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

her Dungeon Fairy lying across her Core – which, now that she really looked at it, had grown considerably over the last few days – and softly weeping.

Hey there…what’s wrong?

“Sandra?”  Winxa sniffed, wiping her eyes as she sat up.  “Are you…alright?”

Sandra sighed internally and tried to figure out what had happened.  I…think so….  That was close, though, and I think I nearly lost myself completely.  I think I can begin to understand how most of the other Dungeon Cores feel after cracking under isolation.

“I thought I had lost you like all of the other Cores I’ve tried to guide,” the Fairy sobbed, losing her composure again for a few moments before settling down again.

Not yet, though like I said…it was close.  I think I went through too many upgrades in too short of a time and I wasn’t mentally prepared for it.  I’m fine now, really.

The sheer panic had faded, that was true; the pain and fear of isolation was still lingering, though she did her best to push it aside and deal with the consequences of it later.

“Just…don’t break like that again if you can – you scared me there,” Winxa pleaded.

Don’t worry, I’m not planning on going through another upgrade anytime soon.  If I had my way, I wouldn’t upgrade at all anymore, but I know that’s unlikely. 

She knew that she had “vowed” never to go through another upgrade while she was in her crazy panicked state, but that wasn’t likely to happen.  Still, she didn’t want to chance going through another upgrade at least for another month.  Or two.  Or a year or a decade – whatever she could get away with.  She did not like losing control like that and wanted to avoid a repeat in the future.

Regardless of what happened, it was over with.  Now that she had her focus and concentration back, she looked around her AOI and tried to see what had happened while she was gone.  It was still early morning, though the pre-dawn light was starting to light up the horizon hinting that dawn was soon to arrive; because of the early (or late, depending on how one looked at it) hour, nothing was really stirring quite yet with the Dwarves, Elves, or Orcs.  There was absolutely no activity inside any of the nearby forests due to the upgrades going on, so it was quiet and practically nothing that wasn’t hers was moving around – for the first time she could remember since she had expanded enough to observe outside of the wastelands.

When she looked further through her AOI through the ground, she wasn’t even surprised to see that she had extended it another 10 miles to just over 30 miles in every direction, which was nearly a 50% increase again.  The biggest difference this time, however, was that she could feel the AOIs of brand-new Dungeon Cores just inside of her new territory.  Eight of them that were new, in fact, were now present to her senses – which was exciting and a little overwhelming.  She couldn’t actually see their dungeons yet, but at least a couple miles of their AOI was intersecting with her own, and based on their spherical shape Sandra estimated that they were just outside of her range.

The exciting thing she noticed when she took her Shears out for a look-see, was that she finally got to see more people!  She found two more Orc villages that were within a mile or two of the forest where she suspected the new dungeons were located, and they looked remarkably similar in composition to Grongbak, though slightly larger and filled to capacity with Orcs – or so she intuited by looking briefly through some windows.  The worrying thing about them, however, was that the AOIs of the dungeons located along opposite forests were already starting to creep out of the forests.  They seemed to be set further back than they were near the wastelands, which made sense because the thickness of the forests was wider at that point as well.  The problem was that she doubted the Orcs quite realized the danger they were in – or would be in soon.

 She found the same thing when she looked further into the Elven lands of Symenora, though each village she found was only half as large as Avensglen – the complete opposite of the Orcs.  This made more sense, though, because there was only a single dungeon they had to deal with; the village near the wastelands had to deal with two at the same time, which needed more bodies to keep up with the culling.  If Sandra was able to stretch her Area of Influence even further, she knew she would start to find less-populated or abandoned Elven villages, as Echo had mentioned at one point that they were barely holding on to what they had and didn’t have the people to stop expansion in certain areas.

The Dwarves had entirely abandoned any pretense of holding the dungeons back and she only found two long-abandoned villages when she ventured out further.  As a result, the dungeons there had expanded extensively, reaching further into the Dwarven lands than any others that she had seen.  In fact, each of the Cores had expanded their Size so much that she had just barely missed being able to see them during her last Core Size upgrade, which meant that things there were looking – to put it mildly – bad.  But not as bad as it should’ve been.

Do you think the beasts and creatures in the forest were responsible for holding them back as much as it appears they’ve been?

Sandra had been explaining what she was looking at to Winxa, and she nodded in response to the Dungeon Core’s question.  “Yes, if you remember, I told you that Cores are looking to kill in order to get Mana; people give more, as you know, but beasts