The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) Jonathan Brooks (me reader TXT) 📖

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