The Crafter's Dungeon: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 1) by Jonathan Brooks (best books to read for students TXT) 📗

Mana Cost to Unlock:

Min. Mana:

Max. Mana:

Average Copper Orb

4 Small Copper Orbs

40

5

100

Large Copper Orb

2 Average Copper Orbs

80

5

200

Well, I can make some new Monsters, at least – so I’ll probably start there, Sandra thought resignedly.  She hoped that one of her new creations could take care of the problem, because otherwise she was at a stalemate again.

“Go for it!  There’s not really any other choice now,” the Dungeon Fairy told her.  “Oh, and by the way, you can absorb your Monster Seeds for half the cost of Mana spent on them, as well as the full cost of the Raw Materials if you don’t want to wait.”

What?!  That was information I could’ve used weeks ago, Winxa.

“Whoops, sorry – I thought I told you.  I…was a little derelict in my teaching duties, unfortunately, and I apologize.  It won’t happen again,” the Dungeon Fairy replied, looking sincerely apologetic.

You’re forgiven – but if you think of anything else that I should know, do try to tell me before it’s too late.

Winxa agreed whole-heartedly and Sandra absorbed a few of her Tiny Copper Orbs for their Mana; after waiting another minute or so for enough ambient Mana to be funneled from her existing Dungeon Monsters and Ant deaths, she was able to start unlocking more seeds.

New Monster Seed unlocked!

Average Copper Orb

Origination Raw Material Cost: 400

Origination Mana Cost: 40

Monster Min. Mana: 5

Monster Max. Mana: 100

New Monster Seed unlocked!

Large Copper Orb

Origination Raw Material Cost: 800

Origination Mana Cost: 80

Monster Min. Mana: 5

Monster Max. Mana: 200

In terms of relative size, her new Monster Seeds were massive compared to her original Tiny Copper Orb.  Strangely enough, even though the Large Copper Orb was nearly the size of one of her Clockwork Spiders, Sandra could still use it to make one.  She wasn’t sure how that worked, but the entire process of spawning her constructs in the first place was unusual.

A thought occurred to her when she looked at the different seeds she could make, so she asked Winxa.  Will using different size seeds make any difference to my constructs?

“Nope.  Even when you find other types of seeds, it does nothing to affect your Dungeon Monsters. You could use the most powerful seed in the world to create one of your tiny spiders, but it wouldn’t change anything about your construct at all.  Though, that scenario isn’t likely to happen, as there are usually minimum Mana amounts on the seeds,” the Dungeon Fairy answered her.

Sandra had seen indeed seen that minimum on her menu, so what Winxa had said made sense.  When she thought about what else the Fairy had said, she didn’t ever remember hearing from Heroes that the dungeon monsters were ever changed by the “loot” they carried, so Winxa was likely right.

After another couple of minutes of waiting for her Mana and Raw Materials to refill from the continued Territory Ant assault, she was finally able to construct her new monsters.

The Articulated Clockwork Golem was practically a giant in comparison to her other constructs.  It was humanoid in appearance – similar to her Tiny Automaton – but instead of a head on top of its shoulders, it instead contained two “eyes” on the front of its chest.  They were located nearly where the collarbone on a human would be, though they were about three times bigger than what she would consider “normal”.

Topping out at a whopping one foot tall, Sandra’s new Golem looked almost as wide, with its bulky torso and shoulders appearing like a large barrel on top of two stick-like legs with wide flat feet.  Its arms were three times the width of its legs and had multiple joints along their length which allowed it to move its upper appendages in multiple directions.  The arms also ended in two clamps, which would allow it to grasp something in its “hands”, which was helpful, but it also wouldn’t be doing anything intricate with them.  Compared to the Tiny Automaton’s simple up and down movement restrictions, however, the relatively free movement of her Golem was extraordinary.

Her large construct was also covered in a very thin plate of an unknown metal, which enclosed the majority of its clockwork innards; it appeared to be the same pliable metal that most of her other monsters were made of, which meant that after enough abuse it could get damaged and fall apart just as quickly.  It was an impressive addition to her arsenal of defenders, but it probably wouldn’t do anything to solve her immediate problem.

It was too big to fit inside the Ant tunnels, nor could it reach them.  Sandra tried to see if it could dig its own way up to the Queen, but after only a minute of scraping at a nearby wall, her Golem had only managed to carve away about three inches of the dirt and stone – and managed to damage one of its claw-like hands in the process.  She scrapped that idea and instead used it to smash and stomp any of the Ants that fell from the tunnels above.

Her Segmented Centipede, on the other hand, seemed like it was going to be the perfect solution.  Only slightly bigger than the Territory Ants in terms of fitting through the tunnels, her new construct boasted a long, sinuous body that was made up of 25 separate “segments” with 4 legs on each part, giving it a total of a 100 legs.  On the front part of the lead segment, Sandra could see a deadly looking set of double pincers perpendicular to each other, which allowed the Centipede to clamp down on anything in its path with gripping force.  It looked like a large plus sign and would hopefully work extremely well slicing through the Ants with ease.

As Sandra was inspecting her new monster, she