Violet and I spend quite a bit of time just watching the babies hatch, and I keep moving most of the mana into the alliance pool. I mentally label it Violet’s college fund, and hope I’ll be able to designate it as officially hers later. For now, I should focus on the baby scythemaws.

The basic solution to what to do is fairly simple, at least: we’ll keep doing what we’ve been doing. The maws have been doing this for some time, and it’s been working, so we should mostly just try to stay out of the way. Still, Violet wants to take a bit more of a direct approach in making sure they get to the water, so I suggest a few expeditions.

She’s a bit nervous about that, too, but if she wants something done, she should do it. She should be able to handle it. The aquifer lakes themselves are a bit beyond what she can patrol, but the passages between her and there are mostly safe. Her denizens should be able to handle anything they stumble over.

I feel her trying to organize as I watch her scions work to do what she wants. Onyx is sticking close to the nests, even though the babies aren’t trying to dig their way out just yet. I think she wants to both protect them, and to get a better look at them once they get moving. The other scions are being a bit more surprising.

I was expecting Cappy to be the one preparing to organize some expeditions, but I think Nose is going to be the one handling that. A little mushroom pops up in the metalworks as Legs and Jello both work to make a pair of little digging gauntlets for the mole, and Nose seems to split his attention between it and the two scions making gear for him.

I can only assume Cappy is giving him whatever intel he has available on those tunnels, and Nose is more able to focus and listen once Legs and Jello are done measuring him. They get to work, shaping and sharpening, and I notice Legs is taking a bit of a back seat to making the gloves. He does some basic work, and a few fine adjustments, but most of it is being done by Jello.

I can feel her burbling away happily through the bond as she works, and her technique is a lot different from Legs’. He mostly uses an anvil and hammer, as well as the small heating forge to shape the metal. Jello seems to act almost like a hydraulic press, and simply brute forces things into shape inside herself.

I’m glad to see her putting the shaped pieces into the heating forge once she’s done bending them, too. Cold working metals like that, especially steel, can introduce stresses. While it’ll be harder, it will also tend to be more brittle. But a nice gentle heating and cooling treatment will let it relax. The sharper pieces will need to be tempered later, but that comes mostly at the end, once you have the shape finalized.

She does do a little hot working, too, mostly in making little connecting pins and such for the joints. She grows little tentacles to grab the tongs and hammer, and she’s getting good enough that she can work on bending one piece while hammering out another. She has a pretty impressive rhythm going, too. I think Legs has been teaching her how to properly multitask, also. I’ve seen him working on several pieces at once before, as well, using all his legs to his advantage.

Nose eventually finishes listening to Cappy and goes to get a couple more moles to follow him. By the time he gets back, Jello is almost done with the gloves. I watch as she works on the last rivet, and I can imagine her sticking out her tongue in concentration as she works on flattening the hot piece of metal enough to not fall out, but not so much that the joint will bind while moving. One last tap of the hammer and she picks up the gauntlet, looking at it with… whatever she uses to look. Satisfied, she dunks it in a water bucket, and I get a notification.

Metalworks Gained!

I stare at the notification for a moment, confused, before realizing what that means. Jello! You did it!

She seems confused for a few moments, too, before I feel the bond practically explode in happiness and excitement. She does a happy dance in Violet’s metalworks, and Legs looks on with pride at his student. You did great, too, Legs! I even feel Violet’s happiness at being able to contribute. Metaphorical hugs all around!

Nose makes a little noise to remind everyone who the gloves are for, and Jello happily gives him his new gear, which he eagerly equips. I don’t think there’s any special quality or anything to them yet, but they should at least make it a lot easier for him to dig around, and should be great to help defend himself, too.

I watch him go as Legs and Jello celebrate a bit more, and I wonder what kind of title he’ll get. My scions have been more happy to lead the expeditions from home, rather than head out with them. I wonder if he’ll get Scout like Teemo? It’s definitely a cool title to have. Either way, I should let him do his job and get to playing with my new room!

It only takes a few moments of thought for me to know exactly where I want to put my metalworks. There’s plenty of room at the labyrinth entrance for something like this, and Jello will be delighted to watch the delvers and be watched in turn as she works. I spend a little mana to redirect my ratlings in their efforts in setting up the shops in the area. There’s only a few adjustments to be made to turn a smelter into a metalworks.

It’s mostly just in scaling down the things that make heat, and scaling up the things that work the metal once it’s cooled. I spend the rest of the mana needed, and my first metalworks is officially a thing! I nudge Jello with that knowledge, and she wiggles in happy excitement. She’s eager to get to work, so she hugs Legs and makes her slow way back to me.

However, instead of going straight to the metalworks, she heads towards the labyrinth itself. I watch, curious, as she starts gathering my denizens. She starts by unceremoniously absorbing a whole hill of the cinder ants, organizing the coke they produce and keeping the ants together. I get the feeling they’re confused, but not confused enough to actively resist one of my scions in her work.

She then heads to the melting pot chamber, and stops at practically every hill there. Those ants are a bit too warm for her to comfortably grab up like the cinder ants, so they instead trail along behind her. She gets quite a collection by the time she’s done, having crucible ants with bellies full of all the different metals and alloys they’ve discovered so far.

Her last stop before heading for the entrance is to grab one of my new basilisks. The strange denizen looks just as confused as the cinder ants, but doesn’t object, even when the crucible ants climb onto him for easier movement… or because he’s more comfortably warm.

The whole strange procession soon emerges from a shortcut and into the metalworks, and I’m just glad there aren’t any delvers there at the moment. Jello deposits the cinder ants in a corner of the shop, and I make a note to ask Queen to encourage a few of the hills to move into the other planned smelter and forge areas. I bet I can get a lot of mana out of the little guys. First, delvers will need to get coal or wood to feed them, then I get mana for them gathering the coke, and more mana for them using it to make whatever they want to make!

I think the labyrinth is going to be even more lucrative than I expected. I should check for coal nodes, too. While I have stone, gem, and metal nodes, I don’t think I’ve actually made any coal ones yet. I can probably have tunnelbores dig out an area nearby to put in some, too. I’ll see about doing that after Jello gets her shop in shape.

With the cinders settled, she gets the basilisk to settle into the forge. I spend a bit of mana to expand it a bit, too, since the crucible ants seem to want to stay in there, also. Jello calls them out, group by group, to start making ingots around the rim of the forge, and she takes the tongs to pluck them out and set aside to cool as they reach the size and shape she wants. Looking at the shapes, I think stock is the technical term? There’s rectangular pieces, round pieces, thick flat pieces, and they all get cooled and sorted by material and shape by my new Metal Smith.

That thought even reminds me, and I gently take a closer look at Jello, not wanting to disturb her, and giving her a chance to ask for privacy. I’m happy to see her new title comes with a new affinity: metal! That’s going to be all sorts of cool to work with. I think Coda is probably going to be hanging out with Jello a lot more, too. There’s a lot of interesting things that metal can do, lots of tough moving parts that will just be easier to work with than stone.

I’ll probably suggest she work on replacing a lot of the parts for the mechanical traps, once she’s more settled. For now, I watch her work, and watch the ants start heading back into shortcuts towards the melting pot, to gather more materials. I can almost hear her humming through the bond as she works, going at a steady rhythm as she stocks her workshop.

You done good, Jello. I’m proud of you.