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

by Jonathan Brooks

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  That…is enlightening. After she had thought about her skill, a menu had popped up describing the different types of materials she could unlock with the use of Elemental Orbs, copious amounts of Mana, and a surprise additional material that was needed from another type of material. For instance, to unlock Lead, she needed Earthenware Clay as a material, which she could unlock with two Average Earth Elemental Orbs, 5,000 Mana, and two Average Iron Orbs.

  There were also many unknowns on the menu, though everything still had a Mana cost; however, the Elemental Orbs needed for them – as well as the additional materials – all had question marks, which indicated to her that she was going to have to experiment with different combinations of things to achieve success. She didn’t mind experimenting a little, especially if it meant unlocking some of the higher-quality metals like Titanium and Platinum, but the Mana cost for those were quite expensive. For instance, at her current intake of Mana – which was now quite considerable – it would still take nearly four months of saving up every drop to afford Mithril.

  Regardless, what Sandra was currently excited about were the different “Fibrous Plant Seeds” like her Flax Seed she already had; it ultimately meant there were other plants that she could use to make cloth with – ones that were much more durable and easier to work with than Flax and the Linen that was produced from it. The only problem, however, was that she needed an additional material that wasn’t something she previously had access to: wood. Now, however, her Area of Influence had expanded enough to include the nearby forests – prime locations for acquiring samples of trees that she could grow in her dungeon.

  Sandra started to use her incoming Mana to finish off some of the 11 stages of her next Core Size Upgrade, even though she wasn’t planning on doing it any time in the next couple of days. She mainly did it because she didn’t want it to go to waste, and her concentration was going to be elsewhere for a while – miles away, in fact.

  As soon as that was taken care of, Sandra took control of one of her slowly moving Small Animated Shears in her AMANS and made it head towards the South and a little east. “Control” was a strong word for what she did because she couldn’t really understand how it floated through the air, nor how it directed how it moved in different directions, so it was more like she gave it an order and watched through its…eyes? Again, there wasn’t really a comparison to a person’s body that she could focus on, so she just went with it.

  She chose to go a little further out of her way to the land of the Elves and then to the forest border between the Elves and Gnomes for two reasons. One, she wanted to avoid calling any attention to herself from the Orcs – because it had already been proven that they didn’t take kindly to a dungeon on their doorstep, so to say – and going to the western border forest between the Orcs and Elves was inviting too much trouble her way. And two, she was curious about how the Elves were doing in their village that she could see as a tiny point in the distance from her AMANS.

  The sun was heading towards the horizon when Sandra’s construct neared the Elven village on the edge of the wastelands. She was astonished at how fast a pair of shears could move through the air when there wasn’t any reason to impede its speed; she kept that in mind for future improvements to her dungeon’s defenses – if any were needed, of course.

  Before it arrived within 1,000 feet of the village, she sent it shooting up into the air so that it wouldn’t be observed very easily. When she estimated that it was about twice the height that it had been earlier, she slowed it down and looked down on a small village made up of only about two dozen smallish buildings in the middle of a grassland far away from the nearest forests. They appeared strange-looking to her and she risked getting closer to see why; instead of cut planks of wood, or even whole logs from nearby trees, it appeared as though the homes and other buildings she could see were grown. They weren’t full-on trees reaching for the sky, however – they appeared as though they were trees that ballooned outwards when they started to grow and then just stopped when they were as large as they needed to be.

  There were a few tall people walking in between the buildings that had silver, gold, and even deep-bronze-colored hair; most of them were wearing clothes or leathers that reflected the brown and green colors of nature, which blended perfectly even in their current village environment. In fact, if the squat tree-buildings were in the middle of a forest, she might’ve passed them by without a second glance; as it was, though, they kind of stood out as the only real structures around.

  Although she wasn’t close enough to see their faces – or their pointed ears that they were famous for – she assumed they were Elves, since they definitely weren’t Orcs, Dwarves, or Gnomes. And, although things might’ve changed in the 200+ years she was “dead”, she didn’t think Humans had the metallic-looking sheen of hair she saw on so many of them below.

  Out of the corner of her vision, Sandra saw two figures run across the grasslands from the direction of the forest to the east, though it looked almost leisurely instead of with any type of alarm. They slowed as they got close, and a few others went out to greet them as they neared the outskirts of the village; she could see them exchange greetings and say something else, but she was nowhere near being able to hear more than a faint sound so high up. As much as she wanted to hear them talking – and relieve a little of the loneliness that still affected her after Kelerim left her dungeon – she didn’t dare get any closer for fear of discovery. What she was doing was reckless enough and she didn’t want to push it any more than that.

  The sun was starting to finally touch the horizon when Sandra watched most of the people enter the “houses” and disappear, and she was left without anything to really see. Knowing that most people didn’t leave the safety of a village at night – at least, she assumed that Elves took the same precautions as did Humans – she took off towards the trees to the east to complete the mission she had assigned herself.

  Within minutes her construct was there on the edge of the forest bordering the wastelands where her Dungeon Core made its home. Before she had the Shears descend, she looked around and searched for anyone nearby for almost a minute; when she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, she had it slowly approach the nearest tree and aimed the construct for one of the small branches near the edge. If she was correct, the closest tree was an Oak tree, and it would have some acorns that would work excellently for a seed to grow the tree from.

  Finding an acorn was easy; keeping ahold of it with a pair of scissors was much harder. The first one fell before her construct could try to catch it; the second was temporarily caught by its handles before it could fall, but a slight jostling caused the acorn to plummet to the ground anyway; she had slightly more success with the third by using the actual shears part to grab ahold of the acorn, but it soon cut into the Oak seed and it slid out and onto the ground below.

  It was time to rethink her plan.

  Fortunately, she knew that cuttings from most trees could be re-planted to grow a new tree, though there was some difficulty if there wasn’t already a root system in place. Luckily for her, she had her Natural-element trap to help with that back in her growing room, so she wasn’t too worried about it.

  Her Small Animated Shears, while relatively sharp on their cutting edges, weren’t quite suited to sawing off a small-sized branch. With a little cutting work, and more than a little tugging at the small branch, she was able to free it from the tree. Before it could fall to the forest floor, she instructed her construct to quickly slide its open ovoid handle along the bottom of the branch, where it slid down and stuck in place when the smaller offshoots snuggled up against it.

  After she was sure it was secure, Sandra instructed it to fly back to her dungeon, though she made sure it moved much slower because she didn’t want to drop the branch along the way. Satisfied that she was successful – and without alerting anyone else to her presence – she started moving her Golems around in her growin
g room, making room for her new acquisition. If everything worked out the way she hoped, she’d soon have access to the Oak tree she had snagged the branch from.

  Which was just another step in the direction of crafting with an even greater assortment of materials.

  Chapter 8

  Despite going slow, it still didn’t take more than 15 minutes for her Shears to return to the dungeon, fly inside, enter her VATS, and make its way down to her growing room. The branch was almost lost when the powerful air-traps blew the relatively lightweight Shears upwards because of the extra surface area, but she saved it by getting rid of the traps in the whole transportation system before they could destroy it. As soon as it was through, she reinstalled the traps, which was fortunately easy because she was already practically full of Mana again.

  Without wasting any time, her Golems delicately took the Oak tree branch from her Shears and she sent it back out of the dungeon to join into the AMANS again. Planting it deep into the spot she had them clear earlier, they arranged the dirt around it to keep it upright and stepped back. A quick activation of the two rooms’ traps and the placement of her Singing Blademasters started the growing process; almost instantly, she could see the tree jiggle a little as it settled more firmly into the ground and the Natural-element trap forced roots to grow out from below the cut portion of the branch.

  From there, it grew much slower than the Flax plants from before (which grew to maturity within a matter of minutes), but it was barely a fraction of the time it would normally need to grow in the wild. Sandra wasn’t exactly sure how large it needed to grow to in order to have enough viable wood to become something she could use as a material – or provide the acorn seeds for that matter; regardless, by the speed of which it was growing, she estimated that it was going to take three or four hours for it to become large enough to fill the space in her room up to the ceiling. If it needed to be larger, she’d probably have to expand the room again – but this time down.

  The roots of her Oak tree were getting quite large as well, but as soon they reached the stone walls separating the plots they immediately expanded where they could – down the dirt plots instead of out. Sandra never realized the sheer quantity of the roots system underneath a tree before; while she knew they were extensive she didn’t realize that it was as large or even larger than the tree aboveground.

  After about 10 minutes, Sandra decided to remove portions of the walkway to let some of the roots expand into another plot, just to see if having a little more room would allow it to grow a little faster; although she didn’t mind waiting, if she was growing other trees in the future she wanted to do it as efficiently as possible. However, when she went to remove some of the stone, she got an unexpected warning.

  Warning!

  While dungeon monsters can still be created from monster seeds, any physical changes to your dungeon while there are invaders inside is prohibited. Please wait until all invaders have been eliminated either through death or voluntary removal.

  Uh…what? Winxa, what’s wrong? Why is it saying there is an invader in my dungeon? The Mechanical Wolves and Jaguars – not to mention her extensive AMANS net above the ground – hadn’t seen anything, otherwise they would’ve alerted her. At least she hoped they would; it hadn’t really been tested with something small trying to get into her dungeon’s entrance. The only time it had really worked was when the Orcs were seen following her Ironclad Apes’ tracks, but they were loud, obvious, and not trying to hide their presence.

  “I’m not sure – it shouldn’t say that unless there is an actual invader inside. I’ve never heard of it being wrong before – but there’s always a first time, I guess,” the Dungeon Fairy replied with equal confusion. “Maybe there are more Territory Ants that you hadn’t seen before now; I’d check around every part of your dungeon just in case.”

  Sandra was pretty sure she would’ve seen something get close to her dungeon underground, but she made sure to check anyways. It didn’t take long for her to find nothing in all of her rooms, nor were any of her constructs attacking anything. She expanded her search farther out to see if there was anything threatening nearby underground; she hadn’t been paying attention to it before, since it was relatively far away, but she did end up finding a dozen other Territory Ant nests scattered across the wasteland. Fortunately, none of them were closer than 1,200 feet away from her nearest room, so they weren’t alerted to her presence in the slightest and didn’t even seem to know she was there.

  She also found two other lairs of Bearlings to the northeast and farther east, but there were only about a half-dozen in each one and they also didn’t seem to be aware of her presence. Well, that wasn’t precisely true; when her vision traveled over them, they seemed to tense up momentarily, but other than that they ignored her Area of Influence completely. If there were any other insects, beasts, or other creatures in the wasteland, they weren’t part of the underground system, so she couldn’t see them.

  Suddenly, Sandra’s attention was pulled back to the first room near the entrance when her Nether trap was triggered unexpectedly. Even in the darkness brought on by the trap she could see inside the room perfectly and saw…nothing. And neither did her Basher Totems and two Ironclad Apes she had stationed in there, as they were completely frozen, waiting for an enemy to attack.

  It was only when she took control of one of the Apes and had it walk towards the tunnel entrance when she finally saw the barest hint of something. It was like a flicker of a shadow in the darkness – almost imperceptible – and she only saw it because she was looking for any evidence of why the trap had triggered. She moved her construct quickly toward where she saw the flicker – which was when Sandra heard a *thwack* and an arrow shot out of seemingly nowhere to impact her Ape’s head with a bright flash of light, though the wooden projectile shattered as a result and left a large dent and scratch on her construct’s face.

  Of course, that didn’t stop her construct in the least, as it moved toward where the sound and arrow came from. That appeared to be enough to arouse some more movement, as a blur that was hard to pinpoint moved very quickly out of her dungeon entrance and back out into the wasteland. The sun was still a slight sliver on the horizon, so it wasn’t hard to see what seemed like a blurry shadow streak away towards the southwest, leaving a sort of echo of its form in its wake. She immediately dispatched one of her Shears to follow overhead, though she made sure to stay far above, which made it nearly imperceptible to anyone on the ground at that distance.

  The shadowy echoes were easy to follow because her floating Shears were quite fast and the form – while quick – had virtually no chance to outrun it. Two-thirds of the distance to the Elven lands, the echoes started to become less frequent and closer together, almost as if whatever it was had been slowing down; another 500 feet passed, and the flicker was almost non-existent. Eventually, it stopped altogether, and Sandra thought she had lost track of whatever or whoever had entered her dungeon.

  Her construct continued along the same route the echoey shadows had been heading for a while, which seemed to be aiming in the general direction of the Elven village along the wasteland’s border. Sandra was about to give up when at the edge of her Shears’ vision she saw a form pop out from seemingly nowhere. The faint remnants of Holy elemental energy faded away from around the form in a matter of seconds, and the person wearing the same type of brown and dark-green leathers turned around while walking backwards and looked off toward her dungeon – and then into the air.

  I think they can see me. She was worried for a moment that her construct had been spotted, but the figure below didn’t look right at it; instead, the Elf – for that was likely who it was – just let their vision pass over the sky without stopping on anything in particular. The Elf turned away after a moment and crossed the distance to the village within a matter of minutes, moving at a fairly quick and alarmed pace.

  This isn’t good…

  “What isn’t good?” Winxa asked, and Sandra
realized that she hadn’t communicated what had happened. With as quick an explanation as possible, the Dungeon Core got the Fairy up to speed.

  “It looks like you’ve been found out, alright. You should get your construct in closer so that you can listen in; even if they see you, it’s likely not going to matter.”

  Good point. With only a slight hesitation, Sandra brought her Shears down closer to the village, making sure to stay out of the line of sight of the figure walking towards the village. Sandra was even bold enough to go drop down completely, where her construct was able to touch and hide flat against the roof of one of the village’s outermost “houses”.

  And then she just waited, curious at what was going to happen.

  * * *

  Echo pushed back her hood, the sweat running down her back in rivulets – and it wasn’t just from the exertion of running through the wastelands. What she had seen there scared her more than she wanted to admit.

  It was almost impossible to keep up with the floating branch as it flew into the wasteland, but there was plenty of light to see where it went. She let her active camouflage drop while she ran at a full sprint toward the unknown, using her Air element to speed her on her way. Slightly reducing the air resistance in front of her running body while gently pushing from behind was all she could really do with it, but it helped to speed her up until she was almost flying through the dry, broken land. She envied the Elite practitioners back in the capital that had a greater Air affinity than she did – they could literally fly…though only for short distances at a time.

  About 20 minutes and nearly 4 miles later, she slowed down as she started to near where she thought the branch had gone. As usual, she hadn’t seen anything in the wasteland – there were occasionally some random beasts that roamed around it at night, but rarely during the day – but she was too experienced to go into an unknown situation without caution. Using her Holy element again, she wrapped it around her body, where it would bend the light and make her essentially invisible to the naked eye. With her active camouflage in place, Echo walked – crouch-walked, rather – toward the spot where she had seen the branch descend and disappear.