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

by Jonathan Brooks

  The Hauler was made of sterner stuff than the squishy body of a Gnome, fortunately, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t damage. In fact, the entire Pilot’s Carriage had been essentially completely destroyed; it would be relatively easy to rebuild it, however, as it was made of wood that her Apes could put together and Sandra could seal it up. The track on the right side of the Hauler appeared almost unscathed, other than a few scratches here and there; the other track, however, was half gone. Looking around, Sandra saw a few pieces of the Steel track embedded in the ceiling almost 40 feet above the Hauler, as well as a few chunks peppering the nearby wall.

  Luckily, none of that shrapnel had shot backwards to hit the wagons, nor did any strike Violet during the explosion – otherwise the little Gnome likely wouldn’t have survived. Equally as lucky, since she had already helped to build the track – after hours of arguing between the other Gnomes that were still sleeping down below – she was able to rebuild it along with the gear and the Pilot’s Carriage. A small portion of the undercarriage was damaged, but that was easily fixed by absorbing the damaged section, creating a length of Steel that would replace it, and then having her Apes hold it in place while she used her Core abilities to “weld” it back into place.

  That didn’t take more than an hour, at least, though most of that time was spent with her Apes hammering large pins into place with their fists; the way the track fit together with the pins was ingenious, as it allowed the “band” to stay connected while being flexible at the same time. It was unlike anything she had ever seen before, and she could only imagine the possibilities for new crafts using that same technique in the future. It was a pain getting it all into place, but once it was on the gear, it appeared to work perfectly.

  With everyone essentially asleep for the night – at least, she hoped Violet was just sleeping at that point – Sandra had an opportunity to finish some more of her crafting. After checking on her Jute stalks, she found that the retting process had progressed far enough for the outside bark to be easy enough to strip off, leaving the fibers underneath usable for making into thread – or, more accurately, twine. Therefore, using the same technique she used for the Flax plants and Linen Thread, she extracted the fibers and dried them in her Leatherworking shop. After a couple of hours, they were dried enough to bundle up and feed into the next stage of the process, which combined the fibers together so that they could be spun into a relatively thick twine-like thread.

  New Monster Seed and Origination Material found!

  Jute Twine

  While Jute Twine can be directly used as a Monster Seed, it can also be used as a material for use in the dungeon or other purposes.

  You now have access to:

  Tiny Jute Twine Bobbin

  Origination Raw Material Cost: 5

  Origination Mana Cost: 5

  Monster Min. Mana: 5

  Monster Max. Mana: 5

  It was possible to make it thinner, but it wasn’t nearly as durable and tended to fall apart easily if it was made any smaller. The twisting of the fibers together made it fairly strong as a result, which was why Jute twine was used in the making of ropes and other similar products. That, and it was fairly inexpensive to make, which was also reflected in the costs associated with them as a Monster Seed. It took barely a minute to acquire enough Mana and Raw Materials – obtained from absorbing the broken pieces of the Hauler from earlier – to unlock the rest of the Jute Twine-based Monster Seeds, and that finished that part of the crafting process.

  That, of course, wasn’t the end of it; she wanted to make cloth out of her new thread-type acquisitions. She had already started weaving cotton using a warp-weighted loom, so she continued that, as well as starting a Linen and a Burlap weave on separate looms. With a reed that she was able to make out of wood that would help condense the weave, her three weaving Apes were able to work fairly rapidly without tiring on the new crafting project. She even took control of one of them for a while to get used to the motions of feeding the shuttle pick through the weaves but left most of the process to them. Normally, crafting took a bit of her own personal attention to complete, but once they were started her constructs were able to repeat the same motions over and over and over without much supervision.

  Within a couple of hours, they had all finished a large length of cloth 4 feet wide and 12 feet long, and Sandra was able to easily cut them off the looms by eating away at the thread or twine. The hardest part was tying off the warp thread ends, actually, because her Apes didn’t quite have the finger dexterity for something like that; strangely enough, she ended up having to use two of her Tiny Automatons working in tandem to tie the thin strings together with some complicated maneuvers. And then, when she was done, she hoped and prayed that she had made enough and with enough quality to count as a material she could use for the future – and then she absorbed all of them at the same time.

  New Origination Materials found!

  Finely Woven Burlap Cloth

  Finely Woven Linen Cloth

  Finely Woven Cotton Cloth

  While these Cloths cannot be directly used as a Monster Seed, they can be used as a material for use in the dungeon or other purposes.

  Success! While the three different cloths couldn’t be used as a Monster Seed, the fact that she could reproduce them for use in making sacks and bags, clothes, and other crafts was exciting. As soon as she unlocked the other types of fibrous-plant seeds using her new skill, she would add to the repertoire of available cloth-like materials, but for now she was just happy to have finished yet another crafting project – at least for the time being. She also briefly wondered why Leather hadn’t been unlocked in the same manner for use as a material, but she realized it was probably because they technically weren’t “finished”; there was a reason the Leather she had made already was starting to rot and decompose. She was missing some vital components to make them last.

  While she didn’t know when Violet would wake up, she guessed that there was still at least 5-6 hours before the other Gnomes awakened for the morning. Plenty of time to get some more done.

  During the night, when she hadn’t needed to use the Mana for fixing the Hauler or for her crafting, she had been feeding her excess intake into the requirements for some of the fruit-producing trees. As soon as she unlocked one, she filled up a plot with them and started to grow that particular tree in a long line. By the time the morning roamed around, in addition to the Orange trees that she left there, she now had Apple, Pear, and Peach trees filling up more than half the room with fruit. She would’ve unlocked more, but there wasn’t enough time.

  The reason Sandra did all that was because she wanted to have a larger variety of foodstuffs to give the Gnomes on their journey home; cooked Bearling meat and oranges would only go so far and would likely be repetitive without a little bit of choice thrown in there. Eventually, she wanted to look into acquiring some sort of vegetables or even wheat so she could make some bread, but that would have to wait until it was a little safer outside – and when she had more time.

  Without more time to start something new, Sandra finished off the wagons for the ride ahead of them. Her Apes had already loaded all the supplies Sandra had stockpiled, though that stockpile was quickly filling up again against the wall as the Mana kept rolling in from her AMANS outside. If – no, when – the Gnomes came back for more, they would have plenty to take back with them.

  Now all she needed to do was close up the tops of the wagons, keeping everything inside safe and secure. Using the same technique that she had used earlier and cheating the process a little, Sandra created large wooden boards that were laid across the tops of the evenly packed wagons and then she sealed them to the sides using the same ability she had used before to “weld” them flawlessly together. Then, on top of that platform on the frontmost wagon, she created some small wooden chairs with arms that would allow the Gnomes not piloting the Hauler to sit and enjoy the – likely bumpy – ride. To help block some of the hot sun – es
pecially in the wastelands – she even extended a canopy of her new Finely Woven Cotton Cloth over the top of the wagon using long poles that were bent in an upside-down U-shape.

  And then, when she was done with that, all the Gnomes woke up – all except for Felbar, of course.

  Chapter 32

  “What…happened?” Violet asked groggily as she sat up.

  Sandra watched her quickly come fully awake as her eyes opened wide in surprise, before feeling over parts of her body, checking for damage. She sighed heavily in relief as nothing seemed to be wrong, especially after looking up at the Hauler, which had been fully rebuilt and repaired, looking as complete as it had before it partially blew up.

  “That must’ve been all a dream then…”

  * Not quite – you blew yourself up. Fortunately, my Repair Drones were able to fix your broken body…but it was close. As for the Hauler, I took the liberty of repairing it while everyone was still asleep. *

  The Gnome looked incredulous, as if she couldn’t believe that she was still alive. “I…think I remember some of that. There was a big flash of light and then…nothing until I woke up a few seconds ago. The parts before that are a little fuzzy, though,” Violet added.

  * You created the enchantment linking the left steering wheel and gear, but something went wrong when you tried to use it. Right before it exploded, you mentioned something about forgetting to reverse the ‘Power’ rune, I think. *

  Violet thought about that for a second with her brow furrowed in concentration. “Okay, I’m starting to remember a little bit more of that, now. I can’t believe I forgot to reverse that rune; it essentially captured all of the energy in the entire linked rune sequence and started to amplify it – catastrophically. I’m actually shocked that I’m still alive – that must’ve been one heck of an explosion.”

  * It…was. However, everything is all patched up now – including you; do you think you have it in you to redo the enchantment? The others are already awake and heading up as we speak, and they’re bringing food for you with them. *

  There was absolutely no hesitation on Violet’s part as she picked herself up – which was fairly miraculous to see given that her body had been a broken mess the night before – and headed over to the Hauler. “I know what I did wrong now, so there shouldn’t be any problems this time,” the Gnome said while climbing up on the back of the machine. Sandra watched her immediately get to work re-creating the enchantment on the steering wheel before hopping down and working on the one for the gear below.

  This time, the little lightning bolt rune she included in the sequence inside the concentric circles was both flipped upside-down and inverted, like it was a strange mirror image of the original. Violet did all of the enchanting faster than she had the day before, with more confident movements and almost no hesitation; toward the end, the obvious strain of holding it all together was evident, but she finished the linking runes without issue and let the entire sequence complete.

  Despite her confidence and lack of hesitation, she still stepped back a few paces – just in case, apparently.

  There was no explosion, nor any indication that anything was wrong – but the previous enchantment hadn’t either until she tried it out. Now the hesitation showed in Violet’s demeanor, as she looked up at the steering wheel and appeared to be psyching herself up to test it out. Before she did, however, the seven other Gnomes arrived in happy spirits.

  “Violet! I see you finally decided to wake up,” Jortor commented good-naturedly when he saw her looking at the Hauler. “How’s the enchanting going?”

  Sandra hadn’t told any of the others what had happened; there really hadn’t been a point, honestly, and she also felt that it should be up to Violet if she wanted to share.

  “It’s…going fine. I made a bit of a mistake on my first try, but I think I did it right this time,” Violet responded with that same hesitation in her voice that she had shown just seconds earlier in her body language. Before she could stop him, Lankas – who was reportedly going to be piloting the Hauler (at least initially) on their way back – jumped up and immediately started turning both of the steering wheels. Nothing happened with the right one, of course, since it wasn’t enchanted yet, but the left one jerked once and then started to turn to the right smoothly after that.

  Sandra and Violet held their breaths – Sandra only figuratively, of course – as they waited to see if it would explode…and nothing happened. Violet had done it flawlessly this time.

  “Only one of them is done? Let’s get that other enchantment set up and then we can get out of here and back home,” Lankas said, jumping down to start looking at the wagons -- and what Sandra had done to finish them off.

  “I need something to eat first, then I’ll be able to knock it out fairly quickly,” Violet told him, expressing that same confidence she had expressed earlier. Sandra was happy the Gnome had jumped right back into the enchanting; the Dungeon Core wasn’t sure that she would’ve had the same drive and enthusiasm Violet displayed after being almost killed from the last one.

  Jortor looked guilty as he handed over some cooked Bearling meat and orange slices to Violet – slightly less than what he had arrived with. Violet took it and practically scarfed it down without protest, before getting back to work. She completed the other enchantment even faster than the previous one, though she looked a bit drained afterwards; she didn’t appear to be as wiped out like when she had created the “Stasis Field” enchantments in Sandra’s Enchantment Repository, but fairly close, nonetheless.

  As she sat down against the wall and finished eating a half an orange she had saved from earlier, Lankas and the others practiced controlling the Hauler around the Assembly and Storage room, which worked perfectly. Sandra overheard them saying how smoothly it moved, and how durable-looking the tracks were compared to the other ones they had worked on in the past. The Dungeon Core felt her own sense of pride in her crafting ability, even if she didn’t physically “create” them using the same skills a normal crafter would. It still counted in her book.

  It didn’t take long for them to be satisfied and ready to go. Sandra had earlier had her constructs in the growing room pick some of the newest fruit for them as a surprise farewell gift, wrapping it up in a burlap sack for them to transport the food. She had also been cooking more Bearling meat for their journey since before they had gotten up, and then sliced it into very thin strips; utilizing her drying racks in her Leatherworking shop, she was able to remove much of the moisture in them, creating a kind of jerky suitable for travel. After they were dried, she packed the strips in four thin stone boxes filled with crushed-up Salt cubes to help preserve them for longer. It was an easy solution that didn’t require Violet to create another Stasis Field enchantment on them, which she didn’t think the little Gnome had in her at the moment.

  They might not last the entire journey, but Sandra was hoping that the combination of meat and the variety of fruit would at least get them most of the way there. It was actually more than she thought they could eat, but she wasn’t sure how far the capital was away from the village they had been living in before it was destroyed. If needed, Violet could always create a Stasis Field enchantment along the road to preserve things for longer.

  “Are these apples? And pears? And…peaches? Where did you get these?” Jortor asked incredulously when he opened the large sacks (well, large for Gnomes, at least) of fruit Sandra’s Apes were loading onto the Cotton-Cloth-covered wagon.

  * Well, I don’t need to sleep, so I was quite busy while you were napping. I unlocked the ability to grow these other fruits, though I ran out of time to do any of the others. *

  “Others?” Jortor asked with great interest. His apparent love of food was obvious as he took a bite out of an apple and almost groaned in pleasure as juice ran down his chin.

  “Hey, those are for our journey home, don’t eat them all,” Lankas slapped Jortor’s hand away when he came to inspect what the other Gnome was looking at.
>
  Jortor looked offended. “I was just taste-testing them; had to make sure they were going to be safe, after all.”

  * To answer your question, I can also unlock Plums, Apricots, Lemons, Limes, Coconuts, Elderfruit, and Ambrosia— *

  “You can grow Ambrosia?” Jortor asked with awe evident in his voice.

  * Well…not quite yet. It will take a while to unlock it and it’ll need some unknown components to do it, but eventually I’ll be able to. Why? Do you know what makes it so special? *

  “Uh, yeah I do. It’s supposed to be the most delicious fruit in the world, that’s why it’s so special,” Jortor responded with a faraway look in his eye. “Oh, and I guess it also temporarily boosts the amount of elemental energy you can hold in your body, if you’re into that kind of thing.” He added that last part as if it were of no consequence.

  Ambrosia allows a person to hold more elemental energy? Sandra had never heard of anything like that before.

  “Hey guys? Maybe I can just stay here while you all go back, so that I can, you know, be here for when the dungeon makes the first Ambrosia. Someone needs to test it out, after all,” the food-obsessed Gnome said to the others.

  * You’re entirely welcome to stay, but it could take years or even decades to unlock access to it. *

  Jortor visibly warred with himself as he thought about that. “Well, maybe I can just visit in a year or two to see if you can grow it yet.”

  Sandra was secretly thankful, as she had visions of constantly having to use her Mana to keep the Gnome’s bottomless pit of a stomach satisfied. As the rest of the food was stowed on board the covered wagon in designated areas, she looked at the Gnomes that were eager to leave – and then decided to ask for help one more time.