The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4)

by Jonathan Brooks

  Powerful shots from the Elite archers ripped literal holes into the moving stone monsters; one had used a massive amount of Earth energy in his shot that basically shattered one of them; another launched an arrow that landed in front of one and created a whirlwind of air that lifted two of the stone monsters off the ground and flung them away, where they shattered against the wall. The last three were skewered by arrows wrapped in a chunk of ice that acted as a kind of drill, rotating fast enough to burrow a hole a foot wide into each of the monsters. That was apparently all it took to kill them, because they crumbled apart and disappeared shortly thereafter, leaving behind their dungeon loot. All of the others had dropped something when they were killed, but none of them had even looked at the loot – they had more important things on their minds, and he didn’t look at these ones, either.

  Which brought him to his current location, looking inside the next room. It appeared as though it was huge, and he was hoping and praying to the Creator that this was the last one, because he didn’t think they could take much more. Other than Rothgar Bloodskull, who didn’t have a scratch on him – and come to think of it, hadn’t actually done anything other than skewer that traitor Orc near the entrance – none of them were uninjured in some way or another.

  I have a feeling that’s about to change, he thought, as he limped ahead and into the next – and hopefully last – room.

  Chapter 40

  “I’ve got nothing left to negate the Air trap in this room,” Fyola said as they stood on the threshold to the room. Wyrlin could understand where she was coming from, because he was on the last dregs of his own Earth energy as well; he thought he might have enough left over for a single enhanced arrow, but that was probably it. He’d rarely used that much energy before while out hunting monsters in the forest, and he didn’t like the way it was draining him of physical endurance the further he drained his energy levels.

  “We’ll just have to make do with what we have, then,” the Warlord said, directing some of the few Orc Warriors they had left to investigate the room. “If I’m not mistaken, this should be the final room; I can nearly feel that the center of the dungeon is very near.” There was a long overhang at the entrance to the room, which blocked those who were still in the tunnel (which was pretty much everyone else) from getting a view of the room as a whole.

  The five Warriors walked inside, looking left and right with their weapons out, prepared to destroy whatever attacked them. Nothing happened to them, though, which in itself was suspicious; they traveled about a third of the way towards the room’s exit, which appeared to be filled in with stone, leaving a 10-foot-wide and tall tunnel to – if Rothgar Bloodskull was correct – the dungeon heart.

  It was at this point that Wyrlin heard a faint *whoosh* sound and he thought that the trap must have been finally activated. However, it turned out to be something else as the Orcs turned as a unit to their right – and looked up; their surprise was evident on their faces for all of a second before a brown blur streaked past those in the tunnel and the injured Ranger received a brief sight of some sort of bird…and then it was gone – along with the five Orc Warriors. He and the others could hear brief roars of pain coming from the Orcs, and then silence again after a few seconds. The next thing they knew, five mangled and torn-up bodies slammed into the ground near where they had been snatched up, bouncing a little from the impact.

  “What was that?” he couldn’t help but ask.

  “I’d say that was some sort of Roc,” Mercyll said, but the confused faces on everyone else (except Fyola) made him explain a little more. “It’s basically a big bird – a really big bird.”

  That seemed easy enough to kill, though with its speed Wyrlin thought that it might be hard to hit. The other Rangers still alive – as well as the Elite archers – seemed to think the same thing, but the Warlord seemed…happy.

  “Finally! A worthy challenge!”

  Crazy Orcs.

  Other than the magnificent sword throw he had seen the Warlord perform near the start of their dungeon nightmare, Wyrlin hadn’t seen him exercise his power and abilities; he didn’t even think he had necessarily used any energy to throw that sword, either – he was just naturally that strong. If he thought that he could fight and kill one of those “Roc” things, then he was welcome to try.

  With some more orders thrown out in his Guttural language, the Warlord directed his Warriors to spread out and advance slowly – or at least that was what he assumed from their positioning and actions. “Back them up and fire when you can, but stay behind us; this is what we are trained to do,” Rothgar then said to the Elves, and they obeyed; not because they were necessarily under his command, but it made the most sense so there was no reason to argue. Honestly, Wyrlin just wanted everything over with so he could heal his wound properly, and the best way to do that was to listen to those who had much more experience killing giant monsters than he did. It helped that Fyola and Mercyll didn’t contest the order either.

  At nearly the same distance into the room, there was another *whoosh* sound and the massive bird came at them again; now that he knew what he was looking for – and was now inside the room a little ways to lend his support – he could see the Roc descend from up above, rotate in the air, and then dive straight for the scattered Orcs. He took aim and estimated where it would end up, launching his last Earth-enhanced arrow into the bird, striking it in its chest and penetrating deep; that didn’t prevent it from snatching up 2 more Orcs in the process with its massive beak, even as it took another few arrows to various parts of its body. A few of the Rangers missed entirely, but of those that hit it, they impacted and obviously did some damage.

  The 2 Orcs in its beak were crunched and spit out even as the bird landed awkwardly 100 feet away to their left. It turned towards them and let out a painfully deafening screech that caused him to drop his bow and cover his ears, but he was already too late; a thick wetness ran from his ears and a sharp pain throbbed inside of his head as his eardrums burst. After that, he removed his hands and found that they were sticky with blood and looking up he saw the massive Roc still obviously screeching – but he couldn’t hear any of it. He could feel the sound as it struck his body as a physical force, but as far as hearing…that was gone.

  He looked around and saw that everyone had been affected – even the Warlord. However, he only smiled at the green blood running from his ears and raced towards the bird, moving faster than any other Orc he had seen. There were a few Elves that could move that fast and even faster – Echo came to mind – but there was such strength behind the Warlord that made it seem much more impressive. When Rothgar was halfway to the Roc, he could see that it stopped screeching and was waiting for the Orc to come to it.

  The whole scene was a little ridiculous-looking; the bird was at least 100 feet long and 50 feet tall, and the 9-foot-tall Orc Warlord looked comparatively tiny – and he didn’t even have a weapon. As soon as he was close enough, the Roc pecked down with startling speed, hoping to snatch up the Warlord like it had all the other Orcs, but Rothgar wasn’t going out like that. Instead, he gracefully danced aside as the beak slammed into the stone to his side, just barely missing him; with the same smile stuck on his face, the Warlord punched the bird in the side of its head while it was literally at eye-level.

  The upper portion of its beak shattered, and the bones of its face caved in with a crack before it snatched its head out of the way in obvious pain. Rothgar wasn’t done yet and sprinted to its legs, where he slid feet first and then kicked one of them so hard it snapped so thoroughly it practically folded in half, causing the bird to topple forward and to the side, crushing the Warlord. At least, it would’ve crushed the Orc leader, but instead Rothgar got to his feet and lifted the massive Roc above his head in a display of incredible strength (Wyrlin had no doubt that he was using large amounts of elemental energy to do that, because no one’s natural strength could lift something that heavy). As the bird tried to flap its wings to escape the War
lord’s lifting grasp, it was flung incredibly hard into the nearby wall and Wyrlin could only imagine that the sound of bones snapping could be heard – but of course he couldn’t hear it. The bird’s body hit so hard it bounced off and rolled halfway back to the one who threw it against the wall.

  The Roc was terribly hurt at that point, and it struggled to upright itself as Rothgar stomped the few steps he needed to move over to it and punched powerfully deep inside of its chest right through feathers, muscle, and bone, wrenching something inside and pulling his hand back out. In his hand he held the still barely beating heart of the massive bird, and he lifted it high above his head and faced the others, seemingly screaming something (but again, Wyrlin couldn’t hear it). The other Orcs pounded their fists against their chest and shouted something back, he assumed, just as the heart, blood, and the corpse of the Roc disappeared, leaving behind a shiny blue gemstone as loot.

  No one heard the *whoosh* that accompanied the arrival of a second Roc, least of all Rothgar. It all happened so fast that no one had a chance to react, though it was probably the sudden reactions on his remaining Warband’s faces that saved the Warlord from instant death. Instead of being snatched up by the beak coming in from behind him, Rothgar was able to shift just enough that he was instead only hit incredibly hard, launching him at least 100 feet and landing with what appeared to be bone-crunching force. Three other Orcs were snatched up and crunched with the Roc’s beak, though one managed to toughen up his skin enough that he didn’t die right away – but when he was released and fell to the ground, the impact certainly did some damage.

  The Warlord stood back up, looking a little worse for wear but not seriously hurt, and everyone got ready to shoot the massive bird when it came back; if they could repeat what they had done before, Rothgar could likely smash that one apart just as easily. However, the bird didn’t come back right away; instead, the Air-based trap that he suspected everyone had forgotten about – he had to admit that it had certainly slipped his mind – activated, and an extremely powerful wall of wind smashed into all of them. It split the group in half, sending one portion off to the left of the massive room and the other portion off to the right.

  Wyrlin felt himself flying through the air at great speed, unable to stop himself. He wasn’t sure how far he flew in an uncontrolled panic, but he hit the ground with enough force that the wind was knocked out of his lungs as he felt a few ribs snap. He rolled a few dozen times until he slammed up against a wall behind him, further aggravating the injury to his chest.

  As he struggled to breathe, to welcome air back into his lungs, he looked down to see a length of wood sticking out of his side. He hadn’t even felt it go in, but he must’ve landed on his bow and broken it in such a way that it impaled him when he rolled. The pain from it hit him just as he was able to take his first laborious breath, and he couldn’t help but tear up from the sheer torture his body was undergoing. His thigh wound was freely bleeding again, having been torn open further from the tossing of his body across the room.

  On top of that, Wyrlin was basically out of Earth energy, deafened from the Roc’s screech, his bow was broken, and he was bleeding out slowly – he was done for. He was able to shift enough of his body to look out into the room to see if there was any hope that they could salvage the situation, and someone could succeed where he had failed. Looking to his left and right, he saw Orc Warriors lying on the ground in various states of injury; a few of them had broken legs from being tossed so far, others had broken arms, and a few appeared to be dead from a broken neck. One of those with a broken neck wasn’t an Orc at all but Mercyll, the Elite spell-caster dead before he could react to the Air trap effectively.

  Most of Wyrlin’s Rangers seemed to have ended up on the other side of the room, where they also seemed to be in various states of injury – and not a single one still had an intact bow; Wyrlin angrily bemoaned the unlucky fate that he was the only one that seemed to be impaled by a sharp piece of bow wood. There, too, a few Orcs had died, but more – than on his side, at least – seemed to be able to at least pick themselves up.

  The amazing thing, however – and what gave Wyrlin some hope – was that Fyola, the three remaining Elite archers, and the Warlord were still on their feet and near the center of the room. They were currently trying to shoot down the Roc that was descending again, but it was ready for their attack; it folded its wings and dived under the archers’ shots, unfurling them again as it got close to the floor to prevent slamming into the stone. One of the Elite archers somehow managed to nock another arrow, enhance it with elemental energy, and then fire it before he and his fellow archers were slammed into by multiple tons of giant bird flesh. They were basically left as a smear on the ground as the bird crashed soon after, the arrow that hit it charged with something that caused its chest to catch fire.

  The Warlord raced over to take advantage of its attempts to right itself after its crash; and something that Fyola did caused the flames already coating the feathers on its chest to flare higher, prompting the bird to screech again, but it did nothing since they were all deafened already. Rothgar jumped high into the air mid-stride and came down on the back of the Roc, where he immediately punched it in the back so hard that Wyrlin could only imagine the tremendous *crack* from its spine being snapped in half. That one punch took all of the fight out of the massive bird and it soon disappeared underneath the Warlord, who stumbled in obvious exhaustion as he fell to the ground after being on top of the Roc.

  Across the way and near him, the Orc Warriors – where they could – pounded their fists against their chests again, which Wyrlin supposed was showing their pride and respect in their Warlord. Unfortunately, that was their last act – and the last thing that Wyrlin saw. From across the room, he watched a massive cube of metal at least 15 feet wide that he had overlooked near the corner float up about a foot off the ground, before it zipped across the far wall, completely obliterating everything in its path – which included Orc Warriors and his Rangers.

  Shocked, Wyrlin managed to turn his head, which was getting difficult as he lost a lot of blood, only to see a similar metal cube in the corner near his side of the room. He saw it float impossibly into the air…and then he knew no more.

  Chapter 41

  Sandra slowly came back to herself, the blood-red anger coating her vision and snapping her mind letting up just enough to comprehend what was going on. She tried to think back on what happened, but most of it was a bit of a blur; still, she had a fairly good understanding of what she had done. A tiny part of her mind had shouted at her to stop, but it was comparatively so miniscule that it had been easy to ignore.

  After her mind had focused on killing all of the intruders, Sandra had gone on a rampage with her Monsters, abandoning almost all of her defensive constructs in her main dungeon (a logical part of her mind kept the ones inside of the Roc tunnel in place) and sent everything she could out to the field of battle happening near her secondary entrance. She even pulled every single Automaton, Sentinel, and helper in the Dwarven residences and growing rooms, as well as all of her crafting stations. She belatedly looked around to see that she had the foresight to keep the “original” Unstable Shapeshifter inside of her dungeon, so that she wouldn’t lose all of the patterns it had cultivated from everyone it had touched. Other than that (and those within her Roc tunnel), the only thing defending her main dungeon were her traps.

  Then she had sent them all against the Dungeon Monsters that were constantly emerging from their long tunnels and all of the Orcs outside that had come to destroy her. She had lost all sympathy for them and they all needed to die – and she helped them on their way. Some part of her mind had luckily identified the mercenaries, Shieldmen, and Rangers that also came to help fight as friendly, which she thought was probably because they were Bonded to her. Everything else was slowly surrounded and killed.

  But that hadn’t been the end of it, however, because with every Orc death in the wastelands, Sandra gained
more Mana. Since she gained Mana, the four Cores also gained Mana – so they sent more and more Dungeon Monsters as a result. Sandra created a constant stream of constructs that she sent outside to surround the exit tunnels of the four Cores, where they would surround and kill whatever emerged. The constant outflow of Monsters seemed impossibly long, but eventually even they tapered off and stopped altogether. Soon after that, Sandra felt each of the tunnels cut off near its source as they were blocked off by the Cores. She could only assume they were using the Mana they had accumulated to upgrade their Core Sizes once again, which could only result in future problems as they unlocked greater and greater chances to produce a Dungeon Monster Sandra would have trouble destroying.

  That was for the future, though, and now she wanted to connect to those tunnels that the Cores had abandoned so that they wouldn’t be able to use them against her. However, in order to do that, she needed to have all of the invaders gone from her dungeon – which hadn’t quite happened yet.

  A portion of her mind had followed along as Kelerim’s father, the Elven Elites, Wyrlin, and the others made their way through her Roc tunnel. She knew she was tempted to throw wave after wave of constructs at them from her Home room, but even in her absolute rage she knew that if she didn’t take care of the problem outside first, they would be an even greater obstacle in the future. Therefore, almost all of her constructs were sent outside to fight, though towards the end she kept some in reserve nearby her Core in case they were needed.