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

Well, let’s hope I don’t make the same sort of mistakes and ruin the land even more, Sandra sent her thoughts towards the melancholy Fairy.

“From what I’ve seen of your actions so far, I wholeheartedly believe that’s the last thing that you want – and I’ll do whatever I can to help you stay away from that outcome.”

Thanks, Winxa – I appreciate your confidence in me.

Sandra really did appreciate the confidence Winxa showed towards her. She wanted to be different than the other Dungeon Cores out there; sometimes it was hard, though, not to think about how much Mana she could acquire from the deaths of living beings.  Fortunately, she wasn’t comfortable with the thought of murder and killing, so whenever thoughts of taking a shortcut to expansion entered her mind, they were almost instantly snuffed out.

After over 100 Small Animated Shears were sent aboveground and into the air above her dungeon, Sandra noticed a significant uptick in how much Mana was being funneled to her.  She was still getting approximately 10 Mana per minute from the constructs inside her dungeon, but the amount she was receiving from outside was already just over 3 Mana per minute.

And that had only been a little less than an hour’s work.

Encouraged by the increase, Sandra continued to create more of her small flying constructs over the next 24 hours, until she was to the point where she was starting to make 2 of them a minute…and then 3…and then 5…  By the time she was done, the sky was blanketed with Shears over much of her Area of Influence – barring the area around the Orc Village, of course.  The ambient Mana absorption increase was exponential as time went on; a steady stream of Shears flowed out of her dungeon in a seemingly never-ending parade of metallic objects.  As she neared the 6-hour mark, she was able to produce 19 or 20 constructs a minute to send out to join the others in the sky.

All told, she had just over 9,000 of her Small Animated Shears covering 180,000 square feet of airspace.  From the ground, they appeared very small and hard to spot, though if you knew what you were looking for you could see them; regardless, unless someone was specifically looking for them, they were practically invisible, being only 3 inches long.

She could’ve kept going, but she had already had to split her concentration during the whole process and dug out a massive room connecting to her boiling vats (previously used for tanning) room in order to supply enough Raw Materials for the Tiny Copper Orbs the Shears needed; she placed it there because she had a plan to use it for something when she was finished with her current project.   The cost to excavate the room and acquire the RM was fairly low, but if she hadn’t had to use some of the incoming Mana to do that, she thought she could’ve had another three or four hundred of her small constructs.

Again, she theoretically could’ve kept going, but the whole process was very repetitive, monotonous, and extremely boring.  And yet, when she finally stopped, took a mental step back, and calculated what she was bringing in every minute, she could see that the entire day spent on her project had been completely worth it.

Previous Mana Intake

Core Absorption: 10 Mana/hour

Dungeon Absorption: 10 Mana/min

Aboveground Absorption: >1/min

Daily Intake: ~15,000

Current Mana Intake

Core Absorption: 10 Mana/hour

Dungeon Absorption: 10 Mana/min

Aboveground Absorption: 260/min

Daily Intake: ~390,000

Before she started her Shears-blanket project, Sandra had been accumulating just under 15,000 Mana a day – which wasn’t a small amount, but not nearly enough to satisfy her need for it; especially when she considered her new construct, which would take more than a full day to supply enough Mana for it – not to mention the Raw Materials needed for its Monster Seed.  Now, however, with just a day’s worth of work – boring, monotonous work, of course – she was acquiring 270 Mana per minute, or a little under 400,000 a day!

Sandra had noticed that the farther she placed her Shears from her dungeon, the less her constructs had started to return.  They were still plenty effective, but they had diminishing returns as her blanket extended over the wasteland.  She was almost tempted to do another round of creating thousands more Small Animated Shears, but she decided that she needed a break from the monotony of it – and her intake had increased by 2,600%...so, not a bad day’s work.

“I’ve…never even heard of something like what you’ve done here before,” Winxa remarked, after Sandra finally told her the results of what she had done.  The Dungeon Core didn’t really have the opportunity to split her attention enough to carry a conversation while she had been working on her project, so it was the first Winxa had gotten any information from Sandra.  “The closest I can think of was when a Natural-element Core created a swarm of toxic small mobile mushrooms that covered about a half-mile of ground before they were sent against a nearby village.  Almost every other Dungeon Core thinks more in terms of ‘bigger is better’, so they rarely use their smallest Dungeon Monsters after they unlock access to larger ones,” the Dungeon Fairy explained.

It doesn’t sound like they employ much strategic thinking in their actions, do they?

“Very rarely.  In fact, the last time any of them really used their Dungeon Monsters with any type of strategy like the way you have…well…you can see the result up there for yourself.”

Don’t worry, Winxa – I’m not planning on trying to take over the world; I’m trying to save it.

“I hope so…Creator help us if you’re not.”

Chapter 3

Now that she had a workable amount of Mana coming in at a fairly rapid pace, Sandra could finally concentrate on other