Chapter 17
Things seemed to be coming together nicely; Violet – now a Journeyman Enchanter for some reason Sandra didn’t quite comprehend – had created the linking enchantment successfully; Felbar was currently practicing with the model with some success, though he was having to learn a whole new control scheme; and Echo was refreshed and forgave Sandra for blinding her the night before.
Of course, as seemed the norm when things were going well, the Dungeon Core felt a drastic change somewhere.
Winxa, it looks like I was right – the Undead Core just expanded its Area of Influence.
“Well, you knew it would happen eventually, so it shouldn’t be a surprise,” the Dungeon Fairy said. “How close is it to the Dwarves now?”
Sandra looked at the other Core’s AOI and confirmed what she had felt initially; the distance they overlapped seemed to have increased by at least two miles – which was a fairly significant increase, and more than she was expecting. Even though she couldn’t see every part of the Undead Core’s range, she estimated that it was at least halfway through the nearby Golem Core’s area; it was possible that along the far edges of the smaller Core’s territory it would be able to attack the Dwarves. All of that she relayed to the Dungeon Fairy, who looked a little worried.
“Such an increase in its Area of Influence likely means that it hit Core Size 30 with its recent upgrade; if you remember, every 10 Sizes tends to have some extra benefits, and apparently a significant increase in its AOI was what it received,” Winxa mused. “Unless, of course, it somehow found the Advancement system and is increasing it that way, but this appears to be too much even for that all at once.”
That wasn’t something Sandra wanted to even consider, because that would most likely make everything that much harder. It was bad enough if the other Core was already 10 Sizes above her, because that would likely mean that it had access to some nasty Dungeon Monsters; if some Advancements were placed on top of that, she worried for her chances of success.
What I really want to know, however, is how the Undead Core seemed to be able to direct its Dungeon Monsters while it was upgrading its Core Size – and how it seems to upgrade so quickly. Whenever I go through an upgrade, I’m next to useless and it seems to take forever – especially the higher my Core Size became.
“It probably isn’t actively giving orders, but instead gave detailed, specific instructions to them before undergoing the process. Just like you can get the flying Shears around your Core to make random patterns to give you something to look at while you’re upgrading, you can make those instructions even more detailed conditional parameters. For instance, you could have them do their little dance down here, but if your dungeon was invaded they could break off and fly off to defend a specific room. This was basically what was happening with the other Core, though its orders were almost certainly designed to maintain a spread of its Monsters to achieve the highest Mana absorption rate, and to react to what you might do in pre-planned ways,” Winxa replied, matter-of-factly. The fact that she could lay out a whole plan for her constructs while she was unavailable during an upgrade (or otherwise) was something that she’d have to keep in mind.
“As for the speed at which it seems to upgrade, it could be due to a number of factors. It could have a Core-specific Skill that increases the speed at which it upgrades and perhaps even reduces the amount of Mana required to do so; it could’ve already started the upgrade before you thought it did and finished in the normal amount of time; or – which I think is most likely – is that single-element Dungeon Cores require less time to upgrade than multi-element ones at higher Core Sizes. I’ve rarely stayed with Cores past Size 20, and those that I remember doing so had multiple elements; I’ll have to check with the other Dungeon Fairies to see if that theory is true or not, but I suspect it is.”
That’s not good if it’s true. Though, it would certainly explain how quickly this Undead Core has expanded, as well as the rapid expansion of the Reptile-Classification Dungeon Core I was forced to destroy. Thanks, Winxa.
Sandra briefly thought about trying to warn the Dwarves at that point to watch out for Undead, but she dismissed it after she realized they would still have a major communication barrier preventing such a warning. Besides, when she looked at their village and their efforts against the Golems – animated dirt-and-stone figures of different sizes, as well as even a few that she hadn’t noticed before that appeared to be made of gravel – on one side and Goblins on the other, she saw that they were well equipped to take care of any Undead they found.
From the looks of them, the Dwarves seemed to be equipped with superior weaponry and armor – which was only to be expected with their Master Blacksmiths – that practically glowed with elemental energy. As opposed to the Orcs who used energy to enhance themselves, the Elves that manipulated energy outside of their bodies to cast spells, or the Gnomes that enchanted everything they could lay their hands on, the Dwarves used their energy in the process of crafting their armaments. The armor and weapons then used the energy from the ones using them to empower themselves; it was similar to enchanting in some respects, but the energy was infused in the crafted metal instead of through enchantment runes and thereby stronger – and more limited at the same time.
From what she understood, if the energy was completely drained from the armor or weapon – and by extension the Dwarf – then the metal would start to degrade and fall apart, rendering it useless. So, while their armor was stronger and could withstand impacts better than all but the most powerful enchantments, as soon as the energy ran out the Dwarves would be next to defenseless. In the same light, while their weapons were lighter-weight in terms of swinging them around, as well as being sharper and packed a punch when hitting Dungeon Monsters, once they ran out of energy…that was pretty much the end of the fight.
Enchantments, while less powerful in general, were much more versatile and didn’t rely on the energy of the user to exist; and if they ran out, they usually didn’t take the material the runes were enchanted onto with them as they deactivated. She could see the benefits in having energy-infused metal, though, because it made the wielders quite powerful, especially when she watched one of the dwarves out culling Goblins instantly light the edges of his double-bladed axe on fire as he lopped off an arm and then a leg from a surprisingly large and strange-looking one.
“It was probably a Hobgoblin, which are a bit larger than your normal run-of-the-mill Goblin,” Winxa answered her question when she told the Fairy about what she saw. “And the Dwarves can also use their energy to produce effects like that fire you saw in their weapons and even their armor, as long as it matches what elements they have access to. You can usually see a slight tint to the metal depending on which element each piece of their armament was crafted with, not unlike those gear tattoos you formed on all your Visitors.”
Now that she was really looking, Sandra could definitely see that the armor and axe the Dwarf was carrying had a noticeable reddish tint to it, especially when she looked at some of the others she saw that were fully equipped. She saw some green, brown, blue, and even a very slight hint of yellow in one of them, which she assumed was for Natural, Earth, Water, and Air; she didn’t see any black, white, or grey, but they might be out in the forest culling where she couldn’t see them. Regardless, Sandra thought they were well equipped to kill any Undead they saw with their access to various elements, though if they were forced to fight too many for a prolonged period of time they could have some issues.
It was only when the Undead Core upgraded again that they would be in danger of direct attack. Though, unless they expanded their AOI by another few miles, then the Dwarves’ actual village – if not the surrounding open lands – was safe for the time being even with another upgrade; Sandra and her own dungeon, because of the specific placement of the Undead Core and her relative proximity to it, might be in danger of being attacked. She wasn’t overly worried despite the danger, because her dungeon and traps should
be more than powerful enough to destroy whatever came her way.
She wasn’t going to take that for granted, of course, as evidenced by the way those Elite Elves almost destroyed her Core. Luckily she had some time before that became a real possibility so she planned on adding some improvements to what she had…but she doubted that the Undead-based Core would even attack her unless she provoked it – there wasn’t a lot of benefit in doing so. The Reptile-based Core had attacked her because she had directly intervened between it and the Gnomes, taking away some of its “meal”; if the Undead Core did the same to the Dwarves, that would likely happen again, but she was hoping to destroy it before it got to that point.
The major danger was in the wastelands now, as the AOI of the other Core had greatly expanded inside of it; most of the previously clear route to the Gnome lands was cut off except on the extreme southeastern side near the former Reptile forest, making travel that way dangerous. It was looking more and more like Violet and Felbar were going to have to wait until the necessary deed with the Undead Dungeon Core was done before they went home.
Her Rolling Force eradication group of constructs had wiped out all of the skeletons and zombies that had ventured out of the forest over the last few days and had even taken to hunting the few Undead they found within the first few hundred feet within the trees; it was now obvious why there hadn’t been much in the way of reinforcements because of the Core’s Size upgrade, but with that changed Sandra started to see more skeletons coming out into the open. Now that they had even farther in which to roam, they were even more spread out – which made her forces have to split up in order to keep up with them.
She added another 500 of her rolling constructs to keep up with the culling, but with nothing that could really be done about the Undead for the moment, Sandra turned her attention back to ways to accomplish the ultimate task of destroying the Core. While she started to funnel her incoming Mana into the Ironwood Seed Transmutation option – which required 500,000 Mana in addition to the resources it needed – she started to work with Echo again on learning to manipulate energy outside of her body.
Fortunately, the breakthrough from the night before was apparently all she needed to finally make some progress. Taking it very cautiously, she learned how to bring out just a few Holy energy units from her Shapeshifter; after a while she started to get a feel for how much energy she was bringing out, though trying to compare it to Mana was for some reason trying to compare a candle flame to a bonfire. Elemental energy was much less…dense, she supposed…which was probably why she had yanked out so much the day before when she expected it to be a lot less.
Regardless, within a few hours she was able to take out and put back any amount of energy she wanted – though not all, as was evidenced when her Shapeshifter started to lose its form when she tried to take the entire amount out. Fortunately, Sandra was able to shove it all back in before she lost control of it, otherwise the Holy energy might’ve caused more than some painful blinding. After that, she stuck to very small amounts – at least until she could figure out how to manipulate it properly to do what she wanted with it.
Luckily for her, that was the easy part. It turned out that once she had the energy pulled out from her body – which was initially very difficult – the actual manipulation was startlingly familiar to what she did with her Mana. The major difference was that it was done from a singular perspective instead of through her normal dungeon senses, so it took particularly focused concentration to perform the simplest of tasks in comparison. That was even considering that she wasn’t using it to create traps that had triggers and multiple moving parts, but instead were powerful manifestations of the elements.
“How did you…do that so easily?” Echo asked, astonished, after Sandra had created a bubble-like shield of Holy energy around her Shapeshifter. Now that she finally had control over the energy, she started to manipulate it in ways that were only limited by her imagination.
* Now that I can finally use this energy, I found that it is remarkably similar to the Mana I’ve been using; my Mana is a lot more…potent…I suppose you could say, but I’ve been using it ever since I became a Dungeon Core, so it’s natural to me, I guess. *
The only thing Sandra needed help with was devising ways to use the energy effectively for attacks. Most of her traps inside her dungeon were of a defensive nature, despite their deadliness, so going on the offensive was something else entirely. She usually had her Dungeon Monsters for that kind of thing, and while she was starting to learn a little bit about tactics from watching many battles over the last few weeks, it didn’t really include spell-casting – especially with Holy and Air as elements. She had a few ideas from watching the Elite Elves tear through her dungeon, but they also looked more complicated and energy-consumptive.
“Well, if that’s the case, then this will go much smoother than I anticipated,” Echo said with a relieved smile, though her astonishment was still showing on her face. “Who would’ve thought that the easiest part of the whole process was going to turn out to be the hardest for you…” she muttered under her breath.
For the rest of the day and into the evening – with a few breaks in between sessions – Echo started to teach Sandra all of the different ways she knew of to use Holy and Air elemental energy. It was actually very informative because her ability to manipulate the energy so easily was both a benefit and a curse, apparently. It was like having a large lump of easily moldable clay in her hands, but she had no idea what to do with it; she might have a vague idea of what a specific type of pot looked like, but without a picture to go by or specific instructions sometimes her efforts would be a shot in the dark rather than a guaranteed success.
That was the main difference she found between using her Mana for traps or other things in her dungeon and the elemental energy she was handling with her Shapeshifter; Mana was easily quantifiable, structured, and ordered, while elemental energy was a bit more fluid and almost wild. It was another reason she liked Enchanting so much, because while it used the same energy she was manipulating now, it was used in a structured rune or rune sequence to achieve a desired result.
Therefore, while she could manipulate it fairly easily, other than a few things like the Holy-based bubble shield and using her Air energy to create a miniature whirlwind that could slice up her skin if she put her hand in the middle of it, everything else was just a guess. When Echo began telling her details – and a few demonstrations – of various spells she knew, the way they were made became much easier to comprehend. For instance, with the Lightstrike spell, it seemed obvious after the fact that she needed to compress the energy together, elongate the entire mass so it looked like a long stick, and then form a sharp tip on one end before mentally “throwing” it forward – but it was a mystery before Sandra was given some nudges in the right direction.
Despite Echo being able to use Air and Holy energy, that didn’t mean she was anywhere near an expert in their use; she could easily demonstrate the way she became “invisible” and left echoes of her form using her Holy element, as well as how she used Air to speed herself up, but the other spell knowledge she had was relatively basic. Describing it, however, allowed Sandra to experiment and figure them out – and even to help teach the Elf how to do those certain things even better. It was a learning experience for both of them, and it was greatly beneficial all around.
The rest of that day Felbar continued to practice with the War Machine model; he was having a slightly harder time than Sandra had expected, but when she remembered what his normal piloting consisted of it made sense. With the older constructs, the older Gnome would wear a special suit that was able to tie into the entire enchantment, conveying via small energy infusions the movements he wanted to perform with the War Machine itself. It took specialized training to properly control it all and required him to provide those energy infusions at the same time, though he could manually move parts of the construct by focusing on certain parts of the enchantment itself.
The new control modules, in comparison, were almost completely different in design. Sandra watched him occasionally jerk his own body around and infuse extra energy into the enchantment, which only served to degrade the runes as they acquired just a touch too much energy – and it didn’t help him control it any more than that. He was slowly learning how to operate everything differently from what he was used to, but it was clear that his previous – and instinctual, by that point – training was interfering with his practice. Over time the Dungeon Core knew he would get it, but she was just glad he was training with the model instead of the real thing, otherwise it could be dangerous for everyone.
Violet came back after a while, looking relaxed and ready to go again. She also worked with Felbar to replace runes that were getting worn out from the mistaken energy influxes, as well as adjusted a few that weren’t quite perfect by replacing them altogether. Nothing was seriously wrong, fortunately, and by the end of the day the entire enchantment was working as flawlessly as possible.
The next few days was a repeat of mostly the same. Felbar continued to practice with the model, getting more accustomed to the new control scheme enough that Sandra actually brought some of her smaller constructs nearby for him to practice with “live” targets. Violet worked on completing the enchantments for the Titanium arms and legs on the larger War Machine, continuing with the torso when Sandra replaced it with Ironwood midway into the second day.
New Origination Material found!
Ironwood Tree Seed
While Ironwood Tree Seed cannot be directly used as a Monster Seed, it can be used in specific applications to create a whole new Monster Seed.
New Monster Seed and Origination Material found!
Ironwood Wood
While Ironwood Wood can be directly used as a Monster Seed, it can also be used as a material for use in the dungeon or other purposes.
The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) Page 20