Chapter 52: Mass Production
Chapter 52
Max woke the next morning warm and comfy in his bed. Anna was hugging him tightly when he opened his eyes. He spent a few minutes running his finger through her hair before she reluctantly let go of him and decided to get dressed.
Max himself never took long to get ready for the day, but Anna was a bit slower. However, Max had no issues slowing down and watching his lovely partner put on her clothes one piece at a time.
After breakfast was finished Max went out to track down Hizon.
"What’s up Boss?" The hobgoblin asked when Max finally found him.
"Quin and I were talking yesterday and we think we came up with a decent idea." Max began to explain the idea about the merchant that would sell things between waves.
"Hmm. It could be done." Hizon said, but it was obvious he was not enthusiastic about the idea.
"I am not saying that you need to sell a lot. Just some basic items, and they can even be sold in limited supply."
The hobgoblin scratched his head. "I guess it would be useful if they forgot anything."
Max shook his head. "Maybe I am not explaining it correctly. I am going to change the dungeon setting so that after each wave, the adventurers will receive the Dungeon Coins that they earned in the previous wave. The merchants will then sell some overpriced but limited in quality goods. In the early rounds there will be a small number of arrows, bandages, food, and water. After later waves we can include basic traps or even hammers and nails. During the waves that come at night you could sell torches or something."
Hizon seemed like he was starting to understand. "Ah, I get what you mean. I will put a list together and run it by you before the defense dungeon opens again."
"Perfect." Max said before sending the hobgoblin off.
While the undercity had begun to take shape, there was still a lot of expansion Max could work on with his earth manipulation abilities, but first he had two dwarves to check up on.
Opening a portal, he stepped out onto the fifth floor of his dungeon. He hadn’t started his grand plans for this level yet but that would come eventually.
The area he entered contained his production facilities. Once he actually started building on the fifth level this area would be shunted off to the side in a hard-to-find location to keep it protected but for now that wasn’t necessary.
He gazed out across the fields in front of him. He employed druids and shamans to tend to the sprawling fields of grains, fruits, and vegetables in front of him. With the way these casters were able to hasten production and improve the yields he expected to start harvesting tomorrow.
If things went well, he was planning on purchasing livestock as well.
This operation should be able to cover the food for his dungeon, and the excess would be sold for dungeon points. Max smiled at that because he was sure Anna would give him a special treat when they achieved self sufficient food production.
Max chastised himself for the fact that he should have done this sooner. But the food production wasn’t the reason he was here today. He walked to a large warehouse that was off to the side of the floor.
This was the Gibble-Hammer workshop. As he entered the two dwarves noticed him right away.
"Boss. Come to check the progress?" Gibble asked.
"That’s right, how are we looking."
Hammer pulled a clipboard from his desk after wiping off his hands on the leather apron he wore.
"We have 100 mechanical hands built and ready to be programed and 15 all seeing eyes."
"Good." Max said. "That should be enough to get started."
"You told us you had an idea of how they can be used in production. Are we finally going to start on that?" Gibble asked.
"I hope so." Max said. "Let’s go over my plans and see if they can work."
Hammer and Gibble move to the table where Max unrolled a large piece of parchment.
"With the new sub-dungeon I added we are going need a large number of basic weapons. At least until I turn it into an instance and then can bind weapons to the eternal soul. I am hoping that we can use the arms to craft daggers, spears, arrow heads, and spear heads."
Gibble, the blacksmith of the pair spoke up. "Boss, that is just not possible. Crafting a good weapon can’t be done by mechanical hands. The precision isn’t an issue but there are too many variables and each weapon needs individual attention."
Hammer, the runesmith interrupted his brother. "While not actually impossible, it would take years to develop a rune sequence that could identify the faults in each weapon during the creation process and have the hands address each issue. It would take years to develop such a thing."
Max shook his head. "I don’t plan on having the hands craft each weapon from scratch, I understand that the effort to set up such a thing wouldn’t be worth it. Now let me ask this, have either of you ever heard of casting?"
"Casting? What’s that boss." Gibble asked.
"It is a manufacturing technique. We make reusable molds and pour in molten iron. Once the molds cool, we have to file away the imperfections and then sharpen the weapons. The quality won’t be comparable to hand crafted items, but they will do for grunts. Or in my case I have close to 6,000 low level goblins that will have weapons that break and get destroyed. If Hizon has to pay full price for weapons each time, he will never make enough. For now, we just need to sell him cheap low-quality weapons."
Max then showed him the basic sketches he had completed. "The idea is that we have an automated assembly line. The hands load up a large cauldron or something with iron and then skim off the slag. Different hands then dump it into molds. The molds travel down a conveyor to cool in a different part of the warehouse. Then new hands remove the items from the molds and clean them to be reused and send them back to the cauldron."
Hammer spoke up. "Then we can get some hands to file away the imperfections and sharpen them. Afte that they need to be taken away and stored until they are used. Yes, this can be done."
Gibble grumbled. "The blacksmith in me doesn’t like it but I can see the draw."
Max nodded. "They won’t be great weapons, but once we have it set up, we just need to supply the iron and then we get weapons that we can sell off. It should be an easy way to arm our grunts and earn DP."
Both dwarves nodded at that.
Hammer went off to start inscribing the basic runes that would be needed on the hands. Once everything was set up, he would modify them for precision.
Max helped Gibble acquire some high-class materials for the molds so they would last a long time.
While both dwarves started working Max began to lay out the assembly line and purchased what he could from the dungeon menu. The rest they would have to make by hand. Once the assembly line began to take shape Max took a step back and let the two dwarves handle the rest.
The dwarves would take a few days to get the assembly line up and running. And once it was it would need serval fine tuning adjustments. But those were problems for later. Right now, Max needed to put more time into the undercity.
***
2 days later, the first crate of mold-cast daggers was complete.
While they weren’t anything special, in Max’s eyes the crate was filled with treasure. Both Hammer and Gibble looked at him with anticipation. Max directed the Dungeon Core to the crate and expressed his wish to sell the weapons.
[100 units of iron daggers (Quality low)]
[Do you wish to sell for 120 dungeon points?]
When Max selected ’Yes’ the daggers vanished and left the crate behind.
"What price did you get boss?" Hammer asked.
"1.2 dungeon points per dagger." Max said while doing some quick math. "1 standard ingot of iron bought from the dungeon core cost us 5 DP. And from that we can make 6 daggers."
"6.12 daggers actually." Gibble corrected.
That surprised Max, he didn’t know where this remainder came from until Gibble spoke up. "When the automatic hands ground off the mold lines, we can take those scraps and re-smelt them since we are producing treated metal."
That made Max smile. Anything that cut waste was great in his book. But what amazed him the most was that the hands and all-seeing eye ran off of ambient magic. They didn’t need a power source. His production factory didn’t need obscene amount of electricity.
"6.12 multiplied by 1.2 gives us 7.344. subtract the cost of iron and that leaves us with 2.344 DP."
"Wow." Both dwarves exclaimed at the same time. Hammer then spoke. "So, 5 DP can buy an ingot of iron, after it is processed in the factory it is then worth 7.344 DP"
"That’s right." Max said. "Once we recover the cost of constructing the factory, we will make a decent profit. With more experience we can most likely increase our margins and make things even more efficient."
"Oh, don’t forget about the slag." Hammer said.
"The slag?" Max asked.
"Yes, the impurities skimmed off the molten iron. Once we collect at least a ton the dungeon core will buy it. It won’t sell for a lot, but money is money."
"Assembly lines are the best." Max muttered to himself.
Gibble let out a heavy breath. "I will be honest, the craftsman in me despises these cheap good. But..."
Hammer then finished for him. "The money we make from this will let us buy plenty of high-quality materials."
"Anna and I have talked, and I am prepared to fund 4 more assembly lines at the current time. We already have one for daggers. Now I want arrow heads, spearheads, short swords, and then for the last I want to make nails."
"Like construction nails?" Gibble asked.
"Precisely."
"Why?"
"Anna ran the numbers, and she is fairly certain that if we can make them in large enough numbers, they may be one of our biggest money makers."
"Hmm." Hammer stroked his beard. "Done right, we shouldn’t need to sand them, and they shouldn’t need much work. We can try it out."
"Great. Let’s plan on meeting back up in a week to see how things are going."