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

bunch of different enchantments and hope they don’t blow up’, do you?” Felbar asked, more than aware of Sandra’s accident earlier where one of her Shapeshifters was destroyed.

* No, of course not.  I need someone with steadier hands and more experience, so Violet will be doing the enchanting. *

Instead of relaxing, that only caused them to tense up even more.  “That…isn’t encouraging.  However, if it’s a relatively safe experiment like the one where we created the Energy Orbs in the first place…then I guess I can do it.”

Excellent!  Now all I have to do is figure out a way not to blow her up…

Chapter 6

The problem with Sandra’s Rune Repository Pillars – which she had known about from the beginning – was that the Preservation Barriers (or Stasis Fields, as the Gnomes called them) surrounding each Pillar, which helped to preserve enchantments for teaching purposes, needed to be replaced at least once a week.  Due to their size, the Barriers that were needed to stop the passage of time ate through the energy infused into them quite rapidly; they could always be replaced without disrupting the preserved enchantments inside (which had already been tried and had been successful), but if they were forgotten about – or, say, Sandra was undergoing a Core Size upgrade and it took longer than expected – then the Barriers would fail.  If that happened, then whatever enchantments that were previously preserved on the Pillar would be lost.

But Sandra envisioned something that would be available for any Visitors to her dungeon that wanted to learn about enchantments – for as long as Sandra’s dungeon existed.  She knew well enough how hard it was to record such knowledge back when she was Human, how guarded Enchanters were with their techniques, and the risk there was in not being able to pass it down to future generations due to an unexpected death.  The Gnomes were going through that last problem right now with the deaths of most of their Enchanters; without enough to go around to keep their land safe, they couldn’t teach their knowledge to their younger generation.  If they died before they could do that, then that information would likely be lost to the ages…just like the Gnomes would be, if Sandra didn’t do something about it.

In order to preserve that knowledge, the Dungeon Core needed to make the Enchantment Repository Room (ERR) one that could maintain itself even if she weren’t there anymore.  If, for instance, she were destroyed – which she didn’t want to think about but would be a fool to consider as something impossible – then all that work would be undone without anyone to maintain the Barriers.  Sandra was aiming to change that.

When her guests arrived at the ERR, Felbar was fascinated by it; he hadn’t gone on much of a tour yet, so hadn’t been far enough down to see the room.  Violet had already given him the lowdown of what exactly it was but seeing it in person was a whole new experience.

Sandra had earlier created a few Large Elemental Orbs – two Spirit and one Natural – and placed them inside the room; she asked Violet to place a small Preservation Barrier over one of the Spirit and the Natural Orbs to see if the Barrier could preserve what was to be done with them…and then asked her to create the enchantment that would turn them into Energy Orbs.  The creation of all those enchantments only took a fraction of what Violet was capable of, and Sandra could tell that she was already being refilled by the Energy Orbs hanging around her neck as she asked Violet to enchant the last Spirit Elemental Orb outside of the small Barrier.

As she asked the Gnome to step back, and across the room, Sandra had one of her Large Armored Sentinels she had standing still near the wall walk forward and pick up the separate Spirit Energy Orb that was newly created.  She wanted to try an experiment with a smaller Barrier, with the hopes that the energy involved wouldn’t be too destructive if something went wrong.

Bringing the Energy Orb in contact with the edge of the Barrier, Sandra indeed obtained the reaction she was expecting; just like the Orbs would do with a person and restore their elemental energy, so too did the Barrier Enchantment absorb the energy given off by the Orb to replenish what it used to maintain itself.

“That’s…I never thought of that!  That means you could maintain these Fields for years, possibly even centuries if you had enough—”

The invisible field surrounding the two static Energy Orbs started to become visible as it glowed with a soft grey luminescence; in a matter of seconds, however, it went from a barely visible tinge to an alarmingly bright, piercing light that hurt to look at.  Sandra instructed her Sentinel to remove the Energy Orb it was holding from contact with the Barrier and the brightening stopped – but didn’t disappear.  Instead, over the next few minutes, the glow gradually lessened in intensity to the point where it didn’t hurt to look at anymore; still, it was an “angry” enough glow that approaching it at the moment didn’t seem like a good idea.

“What…happened?” Felbar asked, looking highly confused.

Violet, on the other hand, was studying the barrier and the Energy Orb in the Sentinel’s hand.  It was hard to tell exactly without comparing it to another unaltered Elemental Orb, but Sandra could’ve sworn that the Energy Orb was a little smaller than it had been just a few moments ago.

* I was worried about that; I was expecting it to work, but I suspected that it wasn’t going to be that easy.  This is what I need your help on, because I believe if we solve this problem, then making those War Machines will be a lot easier. *

While Sandra had some ideas on