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

Sandra instructed her flying constructs to go around the upright bines of Hops and start snipping the buds off. When they hit the ground, she had more Automatons there to pick up and gather them, where they were able to be placed in a separate storage area until they would be ready to be used.  She was told that she could dry them first, but was also informed that they worked best when they were relatively fresh.

Lastly, the potatoes that were grown were a different plant altogether.  Instead of there being a visible sign of their being finished growing above the ground, the potatoes were grown completely below ground with just a flowering plant that emerged to soak in the light from her growing room.  Fortunately, Sandra’s Natural Mana in the trap she had designed was able to mature the potato plants enough that their potato tubers underneath the soil were large and relatively uniform in shape.  The problem was the harvesting, because it required digging up the entire plant to get to the roots and potatoes down below the dirt.  Luckily, Sandra had a solution to that as well.

Three Automated Sharp-bladed Diggers were put to task digging up the rows of potatoes that were ready to be harvested.  They were able to dig down far enough into the soil that they could pull out entire plants with everything below attached to them, where they then deposited them in a pile where more Sentinels were there to pluck the potatoes from the uprooted plant.  The excess dirt was then eliminated by Sandra and replaced in the rows using her Mana, and some of the potatoes harvested were then replanted to grow again.  The rest of the potatoes harvested – and there were a lot – were placed in another large room that had very low ambient light and moisture, which would hopefully prevent the produce from going bad for quite a while. None of the Dwarves were needed for the entire operation, though they were glad to have potatoes that they could prepare and eat right away.

By the time all of the harvesting and preparation was finished, the bread was ready to be baked; the first scents of freshly baked loaves of bread from the oven in the Dwarves’ kitchen must have been glorious, because it didn’t take long for Gerold and the Shieldmen to wake up and make their way to the adjacent dining room, led by their stomachs.  Not for the first time, Sandra wished that she still had a body that could smell and eat, because she vividly remembered those smells from when she was alive, and watching the steaming loaves coming out of the makeshift oven she had created for the Dwarves made her imaginative stomach rumble.

While she had overseen the harvesting and milling all morning, Sandra hadn’t been idle.  In addition to the various extra constructs needed for the process, the milling room, and the creation of additional storage rooms for each of the harvested items, the Core had also been using her Mana to increase her Nets above her dungeon and on additional constructs for the Dwarves.  While her absorption of ambient Mana outside of her dungeon was steadily increasing with additional Shears and Tarantulas, Sandra was starting to see a significant jump in the amount of Mana she was receiving from her Hyper Automatons bringing back the Monster Seeds from the collapsed Reptile dungeon.

She was automatically absorbing all of the smaller Seeds that were created from Copper, Iron, and even Clay – which added up to a lot of Mana over a few hours – but was having anything larger or worth more Mana brought back to her treasury so that she could use them to create more Dungeon Monsters.  These Seeds mainly ranged from Tiny Faceted Sapphire Spheres to the Large Faceted Sapphire Sphere that the massive hydra protecting the Water-based Reptile Classification Core had dropped.  She found that, because she had unlocked the smaller sizes of the Spheres, all it took was an example of them being inside of her dungeon to unlock the larger sizes…not that she’d be able to create anything larger than the small size anytime soon.

Monster Seed Origination

Name:

Raw Material Cost:

Mana Cost (30% Reduction):

Min. Mana:

Max. Mana:

Tiny Faceted Sapphire Sphere

12000

2450

3500

8500

Small Faceted Sapphire Sphere

24000

4900

3500

17000

Average Faceted Sapphire Sphere

96000

19600

3500

68000

Large Faceted Sapphire Sphere

192000

39200

3500

136000

The Large Faceted Sapphire Sphere was almost impossibly expensive both in terms of Raw Materials and Mana, which seemed strange that the theoretically less-powerful Dungeon Core would’ve been able to create it in the first place.  However, Sandra also remembered that Winxa had mentioned that some dungeons acquired the ability to create element-aligned Monster Seeds at a much-reduced cost.

This was obviously evidence of that, as it would likely prove to be inside of the Undead dungeon when she plundered that next; the massive Undead that were in the final room next to the Nether Core’s room had to have similar Seeds when they dropped.  There was so much down there that it was hard to pinpoint exactly what was what, however, so it would have to wait until it was excavated.

Therefore, with all of the Mana coming in, she had enough to add an additional 4 Mechanical Dire Wolves and Jaguar Queens (2 of each), and 2 more Steelclad Ape Warriors to the team of Dwarves that were quickly eating and preparing to go back out to cull some more Dungeon Monsters.  They were getting an earlier start than the day before, which should hopefully allow them to eliminate every remaining Dungeon Monster that was within range of the two dungeons.  There weren’t any more added to what was out there before, so it shouldn’t be too difficult; the Cores hadn’t