The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) by Jonathan Brooks (english readers txt) 📗

cull the nearby dungeons and are thereby safer; the Heroes or whatever that were previously involved in defending the nearby land could join this force and move on to the next dungeon and destroy it, freeing up those Heroes, and so on and so forth.  In a matter of a year or two, your former homeland could be completely freed up from every single dungeon around them; of course, there would start to be some growing dungeons just making it out of their underground areas and into the wider world that replaced the ones that were destroyed – but they would be so weak that they wouldn’t prevent the Humans from going off into other lands to conquer.  Are you following me so far?”

In general, I am.  What I can’t understand is why they didn’t do that; I’m almost positive that they certainly could’ve done it easily.

The Dungeon Fairy nodded.  “That’s what I’m getting at, in fact. If the Monster Seeds that were left behind as your ‘Dungeon Loot’ aren’t enough to dissuade a race from doing that to the dungeons, these Temporary Dungeon Core Enhancements were created to make such a premise nearly impossible.  Or at least so difficult that it would result in many deaths of those Heroes in order to destroy the final few dungeons, which would be extremely powerful.  In addition, while they’re trying to finish them off, brand-new Cores would replace the ones that were destroyed and would rapidly grow until they were again a threat within a few months or sooner.

“Fun fact: this was actually attempted by the Humans when the dungeons first came into existence, but they stopped after four dungeons were destroyed, for some reason that was never revealed to us.  It’s my own personal opinion that the Creator somehow visited the leaders of all the races at that point to warn them of the consequences of continuing down that path, and that was then passed down from generation to generation as some sort of rule that should never be broken.”

Sandra didn’t really consider that a “fun fact”, though it did certainly explain some things.  She remembered back when she was a merchant learning that the Heroes were very particular about what dungeons they destroyed, and that if they were forced to destroy two that were close to each other, they would destroy one and then actively “contain” the other until a new dungeon appeared nearby – then they were free to destroy it.  While she always thought it was because they didn’t want to miss out on the powerful Loot that was dropped by destroying too many at once, but now it made sense with what Winxa was saying.

Then how does that explain what the Orcs are doing?

“Well, in their defense, they probably didn’t know that the Reptile dungeon was just destroyed not too far away, triggering these enhancements,” she replied with an apologetic tilt to her head. “That, or the warning has been lost to the ages, and they don’t know any better.”

That’s just great – what am I supposed to do now?

“I…don’t know.  This could have some drastic consequences for this entire region if more Cores are destroyed; because you’re at a crossroads between the races, all of them would be impacted by this, and further destruction would only spread further into their lands.  You could potentially speed up the demise of each of the races, though it would at least temporarily help those people living around here.”

It was quite the dilemma.

Logically, the greater good was now to leave the Undead Core alone and just cull the Monsters outside, preventing most of the potential expansion of its Area of Influence in the process.  After asking Winxa about the “mentoring benefits” included in the notification, she found that the possibility of another dungeon accessing her AOI was now impossible due to the Enhancements in play, so this option was a real possibility – because she could now upgrade her Core Size without fear.  At least until the Enhancements ended, at which time she was hopeful she could handle any threats with her greater Size.

In her Core’s fictitious heart and in the deepest parts of her mind, however, Sandra wanted to destroy the Undead Core and call it a day.  Thoughts of revenge on the Dwarves’ part motivated some of it, but deep down she could feel that it was the right thing to do, despite the danger it could impose on the towns and villages nearby, as well as those farther into their lands.  By the “right thing”, she meant that it was a mistake that she had made that needed to be corrected, and not necessarily because she thought that she was specifically put there to eliminate all of the dungeons.

Sandra was still undecided as to what she wanted to do as she spent the morning and afternoon creating even more Dungeon Monsters to add to those she already had out and about, including an additional half-dozen Phoenixes to replace those that had perished in the attack the night before.  She also expanded her Hyper Automatons force that she used to bring back dropped Monster Seeds, because she was planning on looting the Dwarven village.  She already noticed a few skeletal rats sneaking in and snatching some of the Seeds dropped from the battle, and she was sure that the Dwarves had a lot of Loot stashed away from their constant culling of the nearby Monsters.

It wasn’t through any desire for it herself – though she wouldn’t deny it would be beneficial – but because she knew that if she didn’t, more and more Undead could potentially slip through and grab it for their Core.  She couldn’t allow any such advantageous looting from helping the other Core, not if she had any hope to contain it in the future.

Sandra figured that she would at least continue the cleanup of all the Undead roaming