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

by Jonathan Brooks

  That wasn’t where its main offensive power came from, though; using Fire Mana, she created a field in front of the Totem that would move along with it wherever it went in the room. When the six-armed construct punched forward, its fist would launch a small ball of fire wherever it was aiming; it wasn’t a very large ball of fire and would probably be just an annoyance to some of the undead, but then again the Martial Totem could punch fast.

  She wasn’t sure how long that Fire Mana field would last under repeated blows by the construct, but it was sure to inflict some major damage before it ran out. Even when it did, the Holy shield would likely still be operational, and the Totem could definitely dish out some major damage with its fists still. After making sure the trigger to activate the trap was set just inside the entrance to the room – and hoping that it actually worked, since she didn’t really have a chance to test it – she turned to see what else she could do before the Undead arrived.

  Unfortunately, a quick look showed that they were relatively close to her dungeon. There weren’t a lot of Specters left after most of them had been destroyed in their suicide attack against her Rolling Forces, but those that were left immediately shot upwards towards Sandra’s AMANS when they got within 100 feet of the entrance. The center of her Shears net was primarily her pre-Advancement ones, and hundreds of them fell out of the sky before Sandra could react, only to dissipate and drop their Copper Orb Monster Seeds before they hit the ground.

  Knowing that a major source of her Mana was in jeopardy, she immediately had the rest scatter, flying to the southwest and out of range of where the Undead Core’s AOI could reach. As a test, however, she kept a few dozen of her newer Reinforced Animated Shears and had them dive straight towards a single one of the black-robed spell casters that had so devastated her first eradication force. It was her hope that since it stayed towards the back and out of direct physical combat that it would be more vulnerable to physical attacks.

  While they might indeed have been vulnerable, her Shears never got the chance to test their resistance. When they got within a foot of the creepy Undead casters, a shield of darkness appeared out of nowhere around the robed form, reflecting the impact from dozens of Shears like it was nothing. Most of her constructs were destroyed when they hit the shield at full speed from above, but two of them managed to hit at an angle and were embedded in the ground. She tried to get them to move afterwards and dig themselves out, but a black sludge seemed to coat them where they hit the caster’s shield; within seconds, they were eaten away by the mystery substance, leaving Sandra relatively blind other than a single Mechanical Jaguar she had in one of the nearby hills.

  To rectify her inability to see what was happening, she took another dozen of her newer Shears and sent them high up into the air above her dungeon, where they could look down from almost a mile; the act caused the Specters to try to reach them, but they fortunately couldn’t reach that far. It wasn’t the best view, but at least she could see in general what was happening.

  She expected them to immediately stream into her dungeon entrance and she prepared herself…but they all stopped before they actually entered. It was kind of eerie, actually; the lead elements of the Undead horde were five feet from the entrance, and yet they all seemed frozen in place. After about half a minute approximately half of the horde broke off and started to move; Sandra thought, this is it…but all they did was rush over to the other entrance to her dungeon in the old Bearling lair connected to her workshop. Once they were there, they stopped five feet away from that cave opening as well.

  What is going on?

  “What do you mean? What happened? Are they inside already?” Winxa asked, sounding a little more confident than just a few minutes earlier when Sandra angrily yelled at her, though she was still a bit reserved in her appearance. The Dungeon Core explained what was happening, but the Fairy didn’t have an answer.

  “Again, this is something I’m unfamiliar with. Core on Core fighting has never been a thing before this – literally couldn’t have been a thing because of the contracts – so I’m not sure what it’s doing.”

  Sandra was no strategist herself, but she was beginning to see what was happening. First, the Undead Core had tricked her by hiding all of those skeletal rats; when she went to destroy them as they emerged, it sacrificed a portion of its horde to destroy her eradication force. Then when it got close enough to her dungeon, it made her AMANS retreat out of range, but it also had the side-effect of reducing the amount of Mana she was receiving from them by almost a quarter because of the distance from her dungeon entrance. Not only that, but it also cut down on her surveillance directly above her, though she could see from a significant distance away.

  Lastly, the Core had obviously seen the outline of her dungeon from down below the ground and camped all of its Monsters right outside of her entrances – why would it do that? The only explanation that made sense was one that just showed how devious the other entity really was; by guarding the only ways in and out of her dungeon, she couldn’t field an army of her own to destroy them. Everything she sent out would be immediately destroyed, as nothing would be able to work together to take the Nether-based Dungeon Monsters down. The Undead Core didn’t need to invade her dungeon to attempt to destroy Sandra; all it had to do was keep her bottled up while it went about its business.

  Sure, she might eventually wear the Undead down by a constant stream of constructs thrown out the entrances, but she could already see reinforcements coming from the trees in ones and twos. There were a few tricks that Sandra had up her sleeve, of course, but she felt like she was always one step behind the other Core; what else will I have to defend against after I destroy these Undead?

  She mentally spoke too soon, because emerging from the forest near the Undead dungeon was a gigantic, horrendous-looking abomination.

  Well, I guess I know what I’m going to have to do now…

  Chapter 19

  Fifth-shield Gerold agilely stepped out of the way of a slow and clumsy strike by the Dirt Golem in front of him…only to be slammed from the side by its other appendage. He went flying through the air a dozen feet before he crashed to the ground, tumbling a couple of times before he smashed into a nearby tree. The young Dwarf heard cracking and worried that either his body or his armor was damaged, but looking up from where he had fallen, he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that it was only the tree itself that had suffered the ill effects.

  Picking himself up from the ground, he was surprised to find that he hadn’t lost hold of his battle-axe even through his flight and subsequent acrobatics. His full-plate armor also looked pristine – like it should – though he could feel that absorbing the impact and protecting Gerold had drained him of a little elemental energy. It was probably only about 5% of what he had available, but the day was just starting; if he wasted all of it now because of stupid mistakes, then he’d be useless halfway through the day.

  The Dirt Golem was already heading in his direction, so the Dwarf readied himself, determined not to fall for that kind of sneak attack again. This was his first solo outing to cull the dungeon monsters outside the village of Nurboldar, and he winced internally when he imagined what Second-shield Bregan would say about his performance so far. His mentor would doubtless chastise him to no end, pointing out his mistakes, and berating him until he shaped up. Despite the abuse from the veteran Shield he had withstood over the last month of training, Gerold knew that it was all done to make him a better fighter – and to help him not die when fighting his first monster.

  I’m not doing such a good job of that so far, am I?

  “Come on, Gerold – get your act together,” he mumbled to himself. The Dwarf stepped forward with his shield strapped to his left arm and his battle-axe in his right hand, trying to exude the confidence he knew he should feel; it was difficult, however, especially when there wasn’t the safety net of his mentor there to help if he messed up. Nevertheless, Gerold knew that the 8-foot-tall Dirt Golem shouldn�
��t present that much of a challenge – or at least the ones he had killed before hadn’t been in the past.

  Giving himself a little shake to get rid of his nerves, Gerold stepped towards the Golem, while at the same time funneling a trickle of his Water elemental energy to the edge of his battle-axe. He did the same with his Nether energy, mixing the two until it made the edge an interesting combination of black and blue that crackled with power.

  Quickly dodging another obviously clumsy strike from the Golem as he closed with it, he saw the other arm of the vaguely person-shaped monster come flying towards him out of the corner of his eye and ducked by practically throwing himself to the ground. The dirt appendage passed a beard hair’s-length over his head, and Gerold swiftly straightened up and counter-attacked. With a sweep of his Water-and-Nether enhanced axe, he sliced completely through the thick right lower “leg” of the Dirt Golem; the Water instantly turned the dirt it touched to mud, making it softer and easier to cut through, while the Nether did something equally important: it prevented the wound to the monster from “healing”.

  Regenerating or Reincorporate might be a better word for how the Golems could normally use their unique abilities to reattach sliced-off parts of themselves by absorbing and reforming whatever got chopped off. It wasn’t instant, of course, but even if you completely dismembered a Golem, after a few minutes the different parts would slowly come back together and reform the monster – though usually it lost a portion of its original size in the process. If a Dwarf didn’t have access to elemental energy to prevent that from happening, then constantly dismembering the Golem was the only method to really destroy it; that process worked, of course, but it took a while.

  Gerold’s Nether element applied to his battle-axe, however, sealed the ends of the “wounds” he inflicted with necrotic energy, preventing the pieces from rejoining. There were other methods with other elements, of course – including Water if he really needed it – but using Nether energy in that matter was the best and most efficient course of action for him.

  The Golem – now missing a leg that was chopped off just above its dirt “knee” – toppled forward onto its arms and remaining knee, and Gerold narrowly missed being crushed by half a ton of dirt by stepping out of the way. He knew that just because it was missing a leg, that didn’t mean it wasn’t still dangerous; a quickly flung-out arm in his direction from the Golem was proof of that, which he easily blocked with his shield, though he had to take a step back to maintain his footing from the impact.

  The Dwarf continued his attack by stepping forward and using his axe to slice off the lower half of the arm that just hit his shield. Now missing a portion of the arm keeping it upright, the Golem fell forward again onto its chest – but it also kept up a flailing assault on Gerold. Fortunately, the attacks by the intact and amputated arms were mistimed and awkward and he was easily able to avoid them completely; he almost took a foot to the face when the entire Monster seemed to shift itself and a leg came flying at him, but he ducked under it and sliced it off.

  After that, it was just a matter of finishing the Golem off by removing the arms and the featureless protrusion on top of its shoulders that he assumed classified as a head, before cutting the torso in half. Once all that was done, the dungeon monster completely made of dirt melted into the ground, leaving behind a small gold sphere as Loot. Gerold sighed as he picked it up and stuffed it in a small pocket behind his breastplate, wishing that it had been steel instead; gold was a metal that was practically useless in Blacksmithing weapons and armor, as it was just too soft to make anything that would last. He had heard that other races prized it because of its shiny appearance and even traded it for goods and services, but to Dwarves it was little better than dirt.

  Overall, what he picked up as Loot out in the forest didn’t really matter – unless it was somehow something really rare – because that wasn’t what the Shieldmen (of which Gerold was a relatively new member) were there for. There was plenty of metal to be found in their mountain homes, so collecting Loot was only a secondary purpose; their real purpose was to cull the Monsters from the surrounding dungeons so that the village of Nurboldar could grow food on the extensive farm it possessed. Such areas of land not already overrun by monsters was extremely rare these days – other than Dwarven mountain strongholds, of course – which was why they were at the back end of nowhere trying to grow food that didn’t take to the environment very well.

  That was in part because they were so close to the wastelands that were dry, barren, and dangerous. It rarely seemed to rain, and even when it did it was fairly light; if there hadn’t been a major river nearby that years ago had been partially diverted for irrigation, then they wouldn’t have been able to grow much there. There were only two other places around their entire land that could grow food outside of the mountains, but Nurboldar was by far the largest of them. While certain types of food could be grown and animals could be raised for their meat inside their strongholds, it didn’t provide a lot of variety – and the most important ingredients to one of their staples was only able to be grown outside.

  All of which was why Gerold felt honored to be assigned to the farming village – though it wasn’t like those in charge had much choice. The ranks of the Shieldmen were getting thinner and thinner over the years as fewer and fewer of the Dwarven population were willing to leave their comfy and safe mountain strongholds to brave the dangers of either farming or culling dungeon monsters. It wasn’t a glorious position, but Gerold felt like he was really making a difference – and I should probably get back to it.

  He was about to venture further into the forest when he felt something strange and yet familiar at the same time. Gerold immediately recognized it as something related to the Nether element he had access to; he had always been uniquely sensitive to the darker elemental energy for some reason, though he didn’t know why he was different from most other Dwarves. Some of the older generations were concerned that it boded an ill omen, but Gerold and his family had dismissed it at superstition – though it had prevented him from having any friends outside of his immediate family.

  Luckily the Shieldmen didn’t care about things like that, so Gerold was happy to leave the mountains and be out where things like his particular affinity to the Nether element didn’t matter so much. In fact, it seemed like it was coming in handy that day, since he could sense some where there shouldn’t be any coming from the trees near the forest’s border with Nurboldar’s farmland. As he turned around to investigate, he followed the traces of Nether with his senses, finding that it was moving around fairly quickly; despite that, within 15 minutes he had found the source – or at least he thought he did.

  Some rustling of leaves was the first thing that alerted Gerold to the presence of something, and he jumped back in surprise when a small rat emerged from beneath a tree root and stared at him. He assumed that it was staring at him, though it was hard to tell – because it was missing all of its flesh, including its eyes! Essentially, it was a skeleton of a small rat walking around, though he figured it could be a large mouse; however, the shape was enough like some of the rats that had infested the long-abandoned tunnels back home – that he used to explore as a kid – that he couldn’t picture it as anything else.

  Reacting instinctively, Gerold swung his battle-axe at the frozen skeletal rodent and split it right down the middle. He knew it shouldn’t have been a surprise to see it dissolve into the ground and leave behind a small copper sphere as Loot, but the presence of something undead – that really shouldn’t be there – threw his mind for a loop. He knew what it was, of course, because there were at least two dungeons that had undead monsters around the Dwarven Kingdom, but he had never seen one in person before; now that he had, though, his mind struggled to comprehend what it meant.

  There must be a new Nether dungeon around here! Gerold hadn’t ever heard of two dungeons being so close to each other before, but the fact that he had only seen a very small dungeon monster likely me
ant that the dungeon was new and didn’t have much stronger than that. He briefly wondered why he couldn’t sense it since it should be fairly close by; then again, he had never been near a Nether-element dungeon before, so he didn’t know if he could sense them.

  Regardless, he knew that he had to let Second-shield Bregan know about it right away, because having another dungeon nearby could cause some trouble if they needed to start culling that one as well. Either that, or they might decide to destroy it, though they hadn’t done it before to either the Goblins or Golems because the risk to the farm was too high if they failed. The Shieldmen were strong, but they definitely weren’t invulnerable – they were as likely to fall to traps and overwhelming dungeon monsters as anyone else. It was decided that culling and keeping them contained was the best option based on their own numbers – but a smaller dungeon should be relatively “safer”.

  Again, it wasn’t his decision, so he started to jog out of the forest, intending to head straight for the village and let Bregan know what he had seen. However, as soon as he got to open land and traveled past the last trees, he was hit by an overwhelming miasma of Nether…that was coming straight from the wastelands in the distance. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t felt it before then because it was so strong; in fact, its presence to his senses was so deep that he felt inexplicably drawn to it. Against his volition, his feet immediately turned towards the source of Nether he identified, and he left the village and the other Dwarves behind.

  He was halfway to the barren wasteland when he forcibly stopped himself and took a deep breath. What am I doing? I have to go warn Bregan and the others about this! Unfortunately, the seductive pull of the Nether-based elemental concentration in the distance was too much for him to resist. I should probably just check it out and give them a full report; if there’s an undead dungeon in the middle of the wastelands then they need to know that. Besides, seeing a small skeletal rat doesn’t really say much, does it?