The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) Jonathan Brooks (books that read to you txt) 📖

use it to smash a way into the other dungeon, deploying the Fortification as a means of securing a foothold, and then sending in an army of constructs afterwards.

The shard hadn’t done this before because of the simple reason that it required too much Mana to accomplish.  First, the Mobile Fortifications were expensive Mana-wise to create, both in terms of the Monster itself and the Monster Seed needed to form the construct.  Second, Sandra had barely been able to maintain an equilibrium of Mana and defenses with the other Cores, though towards the end she had been slowly coming out ahead; assembling an army of constructs to follow the Fortification had been out of reach.

Of course, the benefits of having her Mana intake increase from the Arachnid Queens doing their things in the nearby forests would finally allow the shard to create both the Expanded Mobile Fortification and that army of constructs.

Over the next hour, Sandra watched both the Golem and Slime Cores send in their forces, one slowly and methodically, and the other in a rush.  Both had about the same success, with some solo Golems making it nearly 8 rooms before they were stopped, mainly from a combination of luck in just missing the re-activation of a trap; the Slimes just kept pumping out small Slime after small Slime, reaching 10 rooms deep before they were flattened by a trap, had their nuclei pierced by the bite of a Platinum-banded Wyrm, or were squished by one of Sandra’s Hardened Animated Slabs that inhabited some of the rooms.

Meanwhile, the assembly of a strike force was already underway, as the new type of Fortification was already finished, and its cubic metal form appeared larger than the original construct, though it hadn’t been “opened” quite yet.  Other constructs including more Wyrms and Iron Shears – strangely enough – were quickly filling up her Home, being assembled together to launch a strategic attack.

The Shears were a mystery at first, because they weren’t something that Sandra expected the shard to use, but after a moment they made sense; the jelly-like bodies of the Slimes were soft enough that the Shears could penetrate most of them, piercing the nucleus before the acidic nature of the Monsters they were killing could dissolve them.  While the smaller constructs could probably be used more than once while destroying the smaller Slimes, they were a one-shot deal to a lot of the larger, deadlier slime versions that Sandra had seen before.

Whatever happened, most of the Shears weren’t likely to come back from the raid on the other dungeon.  The shard in control of her Core was banking on it being successful, and if it continued as it was, it might even succeed.

Sandra’s conscience felt herself being pushed back even further in her mind as the last 2 Dungeon Cores completed their upgrades simultaneously.  What that told her was the Goblin and Beast-Classification Cores were of the same larger Core Size, which meant that they would be the ones to watch out for in the near future.  The shard knew this as well, and she could feel a change in its anger and attention.

The build-up of constructs paused as the other 2 Cores came back into operation, and the flow of Golems and Slimes stopped.  Sandra still had no idea how in the name of the Creator they were communicating, but it was patently obvious that they were; when they coordinated their actions so precisely, it really couldn’t be anything else.

All of the Golems that were in the tunnel suddenly marched back into their dungeon, even the ones that were already 4 rooms deep.  The last pair of Iron Golems to leave actually got caught by the Nether trap it had managed to get by in the second room just a few minutes ago, but that didn’t seem to deter them.  As for the Slimes, the ones that were already in the tunnel began to move again, though this time they were a bit more spread out than before, in groups of only 5 at a time, with large, room-width spaces in between groups.

In the next few minutes, other Monsters began to emerge from the other 3 dungeons, and it wasn’t what Sandra expected.  From the Golem Core came the smallest Golems she had ever seen produced, 3-foot-tall forms that looked extremely weak, seemingly made of dust, and appeared relatively non-threatening – but there were a lot of them.  Just like the Slimes, they came in groups of 5 with space in between them, and they toddled forward more than strode, as it appeared their shapes weren’t quite developed for walking.

The Goblins did approximately the same thing, sending out groups of pathetic-looking Goblins at a time; she wasn’t entirely sure what they were at first because she hadn’t seen them come from the other dungeon before.  However, looking at how weak they appeared, she discerned that they looked exactly like the Goblin Worker Sandra had unlocked via her Advancement Options.  She had only created one for a short time and had nearly forgotten what they looked like, but now it was obvious what they were.

The Beasts followed that up with a group of…squirrels?  They were larger than ones that Sandra had seen before – at about a foot and a half tall – and despite their adorable initial appearance, she could see that their teeth were longer and sharper than a “normal” squirrel’s.  Also, while they didn’t have expressions on their faces, by the way they bounded forward in unison, she would call them quite blood-thirsty.

None of it made any sense to Sandra, though she felt some indication from the shard in her mind that it certainly did.  When she finally grasped what it was, as the first larger Dungeon Monsters started to emerge from the other dungeons, she looked on in horror.

The other Cores had learned from the actions of the Golems and Slimes,