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

the merchant in Sandra became excited at the prospect.  When she was still Human and selling merchandise with her Father, they had been consumed with making more copper, silver, and gold coins that were used as currency; none of that helped her now, of course – unless it was in the shape of Copper, Silver, or Gold Orbs.  While she couldn’t use coins, she could certainly use Mana!

“Yes, sort of like that.  Everything you’ve provided us has helped us take back control of our lives, even with the danger facing us – and you’ve done it without asking for much in return.  Well, other than wanting help to cull the nearby monsters, but we would’ve done that already.  Now, I’m not saying you should start charging us for more of your constructs—” Delarthe said while chuckling nervously, as if afraid he had said something that could bite him in the butt later— “because I have a feeling we’ll need them just to survive, but I could see others (when they learn of what you can do) trying to take unfair advantage of you.  From what you’ve told us, you have a finite amount of this ‘mana’ energy to use, and if you’re using it on everything that people want without asking for anything in exchange, then you won’t have anything left to do what needs to be done.”

That…made a whole lot of sense and was good advice.  She had been providing everything essentially for “free” because it was a necessity to ensure everyone survived.  Everything she did for the villager Dwarves living inside of her dungeon she didn’t really count – even the Shieldmen – because they were almost like…family…if that made any sense.  You didn’t charge family, after all, especially when you could easily provide what they wanted without any hardship.

The Orcs were a little different; while she provided them with much-needed supplies, as well as what would probably be seen as extremely valuable storage boxes with near-perpetual Stasis Fields, it was more of an investment.  An investment that would hopefully pay off with bodies that she could use to combat the rising amounts of Dungeon Monsters roaming around.  Despite the efforts of the Shieldmen with her constructs and the Elves with their better bows and now their Wyvine companions, they were just barely keeping up.

While there weren’t any overt signs that any of the dungeons were implementing dangerous strategies similar to the now-destroyed Undead-Classification Core, Sandra had observed a change in the Monsters’ behaviors.  Instead of rushing head-first into conflict and hoping to kill the Dwarves or Elves running around hunting them, they seemed to avoid confrontation.  Before Sandra helped to boost their offensive abilities in the form of weapons, constructs, or Dungeon Monsters, there used to be a greater chance that the other Cores’ Monsters could actually kill some unlucky people; now, though, it was nearly an impossibility.  No one had even been hurt in the last day or so, and none had died after Sandra started to contribute her services.

So, for now, the Dungeon Monsters the two races were culling were scattered and running scared – which was actually one of the smartest things they could do, unfortunately.  It meant that they were still absorbing Mana for their Cores, while staying alive longer and replacing their numbers just enough to cause a stalemate.  Sandra fully expected them to try something else soon, such as gathering up a larger army of Monsters that was more difficult to kill swiftly to pit against the Elves (who usually stayed solitary or sometimes moved in pairs).  She wasn’t sure what the Goblins and Golems could do against the Shieldmen, as they already moved in a group, but she was also sure it wouldn’t be good.

Regardless of what happened in the future, that just meant the need for more help was imperative.  Constructs and Wyvines could only do so much, and unless Sandra was monitoring them constantly and was immediately alert for any changes, they weren’t as effective without a Dwarf or Elf – or potentially an Orc – there to give them specific orders.  Almost a dozen Dire Wolves and Jaguar Queens, as well as 2 Ape Warriors had been destroyed while they were on their own without any “supervision”, and it was only liable to get worse as stronger Monsters were created by the Cores and sent out.

For the time being, until they had a handle on everything, Sandra wouldn’t charge any of the races for her help – including the Elves, who weren’t living in her dungeon nor offering up anything but what they were already doing in exchange for her help.  However, she certainly would mention to the Elves that she could use the Monster Seeds they were stockpiling in their village, ready to be shipped out to other places in their lands.  She couldn’t see what exactly they had without sending a construct inside their homes to snoop around, but she was sure that it had to be quite a bit.

For the time being, as everyone went to sleep in the Elven village, Orc village, and  inside of her dungeon, Sandra spent the night doing a variety of things.  First, she created another bath room in the Dwarven section, which was easily accessible by any of them; as she had thought about earlier, she made it about three times the size as the one she had in the higher section of her dungeon, so that it could incorporate nearly all of them at the same time – if they all wanted to bathe together, at least.  She briefly thought about creating two separate baths for the sexes, but immediately vetoed that idea because she had already seen that they didn’t really have the same type of nudity taboos that Humans had.

After that, she created a few more Distilleries and Breweries adjacent to the previous ones, until she had 5 Distillery and 10 Brewery crafting stations – which