Chapter 4

It had only been about 24 hours since Sandra had completed her AMANS project, and she had used all but 10% of the Mana she had accumulated on constructing her new rooms, the traps located therein, and the Dungeon Monsters that populated them.  She also completed four of the ten stages needed to progress to the next Core Size, and she thought that was fairly good progress.  Although she still didn’t like the experience of losing control of her dungeon and constructs – as well as “the trapped in her head” feeling – that upgrading her Core brought with it, she knew it was necessary…but she was just fine leaving it for later.

With a little better defense in place, Sandra split her concentration between hollowing out more rooms to help with that defense as well as working on her new crafting project.  Before she found out that Kelerim had been followed, she had been excited to start working with the new materials he had brought back with him.  First, though, she wanted to unlock their larger forms to be of use as Monster Seeds, which – due to her increased Mana intake – didn’t take as long as she feared.

Monster Seed Origination

Name:

Raw Material Cost:

Mana Cost:

Min. Mana:

Max. Mana:

Tiny Salt Cube

20

5

5

10

Tiny Clay Cube

80

15

15

150

Tiny Nickel Orb

200

20

20

200

Tiny Silver Orb

3000

300

40

400

Tiny Gold Orb

4000

400

50

500

Locked Seeds:

Unlock Requirements:

Mana Cost to Unlock:

Min. Mana:

Max. Mana:

Small Salt Cube

2 Tiny Salt Cubes

10

5

20

Average Salt Cube

4 Small Salt Cubes

40

5

80

Large Salt Cube

2 Average Salt Cubes

80

5

160

Small Clay Cube

2 Tiny Clay Cubes

30

15

300

Average Clay Cube

4 Small Clay Cubes

120

15

1200

Large Clay Cube

2 Average Clay Cubes

240

15

2400

Small Nickel Orb

2 Tiny Nickel Orbs

40

20

400

Average Nickel Orb

4 Small Nickel Orbs

160

20

1600

Large Nickel Orb

2 Average Nickel Orbs

320

20

3200

Small Silver Orb

2 Tiny Silver Orbs

600

40

800

Average Silver Orb

4 Small Silver Orbs

2400

40

3200

Large Silver Orb

2 Average Silver Orbs

4800

40

6400

Small Gold Orb

2 Tiny Gold Orbs

800

50

1000

Average Gold Orb

4 Small Gold Orbs

3200

50

4000

Large Gold Orb

2 Average Gold Orbs

6400

50

8000

Sandra now had access to Salt, Clay, Nickel, Silver, and Gold as both seeds and materials; the wood that he had brought back, she belatedly remembered, didn’t work out.  What she did have, however, was Flax Seed as a material, which she could grow and eventually turn into linen.  She knew there were other types of cloth out there that could be – and were – made from plants, but she didn’t have the seed available to make them; she was hoping more would become available to her soon – or else she might have to start looking for some on her own.

While she wanted to use the Nickel, Silver, and Gold to start working on some jewelry, she held off for the moment for a few reasons; for one, the fine art of crafting and perfecting rings, necklaces, pendants, earrings, chains, bracelets, circlets, brooches, hairpins, torcs, armlets, and even hairpins took a steady hand that could do delicate work – which none of her constructs could quite accomplish.  While her Tiny Automaton was actually a great size for the smaller, more precise work that required a keen eye, it didn’t have any type of dexterity to accomplish more than the most basic of tasks.

Secondly, most of the jewelry she had seen being crafted in her former life usually had some sort of gemstone accompanying it.  These gems were the material of choice for enchanting, because the runes involved in the process could be created directly into the harder stone without as much fear of it being destroyed.  Since most – but not all – of the jewelry she had seen made over the years were primarily to enhance some aspect of the Heroes battling against the dungeons, it only made sense for the runes and enchantments in general to be as durable as possible.  And since she hadn’t found any gemstones yet in all of her excavations, she was out of luck when it came to those.

Granted, she could theoretically practice making some of the bulkier jewelry items that didn’t take as much finesse, but she still decided to hold off on that for the third reason: there were plenty of other things she could do.  For instance, the clay that she received as both a Monster Seed and a material could be used for all sorts of different pottery crafts. The salt she received was an additional component to improve the tanning process; it could be used to improve her cooking skills (though she really didn’t have a way to test it out), and also during some simple paper-making processes.

But those weren’t what she wanted to craft; some of those different crafts were missing materials that she didn’t have access to, or she couldn’t easily perform the actions that were needed (such as jewelry making and even pottery).  Instead, she wanted to work on something that she had already partially started on earlier while she was excavating Raw Material for her Small Animated Shears dotting the sky outside her dungeon.

She had ended up clearing a room that branched off of the room with her boiling vats, where she had previously used them for cleaning off raw Bearling skins for tanning purposes.  Now, however, it would serve another purpose – cleaning the