The quiet conversations going on between all of the crafters and delvers packing the tent quieted as Celeste walked through the flap and took her place at the desk facing everyone. Emi was quick to pour her a drink, which Celeste gladly took a few sips of before setting back down. Unlike before, a row of soldiers followed her in and blocked off the entrance of the tent behind them. Several of the crafters immediately looked nervous, since no one but the delvers knew what this meeting was about yet. Slowly, the chatter quieted until there was silence, as everyone waited for Celeste to address everyone.

  She touched something on her desk, and as always, the odd experience of the sound outside of the tent fading away came over us once again. Celeste slowly looked out across the group, taking stock of each person individually before she started. "After some further exploration of the third floor by Maxwell and Valkin's respective teams, we have enough information to share with all of you. Unlike before, this information will be considered even more privileged than all of the rest. I'm serious, anyone who lets anything from this meeting leak will see their whole families hang."

  There was a rush of whispers and shocked gasps from the room, but soon enough the murmuring died out. I don't know how well-liked Celeste was, but she always came off as fair to me. She wasn't telling these people all of this as a threat, more like a warning. As I looked over everyone, they looked nervous and anxious, but none of them looked actually scared. Alto glanced over at Piper apprehensively from his spot on the other side of the room, but didn't say anything.

  "If anyone would like to leave now, I will arrange for you to leave the camp immediately and return to Ironcastle. You will be held in the castle as guests until this camp is inevitably fortified and word of what's here gets out. Are there any takers?" Celeste asked. She looked around the room slowly, but no one said a word. Thirty long seconds passed as Celeste waited for anyone to speak up, but no one did. "I assume this means that all of you here understand the severity of what I'm asking of you. Good. Maxwell, if you please."

  Maxwell stepped over and dumped a bag of glowing gems onto a tray set at the front of Celeste's desk in preparation for this meeting. Nearly the entire room gasped as one, and everyone broke out into shocked chatter. The point was clear, the entire tray was filled with glowing gems. From the brief primer the others had given me in the dungeon, I had an idea of the significance of what she was showing them. But it wasn't until we got back and sorted through everything that things finally hit home for me. The entire tray on her desk was filled to the brim with magically charged gemstones. Forget money, we stumbled over a pile of weapons.

  "May I examine some of these closer?" one of the jewelers asked.

  Celeste nodded and waved him forward. The crowd in front of him parted to let the slightly portly human man past. He picked up one of the stones with a gloved hand and examined it with a jeweler's loop. The tent was silent as everyone waited for the man to say something about the pile of glittering stones.

  After a tense moment that dragged on for almost a minute, the man gulped and put the stone back down in the pile before stepping away. "That was a ruby the size of my thumb, charged to the brim with fire mana. There are dozens of other stones here, made from all kinds of materials, all charged with different kinds of magic. How... how long did it take for your personal delvers to gather this much? What tools did they need?" he asked hoarsely.

  Celeste stared at the man, but I caught a glimmer in her eye that made me think she allowed this man to approach precisely because he would ask these questions. "Everything here was gathered and sorted today. What's on this tray only includes the stones infused with magic. There are around twice as many mundane stones of the same type."

  There was another round of shocked gasps, but this time the tent roared with noise as different disciplines of crafters immediately began to talk about the things they could make with all of this. Like a mine, there was immediate concern that the extracted gems would be front-loaded and that there would be less over time, but they didn't actually know where they came from, like we did.

  While we were still in the dungeon, we talked about having things made from the lightning shards to make some connections with the crafters up here, but once we returned, Celeste did exactly as Maxwell predicted and immediately started making plans to bring the crafters into the loop. On a dime, this turned from an expedition to earn resources and money into an expedition to outfit all of her soldiers with the best equipment possible. The better equipped they were when this place was finally brought to light, the better. Ironcastle would need to have this place under control now. Losing this place would be an existential threat to the city-state.

  "Enough!" Celeste called over the voices of the excited crafters. The racket quickly died off and Celeste continued, "While these gems were quickly brought back, the method of retrieving them was a bit risky at best. I'll need to speak with any artificers who can enchant ranged area weapons that physically empowered delvers can wield, as well as anyone who can create passive magic defense enchantments using these gems as a power source. Once we're able to extract a steady supply of them, we'll need jewelers and wand crafters to produce more traditional magic enhancement equipment for my soldiers. Eventually, we intend for anyone here who can craft anything relevant to have access to these materials, but those will be our priorities at first. In the meantime, anyone other than the people I've listed will have access to the mundane materials. Even without being magically empowered, many of these materials are still valuable and useful in many crafts. A mundane ruby still serves as a phenomenal catalyst for many enchantments and alchemical reactions."

  One of the tool makers raised his hand in the back, and Celeste gestured toward him. He cleared his throat before asking his question, "What tools will be necessary for extraction? If you can give me an idea of what substance we're mining from, I can have some prepared."

  Celeste glanced over to us for a moment in thought before turning back and answering. "Nothing jumps to mind in terms of tools. These gems are actually derived from monsters, not mining. We may explore excavation eventually, but not immediately. In that case, we would be cutting through something that appears similar to marble, but we do not yet have a sample of that."

  There was an additional round of murmuring when they heard that the gems came from monsters, but the voices weren't actually as surprised as I had expected. While the crafters had initially assumed that the gems had come from mining, the idea of them coming from monsters wasn't exactly unheard of either.

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  A short drakken pushed their way to the front before raising their hand. "Those area weapons you're interested in? What kind of monsters would they be used for? Stone golems?" the feminine voice asked.

  Celeste shook her head. "No, come over here, Aven'ket."

  The rich purple scaled drakken came over to the desk, and Emi handed the woman a tray covered in a selection of the insect monsters we had brought back. A few were left intact, while others had the gems already removed from them and set aside with the specimen. The collection had a few examples of the different ways we had killed them, from crushing, fire, and lightning.

  Aven'ket's eyes lit up, and she pulled out a jeweler's loop to look closely at the different dead beetles and ants we had brought with us. While she examined them, she made cute little sounds of excitement as she looked at each one. Celeste showed the drakken woman a quick smile before refocusing on the other crafters.

  "The monsters on the third floor seem to be a mix of giant ants and beetles with precious stones, crystals, and gems attached to their backs. They live in giant nests, and within a specific window, they come out to fight each other on a regular cycle, just like the crabs come out on the first floor. Magic has proved to be effective at killing them, but as you know, not all delvers and soldiers have access to magic. One of our priorities is to find a way for our physically empowered delvers to safely harvest them, or at least have a way of protecting their mages while they collect them."

  There was another round of mumbling, but this one was much more short-lived. A thin draco man was quick to raise his hand before the crafters became too sidetracked. Celeste was quick to gesture for him to speak. "Yes, thank you, your high-er, I mean, my lady." The man blushed while a few of the nearby people laughed at his nervousness, but the thin draco powered through it. "Usually, it's inefficient to enchant items to cast offensive spells, but I have found a way to create items like this that slowly recharge over time. For this kind of enemy, this might be a viable tool, especially for physically gifted delvers who aren't able to use much magic... but I would need some samples to experiment with. Usually, the idea might not be worth exploring, but under these circumstances..." The man's eyes drifted to the pile of glowing gems on the tray.

  Celeste frowned and looked the man up and down. I'm not exactly sure what she was looking for, but she must have come to some conclusion because she nodded. "Alright. I suppose exploring novel ideas may be worth it in this circumstance, but we need to keep our waste limited. For now, I'll give you five pieces to work with, and if you can show me something that looks promising, I'll give you additional samples to experiment with after that. What is your name, lad?"

  The draco's expression looked more and more excited as she spoke, but his brow ridge raised in surprise when Celeste asked for his name. "Oh, um, my name is Kell'kit Tellus, my lady."

  One of Celeste's eyebrows rose. "A human last name, Mr. Tellus?"

  Kell'kit's eyes looked down at the ground before he replied. "Yes, my lady. Is that... a problem?"

  Celeste shook her head. "No, of course not, Mr. Tellus. It's just a surprise. Are you from the Tellus family that owns the merchant trading company, then?"

  The draco hesitantly nodded. "I am, yes. Though I'm not very... well respected among my family, for... well, obvious reasons."

  Celeste nodded sadly. "I am sorry to hear that. Do you prefer to go by Kell'kit? Or shall I continue to call you Mr. Tellus?"

  The man perked up a little and cleared his throat. "I would prefer Kell'kit, my lady."

  "Then I will call you Kell'kit in the future. Please hang back with the other crafters I have asked for after the meeting concludes, and we will allocate something for your experiments," Celeste said.

  I looked at the thin draco more closely. He looked a bit lankier than most draco that I've seen, but he still had a tall stature like many of them. He wasn't quite as tall as I am, but I towered over most people after whatever happened to me. His body was covered in orangey burnt-red scales. It was a bright and interesting color among the other draco that I've seen. His body didn't have much mana in it, relative to many of the others here, so I got the impression that he wasn't empowered. He had a nerdy vibe to him, and from his demeanor, someone who's been bullied a lot for it. The thought made me frown, it brought back some bad memories of school. I wasn't an especially nerdy girl, but it was among the things people picked on me for.

  My mind drifted to Luna as I looked over at her. She had been taught by personal tutors rather than sent to any kind of school, but she was still much more well-educated than most. She had gotten along with Maxwell and Piper growing up, so I suppose she wasn't bullied much. I wonder if she would be the type to have a lot of friends if she had gone to school. I wonder if we would have been friends in the world I came from.

  Luna noticed me looking at her and smiled up at me. I smiled back before turning my attention back to everyone else. The meeting was wrapping up now. Celeste was answering a few more questions, but it didn't seem like there was much more of note. Among the people hanging back for the smaller after-meeting was one of the soldiers, but I knew that was always the plan. The soldiers were meant partially for intimidation, I knew, but the plan to outfit their mages was relevant, and the soldier hanging back was the person in charge of the mages in their ranks.

  I sighed and shuffled my feet as we got closer for the next meeting. Hopefully this would be a little bit more interesting than the last. Who knew diving dungeons involved this many meetings!

  Hello! These dungeon report meetings are pretty fun to write, but sometimes I worry that I might be boring people with some of the details. I think it's kinda fun to explore the dungeon from a few different angles, and one of those is the value that craftspeople can extract from them. You'll have to tell me if they're interesting enough to keep a focus on. I hope you enjoyed the chapter, thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas!

  As a reminder, I'm going to be posting Umbral Feast only on Mondays from December 1st till December 29th. The schedule will go back to normal on January 5th. Happy holidays!

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