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

sending its army of reptiles.  When that didn’t work, it protected itself the best it could and went after easier game, following its instincts to kill things: namely, the Elves.  It was only through fortunate circumstances – and a little luck – that she had been able to actually destroy the other Core at all, as well as ensuring that the Elves survived.

But this Undead dungeon wasn’t currently suffering from the unquenchable thirst for death and murder – there weren’t any people within its Area of Influence, nor did it most likely have any idea that the Dwarves were relatively nearby, if out of reach.  Therefore – and this was only what Sandra suspected after the fact – it reacted to Sandra’s attack on its territory by assembling its own army to combat her forces.  It was probably more than obvious that even solo Dungeon Monsters – like the Ogre Skeleton – weren’t going to be able to stop her large band of constructs, so the host of Undead that greeted them was the result of that fact.

There were some basic skeletons in the bunch, but most of the Undead horde was comprised of more-powerful Monsters – including two massive Undead Ogre Skeletons.  There were a few regular zombies, but there were also some beast-like ones as well: a dozen large rotting bears, a few dozen smaller wolves that were grouped up into three different packs, and even a pair of zombie creatures that looked similar in size to Sandra’s Iron-plated Behemoths.

Those were all bad enough, but there was even more than she had seen since she first scouted the forest a few weeks ago.  There were what she suspected were some sort of ghouls; she had heard about them before from Heroes back when she was alive as a Human, but never expected to see one herself.  It looked vaguely humanoid but misshapen in form, almost as if it had extra bones in places it shouldn’t; it was completely naked without any form of reproductive organs and its skin was so pale that it was essentially white, which really accentuated how thin the creature was.  To set it off from looking like any type of person, it had sharp teeth that were as long as its fingers; speaking of its fingers, its digits were also tipped with razor-like nails that could rend flesh from the bone with ease.  Fortunately, she didn’t have to worry about that with her constructs, but it was also said that they were extremely strong in comparison to how they looked – strong enough to bend metal, if the rumors were true.

In the air were the white mist-like Dungeon Monsters that Sandra had seen earlier which had prevented her from sending her Shears in to investigate the forest.  They had a vaguely oblong form, but they were insubstantial enough that it was hard to really get a good look at them; despite that, the air around them almost seemed to crackle with a temperature drop, as if the misty Undead were sucking all of the heat from the air.

Next were some Monsters that appeared to be pale and featureless corpses – that were wearing full suits of plate armor.  It was either made of some sort of black metal she had never heard of before, or it was painted; either way, it was so dark that it was hard to look at them and accurately determine their features.  The open-faced helmet showed only a blank face devoid of anything resembling eyes, nose, or mouth – like a blank canvas without anything on it.  If that wasn’t unnerving enough, they were also holding massive claymores in their hands that were practically as tall as they were, made from the same metal as their armor – and they looked as though they could use them.

There were also a half-dozen tall robed figures that almost seemed to exude darkness from their shadowy forms; they were situated near the back of the Undead host and didn’t look that impressive at first glance.  However, even watching them through one of her Shear constructs, she mentally shivered as she stared at one for half a second – and she knew that they were probably the most dangerous of the bunch.

And then everything seemed to happen all at once.

Her constructs weren’t under any type of leash, because – as she had noticed before – they fought better when she gave them general orders and didn’t try to control them directly. As such, they didn’t hesitate to attack the assembled Undead host with some of the strategies that had worked for them against the skeletons and zombies they had encountered thus far.  The enemy didn’t just wait for them, of course; they immediately streamed forward and hit her incoming constructs with their own devastating attacks.

Her Dividing Rolling Forces targeted and slammed into many of the smaller skeletons, breaking them apart and destroying them.  Some of her rolling constructs bounced ineffectually off of a few of the beast-like zombies, and even more broke themselves upon the two Ogre Skeletons stomping towards her eradication force as they slammed into their thick bones.  Sandra watched as the Rolling pieces that survived the original assault tried to reassemble into a single construct, but many of them were broken, smashed, or just plain trampled by the incoming tide of Undead behind them.  All told, perhaps two dozen of the weaker enemy skeletons were destroyed by them; in comparison, 800 of her Rolling Forces met their end in the first few seconds of the battle.

Her dozens of Mechanical Jaguar Queens and Dire Wolves raced ahead and immediately latched onto the humanoid-shaped and wolf-like zombies and sliced/tore them apart quite effectively; when they encountered the bears and massive “behemoth” variety, however, they were quickly overpowered.  Razor-sharp claws and teeth from Sandra’s big cats ripped chunks of flesh from the monstrosities, but ultimately didn’t seem to do anything more than