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

end of an attack by that…what did you call it?  Singing Blademaster?  An apt name,” Winxa commented when she saw and heard Sandra’s new construct moving around.

It was impressive…but it did absolutely nothing for Sandra.  The Blademaster was made entirely for hurting and killing things, which was the opposite of what Sandra wanted to do.  She supposed that it would be of use defending her dungeon, but as she was hoping to avoid a direct confrontation with anything or anyone, her new construct didn’t really excite her.

The Small Armored Sentinel, on the other hand, was a different matter altogether.  Similar in shape to her Tiny Automaton, it was humanoid in shape with a head, torso, and four limbs. Unlike its three-inch-tall little brother, though, the Sentinel was a foot and a half tall.  While that was only around six inches taller than her old Golem, it more than made up for the extra expense with thick, armored plates covering its every extremity.  The best part about it, though, was the fact that it had hands – and fingers!

They were crude-looking little digits, but after a little experimentation, Sandra found that they could grip things similar to a “normal” hand (she didn’t classify her old body’s hands as “normal”), though intricate work was likely beyond it.  Additionally, to her great pleasure, it had a wrist-like mechanism that allowed the hand to turn. While it couldn’t move in many directions, it could at least rotate the entire hand in a circle.

Excited, but not willing to delay the progress and growth of her dungeon, Sandra partitioned her mind again.  She set one half of it towards digging out another room, which involved absorbing a section of the stone wall in the third room and excavating another tunnel.  Once the process of absorbing and then firming up the new tunnel wall with stone was well underway, the main focus of her mind turned to something else.

Her anticipation and discovery of new constructs completely blinded Sandra to anything else, which was why the discovery that she could vaguely sense the outer world above now came as such a shock to her.  Unfortunately, she couldn’t actually see up there; it was as if a fog descended over her sight when she tried to go past the dirt and stone.  What gives?  Why can’t I see aboveground?  She was really looking forward to seeing the sun again, after being stuck looking at caves non-stop.

“Nice!  It’s good that you can sense it now, as it will give you a good indication of how much space you have until you reach the top.  If you start giving your tunnels a gradual rise to their slope, you can eventually make your way out.  You could, of course, make a tunnel straight to the surface, but it is not recommended – because then anything up there could make it quickly to your Dungeon Core if it wanted to.

“As to why you can’t see up there, it’s because no Dungeon Cores can actually sense anything outside of their dungeon proper.  All sights and information of the world above is sent to you through the use of your Dungeon Monsters, which is yet another reason to have many roaming monsters above.  They’ll give you advanced warning if anything approaches that means you harm and gives you more Mana in the process – it’s what we call a ‘Win-Win’ in the business,” Winxa said matter-of-factly.

The business?

“The Dungeon Core business, of course.  Anyway, you still have a long way yet until you get there, but now that you can see it, you can better plan the layout of your dungeon,” Winxa said, before following it up with a quick disclaimer.  “Or not – the choice is up to you.”

The disappointment of not being able to see the sky or sun quite yet was quickly overshadowed by the anticipation she felt toward what she wanted to do next.  Working with the resources she was accumulating through her constructs’ roaming and tunneling through to the next room (which she ended up adding a slight upward slope to and made it a bit longer than usual), Sandra started to make the tools she needed to get started.

The Land of Muriel had been a relatively safe place for her and her father, but that was mostly due to the fact that they had great Heroes working to make it safe against the nearby dungeons.  As a result, many of the crafts that were made – and that she observed and learned in turn – were designed to keep the Heroes properly doing their job: namely, weapons and armor.  There were other things that she learned, of course, but she was primarily fascinated by the creation of instruments of war designed for the seemingly eternal war against dungeon expansion.

Therefore, what she wanted to do first with her new construct (with hands that looked like they would work properly, nonetheless) and her forge was to make the first thing she had ever seen crafted before: a simple knife.  Granted, the knife the blacksmith had given her when she was eight years old was made of iron, but as she didn’t have that metal yet, she decided to use her new Bronze alloy instead.

To make it, the bare minimum of things she needed were a pair of tongs, a hammer, a file, and, of course, an anvil.  The best metal for making those things was iron or steel, but she had to settle for making it out of Bronze, as that was the hardest metal that she had that wouldn’t bend or break right away. Fortunately, her Mundane Object Creation skill allowed her to make the bronze tools with just an application of her resources.

She briefly tried to make the knife with her skill, but as it was a weapon, nothing happened.  Luckily, the failed attempt didn’t use up any of her resources; since she