The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4) by Jonathan Brooks (e book reading free txt) 📕

knew from personal experience that her behavior changed after she was invaded the first time, and they were already too unpredictable without throwing desperate Cores into the mix.

Therefore, throughout the rest of the day Sandra worked on filling up her Roc tunnel rooms with traps and Dungeon Monsters, which eventually included every single one she had available on her Advancement Creation Options list.  She pulled in all of the Radiant Pegasi that the Elves had borrowed to station them inside, as well as the half-dozen Phoenixes she still had roaming around the Undead-Classification Core’s old territory, looking for any random undead that might have been missed even after it was destroyed.  Everything else had to be created, which took a significant amount of Mana, and by the end of the day she wasn’t even near being finished.  Some rooms had just a single Dungeon Monster in it to represent what she was planning on putting there, but she made sure she had the traps set up first.

She also found that anything larger than a Small Fire Energy Orb when placed in a Copper ball with a Fireburst enchantment was a bit too destructive for her dungeon (and the Goblins throwing them out as bombs) to handle.  They still produced a deadly explosion, but it was also significantly reduced in size, shockwave force, and heat.  It would have to do, though, especially if she wanted her Roc tunnel to stay intact.

At the end of her Roc tunnel just past her Home room, she built another 30-foot wall that encompassed most of the tunnel, leaving just enough of a passageway that she could get her Animated Slab through without too much difficulty.  She didn’t shut it off completely because that would prevent her from manipulating anything within the entire tunnel, and potentially even disperse the traps she had set up – which she had spent hundreds of thousands of Mana to create.  Needless to say, she wanted to avoid having to redo them.

However, she did take a note from what the Undead Core did – I’m learning! – and designed a way to collapse most of the stone wall through manual means if she were truly threatened.  All it took was placing two Small Fire Energy Orb bombs high up inside of the wall with a chute that led to the bottom.  They were positioned so that she could direct two Hyper Automatons placed inside the wall with them to drop the bombs on command, which had more than enough destructive power inside of the enclosed stone walls to make them crumble certain sections, sealing her Home room off from the Roc tunnel.  It was something that she would only do as a last resort because she would then be cut off from everything still inside the tunnel.

When night fell, the Elves and Shieldmen went back to their village or her dungeon, depending on where they called home.  The constructs and Dungeon Monsters she kept on watch over the dungeon entrances, however, in case the Core chose that time to escape.  She knew that if the number of attackers was too great, however, she would allow most of them to retreat; without the backup by their “handlers” – who she had to admit were better suited to directing them than she was – they weren’t quite up to the task of taking on a large force.

The number of her constructs and Monsters outside of her Nets were already beyond what she had when she faced the Undead Core at its peak, but it just wasn’t enough.  She planned to increase their number over the coming days, just as soon as she finished stocking her own Roc tunnel.  Sure, it was a little selfish, but even the Elves or Dwarves would admit that they had a lot of help already, so it wasn’t like she was leaving them undefended.  Plus, she was desperately hoping that the Orcs would come through and start providing her with some mercenaries because that would help more than almost any construct would.

Speaking of that…where are the others?!  It had now been just over 5 days since Violet and Felbar had left for their home, and a little less than that for Echo and Gerold, but she was hoping to hear at least something from them by then.  Her previous thoughts about them abandoning her came back full-force, and she started to become more than a little depressed…and angry.  After all I did for them, this is how they pay me back?  Am I just a joke to them?  Do they see me as just some anomaly and don’t care about the people around here?

“Sandra, don’t forget that these things don’t just happen overnight—” her Dungeon Fairy started to say, before Sandra angrily cut her off.

I’m well aware of that, but we’re on a bit of a time limit here.  Do these people just not care?  Are they that callous and insensitive?

The same part of her mind that had warned her about experimenting on the Goblins surged again, stronger this time.  It was telling her that it wasn’t her friends’ fault that they were delayed, and that there were thousands of different reasons they hadn’t come back yet.  One possible reason stood out among the rest, which helped to squash the anger and ramped up the bout of depression she was experiencing: that they had all died and no one was coming to help.

“Sandra…I think there is something wrong with you.  You’ve never had this many mood swings before in such a short amount of time, at least as far as I’ve noticed.  I think—” Winxa said softly, using the same calming voice that the Dungeon Core recognized from when she was a Human: like an animal handler trying to calm a startled beast of burden.  I am not an animal!

Sandra wanted to lash out at the Dungeon Fairy and deny that there was anything wrong, but