There was no point in looking further at any of the villages (and one town) she had located since she couldn’t really communicate with them, but it was good to know they were there. After leaving a few Shears above all of them to keep her informed of their status in the future, she then turned her focus to what was happening closer to her own dungeon…and the people under her care.
Chapter 27
Sandra finally took the time to look over the notification she received after upgrading her Core Size; she had ignored it at first because anything relating to that time spent in…torture…made her want to panic again right after she had recovered. Now, though, she was able to concentrate on it and pay attention with only a slight tinge of insanity touching her thoughts.
Core Size Upgrade Stage complete!
15/15 Completed
Your Core has grown!
Current Size: 23
Mana Capacity increased!
Raw Material Capacity increased!
New Constructs option!
Core Selection Menu
Dungeon Classification:
Constructs (Adv. Level 1)
Core Size:
23
Available Mana:
15896/38199
Available Raw Material (RM):
10250/86279
Constructs Creation Options:
19
Advancement Creation Options:
8
Constructs Creation Options
Name:
Mana Cost: (45% Reduction)
-----
-----
Mobile Fortification
27500
Iron Colossus
41250
Gravitational Devastation Sphere*
15000
Other than the expected increase in her Mana and Raw Material maximums, she also got access to another construct…which she couldn’t create yet because it was out of her price range, essentially. The Advancement of her Classification had been beneficial at the time, but now it seemed to be coming back to bite her in the metaphorical butt. If she did her calculations right, without the reductions afforded her by the other Advancements she had unlocked, the Iron Colossus – which sounded much more impressive than the Mobile Fortification – would’ve cost 75,000 Mana! As it was, 41,250 Mana was still too much for her to afford, and without upgrading her Core Size again or getting the last reduction in Mana Cost (to a full 60% reduction), she was out of luck.
Sandra wasn’t going to be upgrading her Core Size anytime soon, and a fresh look at her available AP showed that she was at 68 from her recent activities – far short of the 120 AP she would need to afford the last reduction. It wasn’t really important at the moment, anyways, because it sounded like some sort of “Boss” construct and there were plenty of other constructs or even normal Dungeon Monsters she could create that might be able to fulfill that role. Her Aerie Roc, for one, was relatively similar in size to others she had seen or heard of, so it could work in a pinch if necessary. Fortunately for Sandra, she didn’t seem like she was in danger of coming under attack.
That didn’t mean she would deliberately sit around and not protect herself, however.
While she waited for the rest of the world to wake up and start moving, Sandra occupied herself with figuring out how she wanted to defend her Roc tunnel. She had originally constructed it just to move the massive birds out of her Home room, but now it had turned into a major thoroughfare that many of her constructs and projects were using to get to the outside. Not only was it the only way for her Animated Slab to leave her dungeon with supplies, but her Mobile Fortification wouldn’t have been able to leave otherwise. If she ever got around to making her new Iron Colossus, she could even make it the boss that was stationed right in front of her Home room entrance. It was just so useful now that she barely even used the workshop anymore and did most of her crafting down below because it was more convenient.
It was also more dangerous not having much – if any – protection from the outside world through the tunnel. Therefore, as the Shieldmen went out to patrol the forests in anticipation of the Goblin and Golem-Classification Core upgrades, and the Elves prepared by creating sharp roots that shot straight out of the ground and faced outwards in a big circle around their village, Sandra started the creation of defenses for her Roc tunnel.
Before she did anything else, Sandra used her Mana and the Bulk Elimination technique to create more rooms along the lengthy Roc tunnel. The tunnel ran for miles, but she didn’t need hundreds of rooms – because that would probably take years and millions upon millions of Mana to fully defend. Instead, starting from the exit leading to the wasteland, she used the technique along the tunnel 2 times on each side next to each other to create a single room, extending the previous 50-foot-wide tunnel into a room that was 150 feet wide, 100 feet tall, and 100 feet long.
It was fairly simple and didn’t require any extra steps, which made it quite easy to make three of them spaced out evenly on the way to the first “turnaround” room that she had created when constructing the tunnel in the first place. In between the first turnaround room and the second – which led back to her Home room – she constructed 2 more of these basic rooms, and in the last section of tunnel that began with a slide she constructed two more. Lastly, Sandra created an even bigger room at the bottom of the slide from her Home room that was essentially 4 of the rooms she had made before, with 2 stacked on top of each other. Basically, it was twice as wide and twice as tall, which was done for a reason – because it was going to be her “boss” room.
A brief experiment – which she did after the first room was built – showed that the dungeon considered them all rooms (which she had initially been worried about, because it had technically been a tunnel first and she couldn’t build traps in tunnels), so the next part was to figure out what kind of constructs to put inside of them and then build out her traps to mesh well with them. She eagerly pulled up her options and mentally frowned; other than her newest construct options, she had already used the rest in her main dungeon, and it didn’t feel right to reuse them.
Winxa? Is there any rule that says I have to use only my constructs to defend my dungeon?
“Of course not; if you have something available that you can use, then go right ahead and use it. As far as I know, there had rarely been a Core in the past that had access to different types of Dungeon Monsters so I don’t think it had ever come up, but there’s no rule that I know of that would prevent you from using them for defense.”
That was good to know, because while she had other Monsters in her dungeon – such as her Unstable Shapeshifters and the Aerie Roc – she hadn’t used any in actual defense yet. She had used some outside of her dungeon when she was assaulting the Undead horde blocking her entrance, but that felt different – so she wasn’t sure if there was a rule against it that would throw everything off at the end of her planning. Sandra was starting to learn that she needed to ask potentially dumb questions of Winxa in order to learn all she could before she did something as drastic as stocking her dungeon with non-construct Dungeon Monsters or, well, whether destroying multiple Dungeon Cores might end up being worse than the original problem.
That last one she wished she had learned weeks ago.
What that essentially meant was that she could use the Advancement Creation Options she had unlocked previously and just recently – which was quite exciting if she told the truth. As much as she enjoyed her constructs, they were limited in some ways and the variety of different Dungeon Monsters she now had access to was like…a new toy to enjoy. It was probably a little sick to think of her creations as toys, but that was how it felt.
Advancement Creation Options
Name:
Mana Cost: (45% Reduction)
Goblin Foreman
44
Wyvine
4400
Radiant Pegasus
5500
Rising Phoenix
8250
Unstable Shapeshifter
8800
Celestial Authority
9900
Animated Slab
13750
Aerie Roc
19250
She technically had 10 rooms to defend now in the entire Roc tunnel, but she had an idea about that. The first three rooms were going to be filled with…experiments of a sort. The best way to experiment some new ideas she recently had would be with less-expensive Monsters, which in this case were the Goblin Foreman – unfortunately for them. They were so inexpensive that she could practically fill an entire room with Goblins packed in tightly next to each other in about 10 minutes or less – so she figured she might as well use them.
“Sandra, what are you using all of these Goblins for? They aren’t exactly…fighters, you know.” Her Dungeon Fairy seemed to be a bit confused when she saw a stream of Goblin Foremen rushing out of her Home room after being created by Sandra.
I know – but they are going to be used for a few different reasons. Don’t worry, it will be fine.
Sandra was slightly annoyed that Winxa would question her in her choices because she rarely did that in the past. The Dungeon Fairy was more likely to comment on how to improve her defenses, not wonder why she did something in the first place. Then, at the back of her mind, she heard a tiny voice telling her that she shouldn’t be so callous with her Dungeon Monsters because they were flesh and blood, not “lifeless” metal like her constructs. She acknowledged what her own conscience was saying, but ruthlessly pushed it down and away because it was interfering with her plans.
Besides, she wasn’t planning on harming her Dungeon Monsters in the first and the second rooms because they were more there to test out some thoughts she had regarding enchantments. The third room…well, that was a different story.
When she had over a hundred of her Goblins in place in the first room, she started crafting smaller versions of the chest armor she had created for the Orcs. The difference between them – other than size, of course – was that Sandra wanted to try out some enchantments that she hadn’t had a chance to use quite yet. If they worked, then it might be something she could add to future armor she made for the Orcs.
First, for a third of the Goblins in the first room, she added a Light Shield enchantment similar to the one that was being used by Felbar’s War Machine against the Undead, which would activate when something other than the Goblin touched the chest armor. She didn’t hook up any Energy Orbs for additional power, so the enchantment was limited to how much Holy energy (via an Echo clone) she pumped into the rune sequence.
Her experiment there was to see how effective reactive enchantments were on armor, so that she didn’t have to have things activated manually. Most of her other enchantments she had created had to be specifically activated to take effect, but if she could figure out how to get them to trigger automatically – sort of how her dungeon traps worked when invaders crossed over their triggers – then that could change everything.
With this in mind, she also created an enchantment on another third of the Goblins that sucked in water from the air and then froze it rapidly, covering the entire armor in a sheet of hard, protective ice. The enchantment, if she remembered correctly, was meant to keep food and drinks cool once it was activated and not necessarily to freeze water into ice, but with its reactive state she wanted to see if her idea would work the way she wanted it to. For the most part, each enchantment she created was a one-shot deal and couldn’t be reactivated, though with the addition of Energy Orbs in the future that could change.
The last third of the Goblins she enchanted with a Nether-based enchantment that was usually applied to weapons, so she was interested to see if it could be used in a defensive way. Basically, as soon as something touched the armor, a blast of necrotic energy would shoot out and cover anything nearby – except for the Goblin itself. It was usually applied to a bladed weapon’s edges, so that when it sliced into a Monster, the necrotic energy would work to weaken the enemy from the inside, making it much easier to kill. This, she was hoping, would be a lot more dramatic.
Once they were all protected with their new enchanted chest armor, Sandra looted her storage and display room, where she had nearly enough short swords that she had previously crafted for all of her Goblins in the first room to have one; there were a dozen that she had to create for them, which was easy enough to do once she knew how many she needed. While they weren’t warriors of any sort like Winxa had mentioned, it was better than going into a fight unarmored.
For the trap in the first room, she took a cue from the Reptile-Classification dungeon she had invaded previously and used water as her main source of attack. A powerful waterfall of freezing cold liquid would descend from near the ceiling, slamming into whatever walked inside. That wasn’t necessarily meant to hurt them, however, but to provide a false sense of security; after the first waterfall, a second one fell down to the floor after 5 feet of empty space, which was filled with sharp slivers of ice 3 inches long that would attempt to impale anything passing through.
To create those waterfalls, and to have them last for approximately 15 minutes, required nearly her entire maximum Mana to achieve, so there wasn’t much else she could add to the trap. If anything came through the two waterfalls unscathed, they were going to be met by 100 Goblin Foremen with enchanted armor and short swords. Truth be told, she didn’t think they were likely be overly effective, but that wasn’t necessarily the point of their presence.
In the second room, she again created some more Goblin Foremen, but only 30 this time. The main component of the room was something completely different from the first, but it was again an experiment – this time with Energy Orbs and the enchantment placed on the explosive bolts she created for the Elves and their new composite bows. She had already seen what happened when she placed the Fireburst enchantment on the tip of a warhammer and turned up the Limiter rune too high; the resulting explosion nearly destroyed her Steelclad Ape Warrior wielding the weapon, and bent the metal of the warhammer at the same time.
She had applied that to the bolts from a suggestion by Echo, though she used Tiny Energy Orbs to make it small enough to fly; regardless of the size, they still did a heck of a lot of damage. But what if she increased the size of the Orb? She had only used an Average-sized pairing of Energy Orbs for the warhammer; not only that, but the Limiter rune had been adjusted so that not all of the energy would be released all at once, even if she had made a mistake. If she took the Limiter rune completely out of the sequence, however….
Her experimenting ultimately left her with a Copper ball wrapped around a Large Energy Orb. She chose Copper because it tended to work better with Fire-based enchantments, and she enchanted the outside of it with the Fireburst enchantment – which was easy enough. The problem was that she needed it to be activated by touching the Energy Orb in the center, which – on the explosive bolts – was normally done by a strong impact, driving the Spirit and Fire Energy Orbs together, creating the explosion. Here, though, the enchantment wasn’t yet connected to the Fire Orb inside – so she needed a way to connect them.
It ended up being a simple solution of using her Mana to make holes in the Copper ball and then placing more Copper rods that were just barely held in place by a very thin connection of more Copper. The idea was that if one of the dozen rods had enough of an impact placed upon it, it would break the thin Copper connection and be plunged inside of the ball, touching the Fire Energy Orb inside. All she had to do after that was make sure the Fireburst enchantment sequence was connected to each of the rods, and it was ready to go.
To help achieve enough of an impact to drive the Copper rods inside, Sandra transformed the side of the second room into elevated stone platforms. She filled them both two-thirds of the way up to the ceiling with stone, and then formed a staircase up along one side of what were going to be battlements of a sort. This staircase allowed the Goblin Foremen she had created earlier to gain access to the top of the
stone platforms.
Basically, the pathway through the middle of the room (which was the original tunnel) was still clear, only now it was flanked by the stone platforms occupied by Goblins. Sandra wasn’t about to leave access to the exit unguarded, though, which is why she next set up some traps that were just the opposite of the room before and which fit the theme well: Fire! When it was activated, thin streams of concentrated and superheated flames would emerge from one stone platform near the ground and stretch over the entire center of the room to the opposite platform. The streams were likely deadly to anyone touching them, though she didn’t make it completely impassable; by alternating their placement, she would force whatever came through to duck under, jump, or squeeze through to avoid getting horribly burned. Towards the end of the room, she even had a few of the streams move in a pre-planned route, which would make whoever wanted to get through them hesitate while they figured out the pattern.
All of which was designed to slow down invaders, so that the Goblin…bombardiers…could make use of their explosive devices. In fact, by the time everything was set up in the room, she had a Hyper Automaton run from her workshop up above – where she cleared out everything but the Unstable Shapeshifter doing the enchanting – and brought with it the very first “bomb” she had created all the way to the entrance of the Roc tunnel and to the Goblins in the second room. Fortunately, she didn’t have to worry about her constructs activating her traps, otherwise that could’ve been disastrous.
With a lot of excitement that she was barely able to contain, she eagerly had one of her Goblins on top of their stone platforms grab the new device and got ready to throw it…and then hesitated.
The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4) Page 30
