Now that a majority of the crafters had left, it was only Celeste, the delvers, and the handful of crafters that have opted to stay behind. Kell'kit, the thin draco man, was looking at me nervously, while Aven'ket, the purple-scaled drakken, was ignoring everyone in favor of continuing to look at the tray of samples that she had pulled toward herself. The rest of the crafters had left to look at the mundane materials, including Rell'kor, the black and white scaled drakken from Jol'ket's team. Apparently, there were some crystals among the things we brought back that make for very effective poison reagents.

  Other than the ones that made themselves known during the prior meeting, there were a few other people there that I recognized but never spoke to. One was a relatively muscular feline beastkin man, and the other was a drakken man that had steely silver scales. Nevan, the beastkin, was a gemcutter and jewelry smith who was especially good at creating passive defense enchantments. He was apparently so skilled in this niche that no one contested him being the one to help outfit us, while the others assisted the soldiers. The steely drakken was named Torlin. He was more of a generalist experienced in creating a wide variety of enchanted equipment for others. Unlike Nevan, he had gotten into an argument with some of the other crafters about who should be responsible for helping out the delvers and came out on top. It seems like helping us was somewhat of an honor, compared to the soldiers. I was missing some of the cultural context here, but it didn't seem like a good time to ask anyone about it.

  The other notable thing about the two was, unlike most of the other crafters in the room, both of these guys were empowered themselves. The drakken was retired from delving after a long career, and the beastkin's gear had become so popular among his delving acquaintances that he stopped having time to actually delve and switched his focus to crafting after a while. If I judged their strength on how much mana was in their body alone, the beastkin was only slightly weaker than Maxwell, while the drakken was quite a bit stronger than everyone here except for Celeste. That didn't exactly translate into actual strength, but it was a fairly good indicator of how dangerous these guys could be if they wanted to be. Thankfully, both of them were more than happy to be the ones to help us.

  "So, what kind of weapons were you thinking?" Aven'ket asked, dragging me from my wandering thoughts.

  Maxwell shrugged. "I was hoping you could help me with that. I'm not exactly sure what we can do that would let me fight these beetles. I was better off trying to smash them with my boots than swing my sword at them."

  Aria laughed, but Kell'kit's eyes went wide, and he sputtered out his next words, "You can't stomp on them! You'd damage the weaker materials, or tear through your boots on some of the harder ones!"

  "I didn't have much choice. They were crawling all over the place. Climbing up and biting us all over," Maxwell said while grimacing.

  "What did you do on your second go at the floor?" Talia asked.

  Maxwell laughed. "I didn't do anything but scoop up the ones that Iris swept over to us with her magic." He indicated the young mousekin with a hand.

  The crafters all glanced toward Iris, who shrank down a little in her seat once everyone's attention was on her.

  "A kid that age has enough strength in her magic to yank these stones around?" Aven'ket asked.

  "Yes, ma'am," Iris replied nervously.

  "Don't need to call me ma'am, kid. Just call me Aven'ket."

  "Yes, ma- erm. Yes, Aven'ket," Iris replied.

  "Wind primary caster?" Torlin asked.

  Iris nodded shyly.

  Torlin's eye ridge rose, and he glanced at Maxwell. "Why are you bringing such a young child into an unexplored dungeon when she's only a wind caster?"

  I cleared my throat. "Our primary caster is fire focused, and they have practiced together extensively. Our group is more robust than usual, so we have the ability to protect her better than most."

  The drakken squinted at me before shaking his head. "Reckless. Allow me to create some backup equipment for her at least. A wind mage shouldn't delve at all without someone or something to amplify."

  Celeste tapped on the table with a nail, and everyone's attention immediately redirected to her. "Your concern for Iris is appreciated, but please do not insult the judgment of my delving teams. I'll give you extra gems to create some backup equipment for her, but please be respectful, Torlin."

  Torlin bowed low. "Of course, my lady. I apologize." I had half expected the drakken man to give one of us a petty glare, but he seems to have really meant his apology. All teeth and disrespect had completely fallen away from him after Celeste's minor rebuke.

  There was a tense pause after that, but Nevan quietly raised his hand after a moment. "So these beetles, what kind of damage do they inflict on you when they swarm?" I noticed Valkin off to the side shiver from the memory.

  Maxwell shrugged. "Outside of the full moon, they just physically bite you all over. If it were just one or two bites, it wouldn't be a problem, but there were so many and they were so fast that someone could have bled out if we didn't have a healer on hand. During the full moon, there were all sorts of magic attacks flying around. All of us but Helena had to retreat to the prior floor."

  "It was quite wild to see so many different spells being slung everywhere at random. We had to leave, otherwise we could have been hit by random crossfire," Aria added.

  Nevan nodded. "I think I can do something about the bites. If they're relatively small bites coming from all over, I could create something that would repel and protect you from small attacks like that. They would only be able to break through by repeatedly attacking the exact same place. One of you will have to test a prototype for me. We'll see if that will be sufficient to deal with them. I'm less sure what to do about large amounts of random spells, especially if you're unsure about their strength. The wider the variety of types of attacks that a shield has to protect from severely limits the shield's effectiveness against anything."

  "Not having to worry about the swarm's physical attacks would help a lot. If we were just trying to get past the floor, we could avoid the worst of the little guy's magic attacks, but if we're trying to harvest them, we'll need some way to mitigate that danger," Valkin said.

  Nevan shrugged. "A full-spectrum barrier would take a lot of magic to maintain and wouldn't protect from much. You would be better off overlapping dozens of different protection spells on the same artifact."

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  "Would that be possible?" Celeste asked.

  Neven suddenly looked a lot more nervous, but he nodded. "I suppose that would be possible. I could make an artifact with many different inset gems, but the cost of such an artifact would be enormous, and it might not even function that well regardless."

  Celeste glanced at the tray of gems with a frown. "Why don't you take some of the weaker looking gems and attempt a proof of concept? If the results are promising, we could revisit the idea. We should have lots of materials over time. If we could attempt some form of full-spectrum protection, that may allow us to harvest even more, which would be worth it as long as killing them doesn't affect the enemy spawn rates negatively."

  I nudged Luna. ("Killing them can affect the spawn rate?") I asked her.

  ("Yes. We won't know how it works until we can conduct some long-term harvesting, but sometimes the dungeon may increase or decrease the number of enemies over time in response to our actions. Sometimes, over-harvesting can cause an entire enemy type to be wiped out. Other times, it can increase the number so significantly that harvesting them becomes impossible. Either option could make a dungeon worthless, so it's one of the biggest concerns for long-term dungeon extraction,") Luna explained.

  "Have you come up with something for the physical delvers to use?" Celeste asked Aven'ket, now that the other matter was settled.

  Aven'ket crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. "I'm not sure, I'll have to try and figure something out. Maybe brainstorm some ideas with some of my friends. Swarm monsters are difficult to deal with for all non-mages. While a huge supply of gems could help, it doesn't really solve the problem. Even if we craft him something so that he can throw around some spells himself for a bit, in practice, that won't really help him harvest all that much better."

  "I heard something about a flamethrower," I said. "Could that work?"

  Aven'ket processed my words before slowly nodding. "That's a better name than anything else I've come up with. Straightforward. Really gets the point across. Do you mind if I take that?" she asked with glee.

  "Uh... sure?" I was just trying to explain the thing Luna told me about. "Something like that could help, maybe."

  She scratched her chin as her eyes drifted back to the tray of gems. "I was originally envisioning that as a weapon that would automatically change the output of a mage's mana, but something powered by infused gems may be more viable and useful in this instance. I'll give it a try. Maybe I can think of something more appropriate while working on it."

  Celeste nodded happily. "Good. Sounds like you have a few things to experiment with, then."

  Kell'kit cleared his throat. "As for experiments..."

  "Of course, you requested some gems to work on a new array for casting offensive spells. Do you have anything in mind?" Celeste asked.

  He hesitantly nodded. "It should be adaptable to most offensive spells, so I was just thinking to start with something like a firebolt, or something similar. It requires two similar or identical gems with matching mana potency. So, anything I can find from the pile would work well."

  Luna tapped my arm. ("What about the lightning shards? All of those are nearly identical. Wouldn't those work for this? Captured lightning magic wouldn't be particularly useful to me, but that might be a good place for him to start with his experiments.")

  ("Would you mind giving up a few lightning shards for that?") I asked.

  ("If the result goes to Maxwell or Aria, then I think it would be worth the cost, even if it doesn't end up working and he destroys them,") she replied.

  I raised a hand. "I think I have a better idea for a material to test with. The only thing I ask is that the resulting artifact go to one of my friends if the experiment goes well." I pulled the copper-lined box from my storage ring and placed it on the table before opening it in front of everyone. "We were planning on looking into what we can make from these soon anyway, but something that could help Maxwell or Aria would be ideal."

  Kell'kit's eyes lit up in excitement when he saw the crackling box of lightning shards. "May I see?"

  I slid the box toward him. "Go ahead."

  The tall draco carefully examined the box of lightning shards with interest. "So many identical shards. Where did you get these?"

  I shared a glance with Luna. "We harvested all of them from a few lightning strikes on our trip back from the Fallow dungeon."

  He nodded. "That must have been very dangerous. The thunderstorms on the plains in that direction are known to come in fast and be devastating to travelers. You were lucky to have been spared that."

  I didn't want to share exactly how we were able to obtain these shards, so I didn't argue with his assessment and redirected his attention back to the experiment. "So, do you think these would work well? I could give you a pair of them, and if the experiment works, I could give you more. As long as Maxwell or Aria is the recipient of the final product."

  Kell'kit looked up at Celeste, wordlessly asking for her permission.

  She nodded to him. "I do not mind allowing Miss Helena to risk her gems here, rather than using the ones gathered from the dungeon. I will not argue if you wish to make this deal with her, Kell'kit. Please proceed if that's what you would like to do."

  He turned back to me and held out a hand. "Thank you for trusting me with this experiment. I will do my best to give you something that is worth their value."

  I smiled and shook his hand. "I look forward to seeing the result."

  Celeste nodded again with a slight smile on her lips. "Excellent. Onto other business, then."

  For the next hour, Celeste moved on to discussions about arming the soldiers and the standards she has for them. This discussion leaned much more on the crafters than us delvers, but we stayed to share our opinions on the second and third floors and what it would take to ease any future harvesting. Luna was much more involved in this conversation than I was, so I was mostly just speaking for her. Once everything was wrapped up, I was dying to get out of there, though. Meetings meetings meetings! It almost felt like I was in college again!

  Hello! I was a bit surprised to see how universally liked these meetings are. I can be a little hard to gauge how interesting other people will find certain things, so I'm happy that everyone seems to like them for the most part. Don't worry, the next chapter WON'T be another meeting though! lol. Even if you do find them interesting, I doubt anyone wants to see too many of them right after another. I hope you enjoyed the chapter, thanks for reading!

  Here's a link to the community Discord:

  If you would like to support my writing on , you can read up to 10 chapters ahead there!

  Please leave a favorite and/or a rating so I can get my story in front of more eyeballs! If you really enjoy the story, a review would help me a lot! I would greatly appreciate it!