The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) by Jonathan Brooks (best english books to read TXT) 📗

to prevent them from being destroyed.  There were still casualties, but with how inexpensive they were to produce, it was easy enough to maintain the constant defense.  Unfortunately, they weren’t really making any headway towards blocking off the tide of Goblins; at the moment, Sandra was satisfied that the immediate danger had passed.

There was a similar result in the other tunnels.  The Golems were probably the easiest to push back because of the simple application of two of her new constructs, as well as one of her Advancement-gained monsters.  Previously, her Apes wielding warhammers had done a decent job of shattering the animated hunks of dirt, stone, Iron, and even Steel – but their weapons were nearly destroyed as a result.  Instead of having to rely on their rapidly declining quality, Sandra went with her new Champion Totem; creating one of them for a little over 8,000 Mana total, she watched as it sped down the tunnel towards the Golems at a much faster clip than its predecessor, the Martial Totem.  The crafty Dungeon Core was a little worried at first, because instead of the multiple pairs of arms the previous incarnation possessed, the new Totem was back to a single pair; not only that, but it was approximately a third smaller in size.

However, when it arrived at the quickly deteriorating defense near the other dungeon’s entrance, it proved that bigger wasn’t always better.  The Champion Totem was fast, agilely dodging devastating attacks by the larger Golems, before swooping in and punching with surprisingly powerful punches.  In most cases – for all but the Iron and even Steel Golems that Sandra was now seeing emerge from the other dungeon – a quick combination of punches was all it took to shatter the majority of the enemy forces.  For the metallic Golems, repeated strikes in a certain location would start to bend and warp the material the enemy Dungeon Monsters were made of, until finally shearing off from the force enacted upon their limbs.

But the Totem was only one construct, and eventually it would be overwhelmed.  Creating additional Totems was on the agenda; but to aid with the defense, Sandra employed another construct: the Weighted Rolling Force.  She had a hunch of what it could do as soon as she saw its name, and she was quickly proven correct.  Creating 50 of them, she sent them rolling down the tunnel towards the Golem Monsters, picking up speed as they went; when they arrived, they had accelerated enough that the force of their impact against the Earth-based Golems was significant.  Limbs were shattered as the Weighted Forces slammed into them, and already-toppled Golems were broken apart even further as a result.  Even the Iron and Steel Golems received massive dents in their forms, causing some difficulty in the movement of the enemy Dungeon Monsters.  When they hit an Iron or Steel Golem, however, the Forces also shattered from the impact; Sandra noted this, and made sure not to target them unless necessary.  Fortunately, those powerful Golems were few and far between, as most of the Monsters she faced were dirt or stone; the Totem was able to take care of the metallic enemies, at least, while the Forces could shatter the weaker enemies on their own.

Of course, without using some sort of elemental effect to stop the Golems’ regeneration, the large Earth Monsters would eventually reform over time.  To combat this, Sandra employed the Explosive Phoenix, the larger sibling of the Rising Phoenix to which she’d had access before.  Like the majority of the changes she had seen, the Explosive variety of Phoenix was about half again as large as its predecessor – but the changes didn’t stop there.  One of the abilities to which the Phoenix had access was to explosively expel the flames over its body in all directions in a matter of a second, creating a flash of super-hot temperatures; better yet, this wasn’t even something that required any of its elemental energy, but was a natural part of its attack.  By utilizing this explosive technique, the Phoenixes could melt or char the exposed “wounds” of the broken Golems, effectively cauterizing them so that they couldn’t be regenerated.

Against the Slimes, the most effective construct in the past had been her Titanium Anacondas, because they could rapidly strike directly into the middle of their gelatinous forms and crush the nucleus inside that acted as their brains.  Rather than mess with success, Sandra splurged and spent over 35,000 Mana and a whole lot of resources to create 1 of the new Platinum-banded Wyrms.

This Wyrm, as opposed to the Titanium Anaconda, was larger, longer, stronger…and winged.  It could only lift its front half up off the ground with the pair of sheet-metal wings attached to its back, but that was enough to help propel it forward at even greater speed, as well as reach to the top of the tunnel – and everywhere in between.  Its jaws were wide enough to completely engulf 2 or 3 of the smaller Slimes, which it did upon its immediate arrival; the *snap* of its jaws closing on the trio of gelatinous Monsters was reminiscent of a crocodile’s jaws, and the Slimes inside were squished and crushed, killing them instantly.

The acidic nature of their bodies didn’t seem to do much to the Wyrm as it let the remains of the three Slimes run from its mouth; dripping a slimy substance that soon disappeared, it struck out for even more. *Snap* *snap* *snap* went the construct, killing scores of the smaller Slimes in as many seconds.  It was only when it faced the larger, “shaped” Slimes that it started to be slightly affected by the acidity; pits in the metallic jaws of the Wyrm were soon seen as it progressed without stopping, until it was nearly overwhelmed on all sides by dozens of Slimes of different sizes.

Whipping its tail around the tunnel served both to remove the attackers and