The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5)

by Jonathan Brooks

  Current Form: Base

  Current Elemental Energy:

  Air – 4000 energy

  Earth – 4000 energy

  Fire – 4000 energy

  Water – 4000 energy

  Nether – 4000 energy

  Holy – 4000 energy

  Natural – 4000 energy

  Spirit – 4000 energy

  Natural Ability:

  Stable Shapeshift: 0 energy

  Special Ability:

  None – adopts the special ability of whatever form it Shapeshifts into (if applicable)

  Other than the monster having twice the amount of energy for each element that it used to, the only other difference was in its Natural Ability: Stable Shapeshift. After ordering it to move into the Forge where the other Shapeshifters were still enchanting Energy Orbs, she had it acquire the necessary patterns from her original Shapeshifter, who she made sure was kept safe at all times. After collecting a little crop of blood from all of the Dwarves living in her dungeon, as well as all of the Orc mercenaries, she had acquired their patterns; her Shapeshifter was now carrying over 100 different Elvish, Dwarven, and Orcish patterns – which was basically everyone she had bonded with. The only ones that hadn’t been acquired were all of the Elven Rangers and Elder Herrlot, as she hadn’t had the time to acquire them while they had briefly stopped by her dungeon to Bond.

  Thankfully, even though they were two different monsters, they were alike enough that the patterns could be communicated. That was more than good news, because without the ability to create the Unstable kind anymore, to have to start over would’ve been very disappointing.

  As soon as she shifted into Violet, her favorite form for when she was Enchanting using Spirit-based enchantments, she could immediately sense a difference. Whereas before she felt that the forms were only temporary – and they were, lasting only an hour before they reverted to their base form – she sensed that the shift in form was much more…permanent. Instantly worried, she had the Shapeshifter shift back into its base form and sighed in relief. I wouldn’t want it to become limited to just one form, after all. It took about 5 seconds after reverting to its non-shifted form to shift into another one – Echo this time – but that wasn’t that big of a deal; overall, Sandra thought that the “Stable” part of its ability just meant that it wouldn’t revert to its base form after an hour. Whether that meant that it could stay that way forever was something she’d have to discover over time.

  A few minutes later, she was ready to work, as the new Stable Shapeshifter had traveled up to the workshop and was ready to attempt one of the Personal Enhancement Enchantments. Going through all of them in her head, she knew there were a lot to choose from; Silver-based PEEs were a lot more common than Gold or gemstone-based ones, after all, and additional work had been done with them to develop more variations over time. In all, there were different options for each element as well as a few multi-element ones, though of course Violet could only create Spirit or Natural enchantments because of what she had access to; the others would have to wait, utilizing a different form for different elements.

  Rapid Oxygenation (Air)

  Enhance Smell (Air)

  Enhance Hearing (Air)

  Soothe Burns (Fire)

  Lesser Heat Resistance (Fire)

  Gradual Hydration (Water)

  Lesser Cold Resistance (Water)

  Tremorsense (Earth)

  Enhance Taste (Earth)

  Expel Necrosis (Nether)

  Darkvision (Nether)

  Rapid Healing (Holy)

  Minor Invisibility (Holy)

  Enhance Sight (Spirit)

  Detect Illusion (Spirit)

  Cleanse Toxins (Natural)

  Cleanse Poisons (Natural)

  Gradual Nutritional Sustenance (Natural, Earth)

  Water Breathing (Air, Water)

  Muffle Sound (Nether, Air)

  Passive Healing (Holy, Spirit)

  There were probably hundreds of different things that could be achieved with PEEs, but not all of them had been discovered when Sandra was alive. It was quite possible that the Gnomes knew more than the Humans did, and she was excited to one day learn about such enchantments from their Master Enchanters – if they ever visited, that was.

  Sandra ignored another grumbling, wordless rant from the Core shard in her mind.

  With only a few to choose from while in Violet form, she concentrated on one that would be the easiest to test: Enhance Sight. She could already look out from the eyes of Shapeshifter, so it should be fairly straightforward to confirm if it worked or not.

  The basic rune sequence was fairly straightforward, as well. By combining the Enhance, Transform, Visualize, and Activate runes together, she could make the PEE with relative ease; her experience making so many Energy orbs had improved her ability to string runes in sequence without too much trouble. What made it a little different and required some planning was the fact that the rune sequence needed to be circular in shape, without any breaks, and flowed perfectly into each other. The reason behind this was to both ensure that the enchantment continued to work at a steady rate, as well as concentrating and restricting it to the person in contact with the PEE.

  It only took her a few moments to play around with her energy to design the appropriately sized rune sequence, and when it was ready she had her Violet copy pump in 1,000 of her 16,000 Spirit energy into the flat sheet of Silver. She didn’t want to invest too much in it in case something went wrong and it exploded, but it also had enough to last long enough to test.

  The energy flowed through the PEE, eventually settling into the Silver sheet as if it had always been there. Perfect! Not a single major flaw that I can see. She critiqued her own work and saw a few spots where she could’ve tightened up the rune formation – especially on the Visualize rune that she hadn’t used much in her enchantments up to that point – but overall, it was a quality piece of work.

  Without further ado, she carried the sheet of metal outside of her dungeon, before placing it on a shelf of rock at about chest-height on her Violet clone. Sandra first looked around, determining how much she could see of the surrounding land, as well as how much detail she could make out on the ground around her. When she thought she had a fairly good baseline of what she could see, she placed her hand on the Silver and activated the enchantment.

  The difference was immediate. Not only could Sandra make out objects at a farther distance than before, but when she looked at the ground, she could differentiate the smaller grains of dirt at her feet, as well as see differences in the stone that she hadn’t really noticed before aboveground. It was almost as good as her own “vision” under the ground as a Dungeon Core—

  The Enhanced Sight enchantment abruptly shut off as the energy contained within was expended after about 10 seconds. The difference was even more noticeable when the enhancement wasn’t there, as now everything seemed to look blurrier than it was before; she knew that wasn’t necessarily the case, but it sure seemed that way in comparison.

  Proof of concept was a success. Now it’s time to see what I can do with some Energy Orbs.

  Chapter 30

  Using the same principles as she and Violet had developed to produce the multitude of spectacular enchantments used in many of the weapons, Enchantment Repository Pillars, and even the War Machine and Deep Divers suits, Sandra reabsorbed the flat Silver sheet and recreated it for the next step. Using her Shapeshifter, she copied what she had done the first time, though this time she only placed a small fraction of her Spirit energy into it, 10 to be exact, in order to establish the rune sequence.

  Before she finalized it, she placed two Tiny Spirit Orbs together with the Limiter rune connecting them on the outside of the circle made by the PEE sequence, and linked up the entire enchantment. Letting it all go, she held her figurative breath and crossed non-existent fingers that it would work – and not explode immediately. Fortunately, it didn’t—and now it was time to test it.

 
; Not even bothering to take it outside, since she now had a feel for how it would work, she used the Violet copy to press the activation and held her hand to the sheet. Just as quickly as the last time, her vision improved remarkably—too remarkably, in fact. There was so much energy pumping through the Limiter rune connection that it fed through the enchantment at a horrendous speed, improving her vision by an order of magnitude that Sandra hadn’t comprehended before.

  Before she knew it, however, the Shapeshifter’s eyes exploded, unable to take that sort of enhancement for more than a second or two.

  OUCH! What the—?

  “What happened, Sandra? Are you alright?” Winxa was fluttering around her Core worriedly, obviously reacting to her sounds of pain. Even now, Sandra was still feeling the temporary pain of having two organs explode in her Monster’s head, and it took her a moment to answer.

  Yes, I think so. Just another experiment gone wrong; I think I know what I need to change to fix it, though.

  The Dungeon Fairy still looked concerned, but seemed to accept that it was just a part of Sandra’s normal crafting process. “Well, be careful please; I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  Sandra assured her that she would, before concentrating on the workshop again. She had left control of the Shapeshifter as soon as she could after the explosion, and hadn’t had a chance to see what had happened to it yet. When she looked, she could see the Multi-access Repair Drone she had stationed up there was already at work, as the Shapeshifter in Violet form was lying on the floor, with two craters in its face that were caused by the eyeball explosion. It took nearly 10 minutes for it to fully heal, and she knew that if the Drone hadn’t been nearby, the Shifter would’ve likely perished.

  Sandra mentally shuddered as she remembered the feel of the explosion, as well as the enhancement itself. Definitely not the most fun experience I’ve ever had with my Dungeon Monsters; not the worst, but certainly in the top 5 or so.

  As the Shapeshifter healed, she went over what went wrong—which was fairly obvious when she looked at it. Sandra had mistakenly ramped the Limiter up too much; she had “logically” been using the same sort of arrangement of the Limiter sequence as the Energy Orbs, because it was ultimately being fed into the body of the person. However, she had forgotten that the PEEs automatically regulated how much was fed into the person, because of the circular pattern they were constructed of; the same sort of energy flowing through this enchantment compared to the energy refilling someone’s energy reservoir was a vast difference. Sandra thought it was probably because the energy that was regenerated through an Energy Orb was suffused through the whole body as raw energy, and not concentrated on a particular system or body part.

  Wait…does that mean that in a normal PEE, a lot of the energy that sustains and regulates the output is essentially wasted? I thought that I was actually aiming a bit lower than necessary to maintain the correct energy feed-through, but that didn’t seem to be the case; based on what I saw and experienced, I think I need to shoot even lower – which means that I was wrong about how long these PEEs will last with Energy Orbs attached. I thought they might last hours or a day, but it could be much longer.

  Now that was exciting. Sandra thought she would just be shortly extending the time the PEEs could be used before they ran out of energy, but everything was pointing at something greater than that. Years, perhaps – though it was too soon to tell without a working prototype.

  She was impatient for her Violet copy to get entirely healed, and her eagerness to keep experimenting was enough to send most of the lingering feelings of pain from the bodily explosion away. That wasn’t the only thing that was sent away, she realized; as soon as she started to craft for real, the Core shard in her mind had backed off, retreating to the space it had inhabited before the attack on the Orc Warband. She could tell that it wasn’t confined there, and could reemerge at any time, but for the moment there was nothing that called out to it to press against Sandra’s control. Knowing that was progress, of a sort, she had hopes in the future that they could either co-exist or there might be a way to banish the contract-based Core shard once and for all.

  Neither solution of which was going to come right now, however, because her Shapeshifter was back in action. With only the slightest hesitation, she entered the Violet copy’s viewpoint and got back to work. Sandra had already absorbed her failed experiment and salvaged the Energy Orbs, so she tried everything again; this time, she placed the Limiter rune sequence on the very lowest setting she could manage, which basically allowed only the slightest trickle of energy to pass through. Taking a large breath with her Shapeshifter, she activated and prepared to escape its mind if she felt that there might be another explosion imminent.

  But, as she had hoped, it worked.

  The Enhanced Vision PEE worked exactly as it should, enhancing “Violet’s” vision at approximately the same rate as it had been without the Energy Orbs. She could see the stone underneath her feet nearly the same as she would as a Dungeon Core, and looking at the Enchantment inscribed on the Silver sheet made her realize she still had a lot of practice to do to perfect her enchantments. The enhancements allowed her to see the imperfections in her rune forming even more than she had seen before – but it was something she could certainly work on!

  Best yet, the PEE didn’t shut off after 10 seconds, or after a minute, or even 5 minutes. Her vision also didn’t seem to be sharpening at any perceptible rate, which told her that she had hit the equilibrium of input and output. If anything, as she brought it outside and looked around, she thought it might actually be a little worse than the non-Energy Orb enchantment. That indicated that she could theoretically increase the Limiter rune energy output a tiny bit more if she wanted to, but the difference wasn’t dramatic enough to make it necessary.

  Even after 15 minutes, there was no lessening in the PEE’s vision enhancement, but Sandra deactivated it anyway. It was too soon to tell how long the Tiny Energy Orbs connected to it would last if used constantly, but she suspected that they would probably last anywhere from a week to a month – perhaps even more. That was for the Tiny size, too; using a Large Orb would increase that time by 16, so a PEE that could last for a year or more of continuous use was, to put it shortly, amazing.

  Sandra went ahead and absorbed the Silver sheet with the enchantment, because it was entirely too big to be of practical use to anyone. The Energy Orbs were still fine when detached from the enchantment, so they could be reused during the next experiment: Gold! Making a sheet of similar size as the Silver cost a tiny bit more Mana, but was nothing to be concerned with. Then she had to decide on an enchantment to use, though this time there weren’t quite as many that she knew of to try.

  Lesser Buoyancy (Air)

  Minor Muscle Strengthening (Fire)

  Stoneskin (Earth)

  Minor Muscle Elasticity (Water)

  Draining Touch (Nether)

  Purification (Holy)

  Binding Grip (Natural)

  Energy Expansion (Spirit)

  Lesser Buoyancy increased the speed of a person, as well as allowing them to fall from higher distances without getting hurt; Minor Muscle Strengthening did what the name implied – it strengthened the muscles of the person and made them stronger; Stoneskin made the skin harder and more durable, similar to how the Warlord Rothgar Bloodskull could withstand powerful hits without dying; and Minor Muscle Elasticity was another way to increase speed, but additionally helped move the body around more fluidly, such as how Palzerk could dodge attacks while getting in position for his own strikes.

  Draining Touch was a bit of a mystery to Sandra, because she hadn’t ever heard it being used before. Theoretically, it would allow the touch of a person to drain either the energy or vitality of a target, weakening them significantly – but very few Heroes had wanted to get that close to a monster to test out exactly what it did.

  Purification was a way to prevent any type of toxin, poison, or other negative status effect fr
om entering their body. Unfortunately, if someone were already affected, it did nothing to purge those effects from the body – one would need a Silver-based PEE for that, or a spell.

  Binding Grip enhanced the physical grip of their hands and feet, allowing them to climb virtually any surface. Apart from the speed and strength-type PEEs, this Natural-based enchantment was probably the most widely used when Heroes needed to delve into dungeons; it was the most useful of utility PEEs, because there were plenty of times the enhancement could come in “handy”. Even in her own dungeon, if someone had Binding Grip, it could certainly help them navigate their way through a few rooms and bypass the dangers within.

  As for the last, Energy Expansion, this PEE was widely considered the most useless of enchantments, as it had absolutely no value. Supposedly, it doubled someone’s capacity for their elemental energy temporarily, meaning they could hold and access more; it sounded extremely powerful, but since it only lasted a few minutes at most and didn’t actually give them more energy, it was useless. Especially since they needed to sleep to recover their energy—

  Hold on! Why didn’t I think of that before? It was probably because the enchantment was a bit of a joke, and had no reasonable purpose other than as a way to waste the hard-earned money of unsuspecting Heroes who didn’t know any better. It was decidedly worthless – until now.

  But now…this PEE could change everything.

  Excitedly, Sandra used her Violet clone to create the enchantment on the large sheet of Gold available to her, placing the two Tiny Spirit Orbs to the side of it and forming the Gold material around them to keep them in place. She double-checked her work just in case she had messed something up in her excitement, but everything looked okay—if not precisely clean. Either way, it didn’t explode when she settled the rune sequence into permanency, nor did it do anything of the sort when she placed her Shapeshifter’s hand on it.

  In fact, nothing noticeable happened. Did it work? There was only one way to find out, she figured. Looking at the details of her Stabilized Shapeshifter again, she saw that it still had 16,000 Natural energy, with Spirit just under 15,000 – but there was no indication that anything had changed. Grabbing a Natural Energy Orb from the small stash she was back to keeping up in the workshop now that she was constantly producing them, she walked back to the Gold sheet with the Energy Expansion PEE on it. Placing her hand down again, she kept an eye on the Shifter’s information.