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

take years and millions upon millions of Mana to fully defend.  Instead, starting from the exit leading to the wasteland, she used the technique along the tunnel 2 times on each side next to each other to create a single room, extending the previous 50-foot-wide tunnel into a room that was 150 feet wide, 100 feet tall, and 100 feet long.

It was fairly simple and didn’t require any extra steps, which made it quite easy to make three of them spaced out evenly on the way to the first “turnaround” room that she had created when constructing the tunnel in the first place.  In between the first turnaround room and the second – which led back to her Home room – she constructed 2 more of these basic rooms, and in the last section of tunnel that began with a slide she constructed two more.  Lastly, Sandra created an even bigger room at the bottom of the slide from her Home room that was essentially 4 of the rooms she had made before, with 2 stacked on top of each other.  Basically, it was twice as wide and twice as tall, which was done for a reason – because it was going to be her “boss” room.

A brief experiment – which she did after the first room was built – showed that the dungeon considered them all rooms (which she had initially been worried about, because it had technically been a tunnel first and she couldn’t build traps in tunnels), so the next part was to figure out what kind of constructs to put inside of them and then build out her traps to mesh well with them.  She eagerly pulled up her options and mentally frowned; other than her newest construct options, she had already used the rest in her main dungeon, and it didn’t feel right to reuse them.

Winxa?  Is there any rule that says I have to use only my constructs to defend my dungeon?

“Of course not; if you have something available that you can use, then go right ahead and use it.  As far as I know, there had rarely been a Core in the past that had access to different types of Dungeon Monsters so I don’t think it had ever come up, but there’s no rule that I know of that would prevent you from using them for defense.”

That was good to know, because while she had other Monsters in her dungeon – such as her Unstable Shapeshifters and the Aerie Roc – she hadn’t used any in actual defense yet.  She had used some outside of her dungeon when she was assaulting the Undead horde blocking her entrance, but that felt different – so she wasn’t sure if there was a rule against it that would throw everything off at the end of her planning.  Sandra was starting to learn that she needed to ask potentially dumb questions of Winxa in order to learn all she could before she did something as drastic as stocking her dungeon with non-construct Dungeon Monsters or, well, whether destroying multiple Dungeon Cores might end up being worse than the original problem.

That last one she wished she had learned weeks ago.

What that essentially meant was that she could use the Advancement Creation Options she had unlocked previously and just recently – which was quite exciting if she told the truth.  As much as she enjoyed her constructs, they were limited in some ways and the variety of different Dungeon Monsters she now had access to was like…a new toy to enjoy.  It was probably a little sick to think of her creations as toys, but that was how it felt.

Advancement Creation Options

Name:

Mana Cost: (45% Reduction)

Goblin Foreman

44

Wyvine

4400

Radiant Pegasus

5500

Rising Phoenix

8250

Unstable Shapeshifter

8800

Celestial Authority

9900

Animated Slab

13750

Aerie Roc

19250

She technically had 10 rooms to defend now in the entire Roc tunnel, but she had an idea about that. The first three rooms were going to be filled with…experiments of a sort.  The best way to experiment some new ideas she recently had would be with less-expensive Monsters, which in this case were the Goblin Foreman – unfortunately for them.  They were so inexpensive that she could practically fill an entire room with Goblins packed in tightly next to each other in about 10 minutes or less – so she figured she might as well use them.

“Sandra, what are you using all of these Goblins for?  They aren’t exactly…fighters, you know.”  Her Dungeon Fairy seemed to be a bit confused when she saw a stream of Goblin Foremen rushing out of her Home room after being created by Sandra.

I know – but they are going to be used for a few different reasons.  Don’t worry, it will be fine.

Sandra was slightly annoyed that Winxa would question her in her choices because she rarely did that in the past.  The Dungeon Fairy was more likely to comment on how to improve her defenses, not wonder why she did something in the first place.  Then, at the back of her mind, she heard a tiny voice telling her that she shouldn’t be so callous with her Dungeon Monsters because they were flesh and blood, not “lifeless” metal like her constructs.  She acknowledged what her own conscience was saying, but ruthlessly pushed it down and away because it was interfering with her plans.

Besides, she wasn’t planning on harming her Dungeon Monsters in the first and the second rooms because they were more there to test out some thoughts she had regarding enchantments.  The third room…well, that was a different story.

When she had over a hundred of her Goblins in place in the first room, she started crafting smaller versions of the chest armor she had created for the Orcs.  The difference between them – other than size, of course – was that Sandra wanted