The Crafter's Dungeon: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 1) Jonathan Brooks (sites to read books for free .TXT) 📖

looking forward to seeing the sun again, even if it was through the eyes of her monsters – and she had to be ready.  Not only that, but it was entirely possible that another colony of Territory Ants could be underground, or even something worse.  She didn’t have as much knowledge about creatures, beasts, and other wild animals as she would’ve liked, and there was every possibility that there were things she had never heard of in this part of the world she hadn’t ever visited before.

Therefore, before she did anything else, Sandra used her resources to finish the stone covering she had started before the Ant attack.  She had to borrow some more Raw Materials from the walls she was intending to expand a little, but in a short time she had completely finished her main cave, which Winxa mentioned was normally called the “Core Room”.

Makes sense, I guess.

“Yeah, most of the names for things are simple, otherwise many of the insane Dungeon Cores couldn’t understand it very well.  Of course, you can call it whatever you like,” Winxa commented.

It works for now.  I’ll give it some thought, though.

Once the stone covering was complete – with just a single area where she wanted to expand, Sandra looked through one of her slowly drifting Animated Shears at her new place for a different perspective.  She had evened off the “dome” so that the corners and edges ended in a straight line and she had four relatively even walls.  It suited her more than the curved look it had before, so that it almost looked like a room inside of a building – with a brightly-glowing rock suspended in the middle of it.

Overall, the room wasn’t very attractive, with just a grey stone color nearly everywhere she looked; however, she was happy with her work and was proud to call it…dare she say it?...home.

“I like that name.  Home.”

Me too.

Chapter 14

Over the next few weeks, Sandra concentrated on expanding and making rooms.  Starting from the open end that she had left stone-less for that purpose, she created a tunnel 5 feet tall and 4 wide, which led to a large, square, open room with 20-foot ceilings and walls that were 50 feet across.  She then covered all of that in stone, leaving it relatively impenetrable from the outside.

She converted the Raw Materials she absorbed from creating the room into Monster Seeds, which let her create a small army of Animated Shears, Rolling Forces, and Segmented Centipedes.  The Shears gathered up all of the ambient Mana from the middle of the room, the Rolling metal balls covered the floor, and the Centipedes were able to roam all over the walls and ceiling.  After a little experimentation, she found that she needed to maintain about a dozen of her flying Shears, six Rolling Forces, and eight Centipedes to maintain the gathering of ambient Mana throughout the room.

When she looked back “Home”, the number of constructs still inside was a little overkill as far as gathering up ambient Mana, but she was reluctant to part with them.  She kept them close by because they helped her feel a little more protected, even though nothing could get to her now (or at least she hoped).

Obviously, even after creating 26 monsters for her new room, she still had an overabundance of resources.  As a result, Sandra was slowly accumulating a giant pile of Copper Orbs of different sizes around the floor near her Core.  Since she knew she could get some of that back if she needed to absorb them, they acted almost like currency and the floor a bank that she could withdraw from, though it came with a not-so-small fee of half of the mana that she used to create them.

With her expanded Area of Influence, she could see that the territory she now controlled extended up to about 120 feet in every direction.  Given that her two rooms were already pushing that limit, she decided that it was time to upgrade her Core Size again.  After 24 hours of Winxa regaling her with inane stories about her fellow Dungeon Fairies – which Sandra was honestly happy for, since it helped pass the time when she was relatively helpless – she finally achieved Core Size 6.

Your Core has grown!

Current Size: 6

Mana Capacity increased!

Ambient Mana Absorption increased!

Raw Material Capacity increased!

Core Selection Menu

Dungeon Classification:

Constructs

Core Size:

6

Available Mana:

2/320

Ambient Mana Absorption:

.32/hour

Available Raw Material (RM):

800/1600

Convert Raw Material to Mana?

800 RM -- > 32 Mana

Current Dungeon Monsters:

85

Constructs Creation Options:

6

Monster Seed Schematics:

4

Current Traps:

0

Trap Construction Options:

All

Core-specific Skills:

2

It wasn’t nearly as impressive of an upgrade as her other ones, but at least she could handle more Mana and Raw Materials.  Her Ambient Mana Absorption was still pitiful, but she guessed it was good to have that kind of fallback option if she lost all of her mobile ambient Mana collectors, otherwise known as her Dungeon Monsters.

What excited her the most about her upgraded Core Size was the expansion of her Area of Influence.  Being able to see through the dirt and stone for nearly 250 feet in every direction was amazing, and she was eager to keep that going.  She couldn’t see the surface quite yet, but from the few tunnels leading up from the now empty Territory Ant colony, Sandra could sense that it was probably close – but she figured it would take at least another upgrade in order to see it.

As she started to absorb material from the tunnel leading to the next room, Sandra thought about what kind of traps to put in her finished rooms.  Although she was “sealed” right now, that didn’t mean something couldn’t try to sneak in when she wasn’t looking.  The only place they could easily come through