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

finished their Core Size upgrades, obviously, so they weren’t creating any more to replace what had been lost already.

I have got to stop doing that.

Almost as if the Goblin and Golem-Classification Dungeon Cores were waiting for Sandra to think about them, she felt a change in their Area of Influence within minutes of each other.  She was hoping that it was just coincidence that they finished their Core Size upgrades instead of some devious plan hatched by the two Cores; if they were working together already, despite their AOIs not even overlapping yet, then she might be in trouble.  As it was, their Areas of Influence had expanded at least 400 feet in all directions from their dungeons, which brought them both to the edge of the forest.  Another Core Size upgrade (or possibly two) would likely bring them butting up against each other, which would also swallow up the Dwarven village of Nurboldar at that time.

* Gerold – the dungeon’s Area of Influence just expanded, so now they can come right up to the edge of the forest.  There is even more territory to the north and west that I cannot reach, so all of you will be on your own clearing those sections out with the constructs.  Be careful; I can already see a scattering of new Goblins and Golems leaving the dungeon entrances. *

All of the Shieldmen including Gerold had just left her dungeon, so if they hurried they could still stay ahead of everything.  The extra constructs she was supplying to them would certainly help at least, though it would take constant vigilance on their part to maintain low enough levels of Dungeon Monsters to prevent further expansion.

“Thanks, Sandra; we’ll show them that we can take care of whatever they throw at us.”

Gerold’s words were confident, as they should be; he and the others had done an excellent job of culling the Monsters there the evening and night before, and they would do more of the same today.  She just hoped they didn’t grow overconfident and make mistakes, or that the dungeons wised up and switched tactics, or sent out some Monsters that the two groups couldn’t handle, or any number of other issues that might arise that she hadn’t thought of yet.

As it was, there wasn’t much more that Sandra could do because her resources were already stretched a little thin with trying to supply the Dwarves living inside her dungeon with what they needed, creating more Energy Orbs and weapons for the Elves, and adding more constructs to what the Shieldmen were using to cull the nearby forests of Monsters.  Not to mention that she had to make another Aerie Roc for Gerold to travel to his people’s mountain strongholds in the morning. Oh, and she also had to prepare for the Orcs and the mercenaries that would be coming, as well as crafting more weapons and Energy Orbs for the Warbands.

Still, with all those things that she had to do, things were looking fairly good around the wastelands.  The Elves and Dwarves were handling themselves well and the assistance Sandra was giving them was making a real difference.  Glancing around the forests near Avensglen, she could see that all of the Rangers with the new bows had taken the time to adjust them, and they were using those weapons and an increased amount of their elemental energies on spells that assisted them in their hunts.  While the ones that had been bonded already had Energy Orbs provided to them previously, the additional Orbs in their palms were doubling their energy regeneration – and they were taking advantage of the increase with controlled abandon.  Sandra even caught a few of them smiling as if they had acquired a new toy…which she guessed was kind of the case.

However, despite all of that going well, she was worried.  It wasn’t necessarily about the wastelands because she thought she could react quickly enough to hopefully prevent any disasters from happening; no, she was worried about the rest of the Dungeon Cores that were out of her range.  That was why she was so adamant about getting help from the larger population of races and their leadership, because she couldn’t do everything.  With Gerold leaving the next morning (which he didn’t actually know about yet), she was confident she had done everything she could to secure that help, while still maintaining the safety of those in and around her dungeon.

Because of her presence there and her actions, even if what happened wasn’t all her fault, she still felt the responsibility to help everyone.  There were still some things that she could do, of course, which she was planning on doing soon: like upgrading her own Core Size now that she didn’t have to worry about “mentoring” benefits.  It would allow her to extend her own reach significantly, which would allow her to see more of what was happening outside of her little corner of the world.  But until she got everything as under control as she could, shutting herself down while she upgraded her Core Size was a bit dangerous.

It needed to happen soon, though, or it might be too late.  For all she knew, it might be too late already.

Chapter 16

Sandra spent the rest of the day and night working on getting to the point where she thought she would be safe to upgrade.  Looking at the Orcs, she saw that they were making no progress quite yet – not that she expected anything so soon.  They were still adequate on supplies for the time being, but within the next few days she was planning on making a delivery with foodstuffs and weapons; until that time, she was concentrating on wrapping everything else up.

Reducing her Net expansion to just 10% of her incoming Mana again, she ramped up production of Energy Orbs of different sizes, both to be distributed as is