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

by Jonathan Brooks

  Deciding to start with something simple, she created a dozen Oak wood boards that were 3 inches wide, 2 feet long, and an inch thick. Activating the trap via standing in a particular spot near her saw table, she had her Ape lay the wood flat against the stone and push it into the quickly rotating metal saw – and wood chips started to fly and the board was almost ripped out of her Ape’s hands.

  Whoops – pushed it in on the wrong side. Realizing what she did, Sandra had to correct the trap activation placement and moved it to the other side of the table, so that instead of cutting in an upwards motion, the saw was cutting downwards. With that fixed, she had her Ape try again and succeeded in cutting the board with precision. Buoyed by her success, she brought her boards up to Kelerim’s old Forge and used her blacksmithing skills to craft a simple flat Steel band 2 inches wide that would stretch and wrap across all 12 boards in their center.

  While it was still relatively hot and malleable, she placed the boards next to each other and quickly wrapped the Steel band around them; when it was in place, a few quick hammer strikes allowed her to seal the ends of the bands together in a relatively crude weld, but it was enough to hold it in place. The metal was still hot enough to start to burn the wood, so she brought the whole board and band combo to a small trough she had filled up nearby with cool water from the Kitchen/Dining Room. Steam rose up as the metal rapidly cooled, but the Steel was of such purity that even rapid cooling couldn’t cause it to weaken from the extreme change in temperature.

  When it was cool enough, she brought the now-wrapped bundle of boards to the woodworking workshop again. Laying it flat on the saw table, she used the rapidly rotating circular saw to trim and shape the outside of the boards into a rough circular shape. Her Ape didn’t really have as fine of control as she would’ve liked; subtle movements of the entire bundle was difficult with its sausage-like iron fingers. As a result, it looked more like someone had taken an axe and inexpertly cut around the edges of it, but it would work.

  Fortunately, blacksmithing for the Ironclad Ape was much easier. Once the shape was achieved, she brought it back to the blacksmithing shop and created another quantity of Steel to make another flat band; this time, however, it was shaped to cover the outside circular shape of the wood bundle. It would also cover the previous Steel band, keeping it in place and extremely secure. When the still hot and malleable Steel was ready, her Ape used its bare hands to shape it along the edge, allowing it to wrap the wood and then welded the end together when it had made a full circuit. It was a little too long, however, so she had to cut the end of the band off when she was done using a hammer and a sharp chisel that could cut through the still-slightly soft metal.

  Another bath in the water prevented it from burning up and catching fire, and when it was cool, she brought it back out. Now was time for a dozen rivets to hold it in place; using a center punch tool – which was essentially a long spike with a sharp point – she hammered a hole into the edge of the outer band, through the wood, and then created another hole on the other side. Directing her Ape exactly where to place the 11 other holes she wanted along the outside rim and four along the band in the middle, she then used a second Ape she had nearby to start making rivets in the forge. They were essentially long slender cylinders that had one end flat and spread out; when they were ready, she would head up the other end just enough to make it slightly malleable, hammer it straight through the holes made previously, and then finish it up by hammering the softer, heated side – so that it would be flush against the metal rim.

  Using another rounded bar of Steel, she controlled one of her Apes at the forge and heated and shaped it until it looked like a wide U with flattened ends. On those flattened ends, she punched another hole for another rivet, which would correspond to the holes previously made on the center Steel band. Attaching the U-shaped Steel to the back side of the project she was working on, she pounded more heated rivets into the ends to secure it in place and then stepped back to look at her creation.

  It wasn’t the best Steel-banded Oak shield in the world, but it wasn’t the worst either. She could already see where she could improve her riveting to make it cleaner, work on the spacing between the holes, and smooth over the hastily welded parts; all in all, though, it appeared at least serviceable. The wood grain was superb and unnaturally straight, which gave the shield an almost-striped appearance, which she thought was a neat addition to the otherwise relatively crude crafting job. Though, it wasn’t exactly “crude” – not like the junk swords she had seen the Orcs wielding – but she knew she could do much better with practice.

  Just like she had needed to practice with metal and improve her blacksmithing, she needed to practice with wood. Back when she was alive in the land of Muriel, wooden “dungeon loot” drops weren’t very common. In some areas, the higher-quality woods like Magewood and Elderoak were present – but they were few and far between. Humans tended to like more of their premium crafted weapons made from dungeon-looted metal, as opposed to wood; bows and a few staves that were enchanted from some special woods were about all she saw used for weapons or armor, so working with such pristine “common” woods like Oak – as she now possessed – was fairly new to her.

  In order to become a little better at working with the wood, over the next day she practiced creating more of the same shield she had just produced, as well as adding wooden components – like lightweight handles – to weapons such as swords, knives, axes, and even some short spears to help with balancing issues. Since what she had produced before had been made entirely of metal, it was also the first time she had to really utilize some of the leather she had made shortly after Kelerim had arrived; when wrapped around handles – and even things like where an axe head joins the haft – it helped to hold everything together and even supplied a better grip for a person’s hands.

  Sandra spent so much time utilizing her new material that she barely had time for anything else. Crafting only took up a fraction of her incoming Mana, however, and since she had already completed the stages toward the next Core Size Upgrade, she spent everything she had on producing more Monster Seeds. In an area past her Home where her core was located, she started hollowing out a massive room and used the Raw Materials from that excavation and her available Mana to fill it with…“loot”, essentially. She didn’t want everything she was taking in to go to waste, so she filled up what she was now calling her treasury with various Orbs and other seeds of every size she had access to.

  There were Copper Orbs, Tin Orbs, Nickel Orbs, Bronze Orbs, Iron Orbs, Steel Orbs, Silver Orbs, Gold Orbs, elemental Orbs from every element, Cubes of Salt, a small pile of Dragon Glass Flakes, stacks of Oak wood Planks, and even a small castle of Clay Cubes that she had her Tiny Automatons build as they transported them from her Home room. She wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted to do with all of the Seeds she accumulated, but she didn’t want all of those resources to go to waste.

  She was about to start work on trying to create a bow – which would take a little bit, as she needed the normally straight wood she could create to soak in a tub, making it slightly more flexible so that she could bend it into shape – when she realized she hadn’t checked on her Flax in a while. She ate away the covering of the warm churning-water tub where her flax stems were retting and found that they were finally ready for the next step in the lengthy process.

  The next step required the bark on the outside of the fibers inside to be scraped away – which was made much easier and prevented overall breakage from the retting process – and then the water squeezed out and dried. Placing them on the heated tanning racks was the most efficient process, and within an hour they were dry and ready for the next step. Normally, special tools that looked like a long thin grouping of spikes were used to break up the stalks and separate the fibers, but Sandra had something more efficient – or at least more fun. Dozens of Segmented Centipedes crawled all over the dried Flax and used their mandibles to delicately separate the fibers until they wer
e placed into a large pile for further work.

  The next step required melding the fibers together to form one giant “rope”, which she accomplished by making a series of rollers inside her Textile Workshop that were essentially two large grooved stone pillars laid horizontally and angled to produce a thinner rope toward the end. Essentially, placing the long Flax fibers on one end mashed and spun them together so that they formed one giant strand, and adding more fibers as the grooved rollers moved them up, it would continue the rope chain. When it was all done with that step, it moved on to the spinning part, where she had her Ape use a spinning wheel to turn the Flax rope into Linen Thread.

  Sandra absorbed the first bit of thread that emerged…and that’s when it happened.

  New Monster Seed and Origination Material found!

  Linen Thread

  While Linen Thread 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 Linen Thread Bobbin

  Origination Raw Material Cost: 10

  Origination Mana Cost: 5

  Monster Min. Mana: 5

  Monster Max. Mana: 10

  She couldn’t absorb and gain access to the Linen cloth that Kelerim had brought back from the village, but that was because she needed to “craft” the base components herself. She doubted it would be the same with a piece of cloth made from the thread – though to make sure, she quickly spun enough for two small spools of thread and placed them on the loom she had created weeks ago. Within 15 minutes of having her Ape fumbling around with it for a while, she had created a small length of Linen Cloth – which, admittedly wasn’t the best quality, as she was anxious to see it complete – and nothing happened when she “ate” it with her Dungeon Core ability.

  She never remembered Linen Thread or Cloth being something ever dropped as dungeon loot – or any other type of textile, for that matter. Though, she doubted that any other dungeon had taken the time to actually craft it, so unless they acquired it from someone who just happened to have a bobbin or spool of thread on them and dropped it in one of the dungeons, it wasn’t likely that they ever would. And even if they acquired it, they probably wouldn’t use it as a Monster Seed unless it was really valuable.

  With the knowledge of being able to unlock materials like the Linen Thread in the future, Sandra was excited for what was to come.

  Now all she needed to do was survive to see it.

  Chapter 11

  Before succumbing to the inevitable feeling of being thrown down a hole without being able to move or speak that came along with upgrading her Core Size, Sandra started to investigate the options again with her newest Core-specific skill, Organic/Inorganic Material Elemental Transmutation, or OMET for short. In addition to what was on there before with Metals, Fibrous Plant Seeds, and Clays, she now had an additional category: Non-Fruit-Producing Tree Seeds.

  Organic/Inorganic Material Elemental Transmutation Menu

  Transmutation Options

  Elemental Orb Required (Size/Qty)

  Mana Required

  Additional Seed Material (Size/Qty)

  Unlocked (Y/N)

  Non-Fruit-Producing Tree Seeds

  Oak Seed

  N/A

  N/A

  N/A

  Y

  Maple Seed

  Natural (Average/3)

  0/5000

  Tin (Average/2)

  N

  Cedar Seed

  Natural (Large/2)

  0/10000

  Nickel (Average/3)

  N

  Ash Seed

  Natural (Large/2), Fire (Tiny/2)

  0/15000

  Lead (Large/2)

  N

  Pine Seed

  Natural (Large/4), Water (Small/2)

  0/20000

  Bronze (Large/3)

  N

  Birch Seed

  Natural (Large/5), Earth (Tiny/2)

  0/25000

  Silver (Large/4)

  N

  Redwood Seed

  Natural (Large/6), Fire (Large/2)

  0/50000

  Iron (Large/5)

  N

  Yew Seed

  Natural (Large/12), Air (Small/2)

  0/100000

  Gold (Large/10)

  N

  Ironwood Seed

  ?????

  0/500000

  ?????

  N

  Elderoak Seed

  ?????

  0/1500000

  ?????

  N

  Magewood Seed

  ?????

  0/5000000

  ?????

  N

  Ancient Silverpine Seed

  ?????

  0/10000000

  ?????

  N

  Sandra was a little disappointed not to see the presence of actual Wood and Thread on there, but she supposed she needed to grow and make them first before she could use them as material and as a Seed. Still, the fact that she could unlock those new seeds made her excited – and it was entirely possible that she could figure out some of the mysterious “unknown” requirements for the more powerful Tree Seeds. She also took special notice of the fact that the new category said “Non-Fruit-Producing”, which meant that she could theoretically find fruit-producing trees later – where some of the wood off of them were useful in special cases.

  Because she had all of the components to finally unlock some of the new materials through the use of her new skill, that was exactly what she wanted to do. How exactly she was supposed to actually use her skill, though, was another question altogether.

  It turned out to be easier than she thought. All she did was concentrate on “Maple Seed” on her new menu and feed Mana into it; the sensation and effect were strange, however, because they were like nothing she had ever felt before. When she normally fed Mana into something like a Monster Seed or a defensive trap, it just flowed out of her; this, though, felt like it was being pulled out of her Core and then shoved back into a separate compartment. When she had fed the requisite 5000 Mana into it, the Mana “popped” out of her Core and dropped to the floor in a semi-visible sphere of condensed Core energy like one of her Monster Seeds.

  She could barely see it unless she concentrated on it, but she could definitely tell it was there; without thinking about it too much, she created the other necessary Seeds – 3 Average Natural Elemental Orbs and 2 Average Tin Orbs – and had a Tiny Automaton nearby transport them so that they were all in a pile. That was apparently all it took, because all 6 Orbs (the 5 material and 1 Mana-filled one) suddenly melded together and there was a brief flash of light so bright that it actually blinded Sandra for a moment. When she opened them back up, she saw a small greenish seed on the floor where the Orbs had been. It had two flat “wings” on it that were attached to a central seed pod; she remembered seeing thousands of them over the years as they floated and spun down from Maple trees back in Muriel.

  New Origination Material found!

  Maple Seed

  While the Maple Seed cannot be used directly as a Monster Seed, it can be used in specific applications to create a whole new Monster Seed.

  And just like that, Sandra did it. She had used her new skill to essentially “buy” a new Origination Material; it wasn’t quite the same as creating it herself through the use of a crafting process – like the Bronze and Steel alloys she had made previously – but it was satisfying, nonetheless. She wasn’t even sure some of the things she could unlock even could be crafted in any other way, so she thought her new skill was the best possible use of her available resources.

  Excited, she used the same process to unlock the other seeds; Cedar Seed needed Natural and Nickel Orbs; Pine Seed needed Natural, Water, and Bronze Orbs; Birch Seed needed Natural, Earth, and Silver Orbs; Redwood needed Natural, Fire, and Iron Orbs; and Yew Seed needed Natural, Air, and Gold Orbs. The Orbs were easy enough to create and use, b
ut the Mana took much longer to accumulate. The Cedar Seed only needed a little less than her maximum Mana amount – at 10,000 Mana – and it took just over half an hour to gather that much from outside her dungeon. The others, however, took more than her maximum – which felt additionally strange to her Core.

  Whereas the 5,000 Mana needed for the Maple Seed – as well as the 10,000 for Cedar – re-entered her Core momentarily as it was accumulated before being spat back out, the others that required additional Mana stayed there. It almost reminded her of when she was a newly born Dungeon Core and “ate” too much of her cave; the feeling of being full was there, but fortunately she wasn’t shut down and unable to do anything while it was happening. Instead, it was like her stomach was full, but it wasn’t debilitating – on the contrary, she felt almost energized.

  Sandra tried to pull the Mana back out of the spot it was accumulating in her Core, but it was inaccessible. For better or worse, it was tied up in her “purchase” of the next seed like some sort of down payment being held in reserve at a bank. When she thought of it like that, it made much more sense – she had been a merchant in her former life, after all.

  When she added more of her Mana to the “bank”, it would fill up and pop out of her Core just like before, where she could combine it with the other required materials to unlock the other tree seeds. As soon as she had access to a new seed, she immediately set her Golems in her growing room to work planting a seed and nurturing it to enough maturity to harvest for its wood.

  There was one tree seed she couldn’t quite create yet – other than the options with the unknown materials: Ash Seed. She needed to have access to Lead metal as a material, which she hadn’t found while excavating underground nor was it an alloy she could make herself. Instead, she needed to unlock it using her new skill; the requirements stated she needed to have Earthenware Clay as a material – which she didn’t have yet – so she had to unlock that one first. To do that, she needed Earth and Iron Orbs, which were easy to produce, as well as 5,000 Mana.