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

The Dungeon Fairy appeared confused for a second, before she understood – and yet was still perplexed.  “Monster Seeds?  Yes, that’s definitely another source of Mana, if an inefficient one.  I thought you had already absorbed all of your reserves, though.”

Well, yes – but I wasn’t thinking about mine.

Winxa was silent for a moment, staring at the Dungeon Core as she tried to work out what Sandra was getting at.  Comprehension dawned on her suddenly, and she smiled.  “Yes, I believe that could work. However, you may want to hurry – New Cores are usually placed close enough to reach them within a few months; with their enhancements, though, they could be there within weeks, if not days.”

That was good and bad news at the same time.  Sandra looked underground through her Area of Influence, targeting each of the dungeons that had been recently destroyed.  Now that there weren’t any Cores preventing her from seeing inside the collapsed rooms, tunnels, and other areas, it was easy to see the buried Monster Seeds that had been left behind.

In the Reptile-Classification dungeon that Sandra had first destroyed, there were hundreds or perhaps thousands of small Monster Seeds concentrated in the Core’s room there; most had been absorbed by the Core as Sandra’s constructs had made their way down through the dungeon.  Her Ironclad Ape at the time had managed to fight through to the end, but the Core’s safe room had been populated by more Monsters recently created and just barely succeeded in destroying the Reptile-based Core; those – along with what was probably a store of additional Seeds awaiting Monster creation – were now buried deep under the ground.  Not only that, but there were the broken shards of the Core itself there.

Are there any special components of a broken Dungeon Core that I should know about?

“Not that I know of,” Winxa said after another moment.  “When new Cores are placed near the destroyed location of their predecessor, they can absorb the pieces of a broken Core; whether or not they actually do anything is something I’m not aware of.  I don’t remember there being anything special about them, but you’re a bit special yourself…so…who knows?”

Speaking of new Dungeon Cores, Sandra searched for and located the new Core that had taken the place of the Reptile-Classification dungeon nearby; or at least, she found the void in her Area of Influence that marked it in her awareness.  It was located approximately 500 feet to the south of the collapsed Reptile dungeon’s Core room, and it already had two small rooms connected by a short tunnel.  Looking at the new Core’s AOI, Sandra saw that it was nearly 200 feet wide; judging by its incredible growth – which had primarily happened over the last few days as the other Cores were destroyed – it was likely that within the next few days the new Core would be able to locate and quickly tunnel to the veritable treasure trove of Monster Seeds just waiting for it.

Naturally, Sandra decided to beat the other Core there.  Looking at the other collapsed dungeons around the wastelands, she saw that the new Cores were also quickly expanding, but none were nearly at the same level of expansion as the one she had targeted first. She had some time before those others reached the collapsed dungeons of their predecessors – time that she was going to take advantage of.

So, Sandra split her concentration – and her Mana – up between multiple tasks.  Using 10% of the incoming Mana that was being constantly absorbed by her constructs all over, a portion of her mind continued to expand the two Nets in a simple automatic creation of tiny Monster Seeds, Shears, and Tarantulas; it was further made easier because of her new large access to the outside via the Roc tunnel she had dug out.  The new constructs didn’t have to navigate their way through her entire dungeon in order to get outside – they had a fairly simple way to go that didn’t take any more concentration from Sandra once they had their orders.

A full 40% of her Mana was going towards the creation of new Large Energy Orbs of each element, since Sandra now had no stash of them to use in the Visitor’s Bonding process.  Enchanting them took a bit of focus for her as she manipulated her Unstable Shapeshifters, which she found she needed to create two additional of in order to keep up with the demand.

A further 30% of her incoming Mana went towards creating another Aerie Roc and the Small Dragon Glass Sliver Seed that was required to complete its creation.  That didn’t take any of her focus, of course, but creating another harness for it with the enchanted plaques required the use of some Unstable Shapeshifters to craft the entire thing.  The expense of the Energy Orbs used during the enchantment process was relatively negligible, so she pulled that from the 40% she was saving for the entire package.  While she was at it, she also enchanted the Leather the harness was crafted from, using an additional set of Natural and Spirit Energy Orbs to enhance the strength of the Leather itself using a Durability, Fusion, and Activate rune chain that covered its entire surface.

The Durability rune enhanced the outer surface of the Leather, preventing it from taking as much visible damage if it were, for instance, sliced at with a knife; the rune wouldn’t protect it from being sliced apart entirely if something attacked it with strength and determination.  It was a common enchantment for leather or hide-based armor used by Heroes, though there were different enchantments that did basically the same thing for other materials used in clothing and armor.

The Fusion enchantment was usually applied to materials that needed to be joined together; it was