But the whole time she was thinking about what she could do with her new skill.
Chapter 6
Crouching down behind some brush near one of the giant trees that marked the boundary between the Elven and Gnomish lands, Echo took careful aim at the small boar shuffling noisily through the dead leaves carpeting the forest floor. It appeared to be just wandering aimlessly around, without any particular purpose; it was that reason – along with the blank-seeming consciousness behind the eyes – that clued the young Elf Ranger into what she was hunting.
She let the fingertips of her right hand release her arrow, while at the same time using a small application of her Air Element on her projectile. While she didn’t have great strength in Air as opposed to her Holy element, it was more than enough to correct the slight imperfection in her aim for her arrow to slam right into the boar’s dead-looking eye, driving straight into its brain. A small squeal escaped its mouth before it collapsed to the ground as its legs folded under it, the critically shot Ironwood arrow vibrating slowly as it buried itself so deep it likely impacted the rear inside of its skull.
I hope that didn’t chip the arrowhead; I must’ve put too much into that draw. Within seconds, the boar stopped twitching and…disappeared, leaving behind her arrow and something else on the ground. While her perfect shot through its eye was ideal when she was hunting natural game – thereby not damaging its hide or ruining any of its meat – it didn’t really matter that much when killing the dungeon’s nearby monsters. It helped with killing the boar quickly and efficiently, however; she wasn’t real adept at fighting up-close and if she had missed, she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to kill it with the long knife that was strapped to her right thigh.
Echo froze and looked and listened around her for almost five minutes before she stood up and dropped her active camouflage. She only felt a little drained from the use of the Holy element to bend the light around her, causing her to be cloaked in a near-invisibility that gained her the name everyone knew her as now; while she wasn’t completely invisible, there were only faint “echoes” of her form left behind when she moved at more than a snail’s pace through the forest.
She slipped her artfully crafted bow over her shoulder, resting it against the supple brown and dark-green-accented leather jerkin she wearing, which matched her tight-fitting bottoms; the last thing she wanted while sneaking through the underbrush of the forest was to have her clothing snag on something and give her away. Her arms and hands were also covered up – as well as a hood covering her fine, waist-length silver hair – because anything that caused her to stand out amongst the trees in the few times that she didn’t have her active camouflage working could be deadly.
It was hot back in the village of Avensglen, where there weren’t towering trees blocking the sunlight and gifting her with the cool air that she reveled in when she went hunting. From the elder’s stories, their race used to live primarily amongst the trees, but ever since the dungeons along their border started to become more and more dangerous, they had taken to living in the wide-open plains of Symenora, their Elvish homeland. Only Lyringlade – their capital city in the middle of Symenora – had the towering trees that were representative of their people. Which was probably why there were so many of their dwindling race living there now.
There were only a few villages and towns located around the border of their land that were still inhabited and that hadn’t been overrun by dungeon monsters. The village of Avensglen – where she was based out of – and the others were vital to maintain because they provided much-needed dungeon loot that wasn’t readily available anywhere else. While the Elites working out of the capital were keeping back the dungeon monsters from encroaching on the city’s boundaries and surrounding area, these satellite “outposts” provided the raw materials required for weapon and armor production that were used to arm those premier fighters.
Echo turned 50 later this year, which meant that she was finally eligible to apply for a position in the Elites; although their numbers had steadily declined over the years, they still held with the tradition of only accepting those with a bit of “experience” to their name. While 50 might seem old to some of the shorter-lived races like the Orcs and even the fabled Humans she’d heard about before but never seen, in comparison she was barely even a teenager by Elvish standards – and a young teenager, at that.
Echo bent down to retrieve her Ironwood arrow and winced as she looked at the blunted tip of the thin iron arrowhead. She was glad that it hadn’t chipped, at least, because that would’ve been almost unsalvageable; as it was, with a little work and manual labor she could fix it until it was as good as new. Checking over the shaft of the arrow, she smiled when she saw that the Ironwood had held up quite handily even through all of the abuse that she had put it through over the last couple of weeks. She knew it would eventually start to crack from the strong impacts it had to endure, but it had been proving its worth ever since she picked it up from their village fletcher about a month ago.
Not that she had any problems using arrows made from Ash wood, but they tended to break at the most inopportune times. Which meant, obviously, that she went through more of them on a daily basis – thereby decreasing what she could earn by culling the nearby dungeon monsters and hunting the normal beasts in the forest. Although, now that I think about it, it’s getting harder and harder to find any “real” animals out here. She was beginning to suspect that the dungeon had expanded its range again and was wiping out the competition.
It might be about time to call up another Elite squad from Lyringlade to cull the dungeon again. She hated when that happened, because it seemed to take months or years for more monsters to appear aboveground in any large numbers, but it was a necessary precaution to prevent their village from eventually being overrun. Well, that, and it allowed the local wildlife to flourish again. The last time it had been needed had been around 6 years ago, and she was forced to travel to the northwest forest that divided their lands from the Orcish land of Orcrim to hunt; she didn’t like going there, because she wasn’t quite suited to kill the various slimes that inhabited the trees – and who could sense her better than beasts that relied on actual eyesight.
At least this is better than fighting off hordes of monsters near the capital. Sometimes she was almost tempted to forget her dream of joining the Elites and just stay where she was; however, she knew it was important that any Elf that could join the Elites actually did – they couldn’t afford for someone who could fight to sit on the sidelines. It wasn’t just the elders that could see that their race was in a bit of a decline right now, and the only way to fight against their eventual demise was to do just that – fight.
She didn’t really want to think about that, though. She shook her head free of the depressing thoughts and bent down again near where she had retrieved her arrow. A 2-foot-long dark-brown branch was lying on the forest floor, dropped by the monster as loot; she picked it up and immediately recognized it as yew wood, which made her smile in satisfaction. The dungeon had been stingy lately when it came to wood drops, as she had primarily been getting iron, copper, tin, or even a tiny amount of steel in the last few days. That was all well and good for those Elites that liked to get up close and personal to kill the monsters, but it didn’t really help her kind – hunters and Rangers.
They specialized in long-range attacks and that made it extremely important that they had the best-quality equipment. She brushed her fingertips against her own yew bow, which wasn’t mastercraft work – by any means – but she had lovingly crafted it herself…with a little help by another Ranger that had a bit of the Natural element to fuse the quantity of pure, pristine yew wood drops she had stashed away for her own use. It was to help her with her hunting, so she didn’t feel bad about not providing it above her normal quota.
Her work done for the day and with dusk soon approaching, Echo turned to head back towards the village. However, rather than taking a direct line there to the west, s
he instead turned north; she knew she was rather close to the border with the wastelands and she didn’t want to run into any beasts or monsters on the way back. It was much easier to journey the small distance to the north and walk around the forest to the village – because nothing ever traveled into or out of the dry, barren lands. It would be a little hotter, but the season was starting to turn a little more towards fall so she didn’t think it would be that bad.
She carefully picked her way through the brush, making as little noise as possible; just because she could see or hear anything around her didn’t mean that an animal or beast couldn’t hear her. Because she was being careful, by the time she reached the edge of the forest the sky had begun to darken, and the sun was just barely touching the horizon. She had been half-crouched in her walk so she was glad that she could finally straighten up and travel normally, now that she didn’t have to worry about being seen.
Echo was just about to stand up and walk out of the trees when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. About 100 feet away, a glint of metal reflected off the weak setting sun and caught her attention; instead of it being on ground level, however, it was nearly 30 feet up in the air next to the spreading branches of the oak tree that comprised that section of the forest.
She froze and used her Holy element to activate her active camouflage while she tried to find what had caused the glint…and struggled to see anything out of the ordinary. She was beginning to think that it was just a trick of her mind after a lengthy day of hunting, when she saw a branch near where she had thought she saw the light sway a little in the relatively windless day. The next thing she knew, one acorn dropped down to the ground, followed a few seconds later by another. A third dropped to the ground almost 20 seconds later and then all was still…for about a minute. The branch she was staring at intently started to violently jostle back and forth for a short time – and then a small branch broke off from the tree seemingly all by itself. Echo watched in confusion and astonishment as it flew off into the distance.
But it wasn’t heading toward Avensglen or anywhere else in Symenora; no, it was flying straight into the wastelands.
As much as practicality and prudence warred with her now-insatiable curiosity, she knew that playing it safe in this case had no chance against the need to know. This was a completely new development and she knew she had to check it out; only the slightest hesitation made her pause as she followed the direction that she saw the branch flying.
Besides, everyone knew there wasn’t anything too dangerous in the wasteland – or at least nothing that could see her. Right?
Chapter 7
The twelfth room down from the entrance – the one right after the room with the vines and stone blocks in the ceiling – was one of the easiest traps she had created for defense; upon reflection, it was probably one of the more devious ones as well. She combined Water and Nether elements together to create a dark, sludgy, swampish bog that had thick fog drifting through the air above it. She pumped enough Mana inside the trap that it didn’t even need to be triggered – it was always on and wouldn’t disappear.
On the surface, all it really did was make it difficult to move through the room, because the likelihood of being sucked beneath the surface and drowning was very low. Of course, the dozen Steel Pythons hidden underneath the sludgy water didn’t allow anyone passing through to do so unscathed, nor did the thirty Shears hiding in the fog waiting for an opportune moment to glide down and attack.
Overall, though, if whoever was passing through was careful and could avoid being killed by vicious Pythons, then they would move on to the thirteenth room – which was where the deviousness came in. She created a narrow pathway very similar to the one in the room with the vines and stone blocks; instead of stone spikes at the bottom of a pit, however, she filled it with lava using Earth and Fire elements in a trap. It took all 12,517 of her maximum Mana to maintain the large pools of lava for all of 5 minutes and 13 seconds, but it was more than worth it – especially when it was so close to the edge of the pathway.
She had to coat the whole pit and even the narrow pathway with Dragon Glass, which took quite a bit of Mana to do – over 180,000 all told – but it ensured that the intense heat wouldn’t damage her dungeon while the lava was active. She added some Blademasters to the room to add some obstacles to getting across, but that wasn’t the deviousness she was so excited about!
Since the lava was so close to the pathway, even a small disturbance in the pool would cause it to flow over and cover anything in its way – including anyone trying to pass by. She left the ceiling of the room relatively unfinished and placed an Automated Digger up there – which she also used as a catalyst for the room’s trap; when someone entered, it would start to dig out more of the dirt and rocks above and drop it down into the lava pool, causing it to splash and overflow onto the pathway.
And best of all – the sludgy Nether-Water residue from the previous room was highly flammable. Anyone getting any type of flame or heat on them if they were still covered in the sludge would go up like a torch. She’d like to see someone get past that!
The intense satisfaction and desire to see someone die to her traps and Dungeon Monsters running through her take a mental step back in horrified shock when she realized what she was doing. Where did all of these feelings come from, I wonder? Sandra hadn’t been as consumed with perfecting her traps and making them as lethal as possible before, but then again, she hadn’t been so directly threatened with complete destruction by people, either. The Territory Ants and even the Bearlings she could kind of understand – it was in their nature and they couldn’t really help themselves. But the Orcs…the Orcs had made a conscious choice to come after her.
And that scared her – badly.
She knew that she would try to avoid conflict when it arrived so that it didn’t result in the deaths of anyone, but she now also knew that sometimes it was unavoidable. She had traveled and seen enough when she was Human not to be completely naïve about the way the world worked, after all; that didn’t mean she couldn’t try to stop death and destruction before it happened. And if it did…well, what she was doing with her defensive rooms was likely to be more than enough to ensure her own safety.
Not wanting to create anything specifically designed to kill something, she left off finishing the traps in rooms 14-17 (though they still had plenty of constructs inside them) and turned back to something a little more therapeutic: crafting. However, blacksmithing didn’t really appeal to her at the moment because of the association with death it had, so she turned her attention to her new skill. Sandra had to admit, she had been wanting to play around with her new skill but wanted to make sure nothing else needed her attention before she really investigated what she could do with it.
Organic/Inorganic Material Elemental Transmutation Menu
Transmutation Options
Elemental Orb Required (Size/Qty)
Mana Required
Additional Seed Material (Size/Qty)
Unlocked (Y/N)
Metals
Copper
N/A
N/A
N/A
Y
Nickel
N/A
N/A
N/A
Y
Tin
N/A
N/A
N/A
Y
Lead
Earth (Large/5), Fire (Tiny/2)
0/25000
Earthenware Clay (Large/4)
N
Bronze
N/A
N/A
N/A
Y
Iron
N/A
N/A
N/A
Y
Steel
N/A
N/A
N/A
Y
Titanium
?????
0/1000000
?????
N
Platinum
?????
; 0/5000000
?????
N
Orichalcum
?????
0/20000000
?????
N
Mithril
?????
0/50000000
?????
N
Fibrous Plant Seeds
Jute Seed
Natural (Average/2)
0/20000
Oak (Average/2)
N
Flax Seed
N/A
N/A
N/A
Y
Cotton Seed
Natural (Large/3)
0/30000
Maple (Large/3)
N
Bamboo Seed
?????
?????
?????
N
Ramie Seed
?????
?????
?????
N
Clays
Earthenware Clay
Earth (Average/2)
0/5000
Iron (Average/2)
N
Stoneware Clay
Earth (Large/4)
0/15000
Iron (Large/4)
N
Ball Clay
?????
?????
?????
N
Fire Clay
?????
?????
?????
N
Kaolin Clay
?????
?????
The Crafter's Defense: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 2) Page 5
