"That's great!" Kose replies. "It seems like you've really already found your niche in magic item crafting."

She places the glasses back on the testing statue.

"I can't really think of any more tests for the glasses," she comments. "They seem pretty robust."

"That's the idea! Hm... let me test out some different ways to arrange glass on their own, then I'll call it done. I really want to avoid glass shards in anyone's eyes."

Now, at last! She can do that actual glass test that got interrupted by needing to host! And she can do them in front of Kose without it being alarming! Excellent. Pyrex versus the generic versus the arrangement of glass for the final layer of the bulletproof (resistant) sandwich. They will go onto little stands on the ground, like one would place a board that one is going to karate chop. At lens size. The tiniest little chops, for the tiniest martial artists.

Then she will start dropping tiny rocks onto them from high up. Wheeeee~!

They all hold up fairly well! Except for the generic glass, which breaks like, well, glass.

When they do break, the Pyrex breaks into jagged shards. The glass from the composite breaks into little hexagonal-ish nodules, with the occasional sharp corner, but overall perhaps a bit safer to have suddenly in your eye.

... Glass from the composite, then. She can work her way up to it being a proper composite with all of the layers that people who actually specialized in engineering came up with. This decided, she puts the glass back together, and then finishes constructing the glasses. Magic and all.

"Do you want one of these?" she asks, when she's got the magic on it properly. "Or a communication pendant too, now that I think about it. Or just a magical item you want, really."

Kose's eyes widen, and she thinks for a moment.

"I'm not sure what I would do with a communication pendant," she replies. "But I would love a pair of magic-sight glasses. And perhaps you'd be willing to repair one of my rings?"

She tugs a ring off of her middle finger, and holds it up.

"I try not to use it outside of a dungeon, so that it doesn't become too worn, but I don't know how much life it has left in it."

The ring is clearly well used, but nowhere near breaking. The concepts tied to it are things like "food" and "health". It seems as though it might supplement or replace food.

One pair of magic seeing glasses, with the frames given a loving leaf pattern, just for Kose!

And then she peers at the ring. "Oooo, this is neat. I didn't realize magical items could do this, I'll maybe see about making some. It's well used but wasn't near breaking." She then carefully smooths everything out and makes sure the concepts are properly anchored in place; with the glasses, Kose can even see what she's doing. "There you are! Want a spare, too, just in case?"

Kose smiles. "Yes, please, if it's not too much trouble."

She accepts the glasses, and settles them on her face.

"Rings like that aren't as good as real food, but they can be invaluable when you need to travel somewhere that food is scarce," she remarks.

"Makes sense. Good to have, just in case. I'll have that be the next magical item, if that sounds smart to you? Since I'm already figuring out how to make it."

Speaking of: this will need to involve some peering at the ring, to properly understand how to copy it. Smoothing it out and pinning everything back in place doesn't require the same understanding that actually making one does.

She taps her fingers thoughtfully.

"I'm not sure that a ring like this is necessarily a good idea," she replies. "While they are definitely useful, they're something of a niche item. I think probably the most valuable types of item that you don't have represented yet are weapons and shields -- the wilderness can be pretty dangerous, and Adventurers go through things like that quickly."

The communication amulet which Aestrix has secreted away chooses that moment to come to life.

"Well, can you hear me?" Rokat's voice asks.

"I can," Pona replies. She sounds slightly out of breath. "I don't see why you wanted the first test to be so far away, though."

"Oh, remind me to tell you about the time we got the set of communication pendants that only worked if you were getting closer. That took a long time to sort out, let me tell you. And not only because they only dropped after you killed one of those terrible bear things. Anyway -- does it sound clear?"

There's a bit of a pause as she does a little dance on the inside. It's working! It's working!! Her clever spycraft is totally working!! Wait wait no don't just fall randomly silent in front of Kose, pretend like nothing is happening at all. She will allow herself to be steered towards things that would be useful in violent situations, sure. To a point.

"Oh? Okay. Uhh... so, shield or healing, then? I mentioned that one as a possibility to Perkre, that seems like it'd be really useful if I can figure it out. I guess I can make weapons, but I don't really, er. Know how they go, I think dungeons that actually have monsters would make better ones."

... It is hard to hold a conversation while listening to another one. This is perhaps a flaw in her master plan. She'll need to figure out some clever way to have, uh, speech-to-text channels she can check later, probably, she's plenty good at juggling those.

They step through the six channels, and then Rokat instructs Pona to head another four miles out of the village and see where the edge of the range is, but the Aestrix misses a bit of their conversation before she tunes back in.

"... but don't go too far, now," Rokat admonishes her.

"I know where the boundaries are! I'm not seven," Pona protests. The cadence of her voice suggests that she's running again, her breaths coming between words. "Anyway, I'll check in every 500 paces."

"Shields are definitely useful," Kose agrees. "Actually, that gives me an idea! If you're going to want to make your magic artifacts as durable as possible, you could set up testing them like we just did as a challenge for adventurers. It would let you test shields and refine your designs, while also providing a non-harmful physical challenge."

"It's just an idea, though," she continues. "It's ultimately up to you."

"Oo! Yeah, that does sound good! Much easier than coming up with another puzzle. I should carve out a little testing area for them, then..." She will get to doing that, because doing that explains why she is not being talkative while there is a conversation she is attempting to listen in on going on. Boundaries? Why are there boundaries?? That sounds like valuable information about the fabled ~outside~ that she knows so little about.

Unfortunately for her, they really are just testing the limits of the communication pendants. Or perhaps fortunately, because she hasn't set up any kind of speech-to-text system, and she suspects she will be very quickly overwhelmed if there's too much talking at once. This was, probably, a good test for her system as well. There's still time to set things up before anyone goes saying anything important on these things of hers.

She builds her testing chamber with dual purposes in mind; first is the obvious, and second is a place to fit her planned sensory accommodation. So far her architecture has been tall and delicate, but the room at the bottom of the set of stairs leading down and away from the rest of the dungeon is sturdy and squat. It does not break into being a sad box, because she has standards, but it's definitely not the striking gothic architecture from before. Just a very sturdy domed and square room, with visible and only mildly decorative support columns. This is so that people can try to break things inside without causing too much mayhem, but also so that it can support a second, secret room above. That'll be where she has her speech-to-text system, once she figures out how to pull it off.

Before she works on it properly, though, she has some general dungeon chores to take care of. Kose gets her spare ring of sustenance (this being what it clearly is) and the planter in her room gets a little sun lamp that is very pointedly enchanted to give off sunlight, thank you. The next set of communication pendants, already made and untouched by the last set of adventurers, get the titanium in them swapped for the titanium-platinum alloy that worked so well for holding the magic of the glasses. She has a vague hope that this will keep the magic from fraying for longer, but the fundamental structure of the concepts is exactly the same. It's just hopefully on a material better suited to hold it for longer periods of time. While she's doing chores, she neatens up the ring puzzle, adding color and making it lighter and easier to turn. The strength element is kind of silly, okay, she wants little old ladies to be able to wander in here and get something to make their wells safe all on their own, thank you, even if it means extracting less dungeon bullshit per capita.

From there, she adds a couple of elements to her growing library, from elements she thought of that might perhaps become relevant to her interests. Bismuth, tungsten, lithium, and antimony are the ones she can definitely recall being real actual elements that really exist, and from which she can probably actually build stuff out of. She could make more dangerous elements like sulfur, magnesium, phosphorus and mercury, but she'll pass, actually. No war crimes, thank you. She might make lead at some point, it's genuinely a useful material, but doesn't waste budget on it when she knows she'll flinch away from ever using it for fear of giving people lead poisoning. From there she then has herself an extended experimentation session trying to make things she remembers that may or may not actually exist. This gets her iridium and cobalt and palladium, but not much else. Really, that was better than she was expecting, she's glad she had this idea. Pity that she cannot actually bring all of the various Minecraft metals and alloys to reality, she could have done some great things with enderium, but yes, yes, fair enough. Following the almighty periodic table of elements, and all that.

With this all done, she then gets to work on that speech-to-text enchantment. It's going to be a bit of a project, but if she can stupidly program a puzzle to solve itself, she thinks she can absolutely pull off impressing the concept of written language. Maybe even before someone says anything notable on the communication channels! Wouldn't that be nice.

The next thing to interrupt her experimentation is a visit from Tanth. He is nervously fingering the hilt of his sword, and appears to be alone.

He pauses just inside the dungeon, and clears his throat.

"Ah, Aestrix? Do you have a moment to talk?" he asks.

She has not, at any point, told him her name.

“… yes?” she asks anyway, still aiming for the picture of innocence even as she’s on high alert. “Is something wrong?”

"No, no, not at all."

He steps a bit further into the dungeon, and then stops. He looks at the architecture, for lack of a better place to direct his gaze.

"We just, uh, that is to say ... the other villagers and I haven't been entirely honest," he explains. "And we talked about it, and we want to come clean. Because you don't ... that is, you don't really act like other dungeons."

Kose leans on the doorway to the core room with her arms crossed, watching him with a neutral expression.

"I'm clearly far superior in both aesthetics and function?" she teases, lightly. In her experience, a little playful humor helps break the tension. So long as it’s backed up by sincerity and gentleness, which is the tone that follows. "It's okay. I understand that dungeons are, uh. Really extremely scary? You're just trying to stay safe."

His shoulders droop a little, in relief.

"Yeah, that's exactly it," he agrees. "Dungeons ... they're the source of magic. But that also means that within their domains, they can do pretty much anything."

He moistens his lips.

"So, uh, with most dungeons we really can't treat them as more than opponents. But you're not ... acting like you want what most dungeons want from us. And we -- that is, the whole village -- talked about it, and we thought maybe this time could be different. And we agreed that if you were going to help us, with the restoring old magic items and all that, we should start off on the right foot."

He takes a deep breath.

"Kose isn't really a fairy," he blurts, and then tenses up like he's expecting the pretty gothic arches to come down on him.

!! Aww!! Awww they're really actually trusting her!

"I know," she says, still in that gentle reassuring tone of voice. Fluffy and nonthreatening and not at all surprised by this revelation that is supposed to be massive, that's her. "Honestly, I'm glad you have a system to keep baby dungeons from going mad with power or something. It's much safer this way, isn't it?"