The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) by Jonathan Brooks (english readers txt) 📗

Therefore, Sandra had to dig down into the raw numbers, using that same knowledge of math she had learned from her father during their years as merchants.  That learning had come in handy more times than she could count in her search for learning crafting techniques and recipes – as well as during her tenure so far as a Dungeon Core – and she was triply thankful for all that he had done to make her the person/floating-glowing-stone she was today.

First, because she had the available AP, Sandra went into her Advancement Options and purchased the option to reduce the Mana Cost of her Dungeon Monsters; this would help her increase her AMANS faster, as well as helping to produce what constructs she was going to need to eliminate some creature lairs later.  As soon as she did so, she felt a subtle change in her Core; it was not quite as aggressive as the one that advanced her Classification, however – it was more like a slight alteration of…something.  Because she couldn’t actually see it she couldn’t confirm, but she suspected that there was a change in the enchantment “cage” surrounding her Core.  I’ll have to check with one of my Shifters later to see if I notice a difference.

The change only visually manifested itself when she pulled up her Constructs Creation Options menu and saw that all of her constructs cost 15% less Mana to create – all except the Gravitational Devastation Sphere.  Sandra remembered that the particularly destructive construct hadn’t been affected by her Classification advancement before, so it was only with mild surprise that it hadn’t been affected now.  When she pulled up her Advancement Creation Options with her Goblin Worker and Unstable Shapeshifter, she saw that they had also been reduced in cost – which made the Shifter a little bit more affordable for the future at 13,600 Mana instead of its previous 16,000.

The cost was also rounded up, so producing one of her Reinforced Animated Shears now cost 43 Mana; when she added in the lowest-cost Monster Seed that could be used for the construct – which used to be a Tiny Copper Orb at 5 Mana, but was now a Tiny Clay Cube at 15 Mana – the cost shot up to 58 Mana total.  When she added in the 80 Raw Materials that were needed to produce the Seed, the cost was still approximately four times the amount they used to be for her previous Shears.

Rather than be disappointed at the cost, though, Sandra looked at it as a challenge; there was no way to produce quite as many as she used to as quickly, but she could still slowly ramp up the production of them until she had as many or more than she had before – it would just take longer.

Getting enough Raw Materials wouldn’t be difficult, since she was still hollowing out additional rooms so that she could accumulate the AP from them; however, doing so also took a bit of Mana as well.  Right now, she was accumulating approximately 175 ambient Mana every minute – which sounded like a lot – and compared to many other Dungeon Cores in the world, it probably was.  When she factored in the cost of around 20 Mana per minute to carve the dirt and stone out of the ground to make more rooms, Sandra only had enough Mana to produce a bit under 3 of her new Reinforced Animated Shears, compared to the 10 or more pre-Advancement Animated Shears with the same amount.

Using some mental math, Sandra estimated that in about 6 hours she could create and send out just over 1,000 of the new Shears, which was a severe drop in her previous production but was manageable.  As time went on – and with every 1,000 Shears in her AMANS adding another 33 Mana or so to her per minute total – she would be able to add even more; by the end of a full day, she could be near her original amount of 10,000...if she didn’t spend Mana on anything else.

Unfortunately, because there were other things she needed to work on with both her Visitors and to continue to recover her dungeon from the last few days.  The situation with Echo was going to be simple, at least, because Sandra was planning on sending her back to the Elven village with the first shipment of Energy Orbs.  While her inner Dungeon Core screamed at her that it was a risk to arm the nearby Elves with weapons that could be used against her, she knew she had to start somewhere. On the other side of the coin, it was also a risk to let Echo leave when Sandra needed her so much as a liaison between her dungeon and her race – but she wasn’t a prisoner.  If she left and never came back, so be it; if the Elf didn’t choose to help her and her people, that was her decision.

As for Violet, there were a few things that Sandra wanted her to help with on a few—safe—experiments; with Felbar, the Dungeon Core wanted to pick his brain and play around with designing some of the War Machines he used to pilot.  From a few conversations with Violet, she was pretty sure he didn’t know how they were created, exactly, but there was a good chance he could describe what they looked like.

Those experiments and designs were going to require Mana – which would cut into what she could use for strengthening her AMANS.  Her treasury behind her Home had been essentially wiped out during the invasion of the Elite Elves a few days ago, with only a few piles of Elemental Orbs left over that had since been used.  Some of them went towards the Visitor bonding of those same Elves, while the rest went towards creating various Energy Orbs.  If she wanted to