With over 100 of them “born” with the first batch, they were doing exactly what Sandra had hoped: Spreading out and gathering ambient Mana to funnel back to her Core. She could tell the difference in Mana flowing towards her almost immediately, as the stick and leaf spiders succeeded in traveling far enough away from the Queen. It seemed as though the Territory Arachnid was creating a bit of a locational void in the Mana that was used to create more spider babies.
Before she lost sight of them, Sandra tried to order one of the newly born spiders around—but it was as if it was invisible to her attention. Uh, oh. Luckily, she found that if she concentrated on the Queen first and then the individual stick-and-leaf spiders, she could control them that way.
“They weren’t created by you specifically, and likely do not contain any Monster Seeds,” Winxa commented. “You could almost consider them an extension of that giant spider, so in order to direct them, you would have to direct the Queen.”
However it worked, Sandra was just glad that she could control them, even in a roundabout manner. It wouldn’t bode well if she had just released a horde of small, organic-looking spiders on the world, especially when it already had enough problems.
Another batch of eggs hatched, and then another one, and there didn’t seem to be any stopping. Eventually, the forest would start to suffer a bit from the hungry devouring of the Queen, but judging by the rate of attrition, it would probably take a couple of days before it became too much of a problem.
Seeing that her plan was working, and already feeling the difference in her Mana absorption, if still a tiny difference at this point, Sandra spent the Mana she had accumulated and created 4 more Queens, sending them out to different areas of the surrounding forests, where they could start their own webs and their own baby spider production. It was at that time that Furbrea and Owchet arrived at her workshop near the top of her dungeon, so she turned her attention to equally important matters.
Before she forgot, though, she made sure to order the 5 proliferating Queens not to attack – nor to allow their offspring to attack – any people. She didn’t want them swarming over any of the nearby villages because they were defending their territory, after all.
* Kelerim? Can you meet me in the upper workshop? We’ve got some strategizing to do…. *
Chapter 14
As morning dawned, anticipation merged with nervousness, infusing everyone’s minds and bodies. Violet wasn’t necessarily nervous, however, as she was too tired to really have any other emotion. The last week and a half had been a whirlwind of activity, and the Journeyman Enchanter had been pulled in what felt like a hundred different directions. She was used to being under pressure in Sandra’s dungeon, constantly creating enchantments in order to defend the dungeon or the people around the wasteland. But this was different.
For one, she barely used any of her elemental energy; not because she didn’t have any, but because she hadn’t really been enchanting. Instead, she had been teaching one group after another, demonstrating what she had learned as a result of her time in the wastelands.
Secondly, what she was doing was benefitting her people directly. As much as she enjoyed creating new enchantments and learning from Sandra, what she had been involved in hadn’t previously been of direct benefit to Gnomekind – but now it was.
Even under the threat of potential disaster, Violet’s people were eager to learn and apply new enchantments and Enchanting techniques. It was as ingrained in them as body manipulation was to the Orcs, or spell-casting was to the Elves; teaching what she had learned wasn’t so much a chore as a learning experience for herself, as well. Frequently, even as she taught something entirely new to a group, they would take it, turn it on its head, and figure out some new way to utilize it that she hadn’t even considered. It wasn’t even the Journeyman Enchanters that thought of new concepts, but even Novice, everyday people that developed these ideas.
Violet stretched and yawned as she walked out to the assembly space that had been designated right outside the capital. Felbar yawned next to her as he joined her in her march towards the command center. “You look as tired as I feel,” she remarked with another yawn, noticing the bags under his eyes. The grizzled Warmaster had joined Violet in showing off new ideas and techniques with demonstrations in his War Machine. While he didn’t have the advanced technical knowhow of the Machine’s enchantments, he knew enough to be able to show them off and to explain how it all worked. He watched over his precious War Machine like a mother hen with a chick, and he wouldn’t allow anyone near it without his express permission. She didn’t blame him, of course, because if something happened to it, repairing it might be a bit difficult without Sandra’s help.
“Yeah, I could’ve done with some more sleep last night, but coordinating today’s assault lasted far into the early morning.” As one of the senior members of the Gnomish Defense Force, Felbar and his fellow Warmasters had been planning the upcoming push in whatever free time he could find. Apparently, his free time was now considered any time he would normally get some sleep. Poor Felbar.
She patted him on the back, knowing exactly how he felt. For some reason, Violet had been put in charge of assembling all of the new strike forces, and with that responsibility came 1 or 2 sleepless nights; the instances where she was able to take a short nap were few and far between, though she didn’t regret the lack – especially after she surveyed the assembled weapons of war she had a hand in creating.
After acquiring their cache of Energy Orbs from the back of the Aerie Roc that had brought Violet and Felbar to the capital, it was determined that their use should be split up between creating enchantments and being used in those enchantments. Their elemental energy-regenerative properties were too much to pass up, and being able to create permanent enchantments without running out of energy in the middle of the process was advantageous.
She had needed to remind herself that her people had been creating enchantments for thousands of years without the advantage of Energy Orbs – and they were good at it. The main limitation had always been how much energy a person could contribute towards an enchantment, and working with others to provide that energy was a difficult-to-learn skill; with access to more energy via the Orbs, even a Novice Enchanter could create powerful enchantments. It wasn’t only knowledge that differentiated Novice, Journeyman, and Master Enchanters – it was how much elemental energy they could hold at one time. As a result, sharing the bounty of Orbs had allowed even inexperienced Enchanters to create something that required more of an energy charge than they were able to before.
The results of this mass empowerment were seen as she passed by the different Weapons of War in the assembly area. Groups of Gnomes were seen scrambling over mobile ranged contraptions made primarily of wood, enchanted with powerful Air and Natural-based enchantments. The way Echo’s bows were made – with the ability to bend without breaking by a variable combination of Transform, Flex, Movement, and Conform runes – were applied on a much larger scale to a ballistae-type machine. The long straight arms of the giant “crossbow” would flex due to an Activate rune and then snap back to their original position, providing a whole lot of power and force.
Then, from a Novice Enchanter’s innovation, a long wooden pole stuck out from the front of what those using the contraption called the Mass Accelerator, where the projectile would pass through another Activate rune suspended just above the pole. This rune would activate another enchantment on the projectile itself, one that was adapted from Violet’s description of what Echo could do with her Air-based elemental energy. The enchantment (using Pull and Buoyancy runes) created a small pocket of negative air resistance around the large wood and iron-tipped bolt, which effectively quadrupled the speed at which the projectile traveled.
After some experimentation, it was determined that a simple wooden shaft on the bolt would practically disintegrate upon impact from such speeds; as such, they were forced to add a thin iron core to the bolt and bands around the sh
aft to keep it together. This increased the weight, of course, which reduced the distance it could travel, but it also helped the bolt to penetrate its target even further. Not only that, but the bolt could be reused if the wood wasn’t too badly damaged. Were it not for the fact that the Buoyancy enchantment rune needed to be created on wood to be effective, they would’ve used an all-metal projectile instead.
Six of these Mass Accelerators were mounted on an oversized Hauler, where crews could swivel their weapons in relative freedom. As resources were scarce enough, the Hauler was made primarily of wood, other than its axles and tracks. Atop the vehicle was a wooden canopy that would help protect those inside from being attacked from above, while allowing sufficient freedom that they could vacate the entire Hauler if there was reason enough.
“I can’t believe you managed to replicate one of my War Machine’s special attacks; granted, it’s on a lesser scale, but it’s still impressive.”
Felbar was talking about the next Weapon of War, the Flame Thumper. Whereas Felbar’s War Machine could produce a jet of Flames that could roast whatever it was pointed at, the heat of which was intense because of the Energy Cube connected to it, Violet and the other Enchanters had come up with something a bit different. Instead of a long gout of ultra-hot flames that emerged from the War Machine’s “hands”, they had created a long wooden lance with a flat metal head that could be shoved right up against a monster before it was activated via an Activate rune near the handle.
It wasn’t a stream of flames that happened when the Flame Thumper was activated, however. Instead, using a Limiter rune to transfer the Fire energy stored up in the enchantment, a contained explosion occurred on the flat of the lance. This created a *thump* sound that gave the weapon its name, and a flash of intensely hot flames exploded outward, pushing with tremendous force. Anything touching the end of the lance would be blasted away, or at least severely hurt in the process.
Unfortunately, each Flame Thumper only had about a dozen charges before the energy contained in them ran out. They had created hundreds of the explosive lances, however, so they would hopefully last long enough to get the job done. The best part of them was the fact that the enchantments could be easily replicated and produced even as a temporary enchantment while in the field, as long as they knew the Limiter rune.
The next design for a Weapon of War was based on an enchantment she had helped Sandra come up with to improve Gerold’s Deep Diver suit before she left for home. The ability to create melee weapons was a unique one and would be powerful in the right hands, but it wasn’t something that the Gnomes would excel at; close combat without the use of ranged attacks or War Machines was dangerous for them, as they were a lot smaller and physically weaker than the other races. That wasn’t the only option for the enchantment, though.
The way the effect worked on Gerold’s Deep Diver was it would pull a bit of moisture from the air to create an ice-formed battleaxe, utilizing the Energy Orb inside to amplify that water into a new form. It was a brute-force enchantment that worked against the metal of the Deep Diver to manipulate water; the material used in the suit’s construction wasn’t necessarily suited to enchantments that dealt with Water, or even Air for that matter. Materials that worked better with Water were just about any type of material that allowed for absorption, such as cloth, soft wood, or even loosely packed dirt – none of which would work well with the Deep Diver.
The Gnomes weren’t restricted to using only metal, however. In fact, it was better to leave any type of metal for other weapons, because some of them required harder materials to make them work. Therefore, the cloth-wrapped wooden spheres they used as a medium for the Ice Bombs were more than adequate for their purpose. With the enchantment sequence utilizing the Absorption, Condense, Solidify, and Limiter runes laid upon the inner wooden spheres of the Ice Bombs, anything within a few feet of the weapon would have a bad day.
There was a clearly marked Activate rune on the outer cloth, along with a Delay rune in the sequence. When it was activated, the Gnome using the weapon would have 5 seconds before the weapon exploded into multiple shards of ice 3 feet long. Using a long, curved, hand-held launcher that they could whip forward, the Gnome could send the Ice Bomb up to 100 feet away – though at that distance, the Bomb would most likely erupt in midair.
At only a single use per activation, because all of the energy in the enchantment would be expended instantly, it was a costly weapon, but an effective one. Especially when they accidentally discovered that they could invert and rearrange the Absorption, Solidify, and Limiter runes to produce an unexpected effect: the wholesale absorption of any moisture nearby. This didn’t seem that effective at first, but seeing it in action was an eye-opener.
When thrown into a field of grass, the Absorption Bomb caused the organic matter to dessicate completely and fall apart within seconds, and the ground beneath was brittle and crumbling apart. A small mouse within a foot of the target area – not seen before the Bomb was thrown – had all of the moisture from its blood, skin, muscles, and even bones sucked out of it, leaving it a dead, dried-out husk that was barely recognizable as an animal anymore.
Powerful, and yet the effect was relatively small in area: A spherical space about 2 feet in diameter was all that was sucked dry. Attempting to make it stronger with additional elemental energy was largely unsuccessful, with only small increases in the diameter even with twice as much energy as before.
Now, if they had been able to use a Water Energy Orb with the enchantment, that might have made a much bigger difference. Doing so would consume an entire Orb, though, and they had precious few as it was.
There were a handful of other Weapons of War that didn’t require an Energy Orb to produce, which meant that they were able to create quite a few of them in the time allotted before they began their assault. For those weapons requiring an Orb, they were limited by the quantity of resources at hand – exactly 48 of them that weren’t being used by the Enchanters. With 6 Large Energy Orbs of each elemental type, there was only so much that they could do; what they did accomplish was impressive, nonetheless.
Seeing if they were actually effective in action was something else entirely – and it was about time for just that.
Chapter 15
The first thing Violet saw when she entered the command tent was the large table that had been erected in the middle of the area, giving them barely enough room to move around. It was necessary, however, because the table held a complete map of Gnomeria; on the map were markers indicating villages, towns, and the single city that existed outside of the capital, as well as their last-known defenses and current situation. Around the perimeter of their land, thick forests separated them from the other races, nigh impossible to pass through without an extraordinarily large amount of luck – or a massive force, neither of which they had at the moment (not that they had any desire to adventure in other lands).
Relatively near the inside border of those forests were dungeons, nearly 100 of them throughout the entire perimeter. Based on information that was at times updated daily or monthly, lightly tinted glass disks of different sizes sat on top of each dungeon, indicating the approximate reach – or “Area of Influence” as Sandra called it – of the dungeon monsters belonging to those dungeons. Throughout 85% of Gnomeria, the reach of the dungeons was appropriately small, as the nearby Defensive Forces were keeping up with the culling of monsters to keep them small.
There were a few exceptions, where it was obvious that a few had expanded recently, and the dwindling resources of the Defensive Force were shuffled around, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Overall, the defenses were kept to a point where there wouldn’t be much in the way of danger for most of the nearby people – at least for another decade or so, Violet figured, when the loss of so many Master Enchanters over the last few years would really start to be felt with the lack of new War Machines.
For the other 15%, mostly concentrated to the northeast, there was only speculation,
as reports from the area where the King and the rest of his party had been ambushed and killed were sporadic or non-existent. Based on which monsters had attacked them, it was easy enough to pinpoint the dungeons they came from – which had assumed reaches that were significantly larger than the others. Benchville, a small village near the area, was reported to have been wiped out completely, though the few towns and other villages near there had enough warning to have withstood the sporadic attacks, bolstered by emergency reinforcements. Those same reports indicated that it wouldn’t stay that way for long, however, as attacks were becoming more and more frequent, and casualties and losses of defenses were starting to mount up.
Which was why they needed to move quickly before things could become too dire, as much as Violet thought another week building Weapons of War would be beneficial. Then again, I’m not really a strategy person; I’m just here to flex my Enchantment knowledge to produce results. Besides, Felbar agreed with the assessment, so who was she to naysay the decision? That, and she didn’t want any more people dying than there was already, so the sooner they moved, the better.
“Thank you for coming, Violet, Felbar,” the young Enchanter heard as soon as she walked through the door with the old Warmaster by her side. Council Leader Brinda was there, as were the rest of the council members, along with those chosen to lead each contingent. From what she had been told, this was the largest undertaking the Gnomes had been a part of since the events that led to Sandra’s Wasteland, so having leadership throughout their Forces was important. Especially since more than half of them had been recruited from the general population, as their experienced Defensive Forces had taken recent hits to their ranks.
The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) Page 15
