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

Bregan.  With their homes no longer safe, they retreated towards the middle of the wasteland, only discovering that they were actually inside of a dungeon after they arrived and acquired a Visitor’s Bond.

Kelerim showed up shortly afterwards, fleeing for his life from an army of Orcs sent by his father.  Sandra managed to bring him safely back to her dungeon, while preparing for the inevitable attack by the Orcish army…which never came.  Instead, the Orcs went into the two nearest dungeons near Grongbak, destroying the Unicorn-based and Avian-based Cores, respectively.

Unfortunately, such an act had unforeseen repercussions; at least, they were unforeseen by Sandra, though most of the others she had Bonded with had known about them.  It turned out that destroying too many Dungeon Cores in rapid succession would provide enhancements to the other nearby Cores, until such a time as the brand-new Cores replacing those destroyed could increase their Core Size to a certain threshold.  Because Sandra had participated in the destruction of at least one of those Cores, however, she was not entitled to any of those benefits.

Having no other choice but to destroy the Undead-based Dungeon Core, because it was already becoming a serious danger and had proven to possess a knowledge of tactics that far outstripped Sandra’s own, Echo, Felbar, and Gerold ventured towards the hostile dungeon with the intent of destroying the Core inside.  Accompanied by Advancement-unlocked Radiant Pegasi and Celestial Authorities – a type of Angel – as well as a small army of Sandra’s previous constructs, things were looking good…until the entrance collapsed, cutting off her perceptions and her control of anything inside the foreign dungeon.  Luckily for those inside, Sandra was able to pass off control of her constructs and other Dungeon Monsters to Echo and the others before she lost contact.

Through difficult traps, a maze of rooms, and increasingly powerful Undead, the Elf, Dwarf, and Gnome were able to make it to the very end of the dungeon, where they were faced with a near-impossible fight with gargantuan Undead Dungeon Monsters that appeared ready to stomp them flat.  When another horde of smaller Undead flowed in from outside of the dungeon through a separate entrance, failure was only minutes away.  It was only through strategic use of their resources and sheer blind luck that Echo was able to make it to the Core Room, where – with a little help from Sandra, who was fighting to get her constructs into the Core Room from another direction – she was able to destroy the Nether Core.

Felbar and Gerold were barely able to escape with their lives, picking up Echo on the way out as the dungeon itself collapsed, unlike the other Shieldmen who had come with them into the dungeon.  They were successful in destroying the Undead-based Nether Core, at least, even with the expensive cost in terms of lives lost.

With the destruction of the Undead-based Nether Core, though, there was a significant increase in the enhancements affecting nearby Dungeon Cores.  While the results of those enhancements wouldn’t be felt immediately, the time would soon come where their rapid development would be too much for Sandra to safely contain; therefore, it was time to ask for the help of the mortal races.

After developing a new Dungeon Monster that could quickly fly long distances and carry a heavy load – namely, the Aerie Roc – Sandra sent Violet and Felbar on their way back to their homeland of Gnomeria, Echo back to Symenora along with Elder Herrlot, and Gerold back to the Dwarven Kingdom.  Their objective was to explain what was happening in and near the wastelands, describe the danger that the enhancements posed, and enlist their peoples’ assistance in controlling the soon-to-be-dangerous expansion of nearby Dungeon Cores.

To be able to allow her new Aerie Roc to leave her dungeon, Sandra was forced to create an extremely large exit tunnel, using a newly taught technique called Bulk Elimination to remove vast amounts of material all at once.  Eventually, she was able to turn this exit tunnel into another route of rooms filled with Dungeon Monsters and traps so that she could keep it open; if necessary, however, she could collapse the tunnel at a point to prevent access to her Home room where her Core was located.

With her friends gone on their assignments to gather help, Sandra turned her attention to the one land where she didn’t have an emissary to treat with the local government: Orcrim.  Instead, she developed an idea to use volunteers from Orcish Warbands to act as her own personal mercenaries, equipping them with all the best equipment and Energy Orbs; in exchange for these volunteers, she provided the Warbands protecting the Orcish lands with improved armor and weaponry, thereby increasing their overall effectiveness at the same time.

With these mercenaries – as well as the remaining Dwarven Shieldmen, Elvish Rangers, and a plethora of her own constructs and Dungeon Monsters – Sandra was able to prevent the four closest Dungeon Cores surrounding the wastelands from blanketing their Areas of Influence with Monsters, by keeping them bottled up inside their own dungeons.  Unfortunately, this only worked for so long before the Beast and Slime dungeons near the Elvish village of Avensglen broke out of the blockade, with the application of some powerful Dungeon Monsters.

Luckily, Sandra and the Elvish village weren’t unprepared; hundreds of constructs participated in the defense alongside the Elvish people, though even that didn’t prove to be enough.  With defeat a real possibility, the craft-loving Dungeon Core employed a brand-new construct that she wasn’t sure would actually do anything: the Mobile Fortification.  When her construct expanded into a massive, deadly killing machine filled with giant swords and sawblades, the village was saved.

Meanwhile, there were two things that were working against Sandra and the others.  One was unseen, an insidious result of having absorbed some shards of the nearby Dungeon Cores that had been destroyed.  While absorbing