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

already “attached” to.  If the Shadow Beasts weren’t friendly, the situation probably would’ve been a bit frightening: 42 large, all-black Monsters surrounded the village like a besieging force.  Fortunately, after a moment of hesitation, Chryla call out, “Foofoo Kitty?  Where are you?”

Instantly, her Wyvine emerged from the group and walked up to her, which caused all of the other Rangers to call out for their own, followed by the ones that didn’t have a companion yet being introduced to their newest assistants.  In less than 5 minutes they were ready to go and took off for the forests, buoyed by their new helpers.

The few Elven villagers then emerged – being a bit afraid of the scary-looking Shadow Beasts – and brought out beautifully carved baskets full of Monster Seeds: sticks of different types of wood, various metals in Orb form, and more small gemstones.  She ended up absorbing most of the mundane Seeds when they were brought back to her dungeon and used most of it to finish off her upgrade stages, but the gemstones were an entirely different matter.  Instead of them being a Sapphire or Onyx, these were instead Tiny and Small Ruby and Emerald gemstones – which she immediately absorbed one of each, which unlocked their use as a material and Seed inside of her dungeon.  Not only that, but it also meant she didn’t have to pay to unlock them via her Transmutation Menu.

From inside of her Core, she felt something strange after she absorbed one of the Rubies.  It wasn’t quite pain, more like an uncomfortable pressure.  After a moment, she felt a release of something emerge from her Core – which immediately relieved the pressure and she practically sighed as she felt better – and out floated a semi-visible cloud that surrounded her form.  She wasn’t sure exactly what it was until she tried to absorb it – and found that the cloud was pure, concentrated Mana!

“Did you just…no, that isn’t possible,” Winxa said as she backed away from the cloud with a look of distaste on her face.

That was new.  I think the Mana that I had contributed toward unlocking the Ruby as a material didn’t have anywhere to go, so it was released from wherever it was being stored all at once.

Sandra could see the cloud starting to dissipate, so instead of it going to waste she quickly absorbed all of it while making additional Elemental Orbs of different kinds.  By the time the cloud was gone, she ended up absorbing a bit over 200,000 Mana, which meant that she ended up losing around 60,000 Mana that dissipated into the environment before she could gather it up. After a moment, she just realized that, as strangely as it seemed, she just crafted what could be interpreted as the “passing of gas” into something useful.

Let’s not talk about this.

“Talk about what?” Winxa asked innocently.

Exactly.

With that, she was ready to plan out the rest of her day, putting the strange and yet beneficial event behind her.

Chapter 25

It didn’t take her long to realize that if she timed everything right, she could probably upgrade her Core Size and still hopefully be done by the time Delarthe and the other Shieldmen finished for the day.  She had already checked on everyone else and observed the other Cores as much as she could, and everything looked as normal as it could be at the moment.  Therefore, with a warning to the Dwarves and Elves, she let them know she would again be unavailable for a little while, sealed up the Roc tunnel again, and prepared her dungeon for her downtime again.  Without as much on her mind of what needed to be done, she asked Winxa to keep her company again – not that the Dungeon Fairy wasn’t going to do that anyway.

“Absolutely; I’m looking forward to seeing how much those Dungeon Core pieces speed up your next Core Size upgrade.”

Sandra was eager as well, though she was slightly worried that more than she expected would be consumed in the process.  She wanted them to last over multiple upgrades, not have most of them consumed to cut her upgrade time to something like an hour or so.  There wasn’t really a way to tell how it worked until she did it, though, so she initiated the upgrade as soon as she was ready.

The time seemed to fly again, though she thought that it was because her awareness of her surroundings had expanded again, so that she could perceive all the way to the first room in the Dwarven section with a Distillery inside; Sandra couldn’t interact or manipulate anything while under the influence of her upgrade, of course, but it helped to be able to see more.  Glencha was busy in and out of there all day observing the distilling process; there wasn’t much to see, of course, because everything was currently fermenting right now, but that didn’t prevent her from observing that everything was acting the way it was supposed to, while adjusting the temperature now and again.

“Glencha – have you tried the baths yet?  It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen or experienced before.”  Sandra heard Teving talking to her as soon as he walked in from the direction of the Brewing rooms.  The Dungeon Core wasn’t quite able to see in there yet, but she expected the male Dwarf to have spent most of his time with his own crafting stations like he had the day before.

Glencha seemed annoyed at the distraction, and she answered without turning around.  “No, not yet – I’m still trying to calibrate these temperatures so that I don’t kill all of the yeast.”  She paused for a moment and then sighed before turning around.  “How did you figure yours out so fast?”

Teving smiled, as if he were happy she gave in and asked – or because of some other reason