The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4)

by Jonathan Brooks

  “We appreciate the help; we have some things that we can do to help with the defense, which is what we’ll likely work on for the rest of the day. Whatever aid you can lend us would be most welcome.”

  Those defenses came in the form of the villagers demonstrating why they were so important to their small community. She had already seen them using their elemental energy to grow small varieties of crops around their village to feed themselves and the Rangers, but that wasn’t all they could do. With being able to strongly manipulate their Natural energy, they were capable of defending themselves – and creating static defenses that would protect the entire village.

  It took all 15 of them working together to grow a massive, thick root 10 feet tall and 5 feet wide that surrounded the entire settlement, acting like a natural wall against anything attacking. Expending that much energy in such a short time, even with some spare Natural Energy Orbs nearby to help them regenerate it, was enough to exhaust them all – but they had done their part. Those Rangers with the ability to manipulate Natural energy slowly worked on the inside of the root wall, adding a way for them to climb up and perch on the top, where they could shoot down into any incoming Dungeon Monster forces. They also caused sharp thorns to emerge from the side of the root facing outwards, which would easily pierce anything that managed to even reach the wall.

  All in all, it was a decent fortification, but having seen what the Slimes could do with their acidic gelatinous bodies, if a couple managed to reach the wall they could start to literally melt the thick root away. She remembered back when the Gnomes were attacked by the Reptile-Classification Core and they too were fairly well protected – and it hadn’t been enough. Granted, the Gnomes were unprepared for the attack while the Elves would be expecting it, but that wouldn’t make much of a difference if they were overwhelmed from two directions.

  Therefore, it was time for Sandra to contribute what help she could that might make a difference. There were hundreds of things she could think of to add to the defense, most of which was adapting some of the same techniques she used in her own dungeon with traps; using constructs might work, but for them to be useful they would likely have to be outside of the village’s walls to fight things directly. The whole point of the walls was to attack from a fortified position, which meant that using her constructs outside of that protection wasn’t the way to go. Though, perhaps there was something that could help – but she’d have to see it herself to determine if it would be effective.

  It took nearly her entire maximum Mana and the use of another of her Average Faceted Onyx Spheres looted from the remains of the Undead-Classification dungeon to create it, but she finally had a chance to see the new construct she had acquired when she upgraded to Core Size 21: the Mobile Fortification. Before she created it, she made sure to move her Aerie Roc off to the side, because she had no idea what exactly she was going to be making.

  “What do you think it will look like? Will it be as large as your big bird over there? It certainly costs a lot more Mana to create, so I’m expecting it to be rather impressive.”

  Winxa seemed even more excited than Sandra to see what it was that she was going to create, and the Dungeon Core couldn’t blame her. It was always exciting to learn about a new construct, especially since the world – and therefore Winxa – hadn’t seen any of her creations before. In fact, this Mobile Fortification was so expensive Mana-wise that if she hadn’t reduced its cost via unlocking some Advancements, it would’ve cost 50,000 Mana! Added into that the fact that without acquiring some few Seeds that could actually hold it, she probably couldn’t have afforded to create it until she was at least Core Size 25, which would give her enough Mana and Raw Materials to fulfill the requirements for both the Monster itself and the Seed.

  I have no idea, but it’s time to find out! Sandra couldn’t help but be pumped up by the Dungeon Fairy’s excitement, and she had visions of the hydra-thing in the Reptile-Classification dungeon and the massive Undead Monsters she was told about in the other dungeon. Now it was her turn to get something that awesome.

  She got all of the elements together, watched the Mana coalesce, and…was severely disappointed.

  There appeared where she had created the Mobile Fortification construct a large silver cube that she thought might be Steel based on her recent experience working with metals. It was at least 15 feet wide on each side, which made it the largest block of Steel she’d ever seen, but it paled in comparison to the size of the Aerie Roc still in her Home room. For 15,000 more Mana than the giant bird, Sandra was expecting something…awesome. Yet, what she ended up with was a giant parchment weight.

  “Is…that it? This doesn’t look all that impressive, Sandra.” Winxa didn’t even try to hide the disappointment in her voice, which matched the Dungeon Core’s own. Even the Animated Slab had been more impressive when it appeared because she knew that the slab of stone was “animated” and could move around. This, though, didn’t give any indication of what it did – and it was even smaller than the Steel-plated Behemoths she could create.

  Let me see what it can do before we pass final judgment.

  Trying to take direct control of it was somehow worse than trying to stay inside of her Unstable Shapeshifters in their unshifted forms – it gave her an immediate headache. When she entered her mind inside the Fortification with the intention of moving the construct, it was almost as if her mind was being squeezed with great force, so after the headache hit after no more than a second, she left it completely. Instead, she gave it an order to move to the other side of the room and set down near the far wall.

  The Mobile Fortification immediately lifted up a foot off of the floor and zipped across the room so fast she almost missed it moving. For a split-second she thought it was going to crash into – and perhaps even through – the stone wall of her Home room; fortunately, it stopped abruptly right next to the wall with not even the slightest gap in between and set back down on the floor.

  Huh. That alone could prove to be deadly to anyone trying to attack it. Having (however many) tons of Steel that the Fortification was made from slam into something at high speed was bound to hurt just about anything severely. Further experimentation revealed its moving weaknesses, however; it took nearly 10 seconds for the Fortification to “recover” from moving before it could move again, and it could only move in a straight line toward wherever it could turn before it moved. It seemed unreasonably limiting, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

  She attempted to see what else it would do, but whatever she tried to do to activate it in any way was unsuccessful. Unlike the Monsters she unlocked via her Advancements, none of her constructs had elemental energy – and therefore no way to see what kind of Special Abilities they might have. She tried to create a few other constructs and even a Goblin Foreman to attack it, but all it did was sit there and take their abuse without doing a single thing. It was quite frustrating.

  Ok, so this didn’t quite work out the way I had expected. Regardless, I’m not going to let it go to waste; I’ll send it out to the Elves and even if all it can do is smash into them, it will help.

  Sandra ended up creating 3 more Titanium Anacondas to join the two that had patrolled the Slime forest the night before and another 60 Roaring Blademasters to join the previous 45 that were fighting against the Beasts, giving the Elves additional help. They were the only two she could reasonably count on to contribute without getting in the way – and that wouldn’t freak out the Elves; she briefly thought about using Unstable Shapeshifters with Echo’s form like Echo had commanded in the Undead dungeon, but thought that would freak out the villagers, if not the Rangers as well.

  After that, she was content with what they had in defense; there was a wall with 42 Rangers arranged around the entire village, who could employ their elemental energy to enhance their attacks; Sandra created more normal and explosive bolts so that they wouldn’t run out quickly when using their new bows; they had their Wyvines available insid
e the walls in case of a breakthrough; there were over 100 Roaring Blademasters ready to cut a swathe through any opposition along with 5 deadly Titanium Anacondas; she provided another 2 Multi-access Repair Drones in addition to the 2 already accompanying her constructs in case they were needed; and, as much as it was unknown how useful it would be, there was a Mobile Fortification that could at least ram through and splatter anything it came across with its multi-ton weight of solid Steel. She found out how heavy it was when it eventually arrived outside of the village and sank down into the soft dirt a few feet until the earth was compacted enough to hold the construct.

  She thought about trying to design some enchantment-based traps that could be planted outside of the village, but held off for now. For one, she would have to make a lot to cover enough ground to completely spread over the different avenues of attack; two, she thought that might be overkill based on what she thought might be coming the Elves’ way; three, if she needed to, she was planning on sending her Aerie Roc out once the fighting started as backup in case something dangerous made an appearance; and finally, four – she wanted to upgrade her Core Size again while she had a chance.

  It was a lot of upgrades for her to do in such a short period of time, but if she timed it correctly she could be done with it before dawn broke and would finish in plenty of time before the Elven Cores finished their own upgrades. Then there would probably be a period of time when the two Cores would build up their forces for an attack on the Elven village, so she thought it was safe to go ahead and upgrade her own Core. She wasn’t exactly sure when she would get a better time, so she was going to take advantage of it.

  Winxa, I’m going under again.

  “Wow, already? That’s smart, I guess. Just be careful.”

  She had already told everyone that mattered that she was going to be unavailable again, so as soon as she told the Dungeon Fairy she was undergoing her upgrade again, she activated it immediately. It was only when she felt the world close in on her that she really comprehended Winxa’s warning: Just be careful.

  What do I have to be careful about? This is just an upgrade—

  Except that she did have to be careful, because the old anxiety and semi-madness that had affected her when undergoing previous upgrades returned. Even being able to observe more of her dungeon during the upgrade process and Winxa telling stories didn’t help her cope with the feeling of being trapped within her own mind and the helplessness that came with it. She started to panic after just a short time and vowed never to undergo another upgrade if this was what she was going to feel like.

  Sandra probably would have entirely lost her mind and snapped if she had been forced to endure the isolation for the entire normal duration of her upgrade, but the pieces of Dungeon Cores that she had salvaged kicked in and saved her.

  Aaaaaahhhhhhh!

  “Sandra! Are you alright? What’s wrong?!” Winxa asked as soon as Sandra screamed through their connection. The Dungeon Core, freed from her imposed confinement, freaked out and started to look at everything throughout her Area of Influence without really seeing it, controlling constructs and Dungeon Monsters for a split-second before leaving them – all so that she could convince her mind that she wasn’t trapped inside her mind anymore.

  It took nearly an hour for her to calm down enough to really think clearly, only to find her Dungeon Fairy lying across her Core – which, now that she really looked at it, had grown considerably over the last few days – and softly weeping.

  Hey there…what’s wrong?

  “Sandra?” Winxa sniffed, wiping her eyes as she sat up. “Are you…alright?”

  Sandra sighed internally and tried to figure out what had happened. I…think so…. That was close, though, and I think I nearly lost myself completely. I think I can begin to understand how most of the other Dungeon Cores feel after cracking under isolation.

  “I thought I had lost you like all of the other Cores I’ve tried to guide,” the Fairy sobbed, losing her composure again for a few moments before settling down again.

  Not yet, though like I said…it was close. I think I went through too many upgrades in too short of a time and I wasn’t mentally prepared for it. I’m fine now, really.

  The sheer panic had faded, that was true; the pain and fear of isolation was still lingering, though she did her best to push it aside and deal with the consequences of it later.

  “Just…don’t break like that again if you can – you scared me there,” Winxa pleaded.

  Don’t worry, I’m not planning on going through another upgrade anytime soon. If I had my way, I wouldn’t upgrade at all anymore, but I know that’s unlikely.

  She knew that she had “vowed” never to go through another upgrade while she was in her crazy panicked state, but that wasn’t likely to happen. Still, she didn’t want to chance going through another upgrade at least for another month. Or two. Or a year or a decade – whatever she could get away with. She did not like losing control like that and wanted to avoid a repeat in the future.

  Regardless of what happened, it was over with. Now that she had her focus and concentration back, she looked around her AOI and tried to see what had happened while she was gone. It was still early morning, though the pre-dawn light was starting to light up the horizon hinting that dawn was soon to arrive; because of the early (or late, depending on how one looked at it) hour, nothing was really stirring quite yet with the Dwarves, Elves, or Orcs. There was absolutely no activity inside any of the nearby forests due to the upgrades going on, so it was quiet and practically nothing that wasn’t hers was moving around – for the first time she could remember since she had expanded enough to observe outside of the wastelands.

  When she looked further through her AOI through the ground, she wasn’t even surprised to see that she had extended it another 10 miles to just over 30 miles in every direction, which was nearly a 50% increase again. The biggest difference this time, however, was that she could feel the AOIs of brand-new Dungeon Cores just inside of her new territory. Eight of them that were new, in fact, were now present to her senses – which was exciting and a little overwhelming. She couldn’t actually see their dungeons yet, but at least a couple miles of their AOI was intersecting with her own, and based on their spherical shape Sandra estimated that they were just outside of her range.

  The exciting thing she noticed when she took her Shears out for a look-see, was that she finally got to see more people! She found two more Orc villages that were within a mile or two of the forest where she suspected the new dungeons were located, and they looked remarkably similar in composition to Grongbak, though slightly larger and filled to capacity with Orcs – or so she intuited by looking briefly through some windows. The worrying thing about them, however, was that the AOIs of the dungeons located along opposite forests were already starting to creep out of the forests. They seemed to be set further back than they were near the wastelands, which made sense because the thickness of the forests was wider at that point as well. The problem was that she doubted the Orcs quite realized the danger they were in – or would be in soon.

  She found the same thing when she looked further into the Elven lands of Symenora, though each village she found was only half as large as Avensglen – the complete opposite of the Orcs. This made more sense, though, because there was only a single dungeon they had to deal with; the village near the wastelands had to deal with two at the same time, which needed more bodies to keep up with the culling. If Sandra was able to stretch her Area of Influence even further, she knew she would start to find less-populated or abandoned Elven villages, as Echo had mentioned at one point that they were barely holding on to what they had and didn’t have the people to stop expansion in certain areas.

  The Dwarves had entirely abandoned any pretense of holding the dungeons back and she only found two long-abandoned villages when she ventured out further. As a result, the dungeons there had expanded extensively, reaching further into the Dwarven lands than any others that she ha
d seen. In fact, each of the Cores had expanded their Size so much that she had just barely missed being able to see them during her last Core Size upgrade, which meant that things there were looking – to put it mildly – bad. But not as bad as it should’ve been.

  Do you think the beasts and creatures in the forest were responsible for holding them back as much as it appears they’ve been?

  Sandra had been explaining what she was looking at to Winxa, and she nodded in response to the Dungeon Core’s question. “Yes, if you remember, I told you that Cores are looking to kill in order to get Mana; people give more, as you know, but beasts and creatures give plenty of their own. When they venture out to acquire more Mana, they undoubtedly riled up entire communities of natural monsters that struck back with savage intent. If the Core leaves them alone – which is not likely – there probably won’t be any retaliation, but if not…well, I figure you can guess.”

  She certainly could. What she saw inside of the deep recesses of the forests appeared dangerous even to Sandra’s dungeon and she wouldn’t want to get on their bad side.

  The Gnome town she encountered in a stand of trees equidistant of the two forests bracketing Gnomeria was the largest evidence of civilization that she had seen since she was still Human. The town had at least 40 buildings of varying sizes, including – when she peered inside – one large building that housed 6 War Machines (not the ones Sandra had helped create, but the original ones).

  The problem was that there seemed like there was room for a lot more inside the large open-front building, which the Dungeon Core thought that likely meant there had been some attrition in their ranks that hadn’t been replaced. Still, they seemed like they were still in a better position to defend their people than any of the others. They also had high walls surrounding the town with the same stationary crossbows Sandra had seen in Felbar and Violet’s smaller village, as well as a few unique-looking machines that had enchantment runes all over them.