The Crafter's Defense: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 2)

by Jonathan Brooks

  With everything in place, she had her constructs activate her two traps…and multiple events started to happen at the same time. Water filled up the reservoir above and started to pour down in great streams, light bathed the dirt below in a bright steady flash, and shoots of green growth sprouted from the ground – but only in certain places. Some of the plants grew at a rapid pace but were quickly drowned out by the quantity of water pouring down on them, while some grew slowly or not at all because the water didn’t get to them.

  Sandra deactivated both traps and rethought the process. It seemed like the Natural and Holy traps were working fine, but the water was the issue. She briefly thought about just adding a bunch more holes to the ceiling and making them smaller, but she thought she would have the same issue as before – flooding. She wracked her mind for a few minutes trying to think of a solution; she needed to both control how much came down from the room above and find a way to disperse it evenly over all the dirt.

  Eventually, she thought she had an unconventional solution, but a solution, nonetheless. Over the next few minutes, she created a dozen Singing Blademasters and sent them up to the growing room; once they were all in place, Sandra altered the water trap above so that the water level would rise even slower than it had been previously, to reduce the flow of the pressure pushing the water downwards. With that changed, she activated both traps again and positioned her Blademasters underneath the holes about halfway in between the dirt and the ceiling.

  The light turned on and the growing activated; the water flowed down slower than it had before and hit the quickly spinning constructs in the middle of the air, and the water was flung out in a circular spray, liberally covering half of the room. Acting quickly, she lowered the Singing Blademasters until they were only a few feet above the plots of dirt, and their flung-out spray was limited – mostly – to where she wanted the water. Within minutes, the Flax plants had grown out of the ground in beautiful green shoots, reaching three feet in height before stopping and starting to turn yellow. As soon as she saw it start to turn colors, she deactivated both traps and sent her Golems back in to work.

  The best way to harvest Flax was to pull it up by the roots to extend the amount of fibers that would be found inside – so that was what her constructs did. Snapping off the seed pods from the end and placing them in a pile, the Golems then brought the stalks of flax to the vats of water in the next room and placed them inside. Sandra had already removed the boiling water traps from inside the large vats and instead replaced them with warm, but not hot, water that would continuously churn. When the flax stems were placed inside and a very thin stone cover was placed on top to contain it all, the retting (or removal of the tough bark on the outside) would commence.

  There was a bit more that needed to be done to turn the fibers inside the Flax stalks into linen thread and then into cloth, but the retting was going to take a few days to break down the fibers enough to be useful. In the meantime, she had the hard seed pods that were produced by the plants broken open and reused for replanting the rest of the room. The seeds themselves could be used in different applications as well, including cooking, but it wasn’t something that she wanted to do anything with at the moment.

  Since the growing room had been a success, she got rid of the current traps and set it up so that there were traps that covered both rooms – which ended up taking approximately 4,500 Mana for the actual growing room and another 2,000 for the Water trap. She also placed trigger switches for each plot of land, where her Golem and Rolling Force could dictate which plot of dirt they wanted to focus on; when they would activate each trigger, the Singing Blademasters would move over and provide the water spraying system she had developed.

  She thought about doing the entire room at once, but she thought about the future; if she eventually obtained different seeds, then she would want to be able to grow different plants – and hopefully even trees – at different times and different growing periods. After working out a few kinks with the new system that were easily fixed, the growing room was working as perfectly as she could get it.

  Now all she needed was more seeds or other growing materials.

  To get that, however, she thought she was going to need to be able to reach the forests she saw in every direction, and to do that, she was going to have to give in and upgrade her Core Size. Anxiety rippled through her mind at the thought, so she turned back to her blacksmithing for a little while. She reset the catalyst in Kelerim’s Forge to an Ironclad Ape and used it to start churning out steel swords and knives by the dozens.

  There’s nothing like banging away with a hammer to settle the nerves.

  Chapter 5

  Crafting didn’t take a lot of Mana, and neither did expanding her dungeon to include new defensive rooms, so most of her Mana was used to finish up the rest of her upgrade stages – and to create more Shears for the air aboveground. Sandra also created more constructs for her new rooms, though she hadn’t placed any traps in them quite yet. What she did do, though, was expand her Home room where her Core was located, because she finally decided to check out the new construct she had received when she upgraded to Core Size 17.

  Now that she didn’t have to worry about any Territory Ants discovering her and attacking, it was easy enough to expand her room upwards and outwards – to the point where her ceilings were 50 feet high and her ovoid-shaped room was now over 100 feet at its longest. Her Core was now floating 25 feet above the floor – right in the middle of the room – so she figured it was safe enough to create her newest Dungeon Monster: the Iron-plated Behemoth.

  She created a Tiny Dragon Glass Flake, which was actually about half the size of a Tiny Copper Orb – a very strange Monster Seed for something that could contain so much Mana in a construct. When it was ready, she selected it and infused 10,000 Mana into it to create her new Dungeon Monster…and found that she was very glad that she had expanded her room.

  The Behemoth was a monstrous 15-foot-tall, 30-foot-long, and 6-foot-wide construct that appeared beneath her Core; it reminded her of stories about an animal called an elephant that was found far to the south of Muriel – the Human lands where she grew up. Its main body was completely covered with Iron-plate scales that draped off its back to the ground, and four tree-trunk-like legs supported the massive frame with additional iron plates.

  The strangest thing about it, however, was the fact that it had two heads – one on each side of its body. Though, “heads” was a bit of a misnomer; on each end there was a long chain attached near the top that had a large spiked ball attached to it, kind of like a strange flail-like weapon. She directed her new construct to walk away from her and she watched it ponderously move forward – it was extremely slow in comparison to any of her other constructs. When it turned, however, it could turn quickly, and the spiked balls were flung outwards at tremendous speed; anything that they ended up hitting was not going to have a very nice day.

  Rather than have it wait in her Home room where it might inadvertently damage her core if it was forced to fight, she started to create a massive room that branched off from it. She had to make the tunnel leading to it quite large to fit her new Behemoth, but she had plenty of Mana to spare in the construction process – so it was no big hardship. In fact, she almost had too much Mana still coming in and she couldn’t spend it fast enough.

  Splitting her concentration between new room construction, producing more constructs to fill those rooms, blacksmithing, producing more Shears for aboveground, and trying to automate the growing process (all of the extra Flax produced was actually a good source of Raw Materials) was time-consuming and kept her thoroughly occupied. By the time an additional five defensive rooms and one extra-large room (for her Behemoth) were connected together and were complete, she had added an additional 1,000 Small Animated Shears to her AMANS outside, bringing it to a total of 10,000 and bringing in an additional 25 Mana per minute. She spent almost a full day filling in the rooms that were just made with more const
ructs, but she held off on adding any traps to them until she had upgraded her Core at least one more time – so she could make them extra powerful.

  Once that was done, she cautiously filled in the tunnel leading from the eleventh room down to Kelerim’s old Forge room with stone and found that there was no issue with sealing it back up. There was now a route from the entrance through the original eight trapped rooms, leading to nine partially trapped constructed rooms filled with her Dungeon Monsters, which led to her Home room. From where her Core resided, another tunnel branched off to her various crafting workshops, her growing room, and the VATS system that would allow for rapid transportation up and down her dungeon.

  That was about all that Sandra could reasonably do for the moment; she knew she could continue to craft and even attempt a few of her other crafting options, but she realized that she was just putting off the inevitable. Might as well just do it to get it over with…besides, the retting of the Flax might be done by the time my upgrade is complete.

  “Don’t worry, it won’t be that bad – I’ll be right here keeping you company.”

  Thanks, Winxa – you’re one of the only things keeping me sane during those times. It didn’t take long for her Mana to fill up completely again, so within a few minutes she had activated her Core Size Upgrade.

  Sandra was doubly glad that the Dungeon Fairy was there to keep her company – even with her talking about nonsense that didn’t really interest her – because the change in her elevation meant that she couldn’t hear or see any of her little constructs roaming around her Core. She technically didn’t even need them anymore because she had more than enough constructs throughout her dungeon absorbing and funneling the maximum amount of ambient Mana that she could get from it, but she had kept them around because they were her…companions, of a sort.

  Most of them had been there from the very beginning and it felt comforting hearing the clomp-clomping of her Tiny Automatons moving around, or watching her Shears floating by in their now-unnecessary absorption routes. Because her Home room was bigger, though, her awareness didn’t cover the entire small room anymore, and she couldn’t hear or see anything. Winxa – sitting on top of her Core, which she realized now almost dwarfed the little Fairy – was the only connection she had to the world, and Sandra grasped on to her incessant prattling like a lifeline.

  An inconceivable amount of time later when she thought it would never end, her Core Size Upgrade finished, and she breathed a mental sigh of relief. Thank you for being there for me, Winxa – that was a tough one. How long was I out this time?

  “No problem, Sandra. That’s what I’m here for, you know. Oh, and I estimate that you were down for almost two days this time.”

  Thanking her again, Sandra checked on her dungeon and what she could see aboveground with her extensive AMANS setup. Everything looked fairly similar to how it was before and nothing jumped out needing her attention. She let go of the anxiety that she always seemed to have coming out of her Upgrade when it all looked normal – but then she could feel that her Area of Influence had expanded again. When she looked underground and estimated how far it extended, she realized that it was likely able to reach the trees dividing the Orcish and Elven territories; not only that, but Sandra thought she could reach the forest dividing the Elven and Gnomish lands.

  Putting aside the excitement of potentially getting access to wood, she double-checked everything and finally pulled her attention back to her Core, where her Upgrade screen was waiting patiently for her.

  Core Size Upgrade Stage complete!

  10/10 Completed

  Your Core has grown!

  Current Size: 18

  Mana Capacity increased!

  Raw Material Capacity increased!

  Through your use of the intuitive Dungeon Core interface, your current Mana intake, and your unique dungeon fixtures, you have also learned the Organic/Inorganic Material Elemental Transmutation skill!

  Now, that was a surprise. While she hadn’t received any more constructs as part of upgrading her Core Size, she received another skill.

  Organic/Inorganic Material Elemental Transmutation

  (Core-specific Skill)

  Organic/Inorganic Material Elemental Transmutation allows the Dungeon Core to use various Elemental Orbs to have a chance to transmute Organic and Inorganic material into similar-type materials. Once transmuted, those materials can then be used by the Core as usual, and even new Monster Seeds can be created by this method. Elemental transmutation can only be used when no invaders are present. The larger the Elemental Orb and Mana used in the process, the higher the likelihood of success. Does not work on biological-based materials. Requirements: Mana, Raw Materials, specific materials to transmute, and Elemental Orbs. (Skills are permanent and remain even after a Classification change)

  Uh…what? Does this mean what I think it means?

  “What’s wrong? Did something happen?” Winxa asked as she overheard Sandra’s confusion.

  No, no…nothing’s wrong – at least I don’t think so. She explained what her new Core-Specific skill was to the Dungeon Fairy, and for once Winxa seemed to have an idea what it meant.

  “Ah, that sounds like some of the skills I’ve heard Dungeon Cores received in the past, though this one seems not to be as limited in its scope. Basically – at least from my knowledge of similar skills – you can ‘transmute’ one of your materials into something different but adjacent in type.”

  That…didn’t help explain all that much.

  Winxa thought about it for a second, before she tried to explain it a little more. “So, yours is a bit different from the others with the use of your Elemental Orbs, but I’ll try to explain it from the perspective of other Dungeon Cores that have something at least similar, if not exactly the same.

  “These skills were usually given to Dungeon Cores who would have difficulty obtaining many Monster Seeds on their own for some reason or another, so this was to help them acquire different – and higher-quality – Seeds so that they could grow. Basically, instead of Elemental Orbs, they would have to save up enough Mana to unlock another variation of a material or Monster Seed they already had; for instance, if they had Copper as a material but couldn’t acquire any Iron, let alone anything higher/more powerful than that.

  “They would then have some sort of skill menu that they could access to select what they could ‘transmute’, as well as seeing what it would cost in terms of Mana. Normally, it would only be confined to a specific type of material, such as Copper could transmute into Iron for say…40,000 accumulated Mana – and then perhaps Steel for 400,000 accumulated Mana. They were outrageously expensive, but it would also allow the Cores to diversify their Seeds so that they could produce larger Dungeon Monsters. If you think about it, if you weren’t able to produce Steel and how you unknowingly created of Dragon Glass, it’s not likely that you’d be able to create some of your more powerful constructs.”

  You have a point there. In fact, looking at her available Monster Seeds, if she discounted Steel and Dragon Glass (and the Silver and Gold she had just acquired from Kelerim), the most she could fit into a Large Iron Orb (her biggest Seed) would be 3,200 Mana. That meant that she wouldn’t have been able to produce her Repair Drones, Ironclad Apes, Steel Pythons, and certainly not her new Ironclad Behemoth.

  “But your skill seems different, somehow. The others had limits on what they could produce – such as only metallic orbs or types of wood – though there was no limit on how powerful the material they wanted to produce could be. Of course, something like Mithril or Elderwood were very, very expensive Mana-wise – and wouldn’t do much good to a fledgling Dungeon Core anyway. And your skill also seems to need Elemental Orbs instead of just straight Mana to ‘transmute’ the materials, so that could change some things as well.” Winxa shrugged in a gesture that portrayed her confusion and lack of knowledge.

  Thanks – I’ll have to play with it a little and see what I can find out.

 
Before she did that, however, she checked her Core Selection Menu to find out what else had changed.

  Core Selection Menu

  Dungeon Classification:

  Constructs

  Core Size:

  18

  Available Mana:

  943/12517

  Ambient Mana Absorption:

  10/hour

  Available Raw Material (RM):

  12500/34674

  Convert Raw Material to Mana?

  12500 RM -- > 500 Mana

  Current Dungeon Monsters:

  11252

  Constructs Creation Options:

  16

  Monster Seed Schematics:

  85 (3)

  Current Traps:

  30

  Trap Construction Options:

  All

  Core-specific Skills:

  5

  Current Visitors:

  1

  Other than an increase in her maximum Available Mana and Raw Material, nothing much had changed. It was strange seeing that she had over 11,000 Dungeon Monsters, but when she considered that 10,000 of them were Shears floating 200 feet above the wasteland, it wasn’t so hard to comprehend. The rest were filling up various workshops, her Home room, and of course the trapped (and currently non-trapped) defensive rooms. The one thing that didn’t change like it normally did was her Ambient Mana Absorption, which looked like it had completely maxed out at 10 Mana per hour.

  Sandra took control of her Golems near her churning water vats to check on the progress of the Flax retting and saw that it was still going to take a couple of days for it to complete. With that still for the future, and with no other crafts calling out to her for attention, she turned to her waiting defensive rooms and decided to fill another couple of them with strong traps now that she had a greater amount of maximum Mana at her disposal.