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

Two, even if she was able to beat the reptiles back and kill them all, she had no idea when – or if – the attacks would stop.  From what Winxa had told her and her own experience with the reptile dungeon, she imagined that the assault on the Elven village would be constant, and she would have to be on her toes every minute in case something slipped through her defense.  It would theoretically never end, and she hesitated to think what would happen if she wanted to do something that would take her away from the action – like upgrading her Core Size.  To add to all that, the defensive option still probably wouldn’t sway their opinion of her dungeon and the Elites would likely still come looking for her.

Therefore, that left option three.  And with that option, Sandra would make the choice to defend the people with the same lesson she learned from when the Territory Ants attacked her Core.  Sometimes the best defense was a proper offense, just like the only way to halt the assaults was to destroy the source.  And the source in this case was probably going to be just as difficult to get to.

Winxa, I think I know what I have to do.

“And what, pray to the Creator, is that?” she asked.

The only thing I can do in this situation…destroy that other Core before it can kill again.

The Dungeon Fairy smiled, which was not the reaction Sandra was expecting.  “I was hoping you’d say that,” Winxa said, weirdly giving her a thumbs-up.

You’re strange, you know that?

“Oh, believe me – I know.”

Chapter 41

Sandra wasn’t taking any half-measures in her assault of the other Core’s dungeon.  She was going to send the majority of her larger constructs, as well as half of her AMANS with them; she was a little worried about depleting her dungeon of its main defenders, but almost all of her smaller defenders that couldn’t travel quickly were still there, along with her bevy of traps to defend her Core.

From what she could see, there wasn’t any sign of the Elven Elites, and it was closely approaching evening; even if they arrived within the next few hours it was doubtful they would try to attack her dungeon until at least morning.  By that time, Sandra was hoping to replace what she could (within her budget) of her defenders with her more powerful “advanced” constructs, so she didn’t think it would be too bad.  If she were lucky, the Elites wouldn’t even arrive that day or even that night, and she hoped that she would be done and gone from the other dungeon before they even showed up.

In all, her army consisted of 14 Steel Pythons, 22 Ironclad Apes, 14 Basher Totems, 15 Mechanical Wolves, 16 Mechanical Jaguars, 45 Singing Blademasters, and – last, but not least – 5,012 Small Animated Shears from her AMANS.  She didn’t bring any Repair Drones or anything smaller than them because they weren’t fast enough to keep up with the others, and speed was becoming more essential by the moment.  Sandra was barely able to track the quick little lizards that practically streaked through the forest on their exploration, but the ones she followed with one pair of her Shears were already three-quarters of the way to the edge of the forest near the Elven village.  She gave them about 10 minutes before they were discovered – 15 if they were lucky.

As for her own construct force, she estimated that it would take almost 45 minutes to arrive at the dungeon as a whole; her Shears could make it there in a fraction of the time, of course, but she didn’t want to go in just with them in case there was something that could stop them easily inside.  She had never actually been in a dungeon before (hers didn’t count), so she only had some vague stories of what they looked like to go on; the Heroes back in Muriel rarely needed to actually destroy a dungeon – because they culled them fairly regularly – so it wasn’t often that new descriptions of them emerged.

As soon as they departed, Sandra started the process of replacing them for her dungeon with the Mana she had already accumulated and was still accumulating – though the amount she was receiving from aboveground slowly declined from the initial surge when all her constructs left the dungeon as they traveled farther away.  With the increased cost of her constructs since her advancement, the just under 300 Mana per minute she had been receiving almost didn’t seem like enough anymore – and when that number dropped down to just over 200 as the miles separating her dungeon and her Core-hunting force grew, it felt rather insufficient.

For instance, although she used some of the Mana that she already had to create it, the Martial Totem (the “advanced” version of the Basher Totem) took almost an additional 10 minutes for her to accumulate enough to afford its new 8,000 Mana price tag.  Starting from almost empty, it was going to take almost an hour to be able to create another one based on those numbers – but she did have to say that (once she was able to see it) the increase in cost was worth it.

The Martial Totem appeared to be made completely out of Iron as opposed to the relatively softer undefined metal of the Basher Totem; this made it much more durable and should withstand more powerful attacks – as well as having some serious weight behind its own attacks.  In addition, the pair of powerful arms it had before were joined by two other pairs along the “totem” part of the construct, facing in different directions and different heights so that it had basically every