The Crafter's Defense: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 2)

by Jonathan Brooks

  As the metal wolves slowed down to a walk, Violet realized they had arrived at their destination already. And, if she wasn’t mistaken, she was staring at the entrance of a dungeon.

  Chapter 18

  As soon as the group had left the Gnome village, Sandra had pulled back the new constructs that had been heading there to reinforce them; they weren’t really needed anymore, especially when she saw the relatively slow speed of those chasing after them. While some of the snakes and smaller lizards could move fairly quickly, the large crocodiles and giant turtles couldn’t. And as for the two new Ancient Saurians, they traveled the slowest of all with their lumbering movements.

  She was both pleased and saddened by how the Gnomes had been practically forced into coming with her constructs. Sandra was glad that she had been able to convince them that she meant no harm, though when they learned the truth of the entire situation and that it was ultimately her fault that they had been attacked in the first place, she didn’t know how they would react. Since the deaths of the Gnomes had likely fueled the creation of the first Ancient Saurian – as well as the additional two – Sandra didn’t think they’d take the news well.

  Her remaining forces were easily able to keep far ahead of the reptilian army, which was now separated into two major groups, which she kept track of via her Shears above. The first was comprised of the smaller reptiles like snakes and crocodiles and they stuck together instead of traveling at different speeds. That alone showed that they were being controlled by another intelligence, because otherwise they would’ve been spread out and it was possible that some of the smaller-yet-faster lizards could’ve caught up; the fact that they were held back from doing that proved that the Core controlling them knew that attacking as a group was preferable to attacking alone. While Sandra didn’t have much experience in the ways of battle and fighting, she knew that much at least.

  One of her Repair Drones had stayed behind to continue repairing the one-armed Ironclad Ape still near the Gnome village. She could’ve stopped it if she really wanted to and had it escape with the others even if the repair was only half-done, but she reasoned that it might be prudent to employ a small delaying force. Granted, it would be a very small force comprised of a single Ape and a defenseless Drone, but every little bit would likely help.

  The repair and “regrowth” of the Ape’s arm was complete only seconds before the Core’s reptilian army arrived. As soon as it was done, though, she had her larger construct go wild, tearing into the enemy with flying fists and leaping from place to place, in an effort to do as much damage and cause as much disruption as possible. Sandra knew that it wouldn’t be able to do much to stop them, but that wasn’t the point – they just needed to be delayed.

  It worked…up to a point. For more than a minute, her Ape jumped around and did its best to avoid attacks by the reptiles; it ended up killing a crocodile and a half-dozen smaller lizards while it was on its rampage, but it was eventually pulled down by another crocodile that was able to clamp down on her construct’s leg with its jaws. Without the ability to jump away, her Ape attempted to free itself, but was quickly overrun and literally torn apart. Even though they were weaker flesh-and-blood monsters in comparison to her constructs, they were powerful in their own right.

  Her Repair Drone didn’t even try to fight or run, as it was incapable of defending itself and couldn’t move faster than the reptile army. It was surrounded after Sandra’s Ape went down and with a quick clamp of a crocodile’s jaws, the white cylinder was crushed and destroyed. Shockingly, however, the puncturing of its form caused something unexpected to happen – it blew up. An explosion of multi-colored light erupted in all directions, which caused the jaw of the crocodile crushing her Drone to be completely blown apart. With half of its head missing, the deadly reptile faded from view as it dissipated in death.

  The surrounding reptiles were blown away as well, though none of them looked seriously hurt from the explosion. Only the one that had destroyed her Drone had been killed, though even that was a surprise – she had no idea that her construct would do that, and she had to keep that fact in mind for the future.

  Without anything else impeding them, the smaller-yet-more-numerous reptile force investigated the village for any survivors and then took off after Sandra’s constructs – and the Gnomes tagging along. As she had stated before, they kept together in one large bunch, even though they moved at the speed of their slowest monster – the giant turtle. Even given that it couldn’t move faster than Sandra could quickly walk in her old Human body, it was still much faster than the Ancient Saurians in the second group.

  When the village was cleared by the other group, the massive lizards immediately turned to follow after Sandra’s constructs as well. They moved so slowly, however, that unless they used that special ability that she had seen from the first one just before it died, it could take them a full day or more to reach Sandra’s dungeon. That didn’t seem to perturb them, though, because they just plodded along, intent on getting to the Gnomes she had stolen away.

  Before she had her pair of Shears leave the village and follow after the reptilian army, she noticed a veritable swarm of much smaller lizards emerge from the forest where she assumed the other Dungeon Core was located. They were at most a foot long and only half that tall, so Sandra was confused at what purpose they could serve; they reminded her of her smaller constructs that were useful when she had been growing and expanding her dungeon, but they weren’t as useful for defense now as her other bigger and deadlier Dungeon Monsters.

  Her answer was quickly delivered as the surprisingly quick lizards roamed over the field in front of the village and started to pick up in their jaws the Monster Seeds left behind not only from its previous own killed monsters, but from Sandra’s as well. She saw them run back to the forest, where she assumed they would deposit them inside the dungeon where the Core there could either reuse them or absorb them for Mana and Raw Materials.

  When the field was clear, dozens of them roamed through the village and literally plundered it, stealing whatever was small enough to carry off. Sandra couldn’t help but think how many materials she could’ve found inside there too, which she had a feeling would be completely wasted when it came to the other Core. They would likely all be only used as Monster Seeds instead of actual materials, which was a shame.

  The one thing they didn’t carry back, however, was a shiny blue stone clutched in the jaws of Sandra’s Steel Python; she didn’t have a lot of time before they had to leave the Gnome village, but she made sure she grabbed the Seed dropped by the Ancient Saurian before they escaped. While she didn’t get a chance to get a good look at it before her construct snatched it up, she had a suspicion of what it was – but she’d have to wait until it was back in her dungeon to be able to tell for sure.

  Which was only a relatively short time later as her constructs carrying and protecting the Gnomes arrived at the entrance of her dungeon within a half hour. Sandra’s Mechanical Wolves could’ve run even faster, but they had to match the speed of the Ironclad Ape holding the broken and unconscious body of the old Gnome. Felbar, if she remembered correctly what the young woman had called him earlier. He was definitely still alive, but there was a sporadic blood trail being left behind them as they ran, which meant that he needed some healing before he lost too much of his precious life-sustaining fluid.

  Fortunately, she had prepared as much as she could while they had been traveling. She knew it was a bit of a risk letting them all into her dungeon’s safe rooms, but she knew she had to start somewhere.

  “Just make sure you’re protected; you don’t know these Gnomes like you knew Kelerim, and it’s always possible they could betray you. Especially if they end up learning what actually happened…unless you choose to keep that a secret,” Winxa noted, as Sandra’s Wolves slowly brought the refugees inside her entrance. As soon as they passed the threshold, she felt her ability to manipulate many of the things of her dungeon dampened like they did w
hen there was an “invader” present.

  I’m not going to keep that from them, as I want to be as honest as possible. Of course, that is probably the biggest risk, but I’m hoping that once they get to know me a little, they’ll understand that it wasn’t intentional. Besides, even if they do decide to attack me out of revenge, I have plenty of traps and defenders in my Home to protect me. As soon as she had decided on her course of action, she brought quite a few of her new constructs into her Home for protection, before sealing off both entrances with her deadly Fire trap. She had already moved everything out that she’d thought she’d need over the next couple of hours, so keeping herself essentially sealed up wasn’t going to cause her any hardships.

  Sandra watched as the Gnomes entered her dungeon and she thought again about carving some sort of mural or something like that on the entrance tunnel to portray her non-threatening nature. Or, if I can learn how to carve the stone along the outside, I can control one of my Apes and have them do the work for me. That would require quite a bit more effort than just visually eliminating the stone through her normal Core absorption process, but she thought it could be done.

  Despite the danger coming toward her dungeon, she had eliminated the Nether trap in the first room and the Holy trap in the second, so that it wouldn’t freak the Gnomes out and cause them to want to attack blindly – literally. If Sandra didn’t have the newer rooms completed farther down, then she would’ve hesitated to remove them; as it was, however, she was fairly sure that they wouldn’t be as effective against the reptiles as she would hope, as she knew that most of them relied on senses other than eyesight to move about the world. Of course, if she was able to re-establish them before they arrived, she was planning on boosting their effectiveness a bit – she had access to much more Mana since she had initially set them up.

  So, while the traps weren’t present in those two rooms, her constructs certainly were. In the first room, a dozen Basher Totems were lined up against the walls, along with four Ironclad Apes; they were completely motionless and almost appeared to be statues, except that they followed the incoming Gnomes with subtle turns of their heads – or in the case of her Totems, their entire bodies. In the second room, two dozen Singing Blademasters were floating in the air at different points, their blades lying limply along their long pole bodies since they weren’t spinning at the moment.

  All but the female Gnome in front – Violet – seemed nervous seeing all of the constructs around, though Sandra thought it could also be the fact that they were inside of a dungeon at all that caused them to use one of their hands to grip one of their Steel knives at their sides. Violet, on the other hand, looked wary but not necessarily afraid or worried; Sandra was starting to like the small woman – her fortitude during the attack and her determination to save her fellow villagers were excellent qualities in a leader. And a leader she suspected the young Gnome was in actuality, though obviously a reluctant one at that.

  In the tunnel leading to the third room, they were turned aside by the stone door that was opened in the side wall, and the Ape holding the old Gnome and the Wolves following them immediately stepped through the doorway. As soon as they were all inside – including a Repair Drone (the rest had stayed behind or were outside the dungeon again), the pair of Shears that was essentially the gatekeeper swung the door closed silently; it was only when it was locked a noise was made, and it was the first indication to the Gnomes of what was happening. A few of them looked back nervously at the now-closed entrance as they realized they were trapped inside of a dungeon with no visible way out. It couldn’t have been the most comfortable of feelings, but she couldn’t explain that it was for their own safety.

  A short hallway led to the top of her VATS, with the two holes in the floor: one hole was where you could drop down and the other for when you came up. Just like Kelerim, these Gnomes were highly confused, though Sandra wasn’t expecting them to move from there yet. Without instruction and the promise that they wouldn’t die if they jumped down, it was unlikely that they would attempt it anyways.

  Instead, they were greeted by an Articulated Clockwork Golem…and a good-sized pile of Large Elemental Orbs Sandra had moved up from her “treasury”. It’s time to get to work.

  Chapter 19

  This was much easier with an unconscious Kelerim, Sandra couldn’t help but think.

  She needed to accomplish two things; one, establish a mode of communication; and two, heal the grizzled old Gnome, Felbar. To do both of those things, however, she needed to use her Dungeon Visitor Bond skill on at least one of the Gnomes to get things started, but it was proving harder to do that than she thought it would be.

  With Kelerim, she had needed to try out every Elemental Orb and then combinations of the elements to eventually figure out that he had access to Fire and Earth; of course, that was made so much easier because he couldn’t stop her or question her methods. Trying to communicate what she wanted to do to the confused and nervous Gnomes was outrageously harder. Any amount of her Golem’s or her Ape’s pointing and hand-waving wasn’t getting them anywhere after about five minutes where the entire Gnome party started to get more and more agitated.

  “I don’t understand what you are trying to say. What are those small orbs you’re pointing at there? I’ve never seen anything like them before, but for some reason a few of them…feel…familiar,” the one called Violet said after none of them seemed to understand what Sandra was trying to convey.

  Ah…that might be the solution, then. She had been trying to point towards the pile of Elemental Orbs and then to the chests of the Gnomes, but that was doing absolutely no good. She had no clue how to improve on her message before, but with Violet’s last statement, she thought she might have an idea. It was the fact that a few of them felt familiar that led her to try another tact.

  From the battle back at the village, Sandra remembered seeing the woman using the Natural element as part of her temporary enchantment on her Steel knife; the quick rune she had etched on it had created three long spiked thorns that erupted from the blade when she struck at one of the lizards attacking her. It only lasted the one strike, but it was damaging and effective enough that it left an impression on Sandra.

  She took control of her Golem and used its clamp hand to pick up one of the Large Natural Elemental Orbs she had in the pile; bringing it over to Violet, she held it out to the Gnome. After another small bout of confusion, the small woman held out her hand and Sandra let it go, letting it land in Violet’s outstretched hand. As soon as the orb touched her skin, the Gnome gasped in shock and what appeared to be wonder as she gazed down at the glowing green orb in her hand.

  “Th—This is full of Natural elemental energy!” Violet exclaimed, before looking at the elemental orb closer. “At least, that’s what it feels like, but it’s subtly different,” she slowly said after a moment. “I feel a connection to it, though; it’s almost as if it resonates with the Natural elemental energy I can access…”

  Suddenly looking up and at the pile, she walked over and reached down, pulling out a yellowish orb. “And this feels like my Spirit energy!” she exclaimed, looking at the two orbs in her hands with wonder.

  That was apparently all it took, as the others scrambled over and picked out whatever orbs called to them; there were plenty for everyone, fortunately, because Sandra had made sure that there were nine of each Elemental Orb, just in case there were repeats. It was interesting to note that only Violet had access to two elements, while the others only had one.

  With that step at least partially communicated to the Gnomes, Sandra needed their help to save the old Gnome, Felbar. Again, using her Golem – she found it was easier and likely to be less intimidating to them with the smaller construct, since her Ape towered over them – she pointed to the pile and then to the rapidly dying Felbar, trying to convey what she needed. While she could theoretically just keep trying different combinations, it might end up taking too long and they didn’t have any time to lose.<
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  Violet, just like all the other times, caught on before everyone else. “You want to know what elemental energies Felbar has access to?” she asked. Her Golem didn’t really have a neck with which to nod yes, so she instead just shook her arm up and down. That was all that was needed, fortunately, and Violet immediately picked out two orbs out from the only slightly diminished pile and placed them in front of Sandra’s construct.

  “I’m assuming this is Fire and I know this one is Spirit,” Violet stated, pointing to a red one and a similar yellow one like the one still in her hand. Sandra immediately picked them up and hurriedly placed them on Felbar’s chest. After stepping back, Sandra concentrated on establishing a Dungeon Visitor Bond with the dying Gnome – and she felt the tugging at her Core that signified that it was starting to work.

  While establishing the bond with Kelerim had taken 1,000 Mana and 5,000 Raw Materials to complete, only half that amount was consumed in the creation of the bond with the old Gnome. She wasn’t sure if it was the smaller size of her target or if that had only been a one-time thing; either way, it meant that the resources she currently had at the moment filling up her core would be plenty to establish a bond with all of them.

  The same bright golden glow erupted from Felbar’s chest as it had when she bonded the half-Dwarf/half-Orc, and the others screamed out in pain, closed their eyes, and looked away. The light fortunately only lasted a few moments before it faded to a lower level, leaving the sight of the old Gnome with the front portion of his strange faded-rune-covered suit burnt away and a bronze-colored gear covering his chest like a tattoo. And, just like Kelerim’s had been, if Sandra looked at it in a certain direction, she could see little flecks of red and yellow inside, signifying his elemental affinities.

  When they could see again, the Gnomes looked at Felbar and shouted out in surprise, Violet included. “What did you do!?” she yelled out, kneeling down by his side and hesitatingly reaching out to touch the tattoo covering his battle-wound-scarred chest. Before anyone else could freak out, they all stopped their yelling when the Repair Drone hovered over and brought out its two thin arms; placing the metal pads on the old Gnome’s broken leg, Sandra saw red and yellow energy flow out from her Drone and into Felbar.