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

as a Dungeon Core to want to Upgrade, expand, and conquer/kill as much as she possibly could, but for the most part she was able to ignore those instincts; after a while, though, such things were pressing on her mind for her attention.

Then there were all of the Advancement Points that she had just received lately, from the Visitor’s Bonds she had with all of the new Dwarves, to the destruction of the Undead-based Core, the addition of even more rooms down below in her dungeon, and even – unfortunately – the deaths of the Dwarven Shieldmen in the village battle.

In addition, there were still many different materials that she could unlock in the Organic/Inorganic Material Elemental Transmutation Menu for use in improving her crafting of a large variety of different things.  Speaking of that, there was still a lot of crafting that she wanted to do and either didn’t have a chance to, didn’t have the proper materials for on hand, or didn’t have a steady enough hand to craft with.  Now, while she still didn’t have a lot of time, she had many, many materials to work with; there was truly little that she couldn’t do with at least a bare minimum of supplies if she put her mind to it.

There was so much that needed to be considered, started, and done that she barely knew where to start; almost all of it was dependent upon one thing, though: Mana.  As such, that was the place to start.

Chapter 4

In the past, increasing her AMANS was the easiest and fastest way to ramp up her Mana absorption from the wider environment above her dungeon; in some ways, it still was, and between the 7,000 Shears and the 1,500 Rolling Forces she had moving around the wastelands, looking for potential enemies, Sandra was raking in just under 400,000 Mana every day.  That wasn’t anything to sneeze at, certainly, but the other dungeons that had been affected by the enhancements were getting 384,000 Mana a day from their Core and dungeon alone. She was going to lose one of the advantages she had over the others – her ability to rake in much more Mana at a constant rate than any other Core – unless she did something about it.

Expanding her AMANS was certainly something she was going to do, though she had to be careful about that as well.  The presence and sight of them was what led the Dark, Undead-based Core to copy what she had done with small skeletal rats, sending them to travel around in circles to absorb ambient Mana; it was obvious to Sandra that her technique was the best way to acquire large amounts of Mana, but apparently none of the other Cores had thought of doing that before.  Winxa had mentioned that part of the contract and natural instincts of a Dungeon Core likely prevented such an ordered, systematic approach to expansion, though seeing it done was enough for the tactically advanced Undead Core to adapt it for its own purposes.

Therefore, she wanted to mix up her technique a little and not make it as obvious what she was doing.  One glimpse at her Net up above her dungeon, moving in synchronization with each other and maximizing the amount of absorbed ambient Mana, was enough to know exactly what she was doing.  With the expansion of the nearby dungeons’ Areas of Influence, it wouldn’t be long until they could see that happening for themselves.  To disguise or camouflage her actions, Sandra concentrated on her Animated Shears floating above and spread them out even further than they currently were, as well as having them float even higher into the sky.  When they were just over a mile above the wastelands and basically invisible from anything ground-based, she stopped them; they were small enough that even when she looked for them with some of her other constructs near her dungeon, they couldn’t be seen, even when the sun was reflected off of their forms.

It wouldn’t prevent any airborne Monsters from seeing them, though she thought it would be rare for even bird-type Monsters to fly up that high; from what little she knew about them, she hadn’t ever heard of many flying a mile or more above the ground, though even if they did, they usually didn’t look up.  Regardless, there was one more thing she could do to disguise them, at least a little.  Instead of a constant pattern inside their designated spaces, Sandra instructed them to move randomly, widening their boundaries so that they had hundreds of feet to play around with instead of a 20-foot-square cube they had before.  Being so high in the sky allowed them to spread out easily so they didn’t appear bunched up, so there was certainly a benefit to the larger area.

Naturally, there was one major downside.  Being so far away from Sandra’s dungeon, the amount of Mana that was absorbed and funneled back to her Core was cut by just over two-thirds; once it got past about 200 feet above the ground (which allowed them to potentially absorb the full amount of ambient Mana around the area) the amount of Mana they absorbed dropped dramatically. It was the reason why she hadn’t done it in the first place, because she needed every drop of Mana that had streamed into her before (of course, she needed even more now), and it was a significant blow to her incoming Mana.  Now, though, the more important thing was to do what she could to prevent other Cores from copying what she had done, even at the expense of less Mana being funneled to her.

Sandra wasn’t done, however; knowing that she needed to regain that lost Mana, she started a constant production of even more Shears, which she sent up to join the others, spreading them out even farther than they had ever been before.  She was still