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

AP she earned from the project to unlock the additional reduction in the Mana Cost of her Dungeon Monsters.  That helped to speed up production of her Shears a little since it brought the total cost of each one to an even 50, though it also required her to excavate more rooms for the Raw Materials to produce them.  Therefore, in addition to the eight rooms she had excavated, she added another ten to that total; looking at everything from a distance underground, her neatly spiral-shaped dungeon looked like it had a very long tail.

With the influx of Mana inside her Core, and with her AMANS and excavation projects wrapping up, Sandra was ready to start assembling a strike force that could wipe out the creature-based threats around her dungeon.  It was about time, too, because she had observed a gradual migration of the new ones she had discovered; since they weren’t confined to a cave lair like the Bearlings or a colony like the Territory Ants, the groups of Spiders and Wolves were able to place themselves where they wanted.  Apparently, where they wanted was the pathway that Echo used to reach Sandra’s dungeon, as well as the winding route that the Gnomes had used to leave with their wagon.

It was almost as if they could somehow sense where their potential victims had been traveling, so they moved to intercept them when they came back; it made sense, unfortunately, as Sandra had heard that many natural predators tended to congregate where they knew prey was likely to frequent.  Therefore, Sandra warned Echo not to journey back to the dungeon until she made the way safer, which the Elf readily agreed to.

Getting her army ready for the first assault – which would be a large group of Desolate Spiders – Sandra felt like she was going on a shopping spree where everything was on sale.  She pulled up her Constructs Creation Options and saw that the new 30% total reduction in cost was already making quite a difference.

Constructs Creation Options

Name:

Mana Cost: (30% Reduction)

Clockwork Tarantula

18

Reinforced Animated Shears

35

Hyper Automaton

70

Dividing Rolling Force

88

Lengthy Segmented Millipede

350

Iron-banded Articulated Clockwork Golem

525

Roaring Blademaster

1050

Large Armored Sentinel

1400

Mechanical Jaguar Queen

2800

Mechanical Dire Wolf

3500

Martial Totem

5600

Automated Sharp-bladed Digger

7000

Multi-access Repair Drone

11200

Steelclad Ape Warrior

16800

Titanium Anaconda

22400

Steel-plated Behemoth

28000

Gravitational Devastation Sphere*

15000

Advancement Creation Options

Name:

Mana Cost: (30% Reduction)

Goblin Foreman

56

Unstable Shapeshifter

11200

While she couldn’t yet afford to create a Titanium Anaconda or a Steel-plated Behemoth, the previously out-of-reach Steelclad Ape Warrior was now only 16,800 Mana; she was very excited to finally have them back, because they were both better suited for crafting and versatile in combat.  The only problem, though, was that each one she produced was going to be expensive in terms of both Mana and Raw Materials; while she had previously unlocked a few options that would be able to contain the construct, they were expensive to create.

Monster Seed Origination

Name:

Raw Material Cost:

Mana Cost:

Min. Mana:

Max. Mana:

Small Dragon Glass Sliver

40000

14000

5000

20000

Small Faceted Sapphire Sphere

24000

7000

3500

17000

The Small Faceted Sapphire Sphere was the least expensive of the two options, but when she added all the costs up, she was going to have to use a total of 23,800 Mana and 24,000 Raw Materials to create a single Steelclad Ape Warrior.  The Mana itself wasn’t that big of a deal now that she was receiving that much practically every hour, but the Raw Material cost meant that she was back to excavating more rooms.  Fortunately, every two hours of excavating gave her enough to produce another Monster Seed, so the only thing holding her back now was time.

So, the next day saw Sandra alternatingly doing multiple things again, though her AMANS project wasn’t one of them.  Excavating more rooms only took minimal concentration for a part of her mind, so she didn’t feel the strain as much as she had before; almost as soon as she stopped the constant creation of Reinforced Animated Shears for the Net, she had felt like a weight had been lifted off her mind.  The two other things she concentrated on were easy enough to focus directly on, so she didn’t have to divide her focus again.

First was the creation of her creature eradication army; it consisted of four Steelclad Ape Warriors (which were just slightly larger than the original Ironclad Apes, but were made of a shiny steel material), a dozen Mechanical Jaguar Queens, a dozen Mechanical Dire Wolves (which, like the Jaguar Queens, were basically large wolves made from stronger metal than their predecessors), a single Multi-access Repair Drone (it looked nearly identical to the regular Repair Drone, so she wasn’t exactly sure what the difference was yet), and…300 Dividing Rolling Forces.

The last entry into the lineup was something Sandra put in as an impulse, mainly because she knew she was going up against the Desolate Spiders.  The Dividing Rolling Force was about half again as large as the original Rolling Force and made from a metal that was a bit heavier, denser, and could withstand a little more damage; the largest difference, however, was that the construct could divide.  Not just in half, but into at most six different parts of roughly equal mass.  That didn’t seem like a benefit, but it was the dividing action that made it spring into the air a couple of feet, where it could propel forward if it had enough momentum, or slam down into the ground from normal gravitational force.

It would’ve been even more effective if the separate parts were sharp, inflicting cuts on an enemy, but the blunt force they enacted on a target was brutal enough.  After they sprang apart, their divided parts would slowly gravitate toward each other and