The villagers unsurprisingly didn’t seem to want the “upgraded” tattoo, but all of them agreed to receive one in order to pass into the “facility”; Sandra was prepared to tell them all exactly what they were getting themselves into, but she didn’t want to start a panic before they were all done. In contrast, the Shieldmen seemed interested in what exactly the upgrade meant – and all of them immediately agreed to undergo the painful experience as soon as they held one or a pair of the Energy Orbs in their hands.
The screams from the first to undergo the procedure was almost enough to dissuade the others, but when he appeared relatively unharmed – if haunted – from the experience, the remaining Shieldmen insisted that they could withstand the pain for the benefits they would receive. In the end, all 10 of the armored Dwarves took the upgraded Visitor’s Bond – and immediately followed the villagers on their journey deep into her dungeon, barely flinching at the VATS they had to traverse down hundreds of feet. An hour after they arrived at her dungeon, as the sun was fully above the horizon, all of the Dwarves that had survived the attack on their village were safely tucked away in their beds and fast asleep. Felbar and Sandra’s other Visitors also followed suit, as Violet had continued enchanting through the night and the others had been woken up early to fight a difficult battle.
Sandra had sent her Monster escorts back to the Undead forest to join up with those she had already sent there, where they began their systematic extermination of every Undead they came across. They had barely started when Kelerim’s warning from earlier reared its Orcish head.
The half-Dwarf/half-Orc had been correct in his estimation; Sandra took as accurate count of the army of Orcs that was entering her Area of Influence as possible and stopped counting at nearly 1,000. Anything more definite was practically impossible, as they were too undisciplined to stay in neat ranks – they were more like a mob than anything. Regardless, she didn’t think it was too many more than what she counted, which was alarming enough.
What was even more alarming was how they didn’t even head towards the village of Grongbak. Instead, they left the road that would bring them to the village and turned to the northeast, heading in the general direction of the Unicorn-based Dungeon Core located there. She had already seen many of the Dungeon Monsters available under that particular Classification when she was perusing options in her Advancement Menu, and she was fairly certain they wouldn’t stand a chance against the Orcs. Even if they have shoddy weapons, she couldn’t help but note when she went in for a closer look with her Shears.
Sandra followed them as they quickly tore into the forest holding all number of Unicorns, shiny Lynxes, and other Holy-based Monsters – and they all fell without trouble, barely slowing the force down. Within a half hour they had marched far enough to find the dungeon entrance, though they had to backtrack a half-mile when they initially missed it. It seemed as though they knew in general where it was but didn’t have any local guides with them.
“What’s going on?” Winxa asked suddenly. Sandra hadn’t really been paying attention to the Dungeon Fairy lately with everything that had been going on, and she realized that she hadn’t even told her about Kelerim yet. As the last of the Orc army went inside the dungeon, she recounted it all to her guide, to which Winxa looked thoughtful, though worried.
“That won’t be good if they manage to find out your location, of course…but for some reason I feel like I should be warning you of something else,” the Fairy finally said, tapping her finger against her lips as she looked off away from her Core. “Hmm…I’m not sure what it was, though it seemed relevant and rather important. Oh well, I’m sure I will remember given enough time.”
* Well, if you remember, let me know – I don’t want any more surprises especially with those Orcs sniffing around and the Undead Core still a major threat I need to eliminate. *
Twenty minutes after the Orcs entered the Unicorn dungeon, Sandra suddenly felt the AOI surrounding it completely disappear. She was expecting it, but the shock and quickness of its happening shook her a little. They did it…am I next on their hit-list?
Sandra wasn’t really worried about being destroyed by the Orcs despite their numbers, because she was confident her traps and Dungeon Monsters could hold even that quantity off without too much trouble. Given that they didn’t have any special way to negate her traps like the Elite Elves had (at least, she didn’t think so), they should be highly effective. No, the problem was that she didn’t want to have to kill them all, but she couldn’t see any way around it at the moment.
She could now see inside the former Unicorn Core’s dungeon through her Area of Influence, as its presence was the only thing keeping her from seeing inside before. Looking through the entire space – which was now devoid of any traps or Monsters – she saw the corpses of at least 30 Orcs, a few here and there throughout the rooms. She also saw the broken blades of at least a hundred Iron swords, though she was distracted from seeing more than that as the dungeon started to collapse from the Core’s former Core Room and the Orcs scrambled to escape being buried alive.
Minutes later, they all escaped safe and sound, leaving their fallen brethren to their new burial site. The second that the last room collapsed near the entrance – which was essentially just a hole in the ground similar to the Reptile one she had gone into – something appeared in Sandra’s awareness.
Winxa?! What is this?!
The Dungeon Fairy snapped her fingers and pointed a finger up, as though she finally remembered something. “That’s what it was! How could I forget something so important?”
I’d say it was important! This could change everything…
Chapter 30
Temporary Dungeon Core Enhancements
These temporary enhancements are a safety measure implemented by the Creator as established by your contract. These enhancements are granted upon any Dungeon Cores within a certain distance from recently destroyed Cores; this is to reduce the likelihood that the destruction of additional nearby Dungeon Cores will occur while new Cores are brought in and raised to a minimum Core Size to continue the objectives of the destroyed Cores.
These enhancements are not granted to any Cores that – in any way – participated in the destruction of any neighboring Cores, whether through overt, clandestine, or inadvertent means. In addition, any previous mentoring benefits are now instantly null and void for any Dungeon Cores taking advantage of these enhancements.
As soon as the number of new replacement Cores all reach the New Core Threshold (which will also employ a rapid growth cycle during Core Size upgrades), these enhancements will be negated over the course of 7 days, and any mentoring benefits will be reestablished.
(Your Core is not currently eligible for any enhancements)
Current Nearby Dungeon Cores Destroyed:
2
Current Distance Threshold:
100.0 Miles
Current New Core Threshold:
Core Size 20
Current Temporary Enhancement for 2 destroyed Cores:
Area of Influence is increased by a total of 50% over the course of 50 days and stays until the current New Core Threshold is reached.
Next Temporary Enhancements for 3 destroyed Cores:
Includes all previous Temporary Enhancements, plus: Ambient Mana Absorption directly by the Core is increased by 10000%, Area of Influence is increased by an additional 10% over the course of 10 days, Distance Threshold is increased by 10%, New Core Threshold is increased by 2 Core Sizes
So what, would you please tell me, is this? Because from what I’m seeing here, we could be in big trouble.
“Trouble” was an understatement; she narrated the entire notification to Winxa so that she could understand what Sandra was looking at, and the second time reading it only made her more worried. In essence, it was saying that if any more Cores were destroyed, the remaining ones around the area would start to become more powerful – and quickly. As it was, the remaining dungeon near the Orcs, t
he two near the Elves, the two near the Dwarves’ former village, and of course the Undead dungeon would have their AOI increased by 50% over the next 50 days.
“Yes, well, something like this hasn’t happened in a long time so it didn’t even occur to me to tell you about it – because I can’t even remember the last time this actually came into effect.”
Yes, fine, you forgot, we’ll deal with that later – but why does this exist in the first place?
“Well…the best way it was described to me…well…let’s just say it was long ago, was that the Creator designed the dungeons for a specific purpose – as I’m sure you remember: to keep the races from warring on each other by making them concentrate on maintaining the safety of their own lands and people. This purpose would fall apart if the Humans – let’s just say – got together and formed a larger-than-normal force to start destroying dungeons one after another.
“If they manage to destroy one or two, those areas are then freed up from having to cull the nearby dungeons and are thereby safer; the Heroes or whatever that were previously involved in defending the nearby land could join this force and move on to the next dungeon and destroy it, freeing up those Heroes, and so on and so forth. In a matter of a year or two, your former homeland could be completely freed up from every single dungeon around them; of course, there would start to be some growing dungeons just making it out of their underground areas and into the wider world that replaced the ones that were destroyed – but they would be so weak that they wouldn’t prevent the Humans from going off into other lands to conquer. Are you following me so far?”
In general, I am. What I can’t understand is why they didn’t do that; I’m almost positive that they certainly could’ve done it easily.
The Dungeon Fairy nodded. “That’s what I’m getting at, in fact. If the Monster Seeds that were left behind as your ‘Dungeon Loot’ aren’t enough to dissuade a race from doing that to the dungeons, these Temporary Dungeon Core Enhancements were created to make such a premise nearly impossible. Or at least so difficult that it would result in many deaths of those Heroes in order to destroy the final few dungeons, which would be extremely powerful. In addition, while they’re trying to finish them off, brand-new Cores would replace the ones that were destroyed and would rapidly grow until they were again a threat within a few months or sooner.
“Fun fact: this was actually attempted by the Humans when the dungeons first came into existence, but they stopped after four dungeons were destroyed, for some reason that was never revealed to us. It’s my own personal opinion that the Creator somehow visited the leaders of all the races at that point to warn them of the consequences of continuing down that path, and that was then passed down from generation to generation as some sort of rule that should never be broken.”
Sandra didn’t really consider that a “fun fact”, though it did certainly explain some things. She remembered back when she was a merchant learning that the Heroes were very particular about what dungeons they destroyed, and that if they were forced to destroy two that were close to each other, they would destroy one and then actively “contain” the other until a new dungeon appeared nearby – then they were free to destroy it. While she always thought it was because they didn’t want to miss out on the powerful Loot that was dropped by destroying too many at once, but now it made sense with what Winxa was saying.
Then how does that explain what the Orcs are doing?
“Well, in their defense, they probably didn’t know that the Reptile dungeon was just destroyed not too far away, triggering these enhancements,” she replied with an apologetic tilt to her head. “That, or the warning has been lost to the ages, and they don’t know any better.”
That’s just great – what am I supposed to do now?
“I…don’t know. This could have some drastic consequences for this entire region if more Cores are destroyed; because you’re at a crossroads between the races, all of them would be impacted by this, and further destruction would only spread further into their lands. You could potentially speed up the demise of each of the races, though it would at least temporarily help those people living around here.”
It was quite the dilemma.
Logically, the greater good was now to leave the Undead Core alone and just cull the Monsters outside, preventing most of the potential expansion of its Area of Influence in the process. After asking Winxa about the “mentoring benefits” included in the notification, she found that the possibility of another dungeon accessing her AOI was now impossible due to the Enhancements in play, so this option was a real possibility – because she could now upgrade her Core Size without fear. At least until the Enhancements ended, at which time she was hopeful she could handle any threats with her greater Size.
In her Core’s fictitious heart and in the deepest parts of her mind, however, Sandra wanted to destroy the Undead Core and call it a day. Thoughts of revenge on the Dwarves’ part motivated some of it, but deep down she could feel that it was the right thing to do, despite the danger it could impose on the towns and villages nearby, as well as those farther into their lands. By the “right thing”, she meant that it was a mistake that she had made that needed to be corrected, and not necessarily because she thought that she was specifically put there to eliminate all of the dungeons.
Sandra was still undecided as to what she wanted to do as she spent the morning and afternoon creating even more Dungeon Monsters to add to those she already had out and about, including an additional half-dozen Phoenixes to replace those that had perished in the attack the night before. She also expanded her Hyper Automatons force that she used to bring back dropped Monster Seeds, because she was planning on looting the Dwarven village. She already noticed a few skeletal rats sneaking in and snatching some of the Seeds dropped from the battle, and she was sure that the Dwarves had a lot of Loot stashed away from their constant culling of the nearby Monsters.
It wasn’t through any desire for it herself – though she wouldn’t deny it would be beneficial – but because she knew that if she didn’t, more and more Undead could potentially slip through and grab it for their Core. She couldn’t allow any such advantageous looting from helping the other Core, not if she had any hope to contain it in the future.
Sandra figured that she would at least continue the cleanup of all the Undead roaming around before making a final decision on that, as well as potentially talking it over with her Visitors later when they woke up.
Meanwhile, she now had constant observation over the Orcs, which was revealing some interesting happenings of their own. The first thing Sandra thought they would do once they destroyed the Unicorn-based Core was go to the nearby village, but that appeared to be the last thing on their mind. Instead, they immediately camped in the middle of the forest that once contained the now-destroyed Core’s Monsters – and probably still did have a few roaming around somewhere. When they finally stopped moving and lay down to sleep, not even bothering to have someone keep watch for potential Monsters, she was finally able to get an accurate count: 973 Orcs. Most of them still had swords, but 72 of them appeared to have nothing but smaller daggers now, as their shoddily crafted Iron swords were now gone.
What was even stranger was that not a single Orc said a word the entire time. Sandra briefly thought that something might be wrong with them – as she had heard of elemental energy being used in the past to subtly influence someone’s mind – but as she initially observed them setting camp, that notion went away. It appeared as though the force was just tired and had worked together so much that no words needed to be spoken. They were efficient in their movements and did everything with a minimum of fuss, so there was apparently no reason to communicate.
That all took place just past mid-morning, and they were up again approximately 8 hours later as the setting sun was very nearly touching the horizon. The darkness didn’t seem to deter the Orcs, however, as they exited the forest and made for the road to the village.
Except…they k
ept going instead of heading for the settlement.
Winxa, the Orcs aren’t stopping. I can see them going straight for the other dungeon to the southwest of them.
Throughout the day, something had been bothering her about the whole situation, and it took the entire day to figure out what it was: the Warband that had taken over for Razochek and continued the culling process of the nearby forests was nowhere to be seen. It was only when she looked closer at a few of the Orcs in the army that she thought she recognized one or two of them integrated with them.
Why would they accompany the new army when they could just tell what happened to Razochek?
Then she remembered that the others of Razochek’s warband that hadn’t perished with him didn’t actually know what happened to Kelerim’s half-brother, only that he disappeared in the wastelands.
Winxa backed that thought up for her a moment later. “They could be pleading ignorance and be blaming his disappearance on something else. It’s quite possible that they don’t know what happened to the Orcs that died in your dungeon and would rather seem incompetent rather than complicit.”
That was true, but the Orcs that had come from the Bloodskull Compound had to have been informed that a dungeon had killed Razochek – otherwise what they were doing didn’t make sense. Sandra figured it was only a matter of time before they put things together and determined that something in the wasteland killed Razochek and went hunting for it – even if it didn’t turn out to be a dungeon, for all they knew.
The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) Page 35
