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

to do that, though, she was going to need a lot more Mana.

Winxa— Sandra thought towards the Dungeon Fairy, as soon as her Core Size upgrade was complete— what’s the best way to increase my Mana flow?  She was pretty sure she knew the answer, but she wanted to see if there were any other options.

Winxa jumped in surprise as that was the first thing Sandra had said for almost a day and a half.  “Are you talking about the fastest way, or just the most efficient way?” the Dungeon Fairy asked with a little wariness in her voice.

Uh…the most efficient way.  I can guess that the fastest way is what I’ve just experienced, but I would like to avoid that if possible.

The diminutive Fairy breathed a sigh of relief.  “Thank the Creator; I was worried that a taste of the Mana you can get from killing sentients had turned you into the same bloodthirsty murderers that the other Cores always seem to be,” she said as she smiled.  “To answer your question, though, the most efficient – but more time-consuming – method of increasing the amount of Mana you’re acquiring is to do the same thing outside that you’re doing inside.  What that essentially means is to blanket everything aboveground with Dungeon Monsters, which will absorb and funnel the ambient Mana to you.  It will take a hefty initial investment, but it will pay off in the long run.

“If you’re efficient enough, and avoid detection for a long period of time, your Monsters can eventually absorb every available drop of Mana out there.  This rarely happens with other dungeons, however, because all they are concerned about is expanding as quickly as they can so that they can reach their victims.  Which, to be fair, is essentially what The Creator had envisioned for them, but their crazed single-mindedness doesn’t often lend itself to strategic planning.”

I can only imagine.  So, does the ambient Mana extend…upwards?

Winxa looked confused for a moment, before comprehension dawned on her.  “Yes, your Area of Influence extends as far up above the ground as it does belowground, though the concentration of ambient Mana tends to reduce dramatically the farther up you go.  Up to approximately 200 feet above the surface, the intake of ambient Mana is essentially the same as ground level, which gives any Cores that have flying Dungeon Monsters a bit of an advantage – because there is a whole lot more that they can absorb—” the Dungeon Fairy said, before muttering under her breath— “though it’s not like they take advantage of it.”

That was exactly what Sandra was hoping for.  She was reluctant to “blanket” the wasteland with Dungeon Monsters, especially since it would cause way too much attention.  Other dungeons didn’t care about being seen, as they wanted people to come attack them – so that they could acquire the Mana from the sentients’ deaths. Sandra, on the other hand, wanted to stay as hidden as possible – at least for the time being.  The less people who knew about her presence and location, the better.

With a potential solution to her ambient Mana acquisition problem rolling around in her mind, Sandra finally concentrated on the screens that had popped up in her vision.

Core Size Upgrade Stage complete!

9/9 Completed

Your Core has grown!

Current Size: 17

Mana Capacity increased!

Ambient Mana Absorption increased!

Raw Material Capacity increased!

New Constructs option!

Core Selection Menu

Dungeon Classification:

Constructs

Core Size:

17

Available Mana:

32/10014

Ambient Mana Absorption:

10/hour

Available Raw Material (RM):

16500/28895

Convert Raw Material to Mana?

16500 RM -- > 660 Mana

Current Dungeon Monsters:

684

Constructs Creation Options:

16

Monster Seed Schematics:

70 (18)

Current Traps:

27

Trap Construction Options:

All

Core-specific Skills:

4

Current Visitors:

1

All in all, Sandra had ended up using 72,000 Mana in order to upgrade her Core Size.  It didn’t seem like that much, though, because more than half of it had been supplied to her within a couple of minutes from the deaths of the Orcs fighting the Bearlings almost a week before.  In order for her to continue to grow, however, she was going to have to concentrate on the other methods at her disposal.

 She was currently up to 684 Dungeon Monsters, although 60% of them were the smaller constructs that roamed through the lower rooms absorbing the ambient Mana inside her dungeon.  The rest were comprised of the hundreds filling up her uppermost rooms, defending her entrance from any invaders that might come along.  To add to that number, however, she had acquired a brand-new Construct with her Core Size upgrade – but it was going to be extremely expensive to produce.

Constructs Creation Options

Name:

Mana Cost:

Clockwork Spider

5

Small Animated Shears

10

Tiny Automaton

20

Rolling Force

25

Segmented Centipede

100

Articulated Clockwork Golem

150

Singing Blademaster

300

Small Armored Sentinel

400

Mechanical Jaguar

800

Mechanical Wolf

1000

Basher Totem

2000

Automated Digger

2500

Repair Drone

4000

Ironclad Ape

6000

Steel Python

8000

Iron-plated Behemoth

10000

Not only did the Iron-plated Behemoth cost 10,000 Mana – which was almost the maximum she could hold in the first place – but the only Monster Seed she could produce and use to create it was the Tiny Dragon Glass Flake.

Monster Seed Origination

Name:

Raw Material Cost:

Mana Cost:

Min. Mana:

Max. Mana:

Tiny Dragon Glass Flake

20000

7000

5000

10000

Large Steel Orb

32000

3200

5000

16000

In all, she would have to provide 20,000 Raw Materials and 17,000 Mana to produce the construct; to top it off, with the Behemoth name, she was a little worried that it wouldn’t even fit in her Home room. At Core Size 18, she predicted that she would have a large enough Raw Material maximum to produce a Large Steel Orb – which would cost half as much Mana; she technically still had one of the Large Steel Orbs from