The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3)

by Jonathan Brooks

  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 them were destroyed, fortunately, but half of them had their bodies smashed in so much that they could barely pick themselves off the ground.

  The Mechanical Jaguar Queens had even less luck, as they usually relied on their sharp claws to slice up and eviscerate the flesh of their enemies; as the Ogre Skeleton didn’t have any skin or flesh, they were only able to make cosmetic scratches on the hard bones. They were fast enough to avoid being hit by the Ogre’s stone club, at least, but they fell back anyway when the Steelclad Apes joined the fray.

  One of her Apes leapt towards the massive Undead with its warhammer upraised to smash it to bits, but it was knocked out of the air by an unexpected swing of the bone club in the Skeleton’s hand. A hazy dark cloud had seemed to envelop the Undead Ogre just as the Ape attacked, and it persisted long enough for Sandra to see that the enemy Dungeon Monster had somehow increased its reaction speed. Her 11 other Apes attacked at the same time, only to have 6 of them knocked away like the first, the sides of their bodies crumpled in so badly that they couldn’t move. One of them was hit so hard that the internal glowing power source that characterized its vulnerability was punctured and destroyed, leaving behind its Monster Seed – which was immediately picked up by one of the accompanying Hyper Automatons and brought back towards her dungeon for reuse.

  Five of her Ape Warriors, however, managed to close in on the Undead Ogre Skeleton and went to work with their warhammers. Even bones that were thicker and more dense than normal ones couldn’t stand up to the weapons of her constructs; a few impacts from the heavy hammers were enough to start shattering the skeleton, in fact. As a few vital bones were destroyed in its legs, it collapsed on the ground, the hazy dark cloud enveloping it dissipating at the same time.

  With its legs literally cut out from underneath it and its reaction speed back to normal, the Ogre quickly fell to the repeated blows of the Apes. After approximately 30 seconds, the bones fell apart from each other, dissolving into the ground and leaving behind an unusual-looking black orb as a Monster Seed. When one of her Hyper Automatons picked it up, Sandra immediately recognized it as Onyx; judging by its size, she thought it was an Average-sized one, which was a bit worrying.

  Sandra couldn’t create an Average-sized Precious Gemstone, even with her special Advancements; if the Undead dungeon followed the same rules as she did, then an Average Faceted Onyx Sphere cost 28,000 Mana – not to mention 96,000 Raw Materials. Her Advancement brought that down to 19,600 Mana, which was 42 more than her maximum, but she also only had about approximately half of the required Raw Materials. If the Dungeon Core could afford to create one, then it had to be at least a few Core Sizes more than Sandra herself.

  “That’s not necessarily true; I’ve heard of some skills for other dungeons granting the ability to use elementally connected Monster Seeds that would normally be out of reach,” a voice from Sandra’s Home startled the Dungeon Core.

  Winxa was back and hovering near Sandra’s Core, her face composed and thoughtful – entirely unlike how she appeared earlier. The Fairy must’ve come back during the middle of that fight with the Ogre and Sandra had missed her arrival.

  Welcome back; you seem to have…recovered. And what do you mean “elementally connected”? And what skills are you talking about.

  “Thank you, I feel much better now,” Winxa said. “As for what I mean, do you remember the Sapphire you found from those Ancient Saurians? Sapphires are normally ‘elementally connected’ to Water-based Dungeon Cores, just as Onyx is affiliated with Nether Cores, Emeralds with Natural Cores, and so on. Some Core-specific skills allow them to take advantage of the elemental connection to produce those Monster Seeds relatively cheaply, though they would still need to be able to pay the Mana cost for the Dungeon Monsters themselves. It’s quite possible that this Undead Core – as well as perhaps the Reptile Core, based on what it was able to create – has this skill, though it seems strange that two dungeons so near each other have the same – or at least similar – Core-specific skills.”

  That’s…not good. It almost seemed unfair to Sandra that they would have something so useful like that when she didn’t, but then she looked at her own Core-specific skills and abilities – and had to acknowledge that they would probably consider a lot of what she could do as unfair. Regardless of whether their skills were unfair or not, it meant that she had to worry about the other Core sending out some powerful Dungeon Monsters.

  Why weren’t there any of these powerful Undead out here before? Is it just because the Core upgraded its Size?

  Winxa seemed to consider that for a moment before answering. “Normally, dungeons reserve their most powerful Monsters for their dungeon for protection, so you wouldn’t necessarily see many roaming the land around it – mainly because they get culled so often that it would be a waste. My guess is because there wasn’t any culling going on lately that the Core finally decided to let some of their protection go out to join in the absorption of ambient Mana. If they didn’t have to worry about being invaded and destroyed, then it makes the most sense to take advantage of that.”

  Sandra was inclined to agree with that; if she didn’t have to make sure she was protected, she would’ve sent most of her constructs out into the wastelands, absorbing Mana as they went. There were only so many that were needed inside her dungeon to get the maximum ambient Mana from it, so it did make “financial” 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 comple
tion 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 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-doz
en 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 annoy the enemy; the decaying and rotten appendages on the larger beasts seemed to be held together by a stronger force than their smaller brethren, which resisted most of the tearing and ripping her Dire Wolves tried to inflict on them.