The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) by Jonathan Brooks (miss read books .txt) 📕

Winxa – how did it upgrade again so soon?  I thought we had at least another week or two before this happened!

The Dungeon Fairy appeared to be at a loss and somehow scared; Sandra suddenly realized that she had practically shouted at Winxa – and it wasn’t in a nice tone, either.  Feeling bad but unable to apologize right away (because she was angry, though more at herself than the Fairy), she waited for a reply as she explored what she could of the Undead Core’s new AOI.  Looking towards the Dwarves, she saw that it stretched nearly to the forest’s edge, only about a mile or less from being a serious threat to the village.

“I…I don’t know.  I know of no way that it could do that since you’ve been culling it so thoroughly; even if it had found the Advancement Menu, such a rapid increase wouldn’t explain it,” Winxa finally said in a small voice.

Taking a mental breath and trying to relax – the proximity of the Undead Core’s Influence was putting her on edge – she finally apologized to the Dungeon Fairy.

* I’m sorry for yelling, Winxa – I just don’t understand why— *

The answer to that came streaming out of the woods just then.  Thousands of small rat skeletons emerged from the trees and spread out all over the open land, their little forms constantly in motion as they stayed separate from each other; they swept across the Gnome village and beyond, filling the open spaces, before bleeding into the wastelands.  Eventually the flow of rat bones stopped coming; looking at the land from above, she could see that all of them had at least 20 feet in between them as they ran around in circles that slowly tightened towards their centers.  Sandra couldn’t understand what they were doing, until she backed up even further and caught a glimpse of her AMANS.

That sneaky little…

She’d been played, there was no doubt about it.  The flow of simple skeletons and zombies really hadn’t stopped gradually coming into the open land where her eradication force was systematically destroying them one by one.  Sandra only had them venture a little ways into the forest, where she had found essentially the same thing – though there were stronger varieties the further in she went.  She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, because she figured culling the greater quantity of weaker Dungeon Monsters would slow down the growth of the Core as opposed to trying to eliminate anything harder was the way to go.

Obviously, she had read the situation wrong.  The explosion of growth could definitely be explained away by thousands of rat skeletons running around in circles in parts of the forest that she didn’t really have access to because of the floating Specters.  There was still a goodly sized area beyond the actual Undead dungeon that she couldn’t even reach yet with her own AOI, and if that was filled with skeleton rats – who she just saw could also climb up and down trees – then they could act similarly to her own AMANS.

Sandra should’ve known that something was up after the trap that had destroyed her first force, but she had been distracted; it wasn’t a great excuse, of course, but it was the only one she had.  It was her fault that the Undead Core had expanded so quickly; it had obviously seen her floating Shears and understood what they were being used for.  Not only that, but she had been too cautious about exploring the forest and pushing towards as full of a cull as she could, so she had missed the signs that not everything was as it seemed.  She had no one to blame but herself, and now things were going to start getting out of control unless she did something quickly.

The Undead Core had obviously been planning on revealing its skeletal rat army for some time, because as soon as her Rolling Forces started to smash them to pieces, another much larger – and more dangerous force emerged from the trees.  She noticed that it was comprised of the same Undead as the group that had surprised her almost a week ago, though with greater numbers.  They immediately headed for her eradication force, overtaking them within minutes; outnumbered and practically useless against such a group, she had her rolling constructs use their greater speed to keep destroying skeletal rats and stay out of the way of wherever the larger Undead were going.

Before they could get far, however, a veritable cloud of Specters shot forward and quickly descended from above, enveloping her Rolling Forces.  There followed a short and bloodless battle that saw all of her over 2,000 constructs destroyed – but taking out over a hundred of the mist-like Undead at the same time.  Normally she would consider that a fair exchange, but when all of the nearby skeletal rats picked up the dropped Monster Seeds in their fleshless jaws and carried them back to the forest, she knew she had lost big in that exchange.

As for where the larger Undead were going, it was obvious by their unerring direction that they were headed straight for Sandra’s dungeon.

* Echo, get below – there’s a huge force of Undead heading this way!  Felbar, take Violet down as well, I can’t have you up here when they invade. *

Echo hesitated, looking at her bow that was propped up against the nearby wall; she brought it everywhere with her – even to the baths down below – and Sandra was meaning to talk with her about creating a brand-new one for her.  That wouldn’t help right now, of course, but she wanted to thank her for her help with teaching Sandra about casting spells and for delivering the Energy Orbs to her village.