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

I’m quite sure; there are some left where I had placed them initially, and I would have no reason to move them from that spot until I had a chance to experiment with them. 

At that thought, Sandra tried to absorb another shard of the Reptile-Classification Core – and it worked!  Just…it wasn’t exactly what she was expecting.

50% of your next Core Size Upgrade Stage has been fulfilled!

Note: This only takes effect if you currently have less than 50% of a remaining Upgrade Stage to fulfill.

In addition, this notification is only available if you have previously used a destroyed Dungeon Core to increase your Upgrade speed.  This will happen automatically if the pieces of a destroyed Core are within your Area of Influence.

That was more than a surprise.  Sandra told Winxa what the notification said, and the Dungeon Fairy looked perplexed for a moment before she had a thoughtful look on her face.

“I…can see why this may not have been discovered before now.  Most Dungeon Cores would absorb the shards of a destroyed Core right away, and it is unlikely that they would’ve fulfilled most of their Upgrade Stages and held off the process for so long like you had.  Therefore, I doubt any of them had left the pieces alone long enough to take advantage of the speed increase.  Even if they did, most newer Cores find the collapsed dungeons and the broken pieces of their predecessors early enough that a speed increase probably wouldn’t have been noticed all that much.”

You know what that means, don’t you?

“Yes – you definitely need to acquire those other broken Cores before the new Cores do,” Winxa said excitedly.

Exactly.

She was already starting the tunnel that would lead off to the northwest towards the Avian dungeon, of course, but now Sandra knew that she couldn’t afford to wait on the Unicorn-Classification dungeon.  As a result, when the tunnel extended far enough towards the Orcish lands, she forked the tunnel so that it would go to both collapsed dungeons at the same time.  It required a bit more Mana and she had to create more Hyper Automatons and square-shaped steel tubing, but the expense was well worth it if she was able to acquire more broken pieces of Dungeon Cores.

I need to have them!  They’re mine!  I need to destroy even more Dungeon Cores and use their pieces to upgrade faster!

Her greedy and disturbing thoughts made Sandra pause for more than a moment because they were so foreign that it caught her off guard.

“You can’t mean that, can you?”

She didn’t realize she had projected her thoughts until Winxa responded.

No, not at all.  In fact, I don’t even know why I thought that; it’s not like me at all. Truth be told, the fact that I’m even contemplating consuming the carcasses of my kind for my own benefit is a bit disturbing.  Do you think something of the Core I absorbed has…I don’t know…infected me?

The Dungeon Fairy only looked partially relieved upon hearing that Sandra wasn’t about to go crazy and start invading other dungeons to obtain their Cores.  “It’s possible, though I would think that any lingering traces of the soul inside of the Dungeon Cores would be minor.  Still, I would avoid absorbing them for Mana and instead apply them to help you upgrade faster.”

Good idea.  If I start doing something out of the ordinary, let me know; those thoughts scared me a little.

It was like there was the faint presence of a dark stain upon her mind, as if she had dipped her toe into tainted water and pulled it out before it could entirely infect her.  She wasn’t sure exactly how deeply the stain was going to affect her, but with Winxa agreeing to watch her and the knowledge that it existed, Sandra was fairly certain she could ignore it for the most part.  The taint didn’t feel like it was permanent, and she hoped that it would fade over time, so now all she had to do was wait it out.

Regardless of her strange feelings – which were already fading – Sandra kept with her plan to acquire the broken Cores as soon as she could.  Having them in her possession rather than leaving them for the new Cores to acquire was the best outcome as far as she could see.

Sandra absorbed some of the plundered Monster Seeds for the Mana – which were piled up in her Roc tunnel – to help with the expansion of the tiny passageways towards the two collapsed dungeons.  For the rest, which was actually a lot compared to what she had acquired from the Reptile-Classification dungeon, she absorbed and used about half of them to complete 224,000 Mana worth of her next stages, which was nearly 2/3 of the way towards the 342,000 total Mana she needed to complete the next upgrade.

The smallest of the Monster Seeds – which were hundreds of Tiny and Small Copper Orbs – Sandra used to create more constructs to add to her Nets outside.  When those were all used up, she absorbed the rest and continued to add to her ever-expanding collection of Shears and Tarantulas filling the sky and roaming around the wastelands.  By the time she was done using all of that Mana up, she did a quick estimate of how many she had out above her dungeon.  From what she added now and what she had added before she upgraded her Core Size, the numbers were impressive.

23,000 Reinforced Animated Shears

12,000 Clockwork Tarantulas

Watching her Mana absorption tick up over a minute, she received right around 590 Mana; she knew that 10 of that was coming from her dungeon, which meant that everything aboveground (not just her nets, but all of the other