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

he had been that hurt.  Gerold was right, though; none of the other Shieldmen showed even the slightest bit of damage to their armor, despite her seeing them take some hits.

“I heard you flew at least 100 feet before hitting that tree,” Delarthe said seriously…before cracking a smile.  “Nice distance, sir!”

“Ha ha, laugh it up.  Tomorrow will be different – you’ll see!”  Gerold good-naturedly slapped Delarthe on the shoulder and gestured them all to go further into the dungeon.  “We just need to get some sleep…but first, a bath!”

“Wait…we can use that?  I thought that was only for certain people…” Delarthe asked interestedly.

* Any of you can use the baths, including any of the villagers down below.  In fact, when I get enough time, I might even make one down there for them; it’ll be a while, though, as I have a lot of other projects I’m working on. *

“Ooh, that’s good to know.  I could use a bath as well after that night of glorious butchery,” Delarthe mentioned, before murmuring something else under his breath.  “I could really use a drink, though.”

* That’s one of the things I’ll actually be working on.  Another day or two should hopefully see some progress there. *

“Ah, very good!”  All of the Dwarves smiled at that, and Sandra watched them head down to the baths and from there to bed for a long nap.  They were planning on getting an earlier start than the day before, but they also needed to rest a little bit.

In other areas, the two Nets above her dungeon (the AMANS and GMANT) had both increased by another 400 constructs, which brought her daily influx of Mana to just over 500,000 – a small improvement, but an improvement, nonetheless.  Not only that, but she also discovered that her Hyper Automatons who were technically “outside” of her dungeon, were also providing Mana as they worked to stabilize her tunnel.  It was just a trickle, however, because they weren’t moving all that much at the moment and the opening to her actual dungeon was small, but it was better than nothing – and it opened up the potential to create some Nets underground later.  She’d have to experiment to see if they would be worth it or not, though.

The tunnel to the collapsed Core room was a success; as soon as she got to where all of the Monster Seeds were buried, she started eliminating all of the excess dirt and stone that had fallen on top of it.  Since she was where she needed to be and it didn’t matter how much she got rid of, Sandra used her Bulk Elimination ability and got rid of whole chunks of material that was sitting on top of the treasure hoard of seeds.  It caused the roof to collapse a half dozen times, but eventually she had eliminated enough that it was nearly clear in a cubic space all the way up to the surface.

It didn’t take long for her Hyper Automatons to get to work, digging through the dirt and running back to Sandra’s dungeon with their prizes.  She estimated that it would require about half of what was inside of the collapsed dungeon to recoup the cost of reaching the Core room, but she also had extra constructs and material in the shape of square-shaped steel tubing along with it.  All of which she was planning on using again to reach the other 3 collapsed dungeons – and the Undead Classification one was the next on the list.  Although it had been destroyed last, it was probably the richest out of all of them, and she didn’t want the new Dungeon Core that had cropped up nearby to get to it first.

The merchant in her felt that was like leaving valuable merchandise on display and then walking away; she had to secure it before she could move on.

Dawn broke shortly after everything she had going on was either wrapped up or was still in progress (it would take at least half a day for the Automatons to finish up), and with it brought a group of Elves cautiously making their way towards her dungeon from the direction of Avensglen.  They had moved so quickly and efficiently from the village that Sandra missed seeing them at first, and after a momentary flash of panic, she saw the Elder at the front of the pack; and luckily, there were only a dozen Rangers behind her, which meant that she had more than enough Energy Orbs to complete the Bonding process – as well as enough Mana saved up.  Now all she had to do was wait for them to arrive.

Chapter 14

About 5 minutes before they were set to arrive, Sandra sent out one of her Pegasi waiting in the workshop to show the Elder and accompanying Rangers to the secondary entrance where the Bearling lair used to reside.  When they arrived at the large bowl carved into the landscape left by the Dungeon Core’s Gravitational Devastation Sphere, however, the Elder stopped in shock at the sight.

“What…what did this?”

Sandra had no way of communicating that, unfortunately, because Echo was just barely waking up down below.  The Dungeon Core thought that it was prudent that the young Elf get as much sleep as possible, especially since it had been Sandra that had kept her up so late with the meeting in the Orcish village.  That might’ve been a mistake, but there was nothing she could do about it at the moment.  Instead of trying to find a way to answer, she just had her Pegasi walk through the workshop entrance; as she had hoped, the response was taken as an invitation and the Elves followed after it.  Bows at the ready and prepared to defend the Elder with their lives, naturally, but they walked inside, nonetheless.

As soon as they passed over the threshold, the familiar muting