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

Against a single dungeon Core, Sandra would’ve had more than enough to annihilate the resistance and destroy everything inside, including the Core; against all 4 at once, with having to maintain at least a minimal presence of her Monsters at the ends of the tunnels, she was at a standstill.  Early on, she had attempted to rush just 1 dungeon at a time, pulling her constructs back from the other tunnels; but she’d had to abandon that idea when each tunnel she emptied was suddenly filled with enemy Dungeon Monsters.  Theoretically, she could’ve sealed off her end, but then she would’ve lost her control over the tunnel – blinding her to the presence of the Dungeon Monsters inside.

Sandra was furious and out for blood—but she wasn’t stupid.  She knew that when she pulled back enough of her constructs to manage a breakthrough into a single dungeon, the others had somehow been able to sense when she was vulnerable.  Creating the Steel walls she had before near the connecting tunnel entrances was an option, but at the moment she was barely keeping ahead of the steady rate of attrition the other dungeons were prompting among her constructs.  There just weren’t enough Raw Materials to go around, even after reducing the thickness of the Steel around the rest of her dungeon.

I’ve plundered almost my entire treasury already – leaving just a portion of my condensed sphere from my Gravitational Devastation attack for emergencies – and I dare not let my dungeon become overly vulnerable elsewhere. I’m slowly running out of quality Raw Materials from the battle, and it’s all I can do to maintain this equilibrium.  Mana isn’t a problem right now, but it soon will be.

The main problem was that fighting on the other Cores’ home turfs was a losing proposition – but there wasn’t much choice. Whenever she would break through to one of the dungeons, her forces would invade and be surrounded by groups of Golems, hordes of Goblins, swarms of Beasts, and a plethora of dangerous Slimes.  The worst part was that, when her constructs were destroyed inside the enemy dungeons, she would lose their Monster Seeds – and the other Cores would be able to absorb them for her own use.

Sitting back wasn’t an option, either.  The single time she had convinced her endless rage to use some strategy and wait outside each dungeon while her forces built up, the Cores had eliminated the wall separating their forces inside the tunnel and attacked en masse.  Unfortunately, the longer she waited before attacking and breaking through to the other dungeon, the more those dungeons had time to accumulate their own forces. Not only that, but they were all sending out additional forces up above, which thankfully her people were taking care of as soon as they emerged; it wouldn’t stay that way for long, though, because it felt like things were at a tipping point – and that it wouldn’t tip in her favor.

No!  They must all die!  This can’t be happening….

It had all seemed easy and straightforward at first.  Sandra was sure all it would take was pushing the thousands of constructs she had created as a result of the first few minutes of battle against the Orcs against each of the dungeons, and they would fall from the fury of her righteous retribution – but she had underestimated the defensive response.  Her thousands of powerful constructs had attacked from above and below in each location, but they had encountered resistance unlike anything she had seen before.

A savage melee ensued in each dungeon as her forces streamed and pushed back the swarms of defending Monsters, but the advance was short-lived.  With the effectiveness of her commands being reduced because they were inside of a foreign dungeon, she had difficulty navigating them around traps set up around each dungeon.  In the Beast dungeon, there was a room that had beams of superheated flames, so hot that they cut through Steel as easily as her Reinforced Animated Shears could cut through thin Linen thread.  These beams were easy enough to avoid when she knew where they were, but they ended up destroying half of her mindless constructs as they walked through them blindly.

In the Goblin dungeon, a simple pit trap with a Spirit-based illusionary projection had been enough for dozens of Apes, Jaguar Queens, Dire Wolves, and Martial Totems to fall to the bottom of a 200-foot-deep pit.  Sandra had been able to eventually navigate them around the trap, but the damage had already been done.

The same sort of thing had happened to her forces in the Golem and Slime dungeons, with a massive cave-in in the former and a long shallow pit of an extremely acidic substance that literally ate away the feet of her constructs before they got all the way across.  All caution had been thrown to the wind as she had rushed in to destroy the Cores in her hatred and fury, and that lack of planning had been her downfall.  She had cooled somewhat since then, and she realized her mistake too late, but that didn’t really matter – there was seemingly no coming back from the error she had made already.

Unless….

Maybe it was her sudden desperation that allowed her mind to clear a little, or just because her anger receded somewhat since her vengeance hadn’t been immediate, but a sudden epiphany she had might be the solution.  She had ignored everything other than gaining resources and producing constructs over the last 24 hours, so it wasn’t a surprise that something beneficial may have slipped her mind.

Advancement Points (AP)

Source

Criteria

Point Value

Lifetime Earned Points

Lifetime Spent Points

Core Size

Receive AP upon Core Size upgrade (does not count for Core Size 1 nor upgrade stages)

1 per Core Size upgrade

22 AP

(22X Core Size Upgrades)

22/22 AP

Number of Rooms

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