The Crafter's Dungeon: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 1) Jonathan Brooks (sites to read books for free .TXT) 📖

noticed that each segment slotted into the half-open backs of the one in front of it snugly.  From what she could see, they all had pinchers like the lead segment, and were using them to grip onto something inside the spherical body of each part of the Centipede.  After a little experimentation, Sandra saw that it was able to move around with great dexterity and could contort itself into tight places.  Although they worked as a whole to form the largely metal construct, each part of the Segmented Centipede was almost independent of each other – which meant that if one of them was destroyed, the rest could stay together to keep going.

The best part of her new Centipede, though, was the fact that it could mimic the way the Ants stuck to the ceiling and fit through the tunnels!  While her existing monsters continued to dish out damage and devastate the incoming Territory Ants, Sandra accumulated enough resources to create three more of the Segmented Centipedes.  When all four of her new constructs were ready to go, she sent them to the tunnels.

“Remember, you just need to kill the Queen – everything else will fall after she’s dead,” the Dungeon Fairy told her, after seeing how effective her new monsters would likely be.

Sandra felt a little sad when Winxa put it like that; as much as she wanted to deny that any of this was her fault, the fact that she did actually invade the Ants’ territory made her feel like the “evil” one in the situation.  Although she didn’t want to wipe out the entire colony, there was no way she could stop them otherwise, and setting up some sort of peaceful negotiation seemed unlikely – the two sides of the conflict couldn’t even communicate with each other.

So, it was with a heavy figurative heart that she watched her Centipedes first enter the tunnels.  As Sandra had thought, the heavy-duty pincers of her constructs were able to grip onto the heads of the Territory Ants when they came into range and essentially crush them with extraordinary force.  As the rest of their “bodies” followed after the lead segment, her Centipedes made encouraging progress up the tunnel, leaving bodies in their wake as they slowly-but-steadily fought against the tide of Ants.  Fortunately, the entire colony tunnel system was inside her Area of Influence, so she was able to absorb the bodies as her constructs progressed, freeing up room for them to move easier.

Damage to her monsters was inevitable, unfortunately.  The mandibles of the Ants still cut through the metal shells of the Centipedes in places before they died, and a few pincers were sliced apart as well.  By the time her constructs fought their way up to the wider main tunnel, each of them had lost at least two of their segments, with an unlucky one losing a total of four.

Sandra wasn’t idle, though, and was at work building even more of her Segmented Centipedes.  And, now that there were no more invaders inside her actual dungeon, she was able to accumulate more ambient Mana by having her former defenders roam throughout her room again, picking up all of the Mana just waiting for them to pass by.  Additionally, she was finally able to resume eating away at the walls, which gave her even more Raw Materials to make more Monsters Seeds.

Sandra felt the tension that had been unknowingly settled on her Core start to fade away as the fight ranged farther away.  Now that she was fighting back – and effectively at that – she felt more confident that she was going to survive and thrive.

I think I can do this, she thought, as she sent another half-dozen Centipedes up through the tunnels.

Chapter 13

Fortunately, Sandra’s efforts paid off.  It took another two hours of the constant destruction of the Ants sent against them, but her Centipedes finally managed to reach the center of the colony where the Queen continued to frantically lay eggs by the dozens.  They were aided by the fact that the upper tunnels were a bit wider than the ones nearest her dungeon, allowing her constructs to fight two (or sometimes three) across, which turned out to be necessary.

She was glad that she had sent additional forces, because the initial four that she had created were already destroyed.  As her army of constructs got closer to the Queen, the already overworked Ant in charge started to desperately lay even more eggs somehow; the resulting waves of Territory Ants swarmed over her lead constructs with suicidal abandon, but luckily the flood was short-lived.  After two minutes of progressively larger waves of Ants destroying her Centipedes, the Queen went back to laying them at the same pace as before.

“Most wild creatures can use their innate energy to perform special attacks or skills, which is likely what that Queen just did to increase production.  Fortunately for you, that last-ditch effort probably used up the last of her reserve – it should be normal for you from now on,” Winxa told Sandra after she asked about the sudden increase in Ants.

Can my Dungeon Monsters do that too?

“Normally, yes.  In fact, most of the skills that dungeon cores receive after they hit certain thresholds deal with increasing the effectiveness of either their Monsters or their traps inside their dungeon.  Usually, a dungeon’s Monsters use their innate energy based upon their Core’s Classification to perform their special attacks, but your…constructs…don’t seem to have any.  Yes, they are magically animated and use every element to make them work, but they don’t have a reserve of magical energy to tap into.  This makes them actually stronger by themselves, but they don’t have any special attacks to speak of,” the Dungeon Fairy replied matter-of-factly.

That was slightly concerning, but it wasn’t something Sandra had to worry about right now, however, as her Centipedes were doing a great job despite