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

unlocking the use of it in the first place, but she decided against producing her newest construct until she had both made room for it and used her slowly accumulating Mana on something more productive.

There is just so much I want to do, and never enough Mana to do it.

With that thought, she mentally sighed and got to work.

Chapter 2

As much as she wanted to start crafting again – especially with the new materials that Kelerim had acquired from the nearby Orc village – she decided to put her Mana absorption plan into place.  To that effect, Sandra started to produce Small Animated Shears one after another, using up many of the extra Tiny and Small Copper Orbs she had stacked up around her Core.  As soon as they were created, she sent them down the hallway and into the Vertical Air-trap Transportation System (VATS) to get to the top of her dungeon rather quickly.  As soon as they got to the entrance, she sent them outside into the bright sunlight and had them shoot straight up into the wide-open air.

At first, the ambient Mana she had been receiving from her constructs inside her dungeon had capped out at around 10 per minute, which would allow her to create a single Small Animated Shears and the accompanying Tiny Copper Orb (when she ran out of her stockpile).  The 14 Mechanical Wolves and Jaguars (7 of each) that were roaming around outside weren’t affected by the ambient Mana cap that her dungeon seemed to have, so they were providing even more.  Although the Mana wasn’t as concentrated outside of her dungeon – and from what Winxa had told her a few weeks before, would continue to thin out the further she went from her entrance – there was much more to explore.  In the beginning, she calculated that she was receiving a little less than a single Mana every minute from her outdoor constructs.

While that didn’t seem like that much, she also had to consider that her Wolves and Jaguars also moved slowly and cautiously through the wasteland above; again, that was to make sure they were safe and unspotted (hopefully) by anything else roaming around up there.  When they crept around instead of running full out, they could accumulate less of the ambient Mana that was available and just sitting there waiting for them to gather it up.

After the first dozen Shears floated through the air at about 200 feet, however, she could feel even more start to funnel into her.  She was able to spread them out into 20-foot-long cubes, where they would slowly – but continuously – move in their designated space and soak up all the Mana in the air.  They were angled so that their points were facing towards the Orcish village of Grongbak, presenting as little profile as possible to avoid detection.

Using the vision that they afforded her with a figurative “bird’s-eye view”, she was easily able to see the village on the horizon but couldn’t make out many details.  All she knew, though, was that the village – in addition to about 600 feet beyond from what she could “feel”, due to her recent Core Size upgrade – was now thoroughly within her Area of Influence.  She couldn’t actually see that far yet with her Shears because she didn’t dare get too close to people, so she was basing the distance on what she could envision underground.

Although that somewhat limited the space to the northwest where she could expand her ever-widening net of Shears in the air, she still had literal miles of air to fill up with her constructs in other directions.  In fact, since she could see a bit farther away now, she could see that she wasn’t quite in the middle of the wasteland – as she had first supposed.  Instead, it appeared that her dungeon and her Core were located somewhat closer to the Orcish lands than the other three lands – owned by the other races – that were reportedly out there somewhere.

To the north, south, east, and west, she could see the unmistakable sight of trees in the distance, though they were still a bit too far for her Area of Influence to reach yet.  The northern and western forests were the closest, however, which was how Sandra knew she was closer to the Orcish lands than the others.  She couldn’t quite see anything to the southwest, but she saw a small break in the tree line where she supposed the Elvish lands were located – at least according to what Winxa had told her.  It was hard to make out, but she thought she saw similar breaks to the northeast and southeast, where the Dwarves and Gnomes lived, respectively.

She recounted what she saw to her Dungeon Fairy friend, who looked sadder and sadder at the descriptions Sandra supplied to her.

Winxa seemed lost in her memories for a moment, before she volunteered some information.  “From what you describe, it sounds like nearly 100 square miles of land was destroyed and turned into these wastelands.  I’ve only really had second-hand knowledge of what was going on up there from others, so I wasn’t completely sure how much had actually been devastated.

“Those forests you see used to extend and meet in the middle of this area, almost like a crossroads.  It was here that Wester had his dungeon, and at the end of his existence, his Area of Influence had extended for hundreds of miles in every direction.  Most of the wreckage of the land was concentrated here, though, where his actual Core was located; it’s almost like the combined armies of Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, and Gnomes were determined to eliminate every trace of his dungeon, so they probably overdid it a little here.  I can’t blame them, however, as he was quite…dangerous and ruthless.”  Winxa seemed to shiver at the mention of her former Core.