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

by Jonathan Brooks

  Before she could finalize that decision, Winxa shouted out in surprise. “This is Dragon Glass! Where did it come from? Better yet, how did you shape it? It’s supposed to be impossible!”

  New Monster Seed identified!

  You now have access to:

  Tiny Dragon Glass Flake

  Origination Raw Material Cost: 20000

  Origination Mana Cost: 7000

  Monster Min. Mana: 5000

  Monster Max. Mana: 10000

  Currently locked:

  Small Dragon Glass Sliver

  Average Dragon Glass Shard

  Large Dragon Glass Chunk

  That was unexpected.

  “What? What did I say?”

  When you identified that black stone, it became accessible as a new Monster Seed, which also means that I can use it as a material. Apparently, only material that has been identified can be used as a Monster Seed.

  Thinking back at her discovery of both the Territory Ant Egg and the Tin Ore, she realized that she knew what both of them were when they were found. The Eggs were self-explanatory, and though she had never seen raw Tin Ore in the ground before, she had at least seen it when it had been used in crafting recipes. And now that the “Dragon Glass” had been identified by the Dungeon Fairy, it was available to be used as a Monster Seed – though it was going to be far into the future based upon the sheer cost of resources.

  “That’s unbelievable! Only a few of the largest, most powerful dungeons get access to Seeds like that! Though I doubt you’ll be able to use it anytime soon, since it’s normally used for really powerful Dungeon Monsters,” the Dungeon Fairy said, as her face expressed a genuine wonder at Sandra’s discovery.

  Thanks – and you’re right. It will be a long time until I can actually use it for a monster, though I may be able to use it as material inside my dungeon.

  To demonstrate her theory, Sandra concentrated on a one-foot-square piece of stone flooring near – but separate from – her small forge, and pictured it turning into the same Dragon Glass that had been formed earlier. The process was actually easier, somehow; now that it was an “official” material that she could use, the Mana and Raw Materials flowed out of her Core and infused the stone without hesitation – though it used quite a bit more than just turning dirt walls into stone. For that one-foot-square piece of flooring to turn into the glossy black stone, it took 180 Mana and 900 RM, as opposed to the 9 Mana and 45 RM the normal grey stone required for the same amount – a significant increase in cost.

  “That’s just plain amazing! Dragon Glass is very rare and is usually formed by – what else – the world’s few remaining dragons for their lairs. They are in danger of being completely wiped out because of the expanding dungeons all over the world, who hunt down the massive beasts just as they do everything else.

  “As you probably noticed, it is virtually immune to any type of heat, so it is the perfect choice for your forge. The downside of the Dragon Glass is that it can’t be worked into different shapes; it can’t be melted down and reshaped – for obvious reasons – but it can be smashed into smaller pieces, filed down, and even sharpened. Although it’s not nearly as brittle as normal glass, it can still be broken down if enough force is used. The only ones I’ve seen work with it were the Dwarves, though it’s been a long time since they crafted anything with the few rare pieces that are found every once in a while.”

  Hmm…a new crafting material is always welcome. Sandra didn’t have much to work with at the moment, but she envisioned having access to more in the future. Which reminded her – she was thinking of upgrading her Core Size; however, she wanted to see if that was the best idea, so she asked Winxa a few questions first about the whole process. She was curious about the increases she could expect when she upgraded in the future, as well as if she would eventually get the constructs she wanted – and whether she should switch her Classification.

  “Well, as to your first question, from what I remember – since it’s been a long time since I’ve stuck around this long with a Dungeon Core – starting at Core Size 8, the increase in your resource capacities and Area of Influence (AOI) stops being double. At Size 8, you’ll receive a 75% increase; at Size 9, you’ll receive a 50% increase. From there, it tapers down to a fixed rate of 25% for Available Mana, Ambient Mana Absorption, and AOI, and then a 20% increase for your Raw Materials. The first 9 Core Sizes are thought of more as the “learning” stages, where you receive big gains for your efforts to get you started in your endeavors faster.

  “Starting at Size 10, however, it will take substantially more to upgrade your Core. Since you cannot accumulate more Mana than your maximum capacity, the upgrades are done in ‘stages’, and each of the stages requires your maximum Mana to progress. To reach Core Size 10, for example, there are two stages, which means that you’ll need twice the amount of your max capacity to complete the upgrade. It sounds like a lot, but I think you’ve seen how quickly you can accumulate Mana if that is all you concentrate on. From there, however, the amount of stages increases by one for each complete upgrade.”

  I can see why the other Dungeon Cores are obsessed with getting more Mana now; the Mana requirement for the some of the higher Sizes must me in the tens of thousands!

  “Actually, once they pass Size 24, they’re looking at millions of points of Mana to upgrade their Core. Sometimes it can take years of work to accumulate enough to complete even one stage, especially if their Dungeon Monsters are being constantly culled by the nearby sentient races.

  “Now, for your next question – I honestly don’t know. Your Constructs Classification is a new one for me, and I have no idea if your monsters will be able to do the crafting you want. By nature, constructs are artificial recreations of things in the natural world; they are stronger in some respects, and weaker in others. For instance, your Golem…where is it, by the way?”

  It got melted by the heat of the forge.

  “Uh, ok…anyway, your former Golem was probably ten times physically stronger and tougher than most creatures of the same size, but it also couldn’t move very fast and had the finger dexterity of a rock. There is always a trade-off when it comes to Dungeon Monsters, and even though you have a unique assortment of constructs, they have their weaknesses like any other Classification.

  “For your last question, I cannot answer that, as it would likely be considered as giving advice. Only you can choose whether you’d like to switch your Classification or not; however, I can tell you that, based upon what it requires from you to sacrifice to affect a change, if you do decide to do it, the earlier you do it, the better. If you decide to change later, you’ll end up being vulnerable for longer.”

  It was some good information, but Sandra didn’t think it really helped her to make a final decision. She knew that crafting was the way she wanted to go in the future, but whether her Classification would ever become suited for it was a worry. Thinking about it for the next few hours while her third room was nearing completion – which progressed faster when she devoted all of her attention to it – she decided to wait until she had increased her Core Size one more time.

  Sandra wasn’t sure if seeing what she unlocked would help, but she wasn’t in a huge hurry; if it didn’t look like it would work out, she would switch to something else. She just hoped it didn’t cost her too much.

  When the third room finally finished up, she completely sealed it off with stone and informed Winxa that she was going to upgrade again. With another set of her constructs inside the newest room, she was accumulating even more Mana – though it wasn’t quite as much as she expected it to increase.

  The Dungeon Fairy had an easy answer for that. “As your Dungeon Monsters range farther from your Core, the ambient Mana they transfer is lessened by distance. It’s not a large amount while it’s inside your dungeon, but once your monsters start roaming aboveground, you’ll see it decrease even further. That’s why Cores tend to protect their dungeons with deadly traps and monsters, becaus
e it’s their main source of the abundant resource. However, there will eventually be a finite amount of ambient Mana that an entire dungeon can provide, which is why roaming ‘ambient Mana collectors’ in the form of monsters are so important. Though they don’t accumulate the same amount of concentrated Mana like your dungeon, they can reach much farther and can make up for the decrease by an extended range.”

  Ok, that makes sense. Alright, are you ready to keep me company?

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  Sandra’s Mana was already full again by that time, so she activated the upgrade to her Core Size. Her awareness shrunk down until it only encompassed a small section of her Home room, and Winxa plopped herself down on the top of her Core like the last time.

  For the next 24 hours, the Dungeon Fairy regaled her with even more stories about her fellow Fairies. Sandra ended up ignoring most of it, though, because she was more interested in thinking about her plans for the future.

  Chapter 17

  Your Core has grown!

  Current Size: 7

  Mana Capacity increased!

  Ambient Mana Absorption increased!

  Raw Material Capacity increased!

  New Constructs options!

  Finally! Sandra eagerly opened her Core Selection Menu to see what new constructs she had access to.

  Constructs Creation Options

  Name:

  Mana Cost:

  Clockwork Spider

  5

  Small Animated Shears

  10

  Tiny Automaton

  20

  Rolling Force

  25

  Segmented Centipede

  100

  Articulated Clockwork Golem

  150

  Singing Blademaster

  300

  Small Armored Sentinel

  400

  She already had a single Small Bronze Orb from unlocking it earlier and she didn’t want to wait until her Mana filled up again from her roaming constructs; instead, Sandra absorbed a dozen of the nearly 100 Copper Orbs she still had around her Core. The Mana and Raw Materials they provided were more than enough to fill up her new capacities of 640 and 3,200, respectively. She then used those resources to produce another Small Bronze Orb monster seed and created both of her new Dungeon Monsters.

  The Singing Blademaster turned out to be a confusing name. When it was done forming, a two-foot-long metal pole floated a foot off of the ground. Attached to the pole were twelve sharp, horizontal, curved blades separated along its length by 2 inches and staggered so that they weren’t all on the same side. The result was something that looked like a deadly, tarnished silver-colored, metal tree hovering in the air. It appeared fairly dangerous if it were to run into someone, but she thought it would’ve been scarier if the blades had been straight so that it could stab into enemies. As it was, the effectiveness of the blade “tree” seemed limited and she couldn’t detect any singing—

  But then it started spinning. Really fast.

  A high-pitched whine screeched through her Home; the Singing Blademaster was spinning so fast it almost appeared to be all one solid piece, with a pole that had a dozen metal circles attached to it. Sandra directed it to move around her Home at a very slow pace, and as it tilted its upper section heading away from her Core, she could hear the tone of the whine alter slightly. Ah…that’s why it’s a “Singing” Blademaster.

  “That’s quite impressive. I would not want to be on the receiving end of an attack by that…what did you call it? Singing Blademaster? An apt name,” Winxa commented when she saw and heard Sandra’s new construct moving around.

  It was impressive…but it did absolutely nothing for Sandra. The Blademaster was made entirely for hurting and killing things, which was the opposite of what Sandra wanted to do. She supposed that it would be of use defending her dungeon, but as she was hoping to avoid a direct confrontation with anything or anyone, her new construct didn’t really excite her.

  The Small Armored Sentinel, on the other hand, was a different matter altogether. Similar in shape to her Tiny Automaton, it was humanoid in shape with a head, torso, and four limbs. Unlike its three-inch-tall little brother, though, the Sentinel was a foot and a half tall. While that was only around six inches taller than her old Golem, it more than made up for the extra expense with thick, armored plates covering its every extremity. The best part about it, though, was the fact that it had hands – and fingers!

  They were crude-looking little digits, but after a little experimentation, Sandra found that they could grip things similar to a “normal” hand (she didn’t classify her old body’s hands as “normal”), though intricate work was likely beyond it. Additionally, to her great pleasure, it had a wrist-like mechanism that allowed the hand to turn. While it couldn’t move in many directions, it could at least rotate the entire hand in a circle.

  Excited, but not willing to delay the progress and growth of her dungeon, Sandra partitioned her mind again. She set one half of it towards digging out another room, which involved absorbing a section of the stone wall in the third room and excavating another tunnel. Once the process of absorbing and then firming up the new tunnel wall with stone was well underway, the main focus of her mind turned to something else.

  Her anticipation and discovery of new constructs completely blinded Sandra to anything else, which was why the discovery that she could vaguely sense the outer world above now came as such a shock to her. Unfortunately, she couldn’t actually see up there; it was as if a fog descended over her sight when she tried to go past the dirt and stone. What gives? Why can’t I see aboveground? She was really looking forward to seeing the sun again, after being stuck looking at caves non-stop.

  “Nice! It’s good that you can sense it now, as it will give you a good indication of how much space you have until you reach the top. If you start giving your tunnels a gradual rise to their slope, you can eventually make your way out. You could, of course, make a tunnel straight to the surface, but it is not recommended – because then anything up there could make it quickly to your Dungeon Core if it wanted to.

  “As to why you can’t see up there, it’s because no Dungeon Cores can actually sense anything outside of their dungeon proper. All sights and information of the world above is sent to you through the use of your Dungeon Monsters, which is yet another reason to have many roaming monsters above. They’ll give you advanced warning if anything approaches that means you harm and gives you more Mana in the process – it’s what we call a ‘Win-Win’ in the business,” Winxa said matter-of-factly.

  The business?

  “The Dungeon Core business, of course. Anyway, you still have a long way yet until you get there, but now that you can see it, you can better plan the layout of your dungeon,” Winxa said, before following it up with a quick disclaimer. “Or not – the choice is up to you.”

  The disappointment of not being able to see the sky or sun quite yet was quickly overshadowed by the anticipation she felt toward what she wanted to do next. Working with the resources she was accumulating through her constructs’ roaming and tunneling through to the next room (which she ended up adding a slight upward slope to and made it a bit longer than usual), Sandra started to make the tools she needed to get started.

  The Land of Muriel had been a relatively safe place for her and her father, but that was mostly due to the fact that they had great Heroes working to make it safe against the nearby dungeons. As a result, many of the crafts that were made – and that she observed and learned in turn – were designed to keep the Heroes properly doing their job: namely, weapons and armor. There were other things that she learned, of course, but she was primarily fascinated by the creation of instruments of war designed for the seemingly eternal war against dungeon expansion.

  Therefore, what she wanted to do first with her new construct (with hands that looked like they would work properly, nonetheless) and her forge was to make the first thing she had ever seen crafted before: a simple kn
ife. Granted, the knife the blacksmith had given her when she was eight years old was made of iron, but as she didn’t have that metal yet, she decided to use her new Bronze alloy instead.

  To make it, the bare minimum of things she needed were a pair of tongs, a hammer, a file, and, of course, an anvil. The best metal for making those things was iron or steel, but she had to settle for making it out of Bronze, as that was the hardest metal that she had that wouldn’t bend or break right away. Fortunately, her Mundane Object Creation skill allowed her to make the bronze tools with just an application of her resources.

  She briefly tried to make the knife with her skill, but as it was a weapon, nothing happened. Luckily, the failed attempt didn’t use up any of her resources; since she had the opportunity to test the skill out, she tried to make a large kitchen knife – which did nothing as well. In fact, any type of bladed implement she tried to create, whether it was for mundane purposes or not, accomplished nothing. Sandra even tried to make a small representation of a warhammer that she had seen before – with a spike on one side – but that didn’t work either.

  Running through her memories for nearly every type of weapon or armor she could think of, nothing materialized when she attempted to create each one. She figured that the skill must’ve automatically known if it was something that could be used as a weapon or armor and negated the creation of it instantly. Although the small blacksmithing hammers and even the tongs she was able to make could theoretically hurt someone, the thought of using them for that purpose never crossed her mind. As for the kitchen knife – as well as some types of skinning knives that she tried to make – while they were tools for crafting, she knew in her mind that they could be used as a weapon; as a result, her skill wouldn’t allow them to be created.