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

5

5

10

Tiny Clay Cube

80

15

15

150

Tiny Nickel Orb

200

20

20

200

Tiny Silver Orb

3000

300

40

400

Tiny Gold Orb

4000

400

50

500

She also now had access to Flax Seed as a material, which she was hoping would eventually let her make linen.  It didn’t qualify as a Monster Seed, and it appeared as if she was going to have to grow the Flax plant in order to harvest it for the fibers inside of its stalks, but she had plans on how to do that quickly – she had access to Nature elemental Mana, after all.

The biggest disappointment was the complete and utter failure of wood being absorbed for use as either a Seed or material. Sandra supposed she was going to need a tree of some sort that she could harvest; she realized that everything else that she had acquired access to she had either found in its raw state or created herself.  The next time she sent out her Mechanical Wolf to scout, she thought she might see if her range extended to the forests that she could just barely see on the horizon to the northwest and southeast.

But that was for later, as she now had plenty of things to occupy her time.  She needed to build a place where she could grow different plants, get started on her Pottery, and a number of other crafts she was excited to get started on.

* Ooh, this is good.  This is exactly what I needed— *

Something tickled at the edge of her awareness.  Curious, she found her Mechanical Jaguar alerting her to something aboveground; she wasn’t sure why it worked that way, but if she didn’t give her cat-like construct specific instructions, it tended to like to bask in the sun on the small hill above her dungeon.  That didn’t bother her, because it also kept a lookout for any approaching danger – which was exactly what it saw now.

She found her Mechanical Wolf, which was even now only about 50 feet away from the Orcish warband that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, though it appeared to be only half of the 40-strong group that had been in the village.  Sandra’s Wolf was lying completely still under an overhang nearby, which made it extremely hard to spot unless you knew what you were looking for.  Because they didn’t see her construct, she was able to hear the tail-end of their conversation.

“…told you, Razochek.  Those prints looked just like a Bearling’s; if there are lairs of them out in the wasteland, we can save days off of our hunts!  See, look here…and here…and here…it looks like we’re getting close to their location,” a smaller Orc was walking in front of the biggest of the bunch, pointing at the ground as he saw something Sandra couldn’t see from her location.  I wonder if he’s seeing the prints left from my Apes?  They are pretty heavy, and I didn’t even think about what kind of trail they probably left behind them.

“Those aren’t like any Bearling I’ve seen before,” the leader of the warband – Razochek she assumed – smacked the smaller Orc on the back of the head as he responded.  “But I agree, we should check it out in case there is something else out here that might pose a danger to Grongbak.  Those worthless villagers couldn’t kill a cat, let alone a Bearling or whatever else is out here.”

She watched for another minute or so to see where they were going, and her figurative heart dropped when she saw them start to follow her Ironclad Apes’ tracks toward her dungeon entrance.

* We’ve got a problem – you were followed. *

Sandra let both Kelerim and Winxa know about the incoming danger, while she started to panic a little.  What am I going to do?  What am I going to do?!  It was one thing defending herself against wild beasts like the Bearlings who wanted to do her harm, but it was something else entirely to hurt or possibly kill the Orcs heading in her direction.  She kept thinking how much of a disaster this was going to be, when Winxa shouted and knocked on her Core.

“Hey!  Listen up!  Don’t panic in there – this is literally what you were made for.  You might not want to do it, but you have the tools necessary to defend yourself.  Just remember, if they get down here, they will destroy you!  You may have made a friend of one of them, but the rest don’t care about anything but killing – unless there is a reason to keep you alive, of course.”

She calmed down a little, as what Winxa said made sense – as much as she didn’t want to believe it. The mention of an ally made her check in with Kelerim, who was busy strapping on the few pieces of thin Steel armor that she had felt like making for him, though they were highly mismatched.  One greave for his shin, a single vambrace for his forearm, and a solitary pauldron for his shoulder; she had just been experimenting with the Leather that she had recently had access to and was starting to move her personal crafting focus from primarily weapons to armor.

* What are you doing?  You said that you don’t know how to fight. *

“I don’t, but I’m not going to let my friend do this all alone.  This is my home now, and I’m not letting it go without putting up a fight,” Kelerim replied, as he finished strapping the pauldron on his shoulder all wrong.  She absently told him the correct way to put it on, while she thought about what he said.  His statement that he would fight for his friend made Sandra think back to the circumstances of how their strange friendship came about.  She could picture the