The Crafter's Defense: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 2) by Jonathan Brooks (top 10 novels txt) 📗

angle of approach to it covered.  Not only that, but each pair of arms appeared to be able to independently swivel around in any direction, though it didn’t look like they could rotate quickly – so no massive “Singing fistmaster” was in store any time soon.

Once it was in place up in the uppermost room, she had it move outside for a moment and practice attacking the surrounding wasteland’s rock formations – she didn’t want to expend any Mana to fix any damage it did to her dungeon.  The results were spectacular; stone was practically pulverized into dust with each hit the Martial Totem performed on the rocks, and the damage to its own fists was fairly minimal.  She was sure if it kept up the abuse it would get just as damaged as the old one used to, but for a test it performed amazingly.  In her opinion, it was just as deadly as five (or more) of the original Basher Totems, which definitely made up for the increased cost.

While she was waiting for her Mana to accumulate so she could create some more, Sandra briefly contemplated converting some of her treasury into Mana and Raw Materials so that she could complete the reinforcements faster, but she ultimately decided to hold off until she was desperate.  There was no specific need to rush at the moment, as she was still accumulating more than enough to create what she required to replenish her forces – it was just going to take a bit longer than she was used to.  She just needed to have patience and it would eventually come to her – her treasury was for emergencies, and she wasn’t quite at that point yet.

Now, if her constructs completely failed in their objective and were wiped out to the last…then she would panic and dive into her emergency fund.  Until something like that happened, though, the smart approach was to keep on like she was doing.  What she did decide to do, however, was use the Monster Seeds in the treasury to create the reinforcements so she wouldn’t have to waste her Mana to make new ones.

Using some of those Seeds, Sandra did make a couple of the less-expensive constructs that had ended up leaving for the other dungeon, just in case she needed to change up the defense of anything.  To start, she created one of the new Reinforced Animated Shears – and was surprised at how large it was compared to the older version.  At about three times the length (approximately 9 inches), it was a lot deadlier-looking – especially since it was made of stronger metal than the last.  It wasn’t Iron or anything that solid, but when she rammed it into a nearby stone wall at high speed it only bent a little bit compared being completely destroyed like the original one would’ve been.

The new Roaring Blademaster was slightly longer than its predecessor (at about 2 and a half feet compared to 2 feet), but it was thicker around and had larger blades attached to the spinning pole.  Not only did they look like sturdier bronze blades instead of the flimsier metal from before, but they were also thicker – which deepened the higher-pitched whirring “singing” from before and turned it into a lower-pitched “roaring”.  She didn’t want to unnecessarily damage anything – including itself – so she didn’t have it attack anything, but she could sense that it was a higher-quality construct well worth the additional cost to create.

She was just about to see what the Mechanical Jaguar Queen (at 4,000 Mana) looked like, but then her Shears keeping an eye on things near the reptile dungeon saw the moment when the Elves were discovered.  The little lizard climbed up a tree on the edge of the forest and sat there staring at the Elven village a little over a mile in the distance.  Along some of the other trees, her Shears could see a couple other lizards arrive and do the same thing, until there was at least a dozen of them all along the forest’s edge.  Less than a minute later, the pair of Shears floating above the reptile Core’s dungeon watched as a flood of larger lizards, giant turtles, and crocodiles flowed out of the dungeon entrance – and headed straight towards where the Elven village was located.

The other Core must’ve learned something from the previous experience at the Gnome village – and the defense that Sandra had contributed to it – because instead of streaming ahead leaving the slower Dungeon Monsters behind, they stayed as a group and only advanced as fast as their slowest members, which was still fairly fast.  Strangely, they began to slow soon after leaving the dungeon, and around 200 feet past the entrance they suddenly stopped.

A large hole in the ground was revealed when some vines and underbrush were ripped away, and the two massive heads of the Ancient Saurians that Sandra had seen before emerged from hiding – or guarding.  They were still slow, but they moved with determination towards the Elven village with steady steps.  At the rate they were moving and the distance they needed to travel, Sandra guessed that they would arrive at the edge of the forest in approximately five hours.

Her own Dungeon Monsters arrived at the edge of the forest a few minutes later, and they quickly ran/flew through without pausing, searching for the dungeon entrance.  It was deeper through the trees, however, and moving through the trees was a little more difficult than passing through the wastelands – as strange as that sounded.  A couple of times her Steel Pythons got stuck underneath some exposed tree roots, and in some places the trees had grown so close together that it was difficult for her Basher Totems to pass through and had to go around, delaying them even further.

While they were navigating their way through, Sandra finally accumulated enough