The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) by Jonathan Brooks (e ink epub reader .txt) 📕

the collection of bedrooms she had first put together when the larger party of Gnomes had been visiting.  From there, it had expanded to encompass 5 large rooms that were suitable for relatively small groups of different people – which would have to do at the moment for the Royal delegations.

Before he went to sleep, he supplied a large amount of his own blood for Sandra to use in making his Deep Diver suit, as well as helping Jespin acquire blood from the King.  Once he was done, he flopped down on the bed he chose and was asleep within a few seconds.  Night-time had fallen over the world outside by that time, though that didn’t mean that the attacks from the other Dungeon Cores had stopped.  Within the first 2 hours of the new Shieldmen reinforcements, as well as the continued construct creation Sandra was providing, things were starting to become a lot more controlled, and they were finally able to push the Golems back to the two entrances.  The Goblins and Beasts had yet to break out with anything significant, which was entirely because the Elves, Orc mercenaries, and Delarthe’s original team of Shieldmen were doing spectacularly well.

After 4 hours of diligently destroying everything that emerged from the 3 dungeons (she still had yet to see any movement from the Slime-Classification Core), everything…stopped.  There were no more Monsters of any kinds streaming out from any of the dungeons nearby, either aboveground or below in the tunnels.  In effect, it was quiet—too quiet—and Sandra wondered if they were currently upgrading their Core Sizes again.

“Highly doubtful,” Winxa mentioned, when asked.  “Unless they had expended every little bit of Mana they accumulated since the last upgrade on finishing the stages required to upgrade their Core Size, they wouldn’t have enough.  And they obviously had been spending large amounts of Mana, otherwise they wouldn’t have been trying to assault either your tunnels or above the ground.”

Even with the enhancements they are taking advantage of right now?  If I remember correctly, their upgrades cost 25% less now.

The Dungeon Fairy just shook her head.  “Yes, I took that into account, believe me.  There is very little chance that they have managed to accumulate enough Mana to do that quite yet – so they must be up to something else.”

That was what Sandra was afraid of.  It was hard to predict what was going to happen next, though she suspected something in particular.  Namely, she hadn’t seen any evidence of new Dungeon Monsters from any of the Cores as a result of their upgrade – so she figured that was coming next.  What exactly that meant was anyone’s guess, though she continued to produce constructs and even the new Shadow Wyvines for the Elven Rangers.  Similar to the other non-construct Monsters that she had access to, the Advancement Level increase had made the Wyvines much bigger.  They were stronger and deadlier as a result, but she was a little disappointed that they hadn’t acquired any more Special Abilities than they already had; regardless, the Rangers were extremely happy to have the extra help.

While the ceasefire was suspect and worrying, it also allowed those that had been fighting a chance to rest and recover.  The Orc mercenaries went back to Grongbak, leaving only a few behind; all but 3 Elven Rangers (including Chryla) went back to Avensglen to rest for the night; and every one of the Shieldmen trudged back to the dungeon to get some much-needed sleep.  The new Shieldmen following orders under First-shield Parten were the most exhausted, as they had been awake and apparently fighting for days already.

Speaking of Parten, when he arrived back at the dungeon, Delarthe showed him down to where the villagers and new citizens were holed up, but he insisted on seeing King Mynag.  That only made sense, and Delarthe showed him the way after some instructions by Sandra, leaving him to argue with Jespin.

“What are you doing?  We need to get out of here and back to Grandhall.”

The Master Blacksmith just *hmphed* and didn’t even look at the Shieldman as he was busy working on the King’s armor.  “Not right now, Parten.  There’s no sense in going back until I make this for him, anyway.  Besides, we need Sandra’s help to accumulate enough of the mithril that we need to outfit as many Shieldmen as we can.”

“You can’t seriously think it is a good idea to trust a dungeon—”

“She can hear you, you know.”  Jespin laughed when he saw the color drain from the Shieldman’s face.  “Parten, you need to relax a little bit and think things through.  If this dungeon wanted to kill us, Sandra would’ve done it the moment we stepped through the entrance.  Not only that, even if you don’t trust her, this—” the Master Blacksmith held up the massive chunk of mithril next to his workstation— “is the only thing that will save us.  Unless there is some hidden plan I was not aware of to push back the dungeon monsters slowly encroaching on our strongholds?  No?  Then we need to be able to outfit our Shieldmen for the future, and without mithril we can’t do that.  So, whether or not you trust her is irrelevant; this dungeon and the Core that runs it are the only hope we have.”

Parten was fuming, but even he could see what the Master Blacksmith was saying was correct – or at least correct for the time being.

“Besides, First-shield – it isn’t your call to make.  Once I get this done, and we’re lucky, the King will be up and around and can decide when it is time to leave.  Sandra has already promised to send us on our way with enough mithril to last a hundred years, especially after she got what she wanted.”

“And what was that?” Parten asked suspiciously, which prompted Sandra to finally chime in.

The one thing that your