My Dungeon Daddy System: Raising Monsters and Waifus Underground-Chapter 94 – The Boom-Shine Distillery

The opening to Floor 3 from the garden felt like walking into the ligh. The air that hit Reed’s face wasn’t the humid, aphrodisiac perfume of the Garden below, nor was it the sterile, recycled magic of the Casino above.

It smelled of burning sulfur, copper shavings, and... yeast.

"Welcome to the Splash Zone, Boss!" Grika shouted over the roar of a furnace.

The Iron Works was in a state of controlled chaos. The back half of the floor was still sealed off by the obsidian wall Reed had erected to contain the Garden breach, but the front half had been transformed. The weapon racks were gone. In their place stood a monstrosity of brass pipes, glass condensation coils, and pressurized tanks that hissed rhythmically.

It looked like a moonshine still designed by a mad scientist who hated safety regulations.

"Holy crap, how does that short stack work so fast?" Reed said surprised.

Standing in front of this mechanical beast were two figures who could not have been more different if they tried.

On the left was Grika. She was wearing her heavy welding apron, goggles pulled down over her eyes, wielding a wrench the size of her leg. She was vibrating with kinetic frustration, bouncing on the balls of her steel-toed boots. She glistened with sweat and electricity.

On the right was The Herald. The Dryad stood tall and willowy, her skin the color of pale jade, her hair a cascade of living vines that twitched with agitation. She was holding a basket woven from living roots, filled to the brim with glowing, pulsating purple fruit.

"It is too hot!" The Herald hissed, her voice sounding like dry leaves skittering on stone. She hugged the basket protectively. "The babies are sweating! You cannot boil them! They need to gestate!"

"They don’t need a nap, Salad-Lady!" Grika yelled back, banging her wrench against a copper tank. CLANG. "They need to ferment! We need to break down the cellular walls to extract the mana! That means heat! Pressure! Violence!"

"Violence is for weeds," The Herald spat, baring teeth that were slightly too sharp for a herbivore. "These are Lust-Berries. They require a gentle touch. A lover’s caress. Not... steam."

Reed stepped out of the crevices, rubbing his temples. He was fully energized thanks to the planting session, but the headache of management was eternal.

"Ladies," Reed announced, his voice amplified by the acoustics of the cavern. "Please tell me we aren’t fighting over the groceries."

"Boss!" Grika pointed the wrench at the Dryad. "She won’t put the fruit in the hopper! She says the machine hurts their feelings!"

"It does," The Herald insisted, turning her solid black eyes toward Reed. She moved with that unnerving, fluid grace, gliding over the concrete floor. "My Lord. The fruit is alive. It pulses with the Mother’s love. If you crush it, you sour the wine. It will taste of pain."

Reed walked over to the basket. He looked at the Lust-Berries. They were the size of softballs, glowing with a deep, neon-violet light. They didn’t just sit there; they throbbed. Thump-thump.

"Okay," Reed said, looking at the machine. "Grika wants to cook it. You want to cuddle it. We need a middle ground."

He placed his hand on the copper tank of the distillery. He closed his eyes and reached out with his Void Sense.

He could feel the machine. It was a masterpiece of Goblin engineering: all torque, pressure, and fire. It was aggressive.

Then he reached out to the fruit in the Herald’s basket.

He felt the mana inside. It was thick, viscous, and slow. It had a rhythm.

"Grika," Reed said, opening his eyes. "You’re treating it like fuel. It’s not fuel. It’s an engine."

Grika blinked behind her goggles. "What?"

"The mana inside the fruit," Reed explained, gesturing to the glowing berries. "It’s already moving. It has a pulse. If you force it with heat, you disrupt the rhythm and the mana evaporates. That’s why the Herald is freaking out."

He turned to the Dryad.

"And you," Reed said. "You want to let it rot naturally. We don’t have ten years to wait for a vintage. We need to accelerate the heartbeat."

Reed walked between them. He grabbed a piece of chalk from Grika’s workbench and drew a circle on the side of the main tank.

"We modify the intake," Reed ordered. "Grika, don’t use fire to break the cells. Use Void Radiation. Build a condenser coil that wraps around the tank, but instead of steam, pump the exhaust from the Void Engine through it."

Grika’s ears perked up. "Void cooling? That would... induce entropy on the cell walls without raising the temperature. It would age the wine a hundred years in five minutes."

"Exactly," Reed nodded.

"Wait, since when are you the brains?" Grika questioned.

"Plot convince." Reed said quickly moving past it...

He looked at the Herald. "And Herald, you don’t dump the babies in. You guide them. You use your vine-song to keep the mana rhythm stable while the machine accelerates time. Can you do that?"

The Herald looked at the machine, then at Reed. Her vine-hair curled with curiosity.

"To sing them into adulthood?" she whispered. "Yes. I can do that. It is... a darker lullaby. But acceptable."

"Then let’s cook," Reed said. "I want two batches. The Red and the Green."

The next hour was a blur of industrial alchemy.

It was a strange dance. Grika was climbing all over the machine, tightening valves and adjusting the Void-flow with maniacal precision. The Herald stood by the hopper, feeding the glowing fruit into the chute one by one, humming a low, vibrating song that made the copper pipes shiver.

Reed stood in the center, acting as the conductor. He channeled his own mana into the system, stabilizing the reaction.

HISS... GURGLE... THUMP.

The machine came alive. The Violet light from the berries swirled through the glass tubes, mixing with the dark, oily substance of the Void exhaust.

"Pressure holding at 90%!" Grika yelled. "The entropy field is stable! We are speed-running fermentation!"

"The children are singing!" The Herald moaned, leaning against the warm metal of the tank, her eyes rolling back. "They are growing so fast! They are becoming... potent."

Suddenly, a valve whistled.

"Spike!" Grika shouted. "Too much sugar! It’s gonna blow!"

"Vent it!" Reed commanded.

"I can’t! The release valve is jammed!"

Reed didn’t think. He reached out with his hand, grabbing the hot brass wheel of the emergency vent. It wouldn’t budge.

"Elara!" Reed thought. "Chill!"

On it, the ghost whispered.

A flash of absolute zero radiated from Reed’s hand. The brass shattered from the thermal shock.

WHOOSH.

A jet of neon-green steam blasted out of the side of the machine.

It didn’t smell like wine. It smelled like battery acid, lime, and pure, concentrated energy.

"Catch it!" Grika scrambled, shoving a crate of empty glass bottles under the stream.

The green liquid filled the bottles instantly, glowing with a radioactive intensity.

On the other side of the machine, a tap opened slowly. Thick, dark red liquid poured out like velvet, filling a crystal decanter.

The machine shuddered once, then powered down.

Silence returned to the Iron Works, broken only by the bubbling of the bottles.

"We did it," Grika panted, wiping grease and sweat from her forehead. "We made... something."

Reed walked over to the table.

On the left: A bottle of dark, swirling red wine that seemed to absorb the light around it.

[ITEM CREATED: TWILIGHT NOIR]

[Rarity: Rare]

[Effect: High Alcohol Content. Induces [Shadow Whisper] (Truth Serum). Aphrodisiac qualities: Moderate.]

[Spirits: High]

On the right: A bottle of glowing, neon-green sludge that vibrated on the table.

[ITEM CREATED: GRIKA’S ROCKET FUEL]

[Rarity: Rare]

[Effect: Stamina +500%. Speed +200%. Heart Rate: DANGEROUS.]

"Okay," Reed said, picking up the green bottle. "Testing phase."