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

looked at her handiwork.  The shape of the runes was extremely sloppy, but the main form was there; she also saw that a few sections were thicker than others, meaning she had accidentally kept her finger there too long as she hesitated.  There were a few other minor mistakes that she noticed, but she didn’t think it would prevent the enchantment from completing; it would likely not be as effective as it would be if she had done it perfectly, but for a first attempt, it was crude but not horrible.  Kind of like the first knife she had ever made in her forge.

Enchanting is much harder than I thought it would be.  The masters I learned from made it seem so easy, but I guess that’s why they were masters.  I’m going to have to practice quite a bit to get to that level.

Before the enchantment was complete, it needed a catalyst; just like her dual-element traps Sandra had made in her dungeon, it needed something to connect them together to make them work.  In the case of Lifeburn, it was an enchantment that temporarily heated the edge of the Steel knife up when it came into contact with something “alive” – which included Dungeon Monsters; therefore, the best catalyst to use was just a tiny drop of blood to signify how it would be activated.  Using the tip of the knife, Sandra poked the fingertip of her Goblin’s left thumb and felt the jab of pain that accompanied it.

Ignoring the pain, she smeared the tiny drop of greenish-colored blood – that somehow smelled even worse than the outside of the Goblin – along each edge of the blade in a very thin coating.  It didn’t require a lot, and that one drop of blood appeared to do the trick, because when Sandra let the enchantment complete, she felt the elemental energy flow out of her Goblin’s body and fill the runes she had made.

I did it!  I enchanted something!  I can’t wait—

The energy didn’t stop flowing, however; the runes only appeared to be about halfway filled when the Goblin Worker’s energy bottomed out…and then her connection with it was instantly severed as it dissolved into nothing and left behind its Monster Seed.  Using her awareness of her dungeon, though, she was able to see the results of the failed enchantment on the knife that was now lying on the floor.

With the runes only just over half-powered, the resulting enchantment fizzled for a second before collapsing in on itself, which caused a minor explosion that shattered the Steel knife into three pieces.  Fortunately, no damage was done to anything else in the room, as the explosion was fairly limited in scope; if her Goblin Worker was still there, however, it probably would’ve been killed outright or at least fatally wounded and wouldn’t last long afterward.

Why…?

“I’ve never heard of a Dungeon Core even attempting to enchant something before, so I don’t have any prior experience to pull from; however, based on what I overheard you thinking about its elemental energy, I believe it is directly tied to the Mana you spent on creating it.  Unlike a member of a sentient race – for instance, Violet – when it pulled all of that energy out of its body, it didn’t have anything to sustain it anymore; as a result, it essentially killed itself when it ran out of energy.  I’m not sure what enchantment you were trying to do, but it must’ve required more energy than it could supply,” the Dungeon Fairy answered her internal question.

That makes sense, though now I’m really worried.  That was one of the least-complicated enchantments I know that utilizes both elements; there are some that I could try that are even easier that only use one or the other, but that just means I am severely limited in what I can enchant.  And even if it does work, will it recover that elemental energy on its own?  I know that rest and sleep usually recovers it – at least in Humans and Gnomes – but would that work the same in a Dungeon Monster?

“That is something I can answer with certainty: Yes, but very, very slowly.  I know for a fact that when a Dungeon Monster uses a Special Ability, that energy is used up and can take weeks, months, or even years to recover – depending upon how much energy is used.  For instance, that Ancient Saurian probably used its Special Ability to move much faster during that battle at the Gnome village, but for something of that size to use it so sparingly meant that it could take years for it to be able to do that again.”

That was bad news to Sandra, as all her hopes of being able to enchant whatever she wanted disappeared as quickly as her Goblin Worker had when all its energy had been sucked out from it.  True, the Worker was relatively cheap to produce, but if it could only do extremely basic and simple rune enchantments, then it was extremely limited in its usefulness.  One or two enchantments before it was essentially useless made the whole enchanting process one of using up the Goblin and then just throwing it away like garbage; as much as she was disgusted and repulsed by the Monster, it seemed wrong to use the “living” creature that way.  Sandra’s constructs felt different to her, as they were like machines and weren’t really “alive” to her way of thinking – so she didn’t feel the same way about them.

It looks like I’ve got to rethink this whole enchanting situation.  If the Mana spent to create the Dungeon Monster affects how much elemental energy it has, then I’m going to need something that requires quite a bit of Mana to create.  And that probably means I’m going to have to end up spending quite a bit of AP to get those Monsters.