Around the cave entrance, a group of fire dwarves who look somewhat similar to dwarves but whose beards and hair are all flames are guarding the place.

Judging from the number, these guys are at least several thousand.

They had built a fortress around it and sent people to guard the fortress walls.

The fire-enchanted crossbows were arrayed on the city walls at a scale no less than that of the bastion bases. The soldiers guarding the walls were all wearing heavy iron pagoda armor that only revealed their eyes and mouths. They looked very difficult to deal with.

“Is this normal?”

Hiding behind a rock a few kilometers away from the target, Carl put down the telescope and questioned the newly joined drow.

What the other party said before was: The passage leading to the surface is guarded by monsters sent by the fire giant.

The situation of the fire dwarves does not fit their description at all.

"I, we didn't know the situation was like this! Those who escaped before became slaves with a lower status than us after returning. They were sent to the Fire Elemental Plane to do hard labor. We don't know the specific situation here."

Looking at those fire dwarves who were armed to the teeth, the drow mage complained in a trembling voice.

After a brief silence, Carl regained his spirits and waved to Thorin.

"It's impossible to leave right away. Let's prepare to build a temporary base here. I hope these fire dwarves don't have a way to communicate directly with the fire giants."

Carl sat down against the rock resignedly, looking up, thinking about how to deal with those fire dwarves.

He was not worried about Moore's class because the spiritual connection between V and Carl was quite magical. Once Carl died, V would react immediately.

At this time, Carl couldn't help but feel a little annoyed about the specialness of the world he lived in.

With Feren's short messaging technique, he can contact familiar people within his own plane, and even if he crosses planes, the most he can do is lose track of his target.

Although Eberron also has short messaging technology, the message loss rate is frighteningly high due to the interference of the twelve moons. Only the Dragonmark Family can use the dragonmark artifacts made of Siberys dragon crystal to communicate stably.

Thinking of this, Carl shook his head and drove his unrealistic thoughts out of his mind.

"Although Faerun is good, the gods often fight against each other. People like me might be affected by a disaster while sleeping in the middle of the night. Sigh~, it's not easy!"

With a slight sigh, Carl stood up from the rock on the mountain and prepared to start working with Thorin.

If they rely on themselves to fight against nearly three thousand fire dwarves, that would not be a breakout, that would be suicide.

"What are you going to do?"

Seeing Carl waving at him, Thorin walked forward and asked Carl for his opinion.

He knew that he was not as good as Carl in forging skills or anything else, so he always regarded himself as Carl's deputy.

But as the saying goes, a good cook cannot cook without rice. What can these two people do in this deserted place?

As if he could see what Thorin was thinking, Carl patted him on the shoulder.

"Don't worry, there is lava everywhere. Are you afraid that we don't have the materials? Maybe we can extract gold or mithril from the lava. Let's build an engineering construct first, and build a temporary base nearby for the rest!"

At this point, Carl's consciousness became a little dazed.

"Why am I digging holes everywhere like a rabbit? When I reach level 14 as an artificer, I will find a way to keep a demiplane fixed on my body!"

Just as the huge demiplane can be kept constant inside the wizard's tower, the caster can also use certain means to keep the demiplane constant on himself.

Carl's current theory on this is still based on the mansion technique of Mordenkainen.

"Hand-to-hand build an engineering construct? Just the two of us?"

Looking around, Thorin asked in disbelief.

"What else?"

Carl forced a smile without any meaning and shrugged helplessly.

After a few hours, Carl had created the right tools and began forging from the skeletal part of the construct.

But the others were not idle either. Scorpion and Bain took the newly joined drow to scout the enemy situation, Shadow was on guard all around, and Hope used the druid's ability to explore the nearby lava river and tried to dig out some high-quality ore.

With the Lava River as a treasure land, smelting and forging are much easier.

In addition, after going to bed every day, Carl would study the principles of the teleportation array in the dream world.

After realizing that it was impossible to return to Storm Bay as soon as possible, his enthusiasm for studying the relevant principles increased a lot.

However, the remaining pages of the giant spellbook also helped Carl to a certain extent.

Based on Carl's own interpretation, he suspected that the spell recorded on this fragment of page had a certain connection with space.

Because he recognized in them runes related to the etheric and astral realms.

Three days passed in a flash, and soon, an engineering construct that was several times smaller was created by Carl.

It’s not that Carl and Thorin don’t want to make it bigger, it’s just that they don’t have enough materials.

"Very good, let's build a temporary base here!"

Operating this construct that was not endowed with a soul, Carl provided his own magic power and began to dig in the nearby rock.

Carl crushed the excavated rocks, threw them into a large crucible, and then put them into the magma to heat them.

Most of these rocks contain metal components. According to the information obtained by Scorpion and other drow, the fire dwarves also processed metal in this way.

This made Carl, who had originally hoped to find a stable source of minerals, a little crazy.

But he also made some improvements to the process.

That is to use the sulfur dioxide gas emitted from the lava to make sulfuric acid, then use strong acid to dissolve the metals, and then reduce them through electrolysis.

The two methods were carried out simultaneously, which allowed Carl and his team to produce metal much faster.

However, due to the limited scale, the total manufacturing volume is still quite small.

"Should we consider digging a tunnel directly to the surface through the nearby rock face?"

Tormented by the iron-making work, Hope tried to think of a less troublesome solution.

But Carl said to Hope very frankly: "Do you remember how long it took us to land when we first fell? If we had to dig this distance by ourselves, it would probably take us two years."

"Then if we can bypass the fire dwarf's fortress and enter the natural tunnel from another location, wouldn't that save a lot of time?"

Hearing this proposal, Carl hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

“Hiss~! This is a solution. Although it is still a bit troublesome, it is also a way out! Wait a minute, I will calculate the amount of work!”

Quickly taking out a piece of draft paper and spreading it on the structure, Carl calculated for a moment and found that the workload was still bearable.

"I can't tell, Hope, your IQ has gone up!"

"Hmph! Virtue~"

After giving Carl a punch, Hope went to prepare food with brisk steps.

"For a secret project like this, it's best not to use too many constructs. Three should be enough."

Thinking of this, Carl took a look at the processed metal ingots and had a plan in mind.

Manipulating the construct to drill into the ground, Carl looked at the simple hole and sighed out of habit.

After walking deeper for a while, a relatively spacious space appeared.

At this time, Thorin was building an assembly line for producing construct parts.

Eight drow soldiers helped carry the materials, making it look a bit like a small workshop.

"How about it, are there enough metal ingots?"

Because of the different types of metals mixed in the rocks, the metals obtained by Carl and his team were not exactly the same.

Most of it is iron, but there is also copper or other substances that cannot be identified for the time being.

Carl tried to separate various metals by taking advantage of their different melting points, but except for iron and copper, the separation results of the other metals were mixed.

"The strength of these iron ingots may not be up to standard. The air here contains too much sulfur, which causes the metal ingots to be mixed with a certain amount of sulfur during the production process."

Seeing Carl coming in, Thorin stopped the work in his hands and reported the problem to Carl.

"Then leave it alone for now. I'll think of a solution later. You can use the copper ingots to make the construct first. Hope gave me an idea, and I plan to..."

After telling Hope about his idea, Thorin immediately supported it, "Okay! I think it will work! But we still have to make the iron constructs. We can use them to lure the fire dwarves away from their hiding place, so that we can pass through the tunnel secretly!"

After reaching a preliminary consensus with Thorin, Carl consulted with Bain and others.

In the end, Hope's proposal won the support of the majority.

The only one who had some opinions was Scorpion. This guy still thought it was safer to use the construct to destroy the fire dwarves head-on.

If they could make contact with the other elemental creatures in the tunnel, they might be able to catch up with Carl and the others as they advanced.

That would greatly increase the danger Carl and his team would face.

However, the reason why the fire dwarves are so difficult for Carl is their fortress. If he can bypass this tough nut to crack, Carl's mecha will be enough to give those tin cans a good beating.

The giant mecha can crush them with one kick.

After some consideration, Carl decided to take a two-pronged approach. While building the secret passage, they also had to continue building the constructs!

All things are difficult at the beginning. After Thorin built the assembly line, the speed at which Carl and his team produced constructs began to increase.

As the number of constructs increased, the speed at which they smelted metals also began to increase.

However, there are always some tasks that need to be done by the spellcaster himself, such as those involving the engraving of magical runes and the creation of the construct itself.

In another room, a magic circle for summoning spirits was built. All the people were like parts of a machine, interlocking with each other and running at a rapid speed.

This gave Carl the illusion that he was working on the assembly line of an electronics factory during his summer vacation.

(End of this chapter)