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

She gave up after about 10 minutes of trying, because it was too frustrating and no amount of concentration she could summon would keep things stable enough to actually get anything done.  Violet was still watching her struggle with the enchanting and looked amused, which was a step up from the frightened appearance she had earlier.  Sandra felt bad about not even thinking about what kind of mental trauma seeing a copy of oneself would have on someone – but didn’t know how to make it up to her.

Maybe if I Shapeshift into Felbar she’ll feel better about it—

She immediately cut off that private thought, because she thought that the same type of mental trauma of seeing a friend copied would still apply.  Echo, on the other hand, was probably fair game – being an unfamiliar Elf and all that.

* I’m going up to see if I can shift into Echo – the Elf – up above; did you want to come with me? *

“Um…no thanks, I’ve had more than enough of all that for one day.  I’ll probably get something to eat and head to bed early.  I’m hoping that tomorrow is the day when Felbar wakes up, so I want to make sure I’m good and rested for what is sure to be…interesting,” Violet said, excusing herself and running off.

“I can’t say I blame her – that must’ve been quite a shock,” a voice near her Core said.  Sandra looked at Winxa and saw her frowning in the direction the Gnome retreated towards.

That was a big mistake on my part, I admit.  I’ll try not to be “wearing” Echo’s form when she wakes up; I can’t even imagine what will happen then.

Winxa stared at her Core for a minute with a strange look on her face, before busting out laughing.  “As much as that would traumatize the poor Elf, I would actually love to see that,” the Dungeon Fairy said as soon as she was able to speak again.

Yes, well, I’m still not going to do that.  I need her help to prevent my destruction, if you remember, and I think that wouldn’t inspire the greatest confidence in my assertions that I’m not there to kill everyone and take over the world.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Winxa said as she wiped a tear from her eye from laughing so much.  “That does seem more important than my amusement…but maybe you can do that to Felbar?” she asked pleadingly.

Sandra didn’t even bother to reply, as she was sure Winxa already knew what her answer would be.

While she still had at least nominal control over the functions of the Unstable Shapeshifter she had created, she tried to make it walk but only managed to shift a part of its form a few inches before it stopped.  Sandra had more success before she had full control getting it to stretch its arm out to touch Violet, so she assumed that the best way to move the new Dungeon Monster was to just give it orders and wait for it to accomplish them whatever way it could.

As she was pulling out of it, something out of the corner of the Shapeshifter’s slightly distorted vision caught her attention.  Sandra immediately re-entered the Monster to see what it was; despite the “mindache” she almost immediately experienced, she was able to easily pinpoint the anomaly that caught her eye.

Peering almost straight up, she could see a strange floating “cage” of runes that hovered just barely above her Core.  At first, she thought it might be some sort of enchantment that was keeping her floating in place in the middle of the room, or even what was keeping her trapped in the Core in the first place; upon further analyzation of the specific runes she was seeing, however, she started to get an idea of what it actually was.

She was seeing the inner workings of the Dungeon Core system that absorbed and funneled ambient Mana into her Core.

Sandra stared at it in shock and wonder for probably 10 minutes before the splitting mindache forced her to retreat from the Shapeshifter’s form.  When she tried looking at her Core with any of her constructs – knowing what she was looking for – she couldn’t see it, unfortunately.  There was something about the Unstable Shapeshifter that allowed her to see the strange but wonderful enchantment, and she thought about what she had seen.

There were long chains of repeating runes, most of which she didn’t recognize at all, but those she did recognize were what tipped her off: Absorb, Convert, and Strengthen.  Absorb was a simple rune that many Humans who had access to Water elemental energy could use to absorb almost any liquid, condense it, and then turn it into a solid, which made those with Water energy very popular in transporting water over long distances – as well as making those with a servant/cleaning-type bent to their profession very popular in keeping things clean.

Convert was a popular Spirit-energy rune among armor enchanters, as it helped to convert the energy of a strike into something else; the most basic use of it was in combination with the Reflection enchanting rune, which converted a blow to the armor into an equally strong repelling action, sending the energy converted from the strike back into the paw/tail/claws making the blow.  It was a powerful enchantment and usually ran out of energy quite quickly, but it had reportedly saved more than one life that she had heard of.

The last, Strengthen, was the most intriguing as part of the enchantment.  Normally, the Earth-energy rune was used to strengthen something Earth-based to keep it from breaking as easily – like a sword, some armor pieces, or even a clay pot.  It was a very simple rune, which was