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

She had tried altering the circles little by little, then changing the positions of the access lines themselves, then straightening them all out and shaping them one-by-one, and so on and so forth.  She had essentially given up the day before, but she was stubborn enough to keep trying for some sort of result even when she thought she had tried everything.

Felbar had even joined in on the experiments, because the Limiter rune was fairly easy to create; even old War Masters could learn new runes, it seemed, because he picked it up within minutes.  She had enchanted his very own tiny Energy Orb for his use and had even set up another tiny Stasis Field for him – which was easy enough for him to see, since he also had access to Spirit elemental energy.  Despite his earlier enthusiasm, though, he had just about given up and was playing around with different ways of creating the rune sort of how Violet herself was, hoping that it would finally do something.

“Have you…tried creating the rune with your Natural element? That might make a difference,” Felbar asked her, which made her jump since it had been at least an hour since either of them had said anything.

“Of course not, because Sandra said that it was created from Spirit only – so I doubt it would have any effect, either. I can almost feel like it should be working with the one I have, but there’s something preventing it that I can’t see,” she answered, having done everything she could with the Spirit Energy Orb, Limiter rune made from Spirit elemental energy, and the Spirit-based Stasis Field.  Though now I’m beginning to wonder if he has a point; have I been going about this all wrong?

Before she could try it herself, Felbar answered.  “It probably can’t hurt to try…hopefully…so I’m going to test out my Fire element to see if that works; if it doesn’t, I’m out of ideas – not that I had many to start with,” he said, before creating what she could only assume was the Limiter rune using his Fire element.  She couldn’t see or manipulate it, so she had to assume he had done it; he had been creating the other one out of Spirit over and over for about a day and a half, so she had faith that it had been done correctly – or as correctly as they could assume, given Sandra’s spotty recollection of it.

Felbar had only lightly connected the rune to the Spirit Energy Orb he had been using, because he didn’t quite have the Enchanting skill to weave it into the rune sequence around the Orb; when he brought it close to the Stasis Field, Violet held her breath…and let it out in disappointment as the Field started to brighten slowly like it usually did when they connected the Orb and the Stasis enchantment.  I guess that wasn’t it either.

“Oh, well – it was worth a try, Felbar,” she said, failing to keep the disappointment she was feeling from her voice.  “I’m going to try a couple of other things, but then I’m giving up for now; at least we have this rune that we can take back, and maybe one of the Master Enchanters still around will know what to do with it.”

“That’s fine; I can’t wait to get back – these old bones can’t take the cold of this dungeon for this long,” he said, putting the tiny Energy Orb next to the others on his neck as he leaned back against the wall.  They had found that two or more Energy Orbs could increase the regeneration rate of elemental energy, so it was a common practice for them to do so when they were feeling a little drained from all the Enchanting.  “In fact, I’m going to heat this little area up if you don’t mind using a trick my father taught me.”

Violet was barely listening as she looked at her own experiments – trying to see a different way to test what she had already been testing – so she just grunted out an affirmative.  The next moment, she was practically blown onto her back from a wave of heat and force coming from Felbar’s direction.  A scream was abruptly cut off as she looked up to see Felbar stumbling towards her on fire, before he collapsed on his face – unconscious or dead.

Before she could even react, two of Sandra’s healing constructs were there, having moved from their position in the corner of the room; they had been stationed there since the beginning, mostly in case something disastrous happened – kind of like what just occurred.  She crawled over to Felbar’s unmoving body, seeing burns all over his skin, which was easy to see because all of his clothes had been burnt off.

Within moments, though, the burns started to heal rapidly, the angry and blackened skin flaking off as new skin was revealed underneath.  Violet sighed in relief as she saw Felbar’s back moving up and down as he started to breathe deeply again, which meant that he was certainly still alive.  She had seen the healing constructs work miracles before, and now was definitely not an exception.

It took another few hours for the old Gnome to fully recover from the ordeal, get some clothes, and shove his face full of food to replenish what had been lost during the healing.  When Felbar – now completely healed, though his entire body was now completely devoid of any hair – was finally able to explain what happened, Violet sat back and stared at him in surprise, because he had just solved the problem.

That’s…so simple.

Felbar had used a simple temporary enchantment on the floor of the room that would warm the immediate area around him by 10 degrees; when it had enveloped his body, it interacted with the