The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) by Jonathan Brooks (e ink epub reader .txt) 📕

was sadly working quite well.  Without the traps to thin out their numbers, the Goblins and Golems were making headway.

Sandra immediately started to create more constructs for reinforcements, but it was almost too late.  One of the Shieldmen, easily slaughtering the Dust Golems that attacked him and the constructs he was controlling nearby, was surprised by an Iron Golem that stomped up behind him.  With a powerful blow, the Golem punched the Shieldman in the back, sending him flying at least 50 feet into a nearby tree, where he snapped the trunk practically in half from the impact.  He rolled as he landed, coming to a stop and didn’t move.

His armor was still in one piece, though there was the slightest indentation on one side that seemed to work itself out even as she watched. The fact that it was still there and there being no sudden influx of Mana into her Core showed Sandra that he wasn’t dead, but likely very hurt.  That was the good news; the bad news was the direct attack on one of hers caused the shard in her mind to surge to the surface again.

You will all die!  I will destroy all of you until there is nothing left but dust!

The single-minded attitude was getting a little tiring to Sandra’s conscience, but there wasn’t much that she could do about it as she was shoved to the side.  Losing all control of her actions again was also starting to get old, but she had to admit that it was what she needed right now.  Half of the constructs protecting the underground tunnels were quickly pulled out and sent up top, additional constructs were produced, and all other activities in her dungeon stopped as all Mana was delegated to bolstering the flagging defenses of the Dwarves.

A small portion of the Energy Orbs that had been produced was also consumed, which annoyed her no small bit, but they contributed to producing a veritable army of Champion Totems to be used against the Golems, as well as Powered Arachnids and Animated Iron Shears to be used against the Goblins.  In addition, at least 2,000 Shears were pulled from the AMANS up above in the sky, where they rained down on the Goblins, giving Delarthe and the other Shieldman with him some breathing room.  Surprisingly, the loss of 2,000 Animated Shears from the constant funneling of ambient Mana wasn’t too impactful on her replenishment rate.  Sandra could only assume it was because the rate of incoming Mana had been thoroughly bolstered by the tens of thousands of stick-and-leaf spiders that were roaming around.

Overall, the reinforcements were going to help, but they would arrive too late to contain the breakout by the Golems.  Fortunately, the 3 Shieldmen were able to retreat in safety, with an Ape construct picking up the fallen and now-unconscious Dwarf and running with him until a Repair Drone could help heal him back into fighting shape.

Fine.  If they are going to play that way, I think it’s time to target the Golems from below.  I was stopped from destroying the Slime-Classification Core, but nothing will stop—

Another warning came from the workshop up above, stopping the shard’s ranting about how it was going to destroy the Golem Core.

Seriously?  No, not again—

Chapter 37

Sandra clawed her way to the surface as she saw who was inside of her dungeon, shoving the shard so far back into her mind that she doubted that anything would bring it back. Almost immediately, she could hear desperate and pitiful noises coming from the shard’s location, as it realized the same thing; it had been banished to obscurity, unlikely to be brought forth again as the light of hope surged through Sandra’s mind and self-actualization.

With the return of Gerold – who was leading a group of Dwarves inside her upper workshop – Sandra finally felt…whole.  It was as if she had been missing pieces of herself, pieces that she hadn’t even known were missing until now.  It took seeing her friends return from where they had journeyed, all obviously experiencing their own hardships as soon as they had left, only to come back to Sandra and the wasteland.  It was in that moment that she realized the reason behind all of her recent troubles with the Core shard in her mind.

Abandonment.  Sandra had felt as if she had been abandoned, but it was more than that.  It was a reflection of the guilt that she was holding inside of herself, and it took something like this happening to bring it to light.  Guilt over abandoning her father when she had died as a Human merchant, him never knowing what happened to her, leaving him all alone in the world.  What happened to him after she had disappeared she would probably never know, but she was well aware that it probably wouldn’t have been good.  All because of the choices she had made to pursue her dream of being the most knowledgeable crafter in the world.

That guilt had left a crack in her mind that festered unknowingly through the last few months since she had come into existence as a Dungeon Core, allowing the Core shard to latch onto that and grow stronger with it.  As her friends came back, though, she began to feel some of that guilt fade away; it was the knowledge that they hadn’t stayed away of their own choice, but because of the actions of others.  Just like it wasn’t necessarily Sandra’s choices that had led to her demise, but from the actions of others.  Namely, the actions of Dramien, the Holy and Nether Enchanter that had killed her to fuel the powerful enchantment on a weapon.

I need to stop feeling guilty because of the actions of others.  It didn’t just apply to the feelings of abandonment she felt when her friends didn’t come back, but also how she felt overly responsible for the