The Crafter's Defense: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 2) by Jonathan Brooks (top 10 novels txt) 📗

had two flat “wings” on it that were attached to a central seed pod; she remembered seeing thousands of them over the years as they floated and spun down from Maple trees back in Muriel.

New Origination Material found!

Maple Seed

While the Maple Seed cannot be used directly as a Monster Seed, it can be used in specific applications to create a whole new Monster Seed.

And just like that, Sandra did it.  She had used her new skill to essentially “buy” a new Origination Material; it wasn’t quite the same as creating it herself through the use of a crafting process – like the Bronze and Steel alloys she had made previously – but it was satisfying, nonetheless.  She wasn’t even sure some of the things she could unlock even could be crafted in any other way, so she thought her new skill was the best possible use of her available resources.

Excited, she used the same process to unlock the other seeds; Cedar Seed needed Natural and Nickel Orbs; Pine Seed needed Natural, Water, and Bronze Orbs; Birch Seed needed Natural, Earth, and Silver Orbs; Redwood needed Natural, Fire, and Iron Orbs; and Yew Seed needed Natural, Air, and Gold Orbs.  The Orbs were easy enough to create and use, but the Mana took much longer to accumulate.  The Cedar Seed only needed a little less than her maximum Mana amount – at 10,000 Mana – and it took just over half an hour to gather that much from outside her dungeon.  The others, however, took more than her maximum – which felt additionally strange to her Core.

Whereas the 5,000 Mana needed for the Maple Seed – as well as the 10,000 for Cedar – re-entered her Core momentarily as it was accumulated before being spat back out, the others that required additional Mana stayed there.  It almost reminded her of when she was a newly born Dungeon Core and “ate” too much of her cave; the feeling of being full was there, but fortunately she wasn’t shut down and unable to do anything while it was happening.  Instead, it was like her stomach was full, but it wasn’t debilitating – on the contrary, she felt almost energized.

Sandra tried to pull the Mana back out of the spot it was accumulating in her Core, but it was inaccessible.  For better or worse, it was tied up in her “purchase” of the next seed like some sort of down payment being held in reserve at a bank.  When she thought of it like that, it made much more sense – she had been a merchant in her former life, after all.

When she added more of her Mana to the “bank”, it would fill up and pop out of her Core just like before, where she could combine it with the other required materials to unlock the other tree seeds.  As soon as she had access to a new seed, she immediately set her Golems in her growing room to work planting a seed and nurturing it to enough maturity to harvest for its wood.

There was one tree seed she couldn’t quite create yet – other than the options with the unknown materials: Ash Seed.  She needed to have access to Lead metal as a material, which she hadn’t found while excavating underground nor was it an alloy she could make herself.  Instead, she needed to unlock it using her new skill; the requirements stated she needed to have Earthenware Clay as a material – which she didn’t have yet – so she had to unlock that one first.  To do that, she needed Earth and Iron Orbs, which were easy to produce, as well as 5,000 Mana.

When that was unlocked, she combined Earth, Fire, and Earthenware Clay to unlock Lead as another metal she could use as a material.  Then, when that was available, Sandra was able to combine Natural, Fire, and Lead Orbs (as well as 15,000 Mana) together to unlock the Ash Seed to produce another type of tree – and another type of wood when it was grown in her growing room.

Sandra thought it was interesting how everything was interconnected in some sort of giant web; to gain access to something, she needed to have had unlocked quite a few other things in the process.  She had gotten lucky finding or creating so many of her materials earlier, or else the whole unlocking ordeal would’ve likely taken much longer.

While she was at it and unlocking different materials, she went ahead and gained access to Stoneware Clay with Earth and Iron Orbs; Jute Seed with Natural Orbs and Oak wood; and Cotton Seed with Natural Orbs and Maple wood (once her Maple tree was grown enough to harvest and gain access to its wood type).  She held off on planting the Jute and Cotton Seeds, however, until she was prepared to turn them into usable thread/rope; it was a much lengthier process to turn the plants into usable material than just growing and harvesting the trees.  The Flax and Linen Thread was more than enough proof of that.

All in all, it had been a productive two days.  Sandra had now acquired access to every single material that didn’t possess the “unknown” materials needed to unlock them with her new Elemental Transmutation skill – and then unlocked the larger Monster Seed versions of each type of wood, clay, and Lead metal.  She figured she could experiment a little with different combinations of her materials to unlock the others, but they would also require quite a bit of an investment of Mana.  Therefore, before she did anything like that, she decided that it was probably about time to endure the crushing loneliness and isolation that upgrading her Core Size always seemed to bring.

To hopefully stave off some of that and bring back some of the familiarity that she had been missing in her last upgrade, she spent a little