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

If it wasn’t for the fact that so many Monster Seeds were being dropped by the incoming hordes, she probably would’ve been destroyed within the first 20 minutes.  Even with absorbing every Seed dropped, she was barely keeping up with her defenses, and the strain of watching every part of her dungeon was starting to wear on her.  When a few of the Goblin Necromancers started to venture into her Roc tunnel, casting their aura on Sandra’s non-construct Monsters, she knew she was in trouble.  While it didn’t really affect her own Goblins too much, since they were usually destroyed in the process of exploding, when they reached her room with the Wyvines, it started to become a problem.

When one of them died, she lost complete control of it as it rose back up as an undead Wyvine under the control of the Goblin-Classification Dungeon Core.

At that point, Sandra was forced to pull almost all of her constructs from her extensive connecting tunnels and send them to contain this new threat.  She even contemplated creating and using another Gravitational Devastation Sphere to help slow the incoming tide of Monsters; however, even if she dared to risk it, it still wasn’t past its cooldown from the first time she had activated it to great effect versus the Undead horde.

Nevertheless, while it was a bit dangerous to leave the passageways leading to the other dungeons relatively unguarded, they still contained enough traps to stop any incursion from that direction – not that she expected that to happen.  Fighting a war on two fronts was difficult for them to maintain, and the hostile Cores were having more success working together than apart.

It was at that time that the party of Royal Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and one Gnome arrived at their destination, and it was all she could do to hold everything together while she prepared them for their swift attack on the Goblin-Classification dungeon.  Less than a minute after her Champion Totems broke through the last wall between her dungeon and the other dungeon, when the powerful party containing Echo and Gerold were fully engaged in their attack, Sandra finally gained a reprieve.

The Goblins were pulling out.  Turning around and abandoning their allies, they raced back to their own dungeon to help defend it against the invaders – which was what Sandra had been hoping for.  Thanks to Bonding with the Core soul fragment in her mind, Sandra had recently begun to really understand the contracts a Core had to abide by, as well as how a Core would react to a sudden threat to their dungeon; as a result, it made her fairly sure that such an outcome would present itself.  Since their presence in the dungeon had prevented many of their normal abilities, the threat was something that couldn’t be ignored; an attack from Sandra’s constructs, alone, likely wouldn’t have the same sort of effect.

The Goblins had a lot of ground to cover to get back to their dungeon, naturally, but they were quick; the party of all four races needed to be quicker.

The beleaguered Dungeon Core finally obtained some breathing room ,as no more Goblins or Beasts were obtaining the aura that would raise them back from the dead, though those that already had them remained.  Still, the sudden departure of 25% of her dungeon invaders allowed her to recover a little bit and start to push back.

Only 15 minutes later, with things becoming a relative stalemate – though Sandra was starting to gain the upper hand, with fewer and fewer Monsters emerging from the other 3 dungeons – she noticed that the group she had sent with her Resonating Prismatic Core weren’t yet to their destination, so she had to warn them of the impending danger.  She was just glad that there wasn’t any sort of trap that would cut off her communication with them like what happened with the Undead-Classification Core; having the entrance collapse back then had nearly rendered death upon all who had entered.  Since the frontal wave of Goblins were already filing into the dungeon, it wouldn’t be long before they smashed into the back of the group at what would likely be an inopportune time.

Without as much of a threat from the Monsters invading her dungeon at that point – though she kept 99% of her focus on them – Sandra was finally able to watch her friends fighting through the perspective of her Champion Totems and Repair Drones that had gone with them.  To her surprise, the Totems weren’t even being utilized; instead, they were almost acting like guards for the Drones, and she didn’t even think they had seen any action.

But that was understandable, especially with what she was witnessing.  Fear born from some deep-down Core instinct shot through her as she watched the complete and utter annihilation of the Goblins that attacked the front line of King Mynag, First-shield Parten, Princess Celeste, and Gerold.  Palzerk and Owchet were savage killers that protected their flanks, smashing and tearing through everything that got close, though one of the Repair Drones was needed to heal Owchet a few times as he got sliced up by the sheer number of weapons surrounding him.

But the real fear came from watching the Elven Royal couple casting their spells.  Waves of flames, showers of boulders, massive clouds of poisonous gas, and a number of other large area-of-effect spells absolutely devastated dozens—hundreds—of Monsters at a time.  Above them on her Pegasus, Echo pitched in by firing bolt after bolt into the incoming horde of Goblins.  In short, they appeared unstoppable.  All I can say is that I’m glad they aren’t trying to reach my Core.

But Sandra recognized that they were still mortal and expending a lot of elemental energy.  She could see that they were starting to