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

sense to her; if they were just sitting around doing nothing, then they weren’t contributing to making her more powerful. It was like having merchandise that you could sell if you sent it out into the market, but instead of doing that, you kept it in your hidden hole-in-the-wall store that didn’t get many customers. Of course, having that “merchandise” in her “store” helped to fend off thieves, so there was a balance that needed to be established.

While the Repair Drones fixed up her damaged constructs after the battle, Sandra got to work replacing the ones that had been destroyed, including 56 Rolling Forces, one Steelclad Ape, and one of the Dire Wolves that ended up being too damaged to survive after being hit by the bone club.  She put the completion of the Preservation Barriers/Stasis Fields on the RRPs on hold for the moment, mainly because Felbar and Violet needed a break; they had managed to finish three enchantments from the Large Spirit Elemental Cubes that she was able to produce before and during the attack against the Undead, but it was already getting later in the day.  They needed to rest after all of the excitement of finally figuring out a way to power the Fields for long periods of time, and Sandra thought that was a good idea – there was no reason to risk Violet accidentally messing up an enchantment.

The Dungeon Core had been watching what she was doing, however, and thought that she might be able to do it with her Unstable Shapeshifter.  The problem was that if she messed up incorporating the Limiter rune into the enchantment sequence, it might not just blow the Shapeshifter itself up, but half of her dungeon as well.  She knew she needed to start small and keep practicing until she was sure of her skill before she did something like that, so for the moment she was going to leave it to someone more experienced.

Instead, she used all of her incoming Mana over the next few hours to create some Martial Totems to add to her eradication force.  Based on the Undead nature of what she was facing, she wanted something that could act similarly to her Steelclad Ape Warriors; the bites and clawing of her Jaguars just weren’t doing much, and though her Wolves could rip things apart, the evidence from the last fight showed that they weren’t going to be much help against bones that were animated with Mana.  That’s not to say they wouldn’t do any good at all; in fact, they would probably both be good against the decaying zombies she had seen previously walking around the forest.  The Martial Totems, however, would help against any more skeletons they encountered, especially the massive Ogre Skeleton, as she had already seen that the newer Totem could pound stone into dust – so it was likely it could destroy bone just as easily.

Approximately four hours after the battle with the Ogre, Sandra was ready to proceed against the Undead forces.  The open land around Glimmerton was empty of Dungeon Monsters, but the few glimpses she had through the trees with her Shears showed that there were many more inside the trees to the northeast.  Sandra hadn’t sent them in too far because there were still some strange mist-like Monsters floating around the perimeter that seemed to see her flying constructs, and she didn’t think that there was any reason to risk them being destroyed.

The sun was starting to set as her Rolling Forces led the way into the trees, crunching fallen leaves scattered over the forest floor as they busted through a few smaller skeletons near the outskirts.  Soon enough, her entire band of constructs was inside the trees, which quickly grew closer together – with the result of dividing her force into smaller groups.

She encountered her first zombie-like creatures, some smaller Gnome-sized Monsters with decaying flesh, open wounds that didn’t bleed, and generally unrecognizable features.  Her rolling constructs did the job just as efficiently against these as against the skeletons of the same size, though it took more to smash its body apart; soft, decaying flesh prevented a lot of the bone-shattering impacts, but hundreds of them occurring around the same time was enough to practically dissect the zombie.

Just like the skeletons, the size and strength of the zombies increased as they slowly worked their way inside the trees, making sure to cover every square foot on their progress towards the dungeon itself.  Sandra left a pair of Shears hovering around every 100 feet or so to ensure that the area her constructs cleared was still empty and hadn’t been replaced yet; she didn’t want to clear everything out, just to come back and find them all returned with brand-new ones.

Strangely enough, the mist-like Dungeon Monsters she saw had completely disappeared from sight.  They were along the perimeter of the forest earlier, but now she didn’t see a single one; not only that, but the frequency of zombies was starting to lessen the farther her extermination force traveled – which she thought was strange.  I would think that the dungeon would be more protected the closer we got to it—

As her force poured through the trees, the forest opened up into a small clearing about 100 feet long and 50 feet wide.  In the middle of the clearing – and behind it – was a frightening host of Undead that appeared ready for a pitched battle.

Well, there they are.

Chapter 12

Sandra had to remind herself that just because the other Dungeon Cores around her were driven by their insatiable instincts, that didn’t mean they were stupid and ignorant.  The Reptile Core had been surprised by the presence of her constructs and her interference; despite that, it still locked into her location as the reason for its incomplete success at wiping out all of the Gnomes and tried to destroy her by