The Crafter's Defense: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 2) Jonathan Brooks (large ebook reader TXT) 📖

beginning and it felt comforting hearing the clomp-clomping of her Tiny Automatons moving around, or watching her Shears floating by in their now-unnecessary absorption routes.  Because her Home room was bigger, though, her awareness didn’t cover the entire small room anymore, and she couldn’t hear or see anything.  Winxa – sitting on top of her Core, which she realized now almost dwarfed the little Fairy – was the only connection she had to the world, and Sandra grasped on to her incessant prattling like a lifeline.

An inconceivable amount of time later when she thought it would never end, her Core Size Upgrade finished, and she breathed a mental sigh of relief.  Thank you for being there for me, Winxa – that was a tough one. How long was I out this time?

“No problem, Sandra.  That’s what I’m here for, you know.  Oh, and I estimate that you were down for almost two days this time.”

Thanking her again, Sandra checked on her dungeon and what she could see aboveground with her extensive AMANS setup.  Everything looked fairly similar to how it was before and nothing jumped out needing her attention.  She let go of the anxiety that she always seemed to have coming out of her Upgrade when it all looked normal – but then she could feel that her Area of Influence had expanded again.  When she looked underground and estimated how far it extended, she realized that it was likely able to reach the trees dividing the Orcish and Elven territories; not only that, but Sandra thought she could reach the forest dividing the Elven and Gnomish lands.

 Putting aside the excitement of potentially getting access to wood, she double-checked everything and finally pulled her attention back to her Core, where her Upgrade screen was waiting patiently for her.

Core Size Upgrade Stage complete!

10/10 Completed

Your Core has grown!

Current Size: 18

Mana Capacity increased!

Raw Material Capacity increased!

Through your use of the intuitive Dungeon Core interface, your current Mana intake, and your unique dungeon fixtures, you have also learned the Organic/Inorganic Material Elemental Transmutation skill!

Now, that was a surprise.  While she hadn’t received any more constructs as part of upgrading her Core Size, she received another skill.

Organic/Inorganic Material Elemental Transmutation

(Core-specific Skill)

Organic/Inorganic Material Elemental Transmutation allows the Dungeon Core to use various Elemental Orbs to have a chance to transmute Organic and Inorganic material into similar-type materials.  Once transmuted, those materials can then be used by the Core as usual, and even new Monster Seeds can be created by this method.  Elemental transmutation can only be used when no invaders are present.  The larger the Elemental Orb and Mana used in the process, the higher the likelihood of success.  Does not work on biological-based materials.  Requirements: Mana, Raw Materials, specific materials to transmute, and Elemental Orbs.  (Skills are permanent and remain even after a Classification change)

Uh…what?  Does this mean what I think it means?

“What’s wrong?  Did something happen?” Winxa asked as she overheard Sandra’s confusion.

No, no…nothing’s wrong – at least I don’t think so.  She explained what her new Core-Specific skill was to the Dungeon Fairy, and for once Winxa seemed to have an idea what it meant.

“Ah, that sounds like some of the skills I’ve heard Dungeon Cores received in the past, though this one seems not to be as limited in its scope.  Basically – at least from my knowledge of similar skills – you can ‘transmute’ one of your materials into something different but adjacent in type.”

That…didn’t help explain all that much.

Winxa thought about it for a second, before she tried to explain it a little more.  “So, yours is a bit different from the others with the use of your Elemental Orbs, but I’ll try to explain it from the perspective of other Dungeon Cores that have something at least similar, if not exactly the same.

“These skills were usually given to Dungeon Cores who would have difficulty obtaining many Monster Seeds on their own for some reason or another, so this was to help them acquire different – and higher-quality – Seeds so that they could grow.  Basically, instead of Elemental Orbs, they would have to save up enough Mana to unlock another variation of a material or Monster Seed they already had; for instance, if they had Copper as a material but couldn’t acquire any Iron, let alone anything higher/more powerful than that.

“They would then have some sort of skill menu that they could access to select what they could ‘transmute’, as well as seeing what it would cost in terms of Mana.  Normally, it would only be confined to a specific type of material, such as Copper could transmute into Iron for say…40,000 accumulated Mana – and then perhaps Steel for 400,000 accumulated Mana.  They were outrageously expensive, but it would also allow the Cores to diversify their Seeds so that they could produce larger Dungeon Monsters.  If you think about it, if you weren’t able to produce Steel and how you unknowingly created of Dragon Glass, it’s not likely that you’d be able to create some of your more powerful constructs.”

You have a point there.  In fact, looking at her available Monster Seeds, if she discounted Steel and Dragon Glass (and the Silver and Gold she had just acquired from Kelerim), the most she could fit into a Large Iron Orb (her biggest Seed) would be 3,200 Mana.  That meant that she wouldn’t have been able to produce her Repair Drones, Ironclad Apes, Steel Pythons, and certainly not her new Ironclad Behemoth.

“But your skill seems different, somehow.  The others had limits on what they could produce – such as only metallic orbs or types of wood – though there was no limit on how powerful the material they wanted to produce could be.  Of course, something like Mithril or Elderwood were very, very expensive Mana-wise – and wouldn’t do much good