Several days after we began gathering wood, I found Karumi waiting for me in front of the cabin.
“Good morning. Pardon the abrupt visit, but I’ve brought a few things that could aid you.” Towering behind Karumi was a mountain of cardboard boxes, all bearing the Tundra label. Barrels peeked out of every box, all with the same logo branded on them.
“Good morning. What’s with the barrels?”
“Read this.”
Karumi handed me a little paper booklet entitled General Purpose Coagulant (Standard Construction Stone Framing: Liquid Solution) Instruction Manual. I scanned the detailed explanation. It sounded quite easy to use. Just paint an area with the material, and whatever you applied it on, from soil to sand, the spot and its surroundings turned into solid stone.
“This seems really convenient. It’ll make construction easier.”
I sure wished she’d brought it along sooner. This opened up all kinds of possibilities. For example, we’d planned to shovel up cubes of regular dirt or even sand, which were going to go to waste. Now we could instead turn them into stone building materials and reuse them. Sure, I could go take the pickaxe and carve out the stone we needed to use, but it was heavy, and we’d still have to do something with the soil and sand we dug up. I’d never had any call to try using it for anything before, since those cubes crumbled under any kind of impact.
But did I really need fifty barrels of this stuff? Kinda seemed like overkill.
“I’ve never seen this in the Tundra catalog before.”
There was a certain pleasure in browsing the Tundra listings, so I did it often, but it was my first time seeing this stuff. Maybe it just sold out as soon as it was listed; it certainly was useful enough.
This almost seemed too convenient. Even a novice like me could tell that this sort of material would make construction work fast and easy. “Are there restrictions on where you can sell this stuff?”
This kind of thing happened from time to time, especially with PC games. The platform would apply restrictions on particularly desirable goods in certain areas, bringing many a tear to the unfortunate region-blocked gamer’s eyes. Karumi nodded, confirming my suspicions.
“These are intended to be supplied only to labyrinths operating in forward zones, but, well...” Her voice trailed off.
“Smuggled it in for us, did you? Well, I may be new to all of this, but I know a desperate situation when I see one,” Mary solemnly spoke up.
I was thinking the same thing, and was relieved to find that she was able to look the other way, even if reluctantly, when the rules needed to be bent to save someone on the brink of destruction. Perhaps she’d seen the same thing herself and learned to accept it while fighting on the front lines. What a relief to find she wasn’t completely by-the-book.
“You see, we never know how much the labyrinths will need, so a large supply is always kept in reserve. But due to the nature of the reagent, its effectiveness weakens over time in storage, so these barrels of coagulant won’t actually turn anything to the hardness of stone. At best, the result will be the consistency of soft wood.”
Degradation of industrial chemicals was a fact of life. Still, even turning things into soft wood would come in handy for construction purposes.
“Working labyrinths generally cannot use them in this state, so they were slated for disposal.”
It was a believable story. Even stone walls and floors would need frequent upkeep in a labyrinth frequented by adventurers.
“Although these were supposed to be disposed of, they’re not without their uses, so I’ve built up a steady supply. I get them from the control center for operational labyrinths with the intent of using them in case of emergencies for the public works labyrinths under my oversight, like yours. It’s fully within my authority to provide you all of this material, for your own usage.”
“Being in charge of labyrinths sure is hard work.”
The light faded from Mary’s eyes as she was once again exposed to the full scope of the bureaucracy associated with my job. You could almost hear, faintly in the distance, the sound of her dreams being strangled to death.
I left Mary behind, stewing, and went to test out the coagulant. At first glance, the mountain of barrels looked to be made of wood, but on closer inspection they turned out to be cardboard. I kind of thought you’d want to transport liquids in something sturdier, but meh, whatever. I ripped off the tape on top of one and removed the lid, then I took a closer look at the viscous white fluid inside. I picked up the brush that had been taped to the top of the barrel, dipped it in the liquid, and spread a bit of it on a block of soil I had handy.
“Doesn’t look any different to me. And the instructions claim you don’t even need to wait for it to dry, right? This stuff sure is handy.”
I produced a shovel with the <Dungeon Management Tool> and dug into the block of soil to which I’d applied the coagulant.
“Oh, wow, look! It’s not crumbling, Aoi!”
Ann stared at the mossy cube of dirt. I picked it up in awe
“It’s firm enough that this shouldn’t crumble so easily anymore.”
I rapped on it with my knuckles, but instead of breaking apart, it gave a satisfying thonk. Man, seeing a chunk of damp, soft soil turn into a single solid cube really reminded me of this one game I’d played a while back...
“Wow, that’s so weird! It feels moist, but my hand isn’t getting wet at all. This is freaky.”
Ann had taken the mossy soil cube from me. Or, I guess it was more like a mossy block? She lifted it up and eyed it, squeezing it here and there.
“So let’s see, it comes with a dissolving agent, or you can pour hot water on it for long enough and the effect will wear off. I see.”
The instructions even had a section on undoing the effects. It somehow made sense to me that boiling water would undo the effects of the coagulant, and it was a nice emergency measure in case you ran out of the dissolving agent. It wasn’t like intruders were going to build a sauna inside the labyrinth, so it probably didn’t present much of a risk to the integrity of the building materials.
“Okay, the manual doesn’t cover this, but I gotta try it out anyway.” I dug up eight mossy soil blocks and stacked them into a cube then coated it all with the coagulant and tried picking it up.
“Yep, they’re sticking together.” I picked up my jumbo-sized block and shook it around, but it didn’t show any signs of breaking apart. The eight blocks had hardened into a single big block.
“Cool. So not only does this harden soft soil, it also works as an adhesive.” I couldn’t rely on it too heavily, because it only made things as hard as soft wood, but I could still use the hardened earth and sand as building materials.
“This is a godsend. We’ll be able to finish the labyrinth faster now for sure.”
“I’m pleased to be able to fulfill my duty of aiding my labyrinth managers.” She was hiding it well, but I could tell Karumi was elated about having done something useful. Ann nodded at her brightly.
“Man, it’s gonna be a lot of work hauling these all to the construction site.”
“Oh no!”
Apparently neither Karumi nor Ann had thought of that. But come on, just use your head. We had at least fifty of these giant barrels, all filled to the brim with coagulant, and here they all were at the bottom of a deep ravine. Maybe I’d be fine if this were some game where I could just stick them all in my backpack and they’d magically take up no space and weigh nothing, but I didn’t think Karumi had any trick like that up her sleeve. Hell, even if she did, she probably couldn’t let me use it. The thought of hauling them all up out of here was giving me a headache.