The Crafter's Dungeon: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 1)

by Jonathan Brooks

  So, it was with a heavy figurative heart that she watched her Centipedes first enter the tunnels. As Sandra had thought, the heavy-duty pincers of her constructs were able to grip onto the heads of the Territory Ants when they came into range and essentially crush them with extraordinary force. As the rest of their “bodies” followed after the lead segment, her Centipedes made encouraging progress up the tunnel, leaving bodies in their wake as they slowly-but-steadily fought against the tide of Ants. Fortunately, the entire colony tunnel system was inside her Area of Influence, so she was able to absorb the bodies as her constructs progressed, freeing up room for them to move easier.

  Damage to her monsters was inevitable, unfortunately. The mandibles of the Ants still cut through the metal shells of the Centipedes in places before they died, and a few pincers were sliced apart as well. By the time her constructs fought their way up to the wider main tunnel, each of them had lost at least two of their segments, with an unlucky one losing a total of four.

  Sandra wasn’t idle, though, and was at work building even more of her Segmented Centipedes. And, now that there were no more invaders inside her actual dungeon, she was able to accumulate more ambient Mana by having her former defenders roam throughout her room again, picking up all of the Mana just waiting for them to pass by. Additionally, she was finally able to resume eating away at the walls, which gave her even more Raw Materials to make more Monsters Seeds.

  Sandra felt the tension that had been unknowingly settled on her Core start to fade away as the fight ranged farther away. Now that she was fighting back – and effectively at that – she felt more confident that she was going to survive and thrive.

  I think I can do this, she thought, as she sent another half-dozen Centipedes up through the tunnels.

  Chapter 13

  Fortunately, Sandra’s efforts paid off. It took another two hours of the constant destruction of the Ants sent against them, but her Centipedes finally managed to reach the center of the colony where the Queen continued to frantically lay eggs by the dozens. They were aided by the fact that the upper tunnels were a bit wider than the ones nearest her dungeon, allowing her constructs to fight two (or sometimes three) across, which turned out to be necessary.

  She was glad that she had sent additional forces, because the initial four that she had created were already destroyed. As her army of constructs got closer to the Queen, the already overworked Ant in charge started to desperately lay even more eggs somehow; the resulting waves of Territory Ants swarmed over her lead constructs with suicidal abandon, but luckily the flood was short-lived. After two minutes of progressively larger waves of Ants destroying her Centipedes, the Queen went back to laying them at the same pace as before.

  “Most wild creatures can use their innate energy to perform special attacks or skills, which is likely what that Queen just did to increase production. Fortunately for you, that last-ditch effort probably used up the last of her reserve – it should be normal for you from now on,” Winxa told Sandra after she asked about the sudden increase in Ants.

  Can my Dungeon Monsters do that too?

  “Normally, yes. In fact, most of the skills that dungeon cores receive after they hit certain thresholds deal with increasing the effectiveness of either their Monsters or their traps inside their dungeon. Usually, a dungeon’s Monsters use their innate energy based upon their Core’s Classification to perform their special attacks, but your…constructs…don’t seem to have any. Yes, they are magically animated and use every element to make them work, but they don’t have a reserve of magical energy to tap into. This makes them actually stronger by themselves, but they don’t have any special attacks to speak of,” the Dungeon Fairy replied matter-of-factly.

  That was slightly concerning, but it wasn’t something Sandra had to worry about right now, however, as her Centipedes were doing a great job despite not having any “special attacks”. As the four remaining, partially damaged constructs entered the large birthing chamber, a dozen Territory Ants seemed to spawn out of nowhere and attack her Centipedes. They were three times the size of a normal Ant, which meant they would have difficulty moving down the lower tunnels, but they appeared to be there only for the purpose of defending the Queen.

  Their larger heads and bodies made it difficult for her constructs to effectively attack them, while the Ants’ bigger and sharper mandibles sliced massive furrows into the sides of her Centipedes. Two of her constructs went down quickly within the first minute, but not without inflicting their own casualties; half of the dozen that had attacked were crippled when the Centipedes switched from trying to attack the bodies of the Ants to their legs – which were much easier to reach and amputate.

  The two remaining constructs used the same tactic and their superior agility (and dozens of legs) to maneuver away from the deadly sharp mandibles to cripple the last few guard Ants. Unfortunately, in the process, one of Sandra’s Centipedes got hacked apart when one of them was set upon from three sides, leaving only a single segment left over when all was said and done. The remaining, mostly whole construct was able to take advantage of the Ants’ attention on its unfortunate brethren and managed to snap through dozens of Ant legs, removing their threat once and for all.

  The fight also allowed more generic Territory Ants to birth in time to attack in a large wave, which swamped the biggest threat to their existence: the 21-segment Centipede still standing. Sandra instructed her other construct that only had one segment to retreat for a moment and start making its way to the Queen. From her constant surveillance of it over the last day, she had seen that the massive insect didn’t seem to have any real offensive or defensive weapons; although it was at least ten times the size of the Ants it birthed, it didn’t have any mandibles and its body was so big that it couldn’t move quicker than it needed to in order to lay eggs around the room.

  Therefore, as Sandra’s larger Centipede was being slowly whittled down by the spawning Ants, her single-segment construct quickly rushed the Queen. Two Ants tried to intercept it from the cluster surrounding her other force in the room, but her monster was surprisingly fast now that it didn’t have to transport twenty-four other segments.

  It reached the Queen at least two Ant-lengths ahead of them and immediately attacked the head of the oblivious matriarch, clamping down and slicing through its right eye and upper antennae. The massive Ant reacted by rearing up in pain and eliciting a horrendous shriek out of its huge mouth that Sandra wasn’t even aware the insects could make; her segment was fortunately able to hang on as it had clamped down with its pincers and was lifted into the air.

  Seeing an opportunity, Sandra had her construct release its hold on the side of the large Ant’s head, while she watched the Queen’s scream of pain immediately call over the remaining Ants that were finishing off her other Centipede. They rushed to her aid, but they were too late: her single-segment construct fell off towards the mouth of the humongous insect and easily slipped inside.

  Less than a minute later – and after more screams and massive internal damage – the Territory Ant Queen fell to the ground with a loud *thump*, squishing a couple of smaller Ants that were swarming around trying to find some way to help. Everything in the central birthing chamber was silent for a few moments, before her remaining segment started to cut through the side of the now-dead Queen’s head with disgusting squishing noises.

  The Ants quickly attacked and destroyed Sandra’s remaining construct, before turning to leave. She wasn’t sure if they were planning to mindlessly attack her dungeon like they had been doing, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Three more Centipedes that she was able to produce before the attack in the Queen’s chamber finally arrived and were quickly able to wipe out the remaining Ants in less than a minute.

  There were still dozens of eggs around the room, however, but Sandra was hesitant to destroy them before they hatched. For some reason, even though her constructs had killed thousands of the Ants before that – as well as disemboweling their Qu
een – the thought of killing them in egg form was abhorrent to her. Still, she didn’t want to leave anything behind that might be able to attack her unexpectedly again. As a compromise, she chose to wait until they hatched and attacked her Centipedes before she would decide what to do about them.

  But they never hatched. Sandra waited for over five minutes for anything to happen, but their previous accelerated spawning seemed to have come to a halt.

  What’s going on? Why aren’t the eggs hatching?

  Sandra actually forgot the Fairy was there for a moment because all of her focus had been elsewhere. “Now that the Queen is no more, they won’t react the same way. Most likely they will stay inert until either another Queen arrives, or another colony moves in.”

  When she looked at them closer, Sandra could see that Winxa was right. They didn’t seem to be growing or moving at all, and none of them appeared to be as “active” as they were before – if that was the right word. In fact, they almost felt similar to the corpses of the thousands of Ants that were killed and absorbed; going even further, they almost felt like…

  New Monster Seed Origination Material found!

  Territory Ant Egg

  While the Territory Ant Egg cannot be directly used as a Monster Seed, it can be combined with specific other materials to create a whole new Monster Seed.

  What!? She had instinctively tried to absorb one of the eggs like she would with almost anything else she found in her Area of Influence, and the result shocked her.

  “What? What happened?”

  Sandra explained to Winxa the results of her absorption, to which the Dungeon Fairy looked almost as confused as she was. What does that even mean?

  “I have no idea what that means. Your situation is unique and seems to break all the rules, making a good chunk of my previous knowledge unreliable at best, so your guess is as good as mine.”

  Putting it out of her mind for the moment, Sandra absorbed the rest of the Ant eggs in the chamber and saw that they also provided a small amount of Raw Materials in addition to whatever had happened before. She felt a little better about absorbing them rather than destroying them outright, so she left the colony behind knowing that – despite the complete destruction of everything living in the colony’s territory – they would live on in another form…somehow.

  With the threat to her survival and expansion finally eliminated, Sandra could finally get back to what she was doing before the Ants had attacked. But this time, she had someone who could help guide her – because she still had very little idea of what she was doing.

  * * *

  “Had you ever been in a dungeon before this?” Winxa asked plainly.

  Can’t say that I have.

  “Well, the idea is not to have one gigantic room; if there is just one obstacle between you and anyone wishing to do you harm, then it really defeats the purpose of having a dungeon in the first place.”

  The Dungeon Core in her wanted to get right back into expanding her dungeon, accumulating Mana, and increasing her Core Size, but now that she was out of immediate danger, she needed to have a better end goal in mind. Since the Dungeon Fairy was prohibited from giving direct advice, Sandra instead just asked questions about dungeons in general.

  So I need to do what, exactly? Build more rooms?

  Winxa thought about it for a moment before answering. “Again, I can’t give you specific advice, but I can tell you how some of the dungeon rules and properties work. And—” she held up her hand as if to stop Sandra from interrupting— “these rules are universal to all dungeons, which means that not even your seemingly impossible existence will let you get around them. The main thing that the contract enforces is the driving need for dungeons to expand – everything else just stems from that. Their habit to kill other creatures and sentient races comes from their need for Mana and expansion, which has worked as intended for hundreds of years. Of course, there are some issues now, but it is still working elsewhere…”

  The Fairy looked a little pensive for a moment, before she continued. “Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Dungeon Cores don’t just employ monsters to defend them, but traps as well. These traps are usually dependent upon your Classification; for instance, a Fire-based Classification dungeon can use defenses such as flame jets that shoot out of a wall, pools of lava under unstable bridges, and pit traps filled with ever-burning flames. Your imagination is the essentially the limit when it comes to creating them, though the larger and more complex they are, the more they will cost in terms of Mana.

  “Once you have them set up, they will continue to spring and reset with nothing other than the initial investment – though they use the nearby ambient Mana to recharge them if they use an extraordinary amount of Mana when triggered. The larger and more complicated the trap, the more ambient Mana around it is absorbed. In my earlier example, if you had a room full of lava, it would be likely that the entire room’s ambient Mana would be used to fuel the persistent state of the trap – but that is an extreme example.

  Also, if you decide that you don’t want them there or would like them moved, you’ll lose all the Mana you put into the traps if you choose to remove it. Luckily, unlike the Raw Materials needed to create Monster Seeds, you need absolutely nothing for your traps – they are all creations of Mana.

  “The major limitation of traps, however, is that you can only place one per room, which means that even if you make a giant room the size of a mountain, you can still only put one of the Mana-formed defenses inside there. On the other side of the spectrum, a room has to be a minimum size to be eligible for a trap, so you can’t make a hundred tiny rooms and place traps inside each one. A good rule of thumb in room creation, therefore, is that if you can’t place a trap inside, it’s too small. Anyway, like I was saying, most dungeons tend to create a bunch of average-sized rooms in between them and surface, so that they can utilize as many traps as possible.”

  Sandra thought about that for a few minutes, knowing that the information she was being given wasn’t necessarily advice, but she considered it valuable anyway. While she didn’t want to be “like most dungeons”, the overall theory behind the defense was a good one and was something she felt she had to consider.

  After having her “second life” threatened by the Territory Ants, Sandra could see the importance of defense. If she had known beforehand of the ability to create stone using Mana and Raw Materials, she would’ve completely encapsulated her dungeon in the hard surface, preventing the invasion in the first place. She couldn’t guarantee the Ants wouldn’t have still tried to attack, but the entire thing would’ve been quite a bit more manageable.

  Prevention was obviously the key. Sandra knew that she would eventually get to the surface – and was looking forward to seeing the sun again, even if it was through the eyes of her monsters – and she had to be ready. Not only that, but it was entirely possible that another colony of Territory Ants could be underground, or even something worse. She didn’t have as much knowledge about creatures, beasts, and other wild animals as she would’ve liked, and there was every possibility that there were things she had never heard of in this part of the world she hadn’t ever visited before.

  Therefore, before she did anything else, Sandra used her resources to finish the stone covering she had started before the Ant attack. She had to borrow some more Raw Materials from the walls she was intending to expand a little, but in a short time she had completely finished her main cave, which Winxa mentioned was normally called the “Core Room”.

  Makes sense, I guess.

  “Yeah, most of the names for things are simple, otherwise many of the insane Dungeon Cores couldn’t understand it very well. Of course, you can call it whatever you like,” Winxa commented.

  It works for now. I’ll give it some thought, though.

  Once the stone covering was complete – with just a single area where she wanted to expand, Sandra looked through one of her slowly drifting Animated Shears at her new place for a differen
t perspective. She had evened off the “dome” so that the corners and edges ended in a straight line and she had four relatively even walls. It suited her more than the curved look it had before, so that it almost looked like a room inside of a building – with a brightly-glowing rock suspended in the middle of it.

  Overall, the room wasn’t very attractive, with just a grey stone color nearly everywhere she looked; however, she was happy with her work and was proud to call it…dare she say it?...home.

  “I like that name. Home.”

  Me too.

  Chapter 14

  Over the next few weeks, Sandra concentrated on expanding and making rooms. Starting from the open end that she had left stone-less for that purpose, she created a tunnel 5 feet tall and 4 wide, which led to a large, square, open room with 20-foot ceilings and walls that were 50 feet across. She then covered all of that in stone, leaving it relatively impenetrable from the outside.

  She converted the Raw Materials she absorbed from creating the room into Monster Seeds, which let her create a small army of Animated Shears, Rolling Forces, and Segmented Centipedes. The Shears gathered up all of the ambient Mana from the middle of the room, the Rolling metal balls covered the floor, and the Centipedes were able to roam all over the walls and ceiling. After a little experimentation, she found that she needed to maintain about a dozen of her flying Shears, six Rolling Forces, and eight Centipedes to maintain the gathering of ambient Mana throughout the room.

  When she looked back “Home”, the number of constructs still inside was a little overkill as far as gathering up ambient Mana, but she was reluctant to part with them. She kept them close by because they helped her feel a little more protected, even though nothing could get to her now (or at least she hoped).