.

"But if you're okay with running it more than once, then we're great. No problem whatsoever." Somehow, that made me feel like the villain. Yeah, I didn't enjoy fighting all that much, but dungeon clearing had been part of our routine for a long time now. I'd cleared so many with her that I honestly thought that was obvious. Apparently, it wasn't. I slipped an arm around her shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze.

"Fighting's not my cup of tea. I'd rather heal, sing, cook, or do just about anything else. But I've cleared a ton of dungeons with you, and it's been fine." I met her eyes.

"When it stops being fine, I say so. I don't have a problem with that." She stayed quiet, listening.

"Worst case," I went on, "you clear them with Al and Rue, and I'll be there afterward to patch you up if the potions aren't enough. Just remember that as long as I'm not saying anything, we're good." While we were talking, Al stood beside us, slowly turning the strange metal cube over in his hands. When I finished, he straightened slightly and cleared his throat.

"I am always willing to clear dungeons," he said.

"I desire the levels. So even if John chooses not to continue at some point, I will." Mahya's smile widened, and she waggled her eyebrows at both of us.

"Then let's collect the final reward and let this one rest, so we can do a few more runs." I almost asked how many more runs, then stopped myself. Right then wasn't the time. Instead, I turned to Al.

"What have you got there?" He held out the cube. The Perfectly Reasonable Nail-Producing Cube (PRNPC) A solid metal cube of indeterminate origin, questionable intent, and complete lack of accountability. One side features a wide intake slot. The opposite side produces nails. This is the entirety of its job description. The cube strongly recommends being fed metal. Any metal. Clean metal, dirty metal, bent metal, metal you were saving for something else.

Insert metal and allow the cube to apply magic to the situation. After a short and unpredictable amount of time, nails will emerge. No forging, shaping, or recognizable smithing process is involved. The cube simply decides that the input has now become nails. The nails are generally sharp, generally straight, and generally usable, which is considered a success.

If you choose to feed the cube non-metal materials such as sand, stone, wood, bone, glass, cloth, ceramics, organic matter, alchemical residues, enchanted scraps, or "just to see what happens," things, the cube will comply without hesitation, commentary, or warning. The resulting output may resemble nails, may resemble an argument against poor decisions, or may be something else entirely. The cube considers all outcomes acceptable. The cube does not explain its process. The cube does not accept complaints.

The cube is not responsible for injuries, property damage, warped reality, or emotional distress resulting from misuse. Repeated attempts to argue with the cube have shown no measurable effect. The cube does not negotiate. The cube does not apologize. The cube is correct. Usage Note: If the nails look wrong, reconsider what you fed the cube. If the nails look very wrong, strongly reconsider what you fed the cube. If the cube emits smoke or makes choking noises, it is already too late. I burst out laughing.

One thing I could say about this dungeon was that the descriptions were a hoot.