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

The fifth room required her to sacrifice another half of her Singing Blademasters, as the trap inside the room was a line of unending sharp icicles that would shoot straight down from the ceiling, impaling anything that crossed the line.  Even her Apes with their Iron shells weren’t immune, and she lost one when an icicle slipped through a gap in its body and shot straight into its internal power source, killing it instantly.  The only solution she could come up with to get the rest of her constructs through was to have some of her Blademasters spin and impact the icicles, throwing them out of line.  The act, of course, was too much for her spinning constructs and damaged many of them beyond repair, but it was worth it to get the rest through relatively unscathed.

The sixth room was filled with a foot of water that didn’t seem that dangerous, and after a little bit of investigation she couldn’t trigger any traps.  Sandra then used one of her Mechanical Jaguars to wade through the water and test everything out to the exit; when nothing seemed to happen, she ordered the rest to enter the room and make their way across the mine-lake of water in the long, 100-foot-plus room.  Of course, that was when the reptiles that had turned back from the advancing army headed toward the Elven village arrived at the dungeon and immediately rushed inside.  She couldn’t see where they went after that, but they were near her constructs’ location within a minute and coming through a hidden passageway in the tunnel they had just passed through, so she was forced to fight them on the reptiles’ home turf.

Fortunately, the order to attack was given in plenty of time, and her constructs didn’t need any further instruction.  Like she had thought before, it was obvious that they knew exactly what to do against an enemy they could see – it was just the hidden traps that tripped them up so much.

It wasn’t quite the slaughter she was expecting it to be – like when they met outside of the Gnome village.  Instead, the crocodiles used the water extremely well, and even the giant turtles and lizards were able to dive under the water to attack from below; her Blademasters and Shears were next to useless because the water fouled up either their speed of impact or their spinning.  Legs were ripped off of her Apes as two or even three crocodiles latched on and pulled them apart; her Basher Totems had trouble hitting the quickly moving reptiles through the water, which also softened most of the blows they were able to land.  Her Mechanical Jaguars and Wolves actually had the best luck in fighting back, as the water didn’t hinder them as much as the others and they were able to quickly maneuver around to get the attackers before they could strike at the other constructs.

Despite being in hostile territory and literally in the reptiles’ element, her constructs still prevailed.  She ended up losing 7 more Ironclad Apes – bringing her remaining total to 8 – and 5 more Basher Totems – bringing them down to 7 – but the rest of her constructs fared much better.  Although she lost over 100 Small Animated Shears during the fight, she only lost 3 Singing Blademasters and one each of her Mechanical animals.  With a dozen of those, 15 Blademasters, and just under 900 Shears, she was still well equipped to take on the rest of the dungeon.  She was just glad that the entire reptile army hadn’t turned back; otherwise she wasn’t sure she would’ve had many survive an encounter like that with more opponents.

From what Sandra could tell by looking at the outside dungeon void, she looked to be over halfway done with the rooms before her constructs would arrive at the final Core Room – where she assumed and hoped the other Core was located.  Five more rooms separated her forces from the target, and she was determined to get there before they were all destroyed.

It was when they entered the seventh room that the first sign of a defender made an appearance; Sandra assumed that the other Core was making good use of all the Monster Seeds that had dropped from all of her constructs’ destruction and the fight in the sixth room.  That’s what she would’ve done, after all – use whatever resources were available to replenish the defenders.  Fortunately, it was just a few giant turtles that greeted her constructs, which were no match for the might of all her constructs combined together.

What was a match for them, however, was the trap in the room; there were rope-like whips of water that extended out from the walls and snatched up a few of her constructs up as they solidified around them.  Three more of her Basher Totems were lifted into the air and smashed into the ground, completely demolishing them within five or six hits.  Fortunately (or unfortunately – she wasn’t quite sure), her other constructs completely ignored the traps and hurried to the exit, though one of the Apes got snatched…and was held in place because it was too heavy to lift.  Sandra daren’t try to free it with another construct, because the other “whips” were done with their Basher beatdown and were liable to snatch something else up.

Therefore, she left it there to struggle trying to free itself, and Sandra could only hope that the Mana used to establish the trap would eventually run out – at least temporarily, until it recharged – and free her construct at some point.  She felt a little bad about leaving it there, but she had an objective to complete and couldn’t afford to lose any more than she already had.

Her constructs entered the eighth room and Sandra paused as something nagged at her.  She looked around the