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

beams of intense heat tore them to pieces, as they were unable to move through the room without passing through them.  When the trap ran out of Mana, they made it through unscathed, even from the bombs being dropped from above, but they were chewed up shortly thereafter in the subsequent rooms from heat or explosive attacks that shattered or melted them into slag.

The same could be said for the Slimes, especially many of the much larger ones that blobbed their way into her dungeon.  Heat and explosions were enough to tear them up without fail, and they didn’t progress very far before dying.  The few Goblins that joined in the fracas fared even worse, including the Goblin Commanders, who didn’t have enough of a defense against the traps she had in place.

Things started to change once the new Monsters started to show up, however.

Utilizing the Aerie and High Peak Rocs she now had outside, especially the 3 she had just recently regained from her friends returning, she had taken out most of the Slime Dragons that appeared, and two of her giant birds worked together to snatch up and tear apart the humongous bunny rabbit that had emerged from the Beast-Classification dungeon.  She moved one of her Expanded Mobile Fortifications from Avensglen to near her Roc tunnel entrance, which helped to eliminate many of the larger Beasts and Slimes as well, but both types of her defenders could only do so much.

This was especially true when the first Magnetite Golem arrived on the scene.  Sandra thought that her Fortification would be too large to be greatly affected by the magnetic Monster—but she was wrong.  It only took 10 seconds for her powerful construct to be pulled into the Golem, and it wasn’t a delicate process; the twisted wreckage of the Fortification was piled up around the Golem, which seemed entirely unharmed.  The best she could say was that it was rendered immobile, at least until another Golem stopped by and crushed the core of the Mobile Fortification on its exposed platform, and her construct disappeared.

If the magnetic Monster would’ve been able to fit inside of her main entrance, her defenses would’ve been devastated.  As it was, it clomped inside of her Roc tunnel, which was primarily full of non-metallic Dungeon Monsters that she had unlocked via her Advancement Options.  At that point, they were taken out by many of her traps, though they wreaked havoc on some of the other defenses – like her explosive bombs and Goblins covered in shrapnel.

The metallic Mercury Slime, on the other hand, was able to squeeze inside of her main entrance.  Almost immediately, the inability of her constructs to harm the Slime was obvious, and it was able to progress all the way to her room filled with lava without any harm; at that point, Sandra’s Digger constructs were able to knock it into the superhot Fire-Earth trap, where it promptly melted.  There wasn’t just one, though, which made her worried for when another one would reach that point and her trap ran out of Mana.

One of the giant bunnies also succeeded in outrunning her Roc force up above and managed to make it to her large tunnel, where it practically shot through her defenses as if they weren’t even there, knocking other Monsters aside in its rush to reach the end.  Nothing seemed to harm it, and it was in and out so quickly that many of the traps barely had time to activate before it was gone.  It was only when it reached one of the last rooms inhabited by her Animated Slabs that it finally got caught.

One of the Slabs slammed shut on the bunny’s right hind leg, stopping its forward momentum abruptly.  Sandra heard a loud *snap* as it slammed into the floor, which was full of more Slabs.  Unfortunately, the rabbit was so large that her Earthen Monsters couldn’t fully engulf the giant Beast, and it struggled mightily to break free.  Before it could extricate its hind leg, Sandra decided to use what she had learned earlier to finish it off.

The Dungeon Core took 500 Fire Mana and 500 Water Mana, placed them just in front of the frantic bunny, and then attempted to combine them together.  The resulting explosion from the opposing elements was enough to rip the rabbit’s head apart, but it also had the unfortunate side-effect of shattering over half of her Animated Slabs inside of the room.  The entire room also shook hard enough that some of the Dwarven villagers near her Home room could feel it.

Oops.  It was probably too much Mana that she had pumped into the explosion; but then again, she hadn’t wanted to use too little. That had been her one chance to stop the large Monster, as she hadn’t wanted to be forced to close her Roc tunnel to prevent it from reaching her Core.

The worst of it all, however, was when the Goblin Necromancers joined in the fun.  Not only were there some near her main entrance, but they were also near the Roc tunnel, casting their undead-raising aura over all of the Beasts that went inside.  Sometimes it was hard enough to kill some of the larger Monsters, such as the bear-monkey creatures, or the Elephants that charged through, but when they would just get back up after dying, some even missing limbs, that made it all that much more difficult to put them down for good.  Only when their heads were destroyed or separated from their bodies would they stay down for good.

Luckily, if she could consider it luck, there weren’t a lot of Beasts that survived long in her Roc tunnel, as they were susceptible to many of Sandra’s own Monsters and traps.  Her main entrance, on the other hand, was slowly becoming overwhelmed with undead.  As they pushed farther and farther, the Mana in her traps constantly running out and having to