Entering the Foundry this time was very different than when Duke entered initially aside from the greeting message.

  *** You are entering the Celestial Foundry of Teldin. This place is a haven for all of Teldin’s crafters. Be welcome to ply your art here for the good of all in good faith and honor. Should you enter with anything but honor in your heart, turn around now lest you find yourself lost forever in the darker passages. ***

  Sar Borglyn stood before him, or more to the point, loomed over him. Duke could swear that the minotaur had actually gotten bigger in the time he was gone. He looked up to see the broadest grin he had ever seen on a minotaur’s face greet him.

  “Welcome, Emperor! The Celestial Foundry stands ready for you!”

  Duke did not immediately respond as he was craning his neck to see around the mountain of a minotaur and capture the hundreds of creatures and people moving about with purpose. He remembered dozens of passages branching off the main entrance but what he saw now boggled his mind. Are there even this many crafters on the planet?

  Duke finally responded, “That’s good, but I’m not sure I was ready for all this.”

  Sar Borglyn chuckled, “Things have been busy here in the decades you have been absent.”

  “Decades?”

  “Yes, Emperor, it has been more than thirty years since you established the Foundry. We have trained up our second generation of crafters already. They are still young, but they learn quickly with the enhancements built into the training halls.”

  “Second generation? Are people living in here?”

  “Of course. We currently have seventy-two thousand residents. The Mana generation from that many sapient lifeforms is absolutely wonderful!”

  “Seventy thousand people are living in here!”

  “Seventy-two thousand one hundred eleven, to be more precise.”

  “That’s going to take a bit to process. How goes the crafting then? It looks like things are in full-swing.”

  “Indeed. Fully one third of the crafting halls are in use. Of those, nearly a quarter of them are at full output.”

  Duke stared at the minotaur processing the numbers. “So, from what I am calculating, you would need nine hundred thousand people to be at full production?”

  “Closer to one million, but I can provide all the support staff needed so we might be able to manage with a few less. But that is also a bit deceptive. There are many crafting halls reserved for crafts that have yet to be discovered.”

  “Such as?”

  “If I knew, they wouldn’t have to be discovered, would they?”

  “Good point. So where should I start?”

  “The hangar.”

  “Oh, that sounds promising. Show me the way.”

  Sar Borglyn led Duke through several passageways. All the while, they dodged carts speeding through the passages, driven by all manner of beings and presumably being propelled by magic as Duke could see no creatures pulling them. Still, they raced by as fast as a car on a highway. Duke marveled at the speed and control given the apparently wooden wheels. Vulcanized rubber. Surely someone has made that here, right? We’ve got spaceships and the like. Magic and technology have to have blended more in other areas of the Cosmos. Why not here?

  It took them nearly an hour to reach the hangar. They spent the time getting Duke caught up on some of the more significant discoveries and projects. The one that stood out to him the most was related to runescripting. Duke was eager to visit that workshop next – they had made some significant strides in unlocking its capabilities beyond what he and Baslin had learned.

  When they reached the hangar, Duke found it was one of the few workshops that sat at the end of a passage. It also had doors that opened outwardly into the hangar and were fully the width and height of the corridor. His anticipation grew as he approached the doors, expectantly awaiting the wonders he knew must wait for him beyond. Cautiously, even reverently, he reached out for the doors that broke open before him with a hiss of escaping atmosphere.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Duke quickly strode through the doors which slammed shut behind him. Before him spread out a vast manufacturing plant. Assembly lines stretched into the distance, filled with furious activity. For as far as Duke could see, there was activity. There was a mix of races working the lines but there seemed to be a definite order to them. Dwarves and Orcs worked the heaviest machinery while elves and even fae creatures worked on finer details. He walked down the lines barely realizing that Sar Borglyn had left his side.

  As he progressed down the line, he saw that ship parts were becoming more and more defined. At the end of each line, a specific ship part was being finished and handed off to an enormous wagon that took the parts off to some other location. The size and scope of the operation was hard to grasp.

  Duke received waves and nods of acknowledgement as he progressed, but none stepped away from their work. It seemed like the work was repetitive, but they all seemed to be happily focused on their tasks. He decided not to interrupt them.

  As he approached the end of this current line, a dwarf shouted out jubilantly, “Sixt-two!”

  The response from around him was a collective cheer that was equally joyful and encouraging. Duke stopped and asked, “Sorry, to interrupt but Sixty-two what?”

  “Levels. Sixty-two levels into Practiced rank. Only eighteen more until I hit Adept and get promoted!”

  “Well, keep at it then!”

  “Yes, I most certainly will!” He dove back into his work still grinning.

  Duke moved from assembly line to assembly line until he came to the final assembly area and this was what he was looking for. Ships were being assembled finished piece by finished piece. There were devices being used to remotely lift pieces into place. Duke’s senses told him the devices were magical in nature and he supposed that made sense. There were parts being brought in from elsewhere and he could see that they were heavily runescripted on their interior surfaces.

  The entire scene made him smile and as he looked at the completed ships, he found that they were about half again larger than the Iron Reaper and even more heavily armed. He couldn’t help but feel that they were still not enough to deal with even the Syndicate ships he had already seen let alone what he feared they could bring to bear if they got truly serious.

  “Good day, your majesty.” Duke turned to see an albino minotaur smiling at him from behind.

  “Good day to you as well.” A quick scan showed Duke that this was not a dungeon creature and, in fact, the first actual minotaur he had met. He took a pause to note the differences between a dungeon creature and the actual creature before him but the only difference he could discern was in its system recognition.

  “So, Your Majesty, do you like what you see? Do you wish any explanations or walkthroughs?”

  Duke smiled, “Why don’t you walk me through what I am looking at beyond that they are well-armed ships.”

  “Certainly. They are things of beauty, are they not?”

  “Actually, they look a bit boxy to me?”

  “That, Your Majesty, is part of their beauty.” He saw the confused look pass across Duke’s face but chose to ignore it. “Let me take you through one of the completed ones we have in storage, and I think you’ll see what I mean.”

  An hour’s walk later, Duke was coming to terms with just how much area this particular production area actually entailed. He had counted at least one hundred ships being assembled as he passed by the workers. He even heard a shout of “Ninety-two” that was followed by cheers that even carried a bit of awe in them.

  They finally passed into a new area that had hundreds, if not thousands of ships laid out in perfect rows with plenty of space between each to move between them. Duke’s mind stopped counting after he saw more than forty rows of fifty ships each.

  “There are more than two thousand ships here!”

  “Yes, Your Majesty, there are. And we are making more as fast as we can.”

  “We can’t possibly have enough trained pilots for all these.”

  “We have an entire pilot-training dungeon.” Duke did not know when Sar Borglyn had joined him again, but the voice from behind him was unmistakable. He turned to take in the massive minotaur while Sar Borglyn continued, “Granhok has done spectacularly in bringing the shipyards up to this level. You should commend him.”

  “Oh, believe me, I am beyond impressed.”

  Granhok smiled, “No, you’re not. Not yet.”

  “No, really, this many ships are more than I had imagined.”

  “But you’re worried about how they will hold up against capitol ships, right?”

  “You reading my mind or something?”

  “Not your mind, but your face tells the story rather easily. But I was saving this little tidbit for later but, let me alleviate your worries right now. There are two features of each of these ships that are going to change your mind.”

  “I’m listening.” And Duke was indeed listening, eager for whatever wonder was about to be presented to him.

  “OK, first off, each and every one of these ships is so automated that it is designed to be crewed by a single person.”

  Duke nodded in appreciation of that remarkable feat of engineering but could sense that wasn’t the anticipated reveal.

  “The more important thing, Your Majesty, is that the ships are modular. They can be combined in countless configurations to make any larger ship you desire. Need a destroyer? Combine ten ships and you have a destroyer. All their systems combine including their weaponry and shielding to make a whole that is greater than the parts. And if one part, one ship, takes too much damage, it can be dropped from the configuration and the rest will re-combine to maintain overall integrity of the larger ship while the pilot of the damaged ship joins an undamaged one.”

  “That’s fucking amazing! Show me around one of these things!”

  “Of course. Right this way. You see the area marked in green on the side of the ship? That’s the pilot’s entrance and exit. While you only need one person to manage the ship, there is space inside for up to five hundred troops if needed. It can also be reconfigured to handle mechs or a mix of both.”

  “Hell, fucking yeah!” Duke followed the minotaur onto the ship.