The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4) by Jonathan Brooks (ebook reader with android os TXT) 📗

fairly certain she wouldn’t get a definite answer.  The ability to give advice or complete answers to Sandra was a bit lacking as of late, though not through any fault of the diminutive Fairy; the Creator had placed some restrictions on Winxa regarding the choices that the Dungeon Core could make based on that information.  Regardless, Sandra wanted a little more information before she talked to Kelerim about the land of the Orcs.

“Umm…well, I don’t think I can tell you how many Cores there are, but I do think I can give you a little bit of an idea,” the Dungeon Fairy said hesitantly.  When nothing negative seemed to happen, Winxa continued.  “First, the Cores situated around the wastelands are a bit unique in how close they are in relation to each other.  I’m assuming this was done because they border this area, sort of like the gatekeepers of the wastelands.  Farther away, Cores are usually placed 30 to 40 miles away from each other along the borders of all the lands, though sometimes there are outliers.  From what I’ve heard, the saturation of dungeons has been increased over time in lands where more are needed to maintain a stricter balance, such as your former homeland of the Humans.  Here, though, I can only assume extras weren’t necessarily needed, so that should be fairly accurate.”

That was good information to have, and it was more than she expected from the Fairy based on past experiences.  Though, when Sandra thought about it, it was probably because there wasn’t anything definite in her statements like, “There are 312 Cores within the reach of these enhancements.”  From what her guide said, however, the Dungeon Core could guesstimate how many there were.  Based on previous conversations with the Fairy and her own experiences back in the Human lands of Muriel, she knew that dungeons were usually only found along the sometimes-arbitrary border of their lands, like thick forests or mountain ranges – whatever worked to divide them from other lands, basically.

These borders weren’t necessarily straight and could meander in and out of the lands, but if you had a map of a Kingdom or another type government, you could identify where dungeons were likely to be – if not their exact placement.  Essentially, around the edges of the lands of Muriel, she knew that was where the dungeons were, which prevented expansion by her people; she inferred from what she knew and heard about lately that this was basically the same for the other homelands.  Therefore, if Winxa was relatively accurate in her distances between dungeons, then Sandra calculated that there could be anywhere between 6 and 10 additional Cores within reach of the enhancements…per homeland.  Therefore, she was looking at trying to contain 24 to 40 dungeons that were set to be extraordinarily powerful in just a few months.

Not great news, but it was also possible that she could get more accurate numbers from Felbar, Echo, and Gerold and those counts may be less…or they could be more, of course.  Regardless, it really didn’t matter how many of them were already taking advantage of their sudden benefits; Sandra couldn’t prevent their expansion without help from every race…which, unfortunately, brought her to Kelerim.

* I’m sure you’re already aware, but your coming back here – as much as I appreciate your company – has complicated matters somewhat.  Granted, I know that neither of us could’ve guessed that your father would send an army to hunt you down and destroy those two dungeons at the same time, but that’s where we are right now.

 

* What we need to do is stop that from happening again, which means working with your people, as much I know that you’d like to forget that you’re one of them.  I have contacts with the other races now, though of course we still have to see how those pan out, but you – the only one that is even partly Orc – are not exactly the best idea to negotiate on my behalf, don’t you think?”

Kelerim sat looking down at the table, his shoulders slumped and his face looking a bit haggard.  The Half-Dwarf/Half-Orc still hadn’t fully recovered from his ordeal of fleeing Orcrim from the force that his father sent after him, though he did look a bit healthier already.  “I’m well aware of that, Sandra; I’m sorry I brought this all down on you and the others, but I swear I didn’t know it would come to this!”

* I know you didn’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that it did.  There’s nothing we can do about the past, so we must look to the future; what do you think is the best way to go about helping your people?  I obviously can’t send you to talk to any leadership there is, because of reasons I already stated, so what else can we do? *

“You’re right about me not being welcome inside Orcrim right now; although this ‘leadership’ you’re talking about is basically just the most powerful Warlords working reluctantly together for a mutual defense, my father would’ve likely shared my story and appearance to everyone who could listen by this point,” Kelerim explained.  “If he didn’t take decisive action against me and the ‘dungeon that killed his son’, he would look weak to the others; hiding me and my role would be like blatantly concealing a weakness that others would be able to exploit.

“As far as my father and the other Warlords are concerned, I really don’t care about them anymore.  Though I hate how I was treated by them, then and now, it’s the innocent villagers and warbands defending them that will suffer when the dungeons start to overrun them.  From all the information I have, the balance of monsters streaming out of the dungeons was just barely maintained over the last decade, though even that was slowly failing.  Even one dungeon suddenly producing more monsters will