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

Behemoth.  In the southeast corner of the room was her relatively small treasury, where she stored most of her created supplies (like wood and metal ingots) for use in her crafting or for converting into Raw Materials if she needed it.  The south-southwest portion of the room was the tunnel leading to where the Dwarven villagers were working and the growing fields were in production at the moment.

That left the eastern part of the room for her tunnel, though there was one big problem with that direction; if she were to build it out from her Home room at an angle going up to the surface, it would run right into the VATS section that marked the large open column in the middle of her dungeon.  Therefore, she would either have to try to completely rework one of the other tunnels and rooms leading to where her Dungeon Core was located – which would be a bit of a nightmare to manage, not to mention practically impossible to redo the defensive rooms since they needed to remain completely open and functional the entire time – or she would have to go down.

In effect, her Home room was parallel with the bottom portion of the VATS, so she would need to dig underneath that section; once the tunnel was past the VATS, then there wasn’t anything preventing her from angling up to the surface.  Mapping it out in her mind and looking at the underground portion, while measuring angles and determining how steep she could make the incline, she realized that if she kept it at a gradual angle it would eventually come out extremely near the orc village of Grongbak.  Not quite inside of the village, thankfully, but within 1,000 feet or less away from its perimeter.

All of which meant that she would need to gradually curve it at the same time it was angling upwards, which just added another complexity to the entire endeavor.  She was originally going to make the tunnel just barely wide enough for the Aerie Roc to squeeze through, but if there was a curve, it needed to be just slightly bigger to accommodate the curvature.  Curved tunnels – at least from her experience with small-scale ones throughout the rest of her dungeon – were a bit tricky to keep accurate with sizing, because it wasn’t a straight shot from one room to the next.  There has to be a better way.

The answer was a simple one, when she finally thought about it. She figured she could always have the tunnel dug out just a little way, create a large space where the Roc could turn towards a completely different direction, and then go that way.  Simple and easy enough; to top it off, she could use straight tunnels which were a lot easier to excavate and firm up through her special Dungeon Core abilities.  Thinking about it a little more, she thought she might even be able to make a second room inside of the tunnel, which would eventually head off to the east – where it could potentially come out near the middle of the wastelands.

All in all, even though she had a plan, it was an enormous undertaking.  Creating a tunnel that was 120 feet tall and 30 feet wide, that would span at least 2 miles long, wasn’t something that was done overnight.  At least, not for a normal Dungeon Core; fortunately, she had some constructs at her disposal that would help with the excavation, and a wealth of enchanting knowledge in her mind of things that might help as well.  Even with all of that, though, it wasn’t likely to be done for a few days if she was lucky.  Unless, of course, Winxa had some special method she knew about that would speed the process up…

Winxa?  Are there any techniques that the other Cores used to create such large entrances?

The Dungeon Fairy had been staying as far away from the massive Aerie Roc as she could and still be inside of the room.  Although Sandra would never let it attack her – and the Dungeon Core didn’t even know if the diminutive Fairy could even be harmed by it – there was probably some instinctive reaction by Winxa that made her want to avoid even touching it.  Nevertheless, she stayed in the room instead of creating a portal and fleeing, for which Sandra was appreciative – even if the Fairy had been a bit…flaky as of late.

“Well, yes – of course,” she said matter-of-factly, putting her hands on her hips while she looked at Sandra’s Core with confusion.  “All you need to do is—wait; are you telling me you haven’t been using the Bulk Elimination technique all this time?”

Uh…no; I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Winxa seemed to crumple in on herself, and Sandra could’ve sworn she saw tears starting to form in the Fairy’s eyes.  “I’m so stupid!  I’m the worst Dungeon Fairy, ever!  I can’t believe I didn’t tell you the most basic of things,” she said, shaking her head in what looked like denial or despair.  “First, I forgot to tell you about the benefits for other Cores when more than one is destroyed, and now this!”  She threw her hands up in disgust.

Now, listen; you’re not the worst Dungeon Fairy ever.  You’ve made some poor judgements in the past regarding informing me of things that you really should’ve, but that doesn’t make you bad, she tried to console the Dungeon Fairy – though Sandra was starting to question how many things she should know, and didn’t.  With that questioning came annoyance and a hint of anger, but she squashed those emotions as soon as they reared their ugly heads; now was not the time to berate and alienate one of the few friends that she knew – or was fairly confident – was on her side.  Now, just tell me about this…uh…Bulk—