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

that was watching all of the energy emerging from it, that show of power was essentially the same as watching one of your other constructs use their innate energy to float or rotate with seemingly no power source – but that energy is the power source; you just don’t normally see it working.”

It was a pretty simplified explanation, but it made sense, she thought.  Regardless of the validity of the explanation, Sandra still tried to take control of the Repair Drone and use it to craft an enchantment on the double-bladed axe her Sentinel had just finished making.  After ten frustrating minutes of not even being able to get her construct to extend its arms from its pristine white shell, she gave it up as a bust.  There’s got to be a way!  Nevertheless, she gave it up and kept the Repair Drone near the forge, where it would periodically fix the slowly melting parts of the Sentinel as it got too near the heat.

The one downside of doing that, however, was that whenever her little crafter needed “healing”, it would pause as the Repair Drone did its work.  She tried to force it to continue but found that it was completely frozen in place for the duration.  Fortunately, as they were usually minor fixes, the process would only take a few seconds, but the interruption made the movement of hot metal from the forge to the nearby anvil sometimes inconvenient.

Eventually, Sandra gave the Drone instructions to do the same thing most of her other constructs were doing – gathering ambient Mana.  She didn’t really need it in the room to do that, of course, but the slow path she set it on brought it near the forge – and her Sentinel – only once every hour or so, which made the interruption a little longer for the repairs, but much less frequent.

As for the Dungeon Monster construct that had the potential for replacing her constantly repaired Sentinel, at Core Size 15 Sandra received access to something called an Ironclad Ape.  As soon as she could afford to produce the Ape, which cost 6,000 Mana – almost her new Mana capacity – and required an Average Steel Orb, the largest Monster Seed that she could actually originate, she was overjoyed and couldn’t wait to see what it could do.

Made entirely of Iron – as opposed to the other constructs’ softer, unidentifiable metal – the Ironclad Ape stood only 4 feet high when it stood on its back legs; despite not being that tall, the new construct had solid iron plates of thick “skin”, in addition to a complete iron skeleton.  It was more animated than her clockwork or mechanical constructs, because when she was able to see through some of the gaps in its outer “armor”, she could see a faint glowing bluish light right in the middle of its body.  Since it didn’t have any obvious weak points along the outside, Sandra figured this light was what animated it and was its vulnerability.

The sheer weight of the construct was staggering; she estimated that it weighed nearly 2,000 pounds, which was evidenced when it simply walked/stomped around and started to leave cracks in the stone beneath it.  Sandra spent the next few hours using every drop of Mana repairing the cracks and then strengthening the stone flooring, hopefully preventing her from having to repair it in the future.  By the time she had finished all 24 rooms she now had in her dungeon, she had spent almost 5,000 Mana on the project.

The best part of the Ironclad Ape, however, wasn’t its weight or shape – it was the fact that it was animated and could move its arms (and fingers) in any direction it wanted.  Not only that, but as it was larger and stronger than her Sentinel, it could finish projects faster; where her little Armored crafter would need five or six strikes to flatten out a section of red-hot metal, she figured that her new construct could probably do the same in one or two – if the strike was precise enough, of course.  And with her practice lately, Sandra thought she could quickly adjust herself to the different “feel” of the Ape and make that preciseness a reality.

Another added benefit was that fact that it was made of Iron, which wouldn’t melt nearly as easily as her Sentinel did when it was near the forge.  It would likely still get damaged if it stayed there for too long, but as there wasn’t any real point to doing that, Sandra thought it would be safe.  Overall, her new construct was larger, stronger, and could handle higher temperatures for longer – which meant that she could build a bigger forge and start crafting larger pieces.

However, all of her upgrades and expansion meant that she was extremely close to the surface.  The desire to see the sun again was almost overwhelming; in her previous life, she had spent so much time outside that being trapped inside her dungeon felt uncomfortable and foreign.  Sandra didn’t have the same kind of semi-claustrophobic tendencies she had when she was alive as a human, but her Core still desired to reach out from its confines.

Therefore, before she did any more building of forges, crafting of new items like armor, or even gathering enough Mana to upgrade herself again – which was going to take something like 50,000 Mana when she thought about it – she decided to throw caution to the wind and invite the outside world in.

Chapter 24

Sandra wasn’t stupid, though.  Despite resolving to throw caution to the wind, she listened to the information her Dungeon Fairy provided before she committed to the act.

“For completely informational purposes only, I need to tell you about what you will likely face up there.  I don’t have any specific knowledge of what it looks like aboveground, but as you are near the