She gave up after about 10 minutes of trying, because it was too frustrating and no amount of concentration she could summon would keep things stable enough to actually get anything done. Violet was still watching her struggle with the enchanting and looked amused, which was a step up from the frightened appearance she had earlier. Sandra felt bad about not even thinking about what kind of mental trauma seeing a copy of oneself would have on someone – but didn’t know how to make it up to her.
Maybe if I Shapeshift into Felbar she’ll feel better about it—
She immediately cut off that private thought, because she thought that the same type of mental trauma of seeing a friend copied would still apply. Echo, on the other hand, was probably fair game – being an unfamiliar Elf and all that.
* I’m going up to see if I can shift into Echo – the Elf – up above; did you want to come with me? *
“Um…no thanks, I’ve had more than enough of all that for one day. I’ll probably get something to eat and head to bed early. I’m hoping that tomorrow is the day when Felbar wakes up, so I want to make sure I’m good and rested for what is sure to be…interesting,” Violet said, excusing herself and running off.
“I can’t say I blame her – that must’ve been quite a shock,” a voice near her Core said. Sandra looked at Winxa and saw her frowning in the direction the Gnome retreated towards.
That was a big mistake on my part, I admit. I’ll try not to be “wearing” Echo’s form when she wakes up; I can’t even imagine what will happen then.
Winxa stared at her Core for a minute with a strange look on her face, before busting out laughing. “As much as that would traumatize the poor Elf, I would actually love to see that,” the Dungeon Fairy said as soon as she was able to speak again.
Yes, well, I’m still not going to do that. I need her help to prevent my destruction, if you remember, and I think that wouldn’t inspire the greatest confidence in my assertions that I’m not there to kill everyone and take over the world.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Winxa said as she wiped a tear from her eye from laughing so much. “That does seem more important than my amusement…but maybe you can do that to Felbar?” she asked pleadingly.
Sandra didn’t even bother to reply, as she was sure Winxa already knew what her answer would be.
While she still had at least nominal control over the functions of the Unstable Shapeshifter she had created, she tried to make it walk but only managed to shift a part of its form a few inches before it stopped. Sandra had more success before she had full control getting it to stretch its arm out to touch Violet, so she assumed that the best way to move the new Dungeon Monster was to just give it orders and wait for it to accomplish them whatever way it could.
As she was pulling out of it, something out of the corner of the Shapeshifter’s slightly distorted vision caught her attention. Sandra immediately re-entered the Monster to see what it was; despite the “mindache” she almost immediately experienced, she was able to easily pinpoint the anomaly that caught her eye.
Peering almost straight up, she could see a strange floating “cage” of runes that hovered just barely above her Core. At first, she thought it might be some sort of enchantment that was keeping her floating in place in the middle of the room, or even what was keeping her trapped in the Core in the first place; upon further analyzation of the specific runes she was seeing, however, she started to get an idea of what it actually was.
She was seeing the inner workings of the Dungeon Core system that absorbed and funneled ambient Mana into her Core.
Sandra stared at it in shock and wonder for probably 10 minutes before the splitting mindache forced her to retreat from the Shapeshifter’s form. When she tried looking at her Core with any of her constructs – knowing what she was looking for – she couldn’t see it, unfortunately. There was something about the Unstable Shapeshifter that allowed her to see the strange but wonderful enchantment, and she thought about what she had seen.
There were long chains of repeating runes, most of which she didn’t recognize at all, but those she did recognize were what tipped her off: Absorb, Convert, and Strengthen. Absorb was a simple rune that many Humans who had access to Water elemental energy could use to absorb almost any liquid, condense it, and then turn it into a solid, which made those with Water energy very popular in transporting water over long distances – as well as making those with a servant/cleaning-type bent to their profession very popular in keeping things clean.
Convert was a popular Spirit-energy rune among armor enchanters, as it helped to convert the energy of a strike into something else; the most basic use of it was in combination with the Reflection enchanting rune, which converted a blow to the armor into an equally strong repelling action, sending the energy converted from the strike back into the paw/tail/claws making the blow. It was a powerful enchantment and usually ran out of energy quite quickly, but it had reportedly saved more than one life that she had heard of.
The last, Strengthen, was the most intriguing as part of the enchantment. Normally, the Earth-energy rune was used to strengthen something Earth-based to keep it from breaking as easily – like a sword, some armor pieces, or even a clay pot. It was a very simple rune, which was why she was trying to use it earlier with her Shapeshifter on the flat piece of Steel she had created, but again, that didn’t turn out so well.
It was intriguing in the enchantment around her Core, however, because it was inverted – something she hadn’t ever seen before. Logically, she thought that would’ve meant the opposite of its intended purpose, like it was trying to “weaken” everything. Instead, it looked like it was doing something else, something vitally important that had extremely far-reaching implications and potential uses; instead of weakening the enchantment, it was using a portion of the incoming Mana to strengthen the very enchantment it was a part of.
Sandra could see no other purpose for it being there; with the inverted Strengthen rune – along with some other important parts, of course – it was essentially a self-sustaining enchantment that used the Mana it absorbed to recharge and maintain the enchantment…indefinitely. That made sense, though, because a Dungeon Core could potentially be operating for decades or centuries; very few enchantments Sandra knew of could last even a fraction of that long, especially those that were in constant use like this one seemed to be.
What made the enchantment even more unique, however, was that instead of separate elements for every rune – or even dual or triple combinations – each rune seemed to be made up of every element, which Sandra would’ve said was impossible if she wasn’t seeing it herself. And since only those who could access a certain element could see enchantments and the runes they were made up of, that explained why no one had ever seen them before. It also explained why she hadn’t seen it with her constructs; while they were technically creations utilizing all of the elements, they couldn’t access any of them themselves.
That was probably unneedfully confirmed when she tried to analyze her constructs the same way she could the Goblin Worker or her Unstable Shapeshifter – nothing came up. It was almost like she was looking at a special moving object instead of a Dungeon Monster, for all that whatever granted her the information on the other Classification’s monsters was concerned. She briefly looked at a foreign Core’s Dungeon Monsters through her Shears aboveground and found that they were hidden from her analyzation as well, so it only seemed to work on her own.
Regardless, after taking another brief glance at her Core and the surrounding enchantment through its vision, Sandra instructed the Shapeshifter to travel up to the Kitchen where Echo and Felbar were still lying unconscious on the floor. She would’ve put them in a bed somewhere if she thought it would matter, but as they were essentially in comas she didn’t think they particularly cared; besides, the nearby Repair Drone was keeping any type of injury they were sustaining from lying on the relatively cold stone floor healed the entire time.
It’s time to pract
ice and eventually put some of this new knowledge to work.
Chapter 40
Sandra soon discovered the other reason her new Dungeon Monster was considered “unstable”.
The Shapeshifter could move remarkably fast as it flowed forward like some sort of semi-solid slime (when she wasn’t directly controlling it, at least), and it wasn’t long before it was in the kitchen and taking a little sample of Echo’s blood. It was interesting to know that was all it took for her new Monster to shift into another form; not only that, but she also discovered after analyzing it again afterwards that it still had the capability of shifting to Violet’s double. It was almost as if the Shapeshifter had a memory of sorts that filed away the forms of those it had taken a sample of, and it could pull those out at any time. Something also told her that if her new Monster died, any future ones she made wouldn’t remember those samples.
After acquiring Echo’s form, she took control of the Elf form and immediately ran to the VATS so that she could get up to the Assembly and Storage room. She had decided that she would use the room for enchanting practice since it was far away from her Core – she still remembered the minor explosion caused by the half-complete enchantment made by her Goblin Worker. She was planning on using a lot more elemental energy in the future, though, so if something went wrong, any resulting explosions would likely be quite a bit more…destructive.
The feeling of controlling a body that was very, very similar to her old Human one was interesting. There was a bit of a height difference (the Elf being at least a foot taller), but everything else felt refreshingly familiar; it was the first time since she had been made into a Dungeon Core that she felt almost free and like she could live the life she had wanted for so long – a life where she didn’t have deformed hands. Echo’s hands were delicate-yet-strong, as well as being calloused in places that indicated she was quite adept at using the bow she had carried; in short, they were perfect for her to do some crafting and enchanting.
The Shapeshifter’s form was also naked, but since it was just herself and the cold stone didn’t really affect her like it would normally – some sort of side-effect of being a Shifter, she thought – she stayed naked for the moment. She hadn’t wanted to spend the time making clothes and the sheet that she created for Violet’s twin was a bit cumbersome and would hinder her movements.
The enchanting practice – on a variety of materials – went much better than the first time with her Goblin, though she still had to practice quite a bit to have even passable enchantment runes. She only had access to Holy and Air elemental energy through Echo’s form, but there were plenty of enchantments that she could create – and she had 8,000 of each type of energy to play with.
Using Holy elemental energy, Sandra practiced creating a Minor Mending enchantment rune on some scraps of cotton cloth. The enchantment was perfect for bandages or even clothing, though the last was a bit hit-or-miss; Minor Mending slowly healed wounds near where the cloth was pressed up against, and sometimes the runes would get sliced apart when they were on clothing, making them essentially ineffective. Despite having seen the enchantment done dozens of times over the years when she was human, she was having trouble getting it right.
First, she found that the thickness of her rune lines actually did affect the quality of the enchantment, despite thinking otherwise. When she was able to actually complete the rune, she could see it flare up when the energy from her body was pulled out and infused the enchantment; however, if the lines weren’t perfectly formed, she could visibly see that the rune was extremely faint – which signaled to her that it wouldn’t perform its functions very well or even just sporadically.
Second, if she started the enchantment from the wrong section of the rune, it fizzled and disappeared when she completed it, wasting the energy used in its creation. Fortunately, she only made that mistake once when she started it just slightly off from where she should have; after that, she made sure to start it in the exact place she was taught. She was just glad that Minor Mending was a relatively inexpensive enchantment to create – at least in the small size she was making it – as it only cost 15 Holy elemental energy per enchantment.
And third, expending so much elemental energy within a short period of time was literally draining. She didn’t think her Dungeon Monsters could get “tired”, but it turned out that she was wrong – at least when it came to using up its energy. Sandra figured that it was very similar to how she felt momentarily drained in her Core when she expended a large amount of Mana, though it was magnified exponentially when it came to her Shapeshifter.
In all, in just over 45 minutes of practice with the Minor Mending enchantment, Sandra had used exactly 3,000 Holy elemental energy – but it had paid off dividends. The last few that she was able to make were as near perfect as she could get; not exactly master-quality, but with the simple enchantment rune she was making it couldn’t be improved too much even by a master. The form of Echo that her Shapeshifter had acquired was tired – and so was Sandra by extension – but she was happy with her progress. Of course, the enchantment she had been creating was so basic that it was actually recorded in some books that she had seen when she was learning as a Human; for the more-complex, three-dimensional enchantment runes and strings she knew, that practice was barely more than scratching the surface.
Still, it was a good foundation to prepare for that type of work. Next, she was planning to practice a little more complex Air-energy enchantment—
Sandra felt her connection to Echo’s double waver for a moment and she paused in her actions. When nothing else happened after a few seconds, she started to make the first line for the Hover enchantment, when the wavering came back stronger and interrupted her concentration. The enchantment fizzled out without harm, fortunately, but the wavering didn’t stop; after another few moments, Sandra felt Echo’s form start to rapidly expand and lose its shape, until – after another second or so – she was back to having a mindache as the larger-sized Unstable Shapeshifter.
Confused, she tried to Shift the Monster again into Echo…but she was rebuffed.
Warning!
Due to its unstable nature, the Unstable Shapeshifter has temporarily lost the ability to Shapeshift.
Shapeshift Cooldown remaining: 59 minutes, 55 seconds
So, obviously there are some issues there that I need to consider. Sandra was annoyed that her new Monster had another drawback, because she thought that the inability to communicate (she tried again when she copied Echo’s form and had the same problem) and enchant anything in its base form was bad enough. Still, the fact that she could finally enchant was a positive, and if that meant that she had to wait an hour after each use of the Shapeshifter’s Shifting ability (hopefully the down-time wouldn’t increase), then that was an easy price to pay – and might even be solved with another solution.
While she was enchanting, she had only spent a little of her incoming Mana on creating materials, so she had acquired enough to unlock a Monster Seed that would easily hold another Unstable Shapeshifter: Small Faceted Sapphire Sphere. It cost 7,000 Mana in addition to 2 Tiny Faceted Sapphire Spheres (which she fortunately had created and placed in her treasury a short time ago), but she needed it if she was going to be able to make another of her new Dungeon Monsters cheaply – because the Raw Materials needed to create another Large Steel Orb (at 32,000) was extremely expensive. She wasn’t worried about Mana too much anymore, so if she could get away with something that cost more Mana but a third less RM (at 24,000) to create, then that was the way she was going to go.
Her thought was that if she had two of the Shapeshifters, then when one was on cooldown, the other would be able to work – if she timed them right. She still had to wait for her Mana to recover from the expense before she could do that, unfortunately, but she estimated that it would only take about a half hour or so before she was to that point. In the meantime, she was going to use that time to think more about the interesting enchantment “cage” around he
r Core. In fact, while its Shifting was inaccessible, she might even bring her Shapeshifter back down to look at it again and—
Something changed…somewhere. Sandra wasn’t sure what it was that caught her attention, and a quick perusal of her dungeon and surrounding area showed nothing out of the ordinary; Violet was already asleep (or at least close to it) despite it only being late afternoon, the area around her dungeon aboveground was clear of anything that she could see with her AMANS and Mechanical Wolves and Jaguars keeping watch, and nothing appeared to her mind with a warning screen or anything. Everything looked as normal as it could.
When she expanded her awareness to her entire Area of Influence, she checked on all of the villages to make sure they weren’t suddenly under attack – all of them appeared fine. Even checking what she could of the aboveground part of the Cores and the Dungeon Monsters they controlled showed nothing. So, what was it—
Then she saw it – the Area of Influence (AOI) for the reptile dungeon had increased again, and this time it easily enveloped the Elven village to the west. The Dungeon Core had obviously just finished another upgrade of its Core Size and had its AOI expanded again. Sandra could only hope – as strange as it sounded – that the Core would go through another upgrade again, but within a minute her Small Animated Shears above the dungeon entrance saw dozens of small-but-quick lizards pouring out and scattering in all directions.
Sandra instinctively knew what the Core was doing; since it had the same limitations she did when it came to seeing things aboveground, the only way it could explore its new, much-larger AOI was to physically have its Dungeon Monsters scatter and discover what was out there. Earlier, when it had acquired access to Sandra’s AOI, it knew that the Gnome village was near based on the culling that they were doing, if not the exact placement of it. However, it probably didn’t know where the Elves were at all; it knew they existed due to seeing Echo, but not where – which was why it was exploring using fast but likely-inexpensive Dungeon Monsters.
The Crafter's Defense: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 2) Page 31