The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) by Jonathan Brooks (english readers txt) 📗

therefore unable to help Sandra out.  Not only that, but it was quite possible that she would be punished as a result of that, though the Core had no idea what kind of punishment that would entail.

With a great visible effort of willpower, Winxa managed to hold in what she was about to say and immediately opened a portal to wherever it was she lived and disappeared through it.  Sandra could hear the beginning of a frustrated yell coming from the portal before it closed behind the Fairy, and she couldn’t help but chuckle a little at it – despite the fact that Winxa had almost “died”.  She understood the frustration, but there was nothing she could do about it; she just had to shrug it off and hope that the Dungeon Fairy pulled herself together and came back soon.  Sandra had gotten so used to her being there to answer questions – even if they weren’t always satisfactory answers – that she felt like she was missing a part of herself with the Fairy’s absence.

As to what exactly Winxa was trying to convey to Sandra was a mystery, as there were too many things to consider.  Should I just destroy this one Core, should I destroy all of them around my AOI, or should I just keep expanding and getting stronger, eventually destroying every Core I come up against?  That last seemed like a daunting – yet possibly doable – task, though she was positive that solution wasn’t what she was there for in the first place.   With the fact that she could receive Advancement Points from destroying other Cores, she knew that the intention was there, but…where do I stop?

After almost an hour of contemplating it, she still didn’t have an answer – and Winxa hadn’t come back quite yet.  Sandra eventually concluded that she had to take some sort of action against the Undead dungeon one way or another, even if she hadn’t come up with a final decision.  Therefore, she gathered her roaming extermination force of a dozen Steelclad Ape Warriors equipped with warhammers, 30 Mechanical Jaguar Queens, 30 Mechanical Dire Wolves, 800 Dividing Rolling Forces, and 4 Multi-access Repair Drones and sent them to the east.  From her dungeon, she also sent out a small team of her Hyper Automatons to gather up any dropped Monster Seeds left behind; not for her own constructs – hopefully – but from the foreign Undead she was about to destroy.

The first Undead Dungeon Monster they encountered was a small shuffling skeleton with glowing red orbs inside its sunken eye sockets.  It was just about the size of a Gnome – or Goblin – if it was missing all of its flesh, and it seemed to be animated by some invisible force; just like her own constructs, the little skeleton was made to move because it was formed from Mana, which allowed normally inanimate objects (like her metal-made constructs and flesh-stripped bones) to move as if they had a life of their own.  Which, when Sandra thought about it, they essentially did.

As had been her strategy thus far, Sandra sent her Rolling Forces in first; as the small skeleton turned towards her forces with its hands outstretched in front of it – like it wanted to scratch and dig into her constructs with its bare hands – it was pelted by dozens of Force pieces one right after another.  The divided construct slices had enough momentum and weight behind them that bones cracked underneath their impacts, demolishing the Undead before it could do more than look at the incoming force.  All of her constructs came out of the mini-fight unscathed, and the few dents on her Forces weren’t even enough to disable a single one – but they were repaired by Sandra’s drones anyway.

That…was easy.

Of course, that small skeleton seemed to be the easiest and smallest of the enemies her eradication force encountered over the next hour as she methodically swept them across the open field near the Gnomes’ destroyed village of Glimmerton.  There were larger skeletons that walked on two legs that could’ve been Orcs, Elves, or even Humans that could move faster and appeared stronger; her Rolling Forces took them down almost as easily as the first, though it took more of them to do it.

A singular skeleton towered over the rest, however, and it was an anomaly in comparison.  It was twice the height of a human and wider than even Sandra’s Behemoths, and it had bones that were extremely thick and dense.  When her smaller rolling constructs hit the massive undead…ogre, maybe?...they bounced off the bones ineffectually, doing themselves some damage; Sandra was used to that from her attacks against the Crag Hounds, so her other constructs were going to finally have a chance to fight.

The Undead Ogre Skeleton – which was what she chose to finally call it in her mind – lifted up something that she hadn’t seen it carrying previously: a massive femur bone that it wielded like a club.  It brought it above its head and quickly whipped it down onto the ground, flattening and destroying dozens of Rolling Force pieces in a single smash of its club.  Just as it was lifting it back up to continue its devastation of Sandra’s small constructs, a dozen Dire Wolves arrived and surrounded the huge skeleton.

They attacked as one, biting onto the thick bones of the Undead Ogre Skeleton before trying to pull it apart.  It seemed to be effective as one of the bones in its leg was pulled away…momentarily; as soon as it got about a foot away, whatever force animated the looming figure pulled it back into place – along with the Wolf still holding onto it.  A few others had similar results within the first few seconds of their attack, but then the Ogre swept its bone club around it, sending Wolves flying in all directions.  None of