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

by Jonathan Brooks

  Holding her scream in while she took stock of the situation, she could see the Pegasus starting to fade away, dissolving into the ground. Fortunately, the Specter seemed to be consumed at the same time, because there was no sign of it. Echo picked herself up and found her bow – which had rolled away from the crash site roughly 20 feet – and it appeared to be undamaged. The same couldn’t be said for her arrows, as two of them had been bent out of shape with the crash, but she was just glad that one was still fine – and that they hadn’t exploded with such an impact.

  Holding the one arrow and bow in her left hand, she stumbled as the ground shook underneath her feet, the sound of a cracking wood resounding from behind her. She held in her screams from the pain in her left wrist as she landed on it, but she again picked herself up and ran down the relatively short tunnel, hoping that the zombie Giant hadn’t just flattened the rest of her group just a moment ago.

  She quickly found herself in a similar-looking room with nearly the same dimensions as the one before, though there were luckily no massive undead there to greet her. Instead, Echo saw a glowing black crystal-like gem floating in the middle of the room at least a hundred feet above her which reminded her a little of what Sandra appeared like, though the feeling of Nether energy wafting off of the Dungeon Core she was looking at made it much more sinister. In comparison, Sandra’s Core was bright and almost cheerful, which matched the personality of the voice she had heard inside her head on many occasions.

  How am I supposed to destroy it from here? Normally, hitting something from that distance wouldn’t be a problem, even with compensating for the powerful draw of the bow and the heavier exploding arrow. With her obviously broken wrist, though, she didn’t think she’d be able to hold the bow up, let alone steady it enough to aim.

  Echo looked below the Core and saw that she better decide what to do quickly, because there were more skeletons and zombies forming on the ground. There were already a half-dozen undead and more were appearing every few seconds, and they started to shuffle in her direction. Looking around the rest of the room for some sort of other solution, she saw that it was empty of anything…except another massive tunnel leading to who knew where.

  I might as well try something, otherwise I’m dead…though I’ll probably not survive this either way. Trading my life for the destruction of this Core would be a worthy endeavor any Elf would appreciate. She gathered the remnants of her Holy energy that had regenerated and formed another Lightstrike spell, adding what Air she had to help speed it on its way. When it was as large as she could get it, she released it towards the floating Core.

  It flew straight and true, but the farther it got from her, the more it shrunk; she knew that was going to happen, which was why she tried to make it as big as possible to begin with. Time seemed to slow down as she watched the now-small streak of light hit the undead Nether-Core, and she held her breath as it seemed to splash against the glowing black crystal. Echo heard a sharp *crack* and she rejoiced for all of a second…before she saw that it was still intact, other than a long crack running up the side of it.

  With no other choice, she decided to see if she could hit the Core with her bow by switching hands; however, her left hand couldn’t even pinch the arrow to set it on the invisible string, let along pull it back. With great pain, she shifted it again and held the bow loosely in her left hand, and then held it up; she let out the scream she had been holding as she pulled back the arrow she had nocked and aimed…then she released.

  Her left wrist snapped, and she lost control of the bow almost immediately, which was probably why she could tell right away that her arrow was going to go wide – though just barely. She sighed and waited for it to miss—

  A flash of metal zoomed into her field of vision, aiming straight for the Core in the center of the room – or at least she thought it was aiming for it. Instead, what she quickly realized was a pair of Sandra’s flying Shears hit her arrow mid-flight, causing it to change the angle of its flight enough that it slammed into the Core.

  A familiar explosion engulfed the undead Dungeon Core and it shattered into hundreds of pieces, falling to the ground in a rain of crystal fragments. Echo stood there in shock at the sight, unable to understand what had just happened. Looking down, however, made her realize that although she had succeeded, she wouldn’t survive long; the skeletons and zombies were still heading for her and she had nothing with which to defend herself.

  “Echo! You did it!” she heard from far behind her and she whipped around in surprise. Felbar and Gerold were running towards her down the tunnel without their Deep Delver constructs, but even if they were armed they wouldn’t be able to reach her in time. The undead were very nearly upon her, and she was too tired and injured to run from them.

  * Echo! Felbar! Gerold! Bring the Shieldmen and run up the other tunnel – the dungeon is about to collapse! *

  Sandra’s voice precipitated hundreds more Shears flying in and slamming into the skeletons and zombies coming for her; they didn’t do a lot of damage by themselves, but the sheer quantity of them caused bones to crack and shatter, as well as tearing away zombie flesh. She doubted they would do much good against something more powerful, but it was enough to save them – though they were destroyed in the process.

  “I’m so glad to hear your voice, Sandra, I thought we were going to die down—”

  * Less talking, more running! You don’t have much time! *

  Echo heard another *crack* coming from above, but instead of a Core cracking it was the ceiling of the room; another few seconds went by and a huge chunk of it broke away and fell, crashing with an ear-shattering explosion of stone chips as it hit the floor. In addition, the dim light of the room was starting to become even dimmer, so Echo quickly joined the Gnome and Dwarf as they passed by her and ran for the other tunnel.

  As soon as they got there, she could see Angels and Apes attacking another force of undead there, and they were ridiculously outnumbered. Luckily, there were also eight Pegasi waiting for them there that flew over to the three.

  * Are the Shieldmen behind you? *

  Gerold said something that Echo couldn’t understand with a hitch in his voice. Sandra didn’t translate, however, probably because there was entirely too much going on.

  * Their sacrifice will not be in vain – but we have to get you out of here. *

  The Pegasi folded their legs down so that even the Gnome and Dwarf could climb up on their own winged horses. As soon as they were settled and were holding onto the mane of their flying mounts with a death grip, they took off towards the entrance.

  Down below, the last of the Apes and Celestial Authorities were quickly overwhelmed by a horde of Undead, which then started rushing up the tunnel after the fleeing Pegasi. Before they could get far, the Core Room and then the tunnel started to collapse, crushing the back ranks. In a cascade of destruction, the rest of the tunnel fell apart just behind Echo and the others, coming so close to killing them all that one of the lagging Pegasi was smashed by a falling boulder from the ceiling and crashed to the ground.

  Less than 5 minutes after the Core was destroyed, 7 Pegasi and three riders shot forth from the tunnel just ahead of its complete collapse and Echo looked around to see that they had emerged into a dark forest. We must’ve been in there longer than I thought.

  As the Pegasi burst through a small space in between the foliage above, she looked over at the others who appeared to have the same shocked expressions she was sure was on her own face. We…did it? We’re…alive?

  It seemed impossible that they had both succeeded and were still alive – but it was completely and unequivocally true. Unless I died and this is all a dream?

  Almost as if on cue, the pain in her wrist decided to come back at that moment as if to prove it wasn’t all just her imagination.

  Chapter 34

  When the Undead around the forest and open areas started to make their way back towards the dungeon her friends were trapped within, Sandra h
ad a feeling that Echo and the others were making some progress and making the Core nervous. When they all disappeared at about 5 hours after the entrance’s collapse, she began to hope that they would succeed.

  She had already been building up some more forces for an assault that she wasn’t sure would even be successful, so she cautiously began to send them towards the other entrance at that point. Sandra wasn’t convinced that the whole pulling-back of the undead into the dungeon wasn’t another trick, so she sent them in separately, and from different directions, just in case there was something waiting for them. If one or a few were attacked, then she could pull them all back at the same time, but if she had sent them as a full group it might be difficult to escape with all of them.

  Her hopes rose as they arrived at the entrance without any trouble, though she was still cautious. She was right to be cautious, too, because the few Shears she sent in to look around found a massive tunnel filled with undead. She couldn’t make out the end of the tunnel from the entrance, but from underground and outside of it she could tell that it was all one long passageway that led directly towards what she assumed was the Core Room; it seemed a little crazy to Sandra to have it so open and vulnerable, but then again it might’ve been for some strategic purpose that she didn’t know about.

  She briefly thought about just sending in thousands of her Shears to see if they could fly down and destroy the Core, but the sight of dozens or possibly hundreds of Specters in the tunnel floating around dissuaded her of that notion. She still thought that if she sent enough they could probably get through, but then she considered what would happen to the others if she succeeded. If they were still an hour or so away from the Core Room, then if she destroyed the Core they would be crushed with no way out when it collapsed afterwards.

  It was another hard choice, because she wasn’t sure if she would have another chance like the one she was looking at, and while she had more Dungeon Monsters on the way, they would be hard-pressed to defeat what was already in the tunnel. Eventually she decided to just bring in approximately 3,000 of her Shears in preparation of an attack if it seemed like the others had failed.

  When 75% of the undead she could see from the entrance left the tunnel – she supposed they went further into the dungeon – she knew that her friends were likely close to the end, and that the Undead Core was panicking. Still, with it at least marginally aware of her presence outside the second entrance, it kept some in reserve to prevent her from coming in. With the reduced number of Specters in the tunnel, though, she figured it was about time to go for it – she couldn’t wait any longer.

  So she sent her ground forces inside and they pushed back at the undead inside. They were making fairly good progress, but additional ones started to reinforce them from further inside; the Undead Core was probably working to replenish those that Sandra killed, and it made their progress stall. That’s when she sent in half of her Shears to see if she could get through.

  As if reading her mind, the remaining Specters assembled across the tunnel in an unbroken wall of mist. Her Shears hit them at full speed and punched through but dissolved soon after from the powerful essence of the undead; her constructs just weren’t powerful enough to survive even the briefest contact. However, it wasn’t as if her Shears had no effect; the wall of Specters appeared to have shrunk from the touch of her own constructs, but it was still full enough to prevent anything from getting through.

  She sent some of her Pegasi in next, using their Nether-negating Auras to try and thin it out. It worked, but as soon as they got close enough to use the Aura, the Specters would rush forward and overwhelm the individual Pegasi; she lost four of them before she decided to just go for it and send the remaining 16 she had in – because she was running out of both time and her other Dungeon Monsters fighting the Undead down below.

  With her own “wall” of Pegasi using their Auras, she managed to thin the Specters enough to send her Shears back in; 500 of them went first and punched through the mist, but only one survived to keep going. She wasn’t sure if that was enough to succeed in destroying the crystalline Undead Core, so she pressed her Pegasi to close the distance with the Specters.

  Their Auras ended up destroying most of the Specters, but it ended up killing half of her Pegasi in the process. The other 1,000 Shears then were free to go towards the Core, while her forces in the tunnel were slowly being taken apart.

  The single pair of Shears that made it through from the 500 that had tried rushed ahead, seeing the Core in the distance. As soon as it entered the room, however, she saw Echo releasing an exploding arrow at the Core from the ground, but her scream let Sandra know she was in quite a lot of pain. The world seemed to slow as she saw the arrow knocked out of alignment as Echo’s wrist snapped and the bow went flying; there was nothing she could do, however, as the delay between her orders and the Shears actually doing anything was too great.

  Luckily, the Shears had been coming in the room at a lower elevation as it passed through the tunnel, and it had to angle itself upwards to hit the Core. Through some miracle or sheer accident, the construct hit the exploding arrow and knocked it back on course; when the Core shattered along with the arrow’s explosion, it took her Shears with it.

  From there, Sandra managed to get in contact with those left alive – she felt horrible that the Shieldmen didn’t make it – and was able to facilitate their escape before everything collapsed. The rest of her forces perished along with all of the undead, though she supposed that it was quite possible there were more scattered around the forest that hadn’t been called back. She doubted it would be many, however.

  As for the Shieldmen, Gerold and Felbar told her when they got back to her dungeon that they were smashed by a tree wielded as a club by a giant zombie. Glancing blows from that same club were also what damaged their Deep Delvers enough that the Dwarf and Gnome couldn’t move inside of them, so they escaped from the constructs and made a run for it. The Giant was apparently still alive at that point, and it had killed the rest of the Undead in the final room with the incessant flailing of its club, but the surviving Gnome and Dwarf were small enough that they were able to sneak past as it kept stupidly smashing ineffectually at the deceased bodies of the Shieldmen. The Undead Core had obviously been occupied in other matters – namely Echo’s and Sandra’s efforts to reach the Core – to direct the zombie Giant and stop it from doing that.

  “So…what do we do now?” Echo asked later, when everyone was safe and healed up back in the dining area of her dungeon. Kelerim and Violet had joined the three that had survived the destruction of the other Core and its dungeon.

  Speaking of that, the notification had come up from the destruction of the Undead Core as soon as the dungeon had collapsed completely, and Sandra wasn’t looking forward to what would happen soon. The Area of Influence for all of the remaining dungeons in the area – and possibly even farther, as the Distance Threshold had increased – would start to expand, the Cores would begin to accumulate Mana at a faster rate than they did previously, and they would start to upgrade their Core Sizes even faster than normal.

  Temporary Dungeon Core Enhancements

  (Your Core is not currently eligible for any enhancements)

  Current Nearby Dungeon Cores Destroyed:

  4

  Current Distance Threshold:

  138.0 Miles

  Current New Core Threshold:

  Core Size 25

  Previous 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

  Current Temporary Enhancements for 4 destroyed Cores:

  Includes all previous Temporary Enhancements, plus: Mana Cost to upgrade Core Size is decreased by 25%, Mana Cost of all Dungeon Monsters decreased by 25%, A
mbient Mana Absorption within the Core’s dungeon is increased by 2500%, Area of Influence is increased by an additional 25% over the course of 25 days, Distance Threshold is increased by 25%, New Core Threshold is increased by 3 Core Sizes

  Next Temporary Enhancements for 5 destroyed Cores:

  Includes all previous Temporary Enhancements, plus: Mana and Raw Material Cost of all Monster Seeds is decreased by 30%, Ambient Mana Absorption from outside the Core’s dungeon is increased by 30%, Area of Influence is increased by an additional 30% over the course of 30 days, Distance Threshold is increased by 30%, New Core Threshold is increased by 3 Core Sizes

  She looked at their tired faces, wishing that they had a lot of time to rest and relax after the exhausting last couple of days.

  * I’m not quite sure, but I do know that this whole situation has now become bigger than just this little area around my dungeon. I think it’s about time we have a chat with some of your leadership, because we can’t do this all by ourselves. *

  They looked at each other and sighed, all of them putting their heads in their hands as they shook them in defeat. “Good luck with that,” Gerold said, which was echoed by everyone else in the room.

  Apparently, that might be more difficult than even destroying the Undead Core…