The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4) by Jonathan Brooks (ebook reader with android os TXT) 📗

came back to herself, the blood-red anger coating her vision and snapping her mind letting up just enough to comprehend what was going on.  She tried to think back on what happened, but most of it was a bit of a blur; still, she had a fairly good understanding of what she had done.  A tiny part of her mind had shouted at her to stop, but it was comparatively so miniscule that it had been easy to ignore.

After her mind had focused on killing all of the intruders, Sandra had gone on a rampage with her Monsters, abandoning almost all of her defensive constructs in her main dungeon (a logical part of her mind kept the ones inside of the Roc tunnel in place) and sent everything she could out to the field of battle happening near her secondary entrance.  She even pulled every single Automaton, Sentinel, and helper in the Dwarven residences and growing rooms, as well as all of her crafting stations.  She belatedly looked around to see that she had the foresight to keep the “original” Unstable Shapeshifter inside of her dungeon, so that she wouldn’t lose all of the patterns it had cultivated from everyone it had touched.  Other than that (and those within her Roc tunnel), the only thing defending her main dungeon were her traps.

Then she had sent them all against the Dungeon Monsters that were constantly emerging from their long tunnels and all of the Orcs outside that had come to destroy her.  She had lost all sympathy for them and they all needed to die – and she helped them on their way.  Some part of her mind had luckily identified the mercenaries, Shieldmen, and Rangers that also came to help fight as friendly, which she thought was probably because they were Bonded to her.  Everything else was slowly surrounded and killed.

But that hadn’t been the end of it, however, because with every Orc death in the wastelands, Sandra gained more Mana.  Since she gained Mana, the four Cores also gained Mana – so they sent more and more Dungeon Monsters as a result.  Sandra created a constant stream of constructs that she sent outside to surround the exit tunnels of the four Cores, where they would surround and kill whatever emerged.  The constant outflow of Monsters seemed impossibly long, but eventually even they tapered off and stopped altogether.  Soon after that, Sandra felt each of the tunnels cut off near its source as they were blocked off by the Cores.  She could only assume they were using the Mana they had accumulated to upgrade their Core Sizes once again, which could only result in future problems as they unlocked greater and greater chances to produce a Dungeon Monster Sandra would have trouble destroying.

That was for the future, though, and now she wanted to connect to those tunnels that the Cores had abandoned so that they wouldn’t be able to use them against her.  However, in order to do that, she needed to have all of the invaders gone from her dungeon – which hadn’t quite happened yet.

A portion of her mind had followed along as Kelerim’s father, the Elven Elites, Wyrlin, and the others made their way through her Roc tunnel.  She knew she was tempted to throw wave after wave of constructs at them from her Home room, but even in her absolute rage she knew that if she didn’t take care of the problem outside first, they would be an even greater obstacle in the future.  Therefore, almost all of her constructs were sent outside to fight, though towards the end she kept some in reserve nearby her Core in case they were needed.

Her Dungeon Monsters and traps had done an admirable job of killing almost all of the intruders by the time she could focus on them again.  Her thought about suffusing the trigger to each trap throughout the much larger rooms – which helped to prevent much of the negation the Elite casters could employ to shut the traps down – had worked well enough, though Sandra could see how it could be improved upon in the future.  Her surprise Aging Fields inside of one of the tunnels had also worked beautifully, killing so many of the invaders that she was beginning to think about adding similar types of non-dungeon-connected traps throughout her entire dungeon.

The exploding suicidal Goblins filled with Large Energy Orbs as their Monster Seed had made her cackle in delight as they exploded, and their Tin and Nickel armor shot off in all directions killing more of the Orcs than she expected.  The Wyvines, despite being exposed by the negation of the Nether-based shadow pillars, caused her to snicker as the Orcs died by the score, unable to see what was attacking them.  Sandra also giggled insatiably when her Phoenix Monsters burned dozens of the invaders alive, and she only wished that they had let the reborn Monsters have another go at them – but they were unfortunately killed before they could emerge completely.

She was slightly disappointed as she watched her Echo copies fire their crafted bows with horrible accuracy, but afterwards she snickered because it didn’t matter too much since the invaders were packed so tightly together. Without Echo to lead them, they didn’t even get another shot off besides the first, though at that point it didn’t make that much of a difference – especially as some of her Animated Slabs surprised the Orcs and squished over a hundred of them in less than a second in the next room.

Her bloodlust calmed enough when the only invaders left were inside of her final “Boss” room, facing off against the two Aerie Rocs.  There wasn’t much she could do other than watch, and she was surprised at how strong Kelerim’s father seemed to be.  The sight of him, and the focus she put on the Orc Warlord, further fueled her insanity and