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

by Jonathan Brooks

  “We have to destroy it – undead dungeons are abominations that need to be eliminated as soon as possible,” Echo automatically said, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop them – not that she would stop them even if she had a choice. It was something she believed in with every fiber of her being.

  Violet and Felbar stared at her with strange looks on their faces. “That was apparently what Sandra was trying to do—” Felbar started to say, before the Dungeon Core herself cut him off with the first non-translation message Echo had heard since she walked in.

  * That wasn’t necessarily what I was trying to do; I was only trying to cull the Dungeon Monsters outside of the dungeon enough to delay its expansion. I hadn’t quite yet decided on whether or not to destroy the Core, but that seems like a moot point right now. I messed up and made it worse, and I’m not even sure that I could destroy the Core even if I wanted to. *

  Sandra went on to describe what had happened to her own force of monsters she had sent there to destroy the undead, and how they had been thoroughly eradicated.

  “We never saw some of those other undead she claims to have seen; I only remember killing thousands of skeletons and zombies in my time there culling them in my War Machine. As for those Specters – the mist-like undead she was talking about – all it took to kill them was a quick temporary Fire-based enchantment on one of my weapons and they were destroyed quite easily,” Felbar added when the dungeon was finished talking.

  * Wait a minute, you put an enchantment on your weapons? Why? *

  Sandra seemed completely confused by that, but it was so natural and obvious to Echo that she answered for the Gnomes. “It’s because the undead are vulnerable to certain elemental attacks. Holy-based attacks work the best, of course, but Fire works quite well in a pinch; others like Natural, Air, Earth, and Water are nearly useless against something that is already technically dead, but they can be used in various ways to at least inflict damage. However, for undead monsters such as that Specter Felbar was talking about, they are resistant to most physical forms of attack, though the touch of iron can ‘hurt’ them if they are in constant contact with it.

  “Then there are others that are resistant to anything other than Holy-based attacks, which was one of the main reasons I was hoping to become an Elite with my ability to manipulate Holy elemental energy. Destroying Nether dungeons – and especially undead-based ones – is something I desperately want to be able to do one day,” Echo explained.

  The Gnomes nodded along with her explanation and Violet added, “I thought everyone knew that, which was why I hadn’t thought to tell you.”

  Sandra was silent for a while, leaving Echo and the others staring uncomfortably at each other. While she didn’t necessarily dislike the other races, the distrust between the Elves and the others was deeply ingrained and taught at a young age; she put a lot of that aside after she was saved from death by the dungeon and the subsequent interaction between them all, but whispers of it were still there. Therefore, she still wasn’t entirely used to being around the small people, and it was obvious that they felt at least a little of the same.

  * Yes, well, I don’t have much knowledge about the undead from my previous life. I mainly concentrated on crafting; while there were some enchantments that pertained to killing the undead, I never had time to study the actual Dungeon Monsters themselves. I didn’t realize that some of them could only be hurt by elemental attacks, and I was unprepared with how ineffective my constructs would be against them.

  * I can only blame myself for not asking about it; Winxa turned out not to have much knowledge on the subject of the undead, as she had never been put in charge of an Undead Classification Dungeon Core before. As much as I don’t like admitting my abject failure in this instance, I would appreciate all of your help to fix this problem. *

  To Echo, that sounded much more interesting than picking up and delivering Energy Orbs to her people; even though she knew they needed – or at least wanted them – she’d much rather be doing something…productive. Something that would make a difference, at least – and destroying an abomination in the form of an undead dungeon would definitely classify as that.

  “I would love to help, though I don’t know exactly how I can,” Echo said, having some doubts about her effectiveness in delving through the dungeon by herself. Even if she was accompanied by hundreds of Sandra’s constructs, she knew that such an endeavor would be extremely dangerous – the hundreds of lost Elites over the years who participated in such an act could attest to that.

  “I don’t think she means for you to go yourself; rather, I think Sandra wants your knowledge of the undead to help her defeat them with her constructs somehow. While Violet and I have some knowledge of the undead – and obviously more than the dungeon does herself – you seem to have a greater understanding of their dangers and weaknesses,” Felbar said.

  * Exactly. And as you’re the only one here that can manipulate Holy elemental energy to cast spells and other effects, it will be extremely useful to have that type of knowledge. Violet and Felbar can help me with some of the enchantments that I know of that might be beneficial, but I have almost zero knowledge of how to manipulate elemental energy in the way that you and the Elves do. *

  Echo was very confused. “And how would that knowledge help you? I thought your constructs couldn’t manipulate energy in that way, and even if they could I’ve been told that controlling the elements in the way that we do is unique to each race. So, unless I’m going with whatever force you send, I’m not sure that it would do any good.” The prospect of going to the undead dungeon with the intent of destroying it was both frightening and exciting at the same time, and she didn’t want to be left out of it if she had a choice.

  * It’s true that my constructs can’t manipulate energy like that; it’ll probably take some time and effort on your part to educate me how it’s done, as well. However, we’ll have some time before things start to get too dangerous for the Dwarves or anyone else, so I’m hoping to have the opportunity to finish up my other projects and get a course in basic spellcasting.

  * As for you going with them, I wouldn’t have it any other way…but it won’t exactly be in the way you think. *

  Out of the corner of her eye and against the far wall of the workshop, Echo saw the creepy-looking Shapeshifters start to shrink and take on another form. Within seconds, she was looking at six exact copies of herself – naked copies, to be exact.

  Her mind shut down for a few seconds as she stared at herself in multiplicate; when she was able to think again, she saw that Felbar was determinedly looking in the opposite direction of her doubles, while Violet was smiling at her. I think she’s enjoying this for some reason!

  “Uh…what…?” was all Echo was able to get out, just before the Shapeshifters dropped her form and expanded into their former multi-colored amorphous blobs.

  * Sorry about that – it was probably a bit of a shock. I just wanted you to see what I was talking about; not only will “you” be going, but many of you will be accompanying my constructs on the way. *

  Echo was still recovering from the shock of seeing so many of herself in duplicate, so all she could do was nod in acceptance. What she had just seen went against the laws of nature in her opinion – and could be dangerous in the future for a multitude of reasons – but she figured it would perhaps be okay because it was ultimately going to be used to eradicate an undead Nether dungeon. She wasn’t sure if the ends justified the means in this case, but her instinctive hatred and abhorrence of the undead overrode any real hesitation.

  “Very well,” she finally said haltingly, her throat dry and causing her voice to crack. “When do we start?”

  Chapter 14

  Putting the failure and subsequent consequences of that failure behind her, Sandra threw herself into training, crafting, and various lines of development. Everything was hinging on an estimated timetable of three months, which was a guesstimate of the time the Un
dead Core would need to expand its Area of Influence enough to endanger the Dwarves – and possibly even stretch far enough to attack Sandra’s dungeon. That time was based on how the other Core had previously operated with its Dungeon Monsters, sending them out to accumulate ambient Mana, as well as guesses at its Core Size and how soon it would be able to upgrade itself; it was also contingent on the ability of Sandra to thin out and cull some of its undead numbers outside of the dungeon, while at the same time ensuring she didn’t fall into a trap like last time.

  She wasn’t about to let the Undead-based Dungeon Core have free rein to grow as quickly as it could; whether it was based on the need to delay its expansion as much as possible or through some innate need for revenge against those that completely destroyed so many of her constructs, Sandra had the desire to—safely—kill as many of the undead as she could. Her Shears she placed around the border of the wastelands and in the Gnome lands had already seen skeletons and a few zombies roaming the open areas again, and it would be prudent to cut down on their numbers before they grew out of control.

  So, using a small portion of her treasury – and the Mana she had accumulated during the night before – Sandra assembled another eradication force; this time, however, it was comprised entirely of Dividing Rolling Forces. They had proven to be more than capable of destroying many of the skeletons and even most of the zombies they had encountered and were fast enough to flee if something stronger and more dangerous came along – like the Ogre Skeletons or bear-like zombies. Having 1,500 of them all roaming around as a quick strike force, they could rapidly kill something and then escape before another horde of undead came to wipe them out.

  With the Mana cost of their creation and Monster Seeds at just under 150,000 Mana and 120,000 Raw Materials, it was a bit of an investment; however, the loss of a couple of them every now and then was much better in her eyes than the loss of even a single Ape Warrior if it was caught off guard going against the Undead. Besides, the Hyper Automatons she had gathering up Monster Seeds and bringing them back to her dungeon would negate most of those losses – and it turned out that her Rolling Forces could move much faster when they didn’t have to wait for any of the other constructs with them.

  As soon as they were assembled and took to the field, they practically swept through the roaming skeletons and small zombies in a matter of minutes. They would throw 200 or so of their number against even a larger skeleton – Human or Orc-sized – and completely pulverize it in a few seconds, while the others continued on and targeted the next. A few times some of the pieces of her constructs were damaged in the process, but the original Rolling Force it came from was usually able to continue; when it became too damaged, it would be destroyed and leave behind its Seed – which would be picked up by the following Automatons that were already gathering up the ones left by the undead that were killed.

  The other Core was initially slow to react to the lightning-fast attack on its Dungeon Monsters, to the point where the area outside the forest was completely wiped out of all Undead. When her Forces entered the trees and started to pick off random zombies, she started to see less and less of them; rather than progress towards the center and encounter the same powerful army she had before, she continued to have her constructs roam around the inside perimeter of the forest, picking off the few stragglers roaming around.

  At one point, one of the mist-like Specters – or at least that was what Violet called them – had swooped down to attack a group of her rolling constructs; after it enveloped about a dozen of them in its misty form, she could see her Dungeon Monsters succumb to its unusual attack just like her Shears had. However, she could also see that its attack also consumed a sizable portion of the Specter as well; therefore, she ordered another hundred of her Rolling Forces to attack the Undead mist.

  The results were interesting; as the Rolling Forces split apart and flew through the Specter – since there was nothing physical for them to hit, they only came into contact briefly before exiting out the other side of the misty form – they “ate” away at the undead bit by bit. A few of the Force pieces were destroyed in the process, but most of them didn’t touch it long enough to have much effect; on the flip side, five to six hundred heavy metal pieces – that had at least some traces of Iron in them – flew through the Specter and practically shredded it. When it was only a small fraction of its original size, the undead Dungeon Monster dissipated and left behind a Large Nickel Orb.

  It was good knowing that they could be killed, but the Specter also ended up destroying 15 of her Rolling Forces in the process; that wasn’t too much of a hardship because her Automatons would soon pick up all the Monster Seeds and bring them back to her dungeon, but too many of those fights would quickly diminish her Rolling Forces. It was for that reason that she had them retreat and stick to the forest’s perimeter and open land nearby; being able to avoid them was much easier out in the open, though if it came down to a fight she knew she could eliminate the Specters by throwing all she could at them.

  After a few hours, individual undead started to roam again in the areas her Forces had previously cleared as they were slowly replaced. It made sense, actually, because the reason the Core didn’t keep all of its Dungeon Monsters together in one group was the same reason Sandra had her AMANS spread out over thousands of feet of open air; grouped up together, they accumulated much less ambient Mana than if they were spread apart. Whenever they would venture out from the safety of the deep forest, she would immediately order her constructs to kill them, before retreating to safety themselves.

  With that taken care of – at least for the moment – Sandra focused on the proposed solutions regarding the entire Undead Dungeon Core problem. It was unfortunately no longer a question whether or not she was going to have to destroy the other Core; it was already too powerful and there was very little hope that she would be able to perpetually prevent it from upgrading its Core Size enough to threaten the Dwarves – and possibly others that might be present even beyond her own Area of Influence. It was sadly better to eliminate the problem now rather than have to worry about it in the future.

  She thought that it would only be a simple matter of enchanting some of her Steelclad Ape Warriors’ warhammers and learning from Echo how to cast spells, but it wasn’t going to be that easy. Not because it wouldn’t work, but because there was some unexpected pushback from the Gnomes she was going to ask for help with the enchanting.

  “I want to help with the culling of them outside of the dungeon; it’s still technically my duty, and I need to do it. If you get my War Machine working, we’ll do whatever you want – which includes finishing the rest of your Enchantment Repository with the new rune on the Fields,” Felbar told Sandra as soon as her attention was back from her Rolling Forces. It was unmistakably an ultimatum – and one that she would normally be all for if the circumstances had been different.

  * I told you what I saw there; you can’t deny that it’ll be extremely dangerous. How about we take care of the Undead-based Dungeon Core first, then we can concentrate on your War Machine? *

  Her plea fell on deaf ears, though Sandra could tell that Violet was wavering and would probably fold if pushed far enough. However, the entire ultimatum appeared to be Felbar’s idea and he wasn’t budging; the Dungeon Core almost decided to try to do it herself and not rely on their help, but the fact of the matter was that she hadn’t even come close to perfecting the incorporation of the Limiter rune yet. Without seeing the relatively complex sequence constructed a few more times – as well as lots of subsequent practice with her Shapeshifters – she wasn’t sure she could reliably create it. The last thing she wanted was to accidentally make a mistake and blow up half of her dungeon because she thought she could do it without help…so she decided to be the one to fold to their – not wholly unreasonable – demands.

  The learning and teaching coming from Echo was going to have to wait until she was back, anyway, because she was gone after taking the few Energy Orbs that
had been completed. She was supposed to tell the Elder that she was going to be in and out of the village for the next few days, but would be bringing more shipments when she could; Echo was going to need to stay close at hand so that she could be there to instruct Sandra on the basic art of energy manipulation. While it was vaguely similar, she felt that at its heart, it was entirely different from Enchanting.

  Meanwhile, before they could get started with that, Sandra took a look at the War Machine and conveyed her earlier ideas about how to get it enchanted in a way that didn’t require it to be done all at once. Violet instantly rejected the idea as impossible at first, but as the Dungeon Core explained it further, she could start to see that the Gnome was warming to the concept she was trying to convey. After describing what she envisioned for nearly half an hour, the Apprentice Enchanter finally nodded and said, “I…think that might work.”

  The problem she had identified as needing to be overcome was linking up all the enchantments as a cohesive whole; the Master Gnome Enchanters could create an entire enchantment sequence that would cover the entire War Machine, but they didn’t have that luxury. Instead, they were going to have to create 10 different smaller enchantment sequences (2 for each leg, 2 for each arm, 1 for the torso, and 1 to link them all together) that would work in the same way.

  The individual Natural-based enchantments on the War Machine that allowed the normally inanimate material – like wood and steel – to stretch, bend, and move to the will of the pilot Violet knew quite well; she had been tasked with replacing and maintaining them in her time there in the village. It was the Spirit-based enchantments that she didn’t have as much knowledge of, since those were what controlled everything; the Master Enchanters of the Gnomish people had created an intricate network of interlinked sequences that were easily manipulated by the pilot. It was this that they needed to replace and still have it function in essentially the same way – but it was going to take some trial and error experimentation to get it to work.