The Crafter's Dungeon: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 1) by Jonathan Brooks (literature books to read TXT) 📕

Sandra decided to see if she could make her dream of doing her own crafting a reality.  Of course, she was a long way off from that; now that she had a goal in mind, however, she worked single-mindedly on accomplishing it.

The first thing she did was instruct her existing Clockwork Spider to continue roaming around her small little cave.  Although there was very little benefit from doing so in the beginning – since most of the ambient Mana had already been absorbed – Sandra noticed that it slowly returned, only to be sucked up immediately and funneled to her Core.  It wasn’t a large amount, but it was at least steady.

While her dungeon monster did that, she concentrated on what the Dungeon Fairy had told her to do – expansion.  Although she didn’t consider herself like most of the other Cores that Winxa had told her about (with their insanity and homicidal tendencies), Sandra knew that they had at least one thing in common: the need to grow larger and expand their Area of Influence.

This was made abundantly clear as soon as she started to eat away at the nearby cavern walls, converting the Raw Material into Mana as she went.  Soon, though, she started to feel like her tendrils of thought that were seeking out the Raw Materials inherent in the walls were starting to reach their limit.  She could still “eat” away at the floor and ceiling, of course, but luckily, she didn’t have to.

Because she was now completely full of Mana.

Warning!

Upgrading your Core Size will deplete all of your Mana and leave you unable to perform any other action until the upgrade is complete.  However, any previous orders given to your dungeon monsters will continue to be in effect, and any traps setup through your dungeon will still operate normally.

Upgrade your Core Size? Yes/No

As soon as she had reached full Mana Capacity, she found a blinking option on her Core Selection Menu that said, Upgrade Core Size?, so she of course selected it.  The warning was good to know for the future, but as there was no discernable risk to her right now, there was no reason to delay.  She selected Yes, and her vision immediately dimmed so that she couldn’t see more than a tiny bit away from her Core.

She started to freak out a little bit when she felt her senses dulled; she couldn’t “feel” her Clockwork Spider or hear its strangely comforting *tink-tink* as it roamed around – and trying to reach out with her invisible sensing “tendrils” was a no-go either.  She was essentially trapped in her own mind again, and that scared her more than a little bit.

Although she had survived the featureless void where her soul found itself after she had died, the experience wasn’t a pleasant one.  She well understood how most of the Dungeon Cores that were taken from there went insane; Sandra thought that the only reason she hadn’t lost her mind was that she had so much knowledge to remember from her life and reviewing it had helped her hold on to her sanity.  At the same time, she acknowledged that toward the end of her existence in there, even her constant recitation of the various crafting recipes and techniques she had learned wasn’t as effective as it had been at first.  Although it was hard to accurately tell, she thought that another decade or more in that place would’ve had the same result of insanity as every other soul that emerged.

Therefore, to be thrust back into a space where she was stuck with just her thoughts again was difficult.  Fortunately, Sandra had two things going for her; one, she could still vaguely sense the area directly around her Core – which was admittedly not much, but it was something, at least; and two, the time she was stuck like that was blessedly short.  At least, it didn’t feel like a long time – she had no real reference of passing time down in the deep recesses of her cave, but she figured it didn’t take any longer than an hour or so.

As soon as her Core Size upgrade was done, she felt an explosion of information assault her senses.  After no more than a second or two, however, Sandra acclimated to the new sensations and was able to look around with what felt like “new eyes”.

She could literally “see” through the walls of her small cave and felt the dirt and stone it was comprised of.  Her range didn’t extend far, though, but she estimated that it was nearly four times farther than her current two-foot diameter cave – so it was still a significant improvement.

Her Clockwork Spider was still roaming around her cave, so Sandra grabbed ahold of its attention and directed it to look towards her Core.  She gasped inwardly when she saw herself – I’m twice the size I was before!  Apparently, the Core Size upgrade was literal: she had literally doubled in size.  Now that her Core was larger, she could make out the perfect facets around her structure and was fascinated in the way the internal glow emitted from the center, only to be broken up into a beautiful array of light along the cavern walls.

Your Core has grown!

Current Size: 2

Mana Capacity increased!

Ambient Mana Absorption increased!

Raw Material Capacity increased!

New Construct options!

New Monster Seed Schematic available!

Core Selection Menu

Dungeon Classification:

Constructs

Core Size:

2

Available Mana:

1/20

Ambient Mana Absorption:

.02/hour

Available Raw Material (RM):

25/200

Convert Raw Material to Mana?

25 RM -- > 1 Mana

Current Dungeon Monsters:

1

Constructs Creation Options:

2 (1)

Monster Seed Schematics:

1 (1)

After the shock of a random purple-colored screen temporarily popping up in her vision faded away, Sandra looked at her Core Selection Menu.  She noticed that, just like her physical size, almost everything had doubled.  Her maximum Mana