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

to risk the safety of anyone or anything in her dungeon.  Even if it exploded (which she severely hoped it didn’t), there was quite a lot of space in between the last room and anything vital.

Sandra knew that the Elemental Orbs she could create as seeds cost 50, 100, 400, and finally 800 Mana for the largest; what that meant was that she needed to use 1600 Mana to create one twice the size of her Large Orb.  Without further ado, she pulled out 1600 Fire Mana from her Core and had it float in the middle of the room; it was actually quite a large sphere with at least a 4-foot diameter, but she knew it would shrink down when she condensed it.

Within seconds, she remembered why she was happy enough to unlock the other sizes of Elemental Orbs – because it was hard.  The Mana wanted to squeeze out of her mental grip at every opportunity; whenever she thought she was condensing it all together as one, a large hump of Mana would slip out of her control and stick up where she wasn’t expecting it.  She equated it with trying to shape a massive ball of clay with your bare hands, except your hands weren’t big enough to fully reach around the entire sphere – and every time you pushed in one place, it would make another section push out.

It was frustrating, but after nearly ten minutes of straining at the mass of Mana and almost giving up, she started to see a solution.  The problem was that Sandra was trying to push it all in at the same time, obviously, so she figured she had to cut down on how many sides she was focusing on; since she was working with a sphere, she currently needed to concentrate on hundreds or thousands of spots on her project all at once.

Therefore, she made a cube.

It was strange and a little foreign at first – since she was accustomed to handling orbs and spheres – but in less than a minute Sandra got a handle on the large mass and formed it into a relatively equal-sided cube.  As soon as it was in the shape she wanted, she pushed in on each side and condensed the Mana down; she found that it was much easier to concentrate on only six areas at once, though she had to admit that it was a little harder to keep pressure on each face of the cube to ensure it stayed the same shape.

Regardless of that difficulty, in less time than she had ineffectually spent on the original sphere, Sandra shrunk the Fire Mana down into a tight little box that was a little larger than twice the size of a Large Elemental Orb.  The strain she had first experienced when making the Tiny Elemental Orb was there on her mind but was surprisingly a lot less than she had been expecting.  She wasn’t sure if it was because her mental and Mana-manipulation capacity was a lot more than it used to be or from the new shape of her creation; nevertheless, she was very happy it wasn’t trying to rip her mind apart.

With a final push that condensed the cube even further, Sandra felt the pressure she had been maintaining on the Mana completely disappear as what she had made locked into place and fell to the ground, her control over the mass of Fire Mana now absent.  A strange…ripple…went through her mind and her Core, which was followed up by some welcome surprises.

Skill Evolution

Advanced Elemental Monster Seed Origination

(Core-specific Skill)

The Advanced Elemental Monster Seed Origination skill allows the Dungeon Core to condense Elemental Mana into condensed objects.  These Elemental objects can be used as Monster Seeds or in other unique applications.  Requirements: Mana.  (Skills are permanent and remain even after a Classification change)

New Monster Seed created using your Advanced Elemental Monster Seed Origination

skill!

You now have access to:

Tiny Fire Elemental Cube

Origination Raw Material Cost: 0

Origination Mana Cost: 1600

Monster Min. Mana: 300

Monster Max. Mana: 800

 

Currently locked:

Small Fire Elemental Cube

Average Fire Elemental Cube

Large Fire Elemental Cube

Skill Evolution?

Winxa seemed surprised – shocked even.  “I’ve only heard of that whispered around the other Dungeon Fairies as a rumor; I never thought I would hear about it firsthand!”

Yes, but how did it happen?  And what is it?

“It comes from applying your skills in different and unique ways, stretching the bounds of what it should be capable of normally.  Typically, Dungeon Cores that have Core-specific skills only use those skills as they are described; if they work the way they are supposed to, there usually isn’t any reason for the Core to experiment and try to get it to do something else – that kind of ingenuity just isn’t encouraged, especially with a contracted Core.  You, on the other hand, obviously have the kind of thinking that is exactly what the Skill Evolution needs to activate.

“As for how it works, it should work similarly to how the old skill worked, though usually with improvements.  Like I said, Skill Evolutions were more of a rumor in Dungeon Fairy circles, so your guess is probably as good as mine,” Winxa said with a shrug and a smile.

That wasn’t particularly helpful but based on the description of her Advanced Elemental Monster Seed Origination skill, she could see that instead of it just being a small “orb”, it now said “objects”.  Then there was the fact that the large red cube that she had created was called a “Tiny Fire Elemental Cube” – despite the fact that it was bigger than the largest Elemental Orb she could create.  Sandra was just glad that she could unlock and access the larger sizes of Cubes; while she could theoretically create them on her own, she’d rather not have to struggle with handling and condensing