The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) by Jonathan Brooks (english readers txt) 📗

More and more stalks of barley started to twitch as a veritable wave passed through the field, aiming unerringly for the line of armored Dwarves that assembled next to Gerold and Felbar – leaving him and the Gnome to defend the middle.  The villagers fell back and locked themselves in the Hall, the strongest and most defensible building in their small village.  Thinking about the night before his disastrous first day, he remembered being in there drinking at a small impromptu party with the other Shieldmen, celebrating his training completion; that memory also brought back how he had good-naturedly thrown one of the others through a wooden wall in a wrestling match – and the “strongest and most defensible building in the village” didn’t seem that strong.

My father probably could’ve built that thing out of stone and then nothing would get through; with it made almost entirely out of wood, however, it won’t last long versus one of those more powerful undead.

His roaming thoughts were brought back to the present as the constant stream of undead made its way through the barley field; he tensed up as the twitching stalks arrived at the edge nearest the village…and a small skeleton rat poked its head out and stared at the assembled Dwarves with the empty eye sockets of its skull.

“Boy, if you got us all worked up over a tiny rat—”

The rat was soon joined by the appearance of hundreds more, just barely visible at the edge of the light thrown out by the torches.  Gerold couldn’t help but think that if they had actual eyes, they’d be looking at hundreds of accompanying reflections – though the appearance of undead rats in their skeletal forms was bad enough.

At some unknown signal, the rats streamed out of the stalks and started to swarm over the assembled Shieldmen, as well as Gerold; they completely ignored Felbar in his War Machine…but he didn’t ignore them.  The ground shook a little as he slammed his warhammer down, completely demolishing a dozen rats at a time, before sweeping his weapon back and forth, picking up and tossing the rats aside in the process.  Gerold followed suit, smashing the rats which were fortunately having a difficult time climbing up the smooth metal of his Deep Delver; he eventually activated his Flame Cone enchantment with a flick of his right pinky finger to the activation spot, sending out a relatively small swath of fire around him, which was very effective against the weak undead.

The others were good at what they did, and despite the hundreds – or potentially thousands – of small rats swarming around them trying to reach the villagers in the back, they kept the line against the waves of undead.

* That’s just the first wave – the larger undead are arriving…now. *

Gerold’s senses had been overwhelmed by so many Nether monsters around him, but when he focused on that sensitivity, he could see that she was right…these were just the appetizer; the main course was coming up.

Chapter 28

Watching from above the village and fields from three dozen Reinforced Animated Shears, Sandra watched as hundreds of Undead streamed out from the trees, trampling the field of Barley in their effort to reach the Dwarves and lone Gnome.  She heard Gerold warn the others of the incoming horde, but they were still having trouble against the swarm of rats; well, not trouble, but the small skeletons were literally throwing themselves suicidally at the Dwarves.  Too late, she saw the plan: they were there entirely as a distraction, as the Dwarves were too busy trying to kill the smaller undead to prepare for the other, more dangerous ones.

* Tell them to ignore the rats – they’re coming! *

Both Felbar and Gerold tried to convey the problem, but the rats were just annoying to completely ignore.  As the Undead closed in, Sandra brought in her small force of 6 Phoenixes – who were able to arrive faster than the others – and swept them over the field, burning through over a hundred Specters before they burned out and crashed to the ground.  That was beneficial enough, but their bright appearance highlighted the rest of the field – and the horde of powerful undead heading their way.

The Dwarves finally understood the danger and did their best to ignore the jumping and biting of the skeletal rats as they prepared to withstand the charge of Undead.  “HOLD THE LINE!” the old Dwarf that Gerold said was named Bregan shouted, getting everyone’s attention.  They immediately faced towards the incoming enemies, letting all of the other distractions go as they settled themselves to receive the first wave.

Sandra briefly looked at her own main forces to see how far away they were and estimated that they wouldn’t get there for at least two minutes; the line of Shieldmen with Gerold and Felbar looked impressive – but she doubted they were going to hold intact for that long.  She didn’t think they were necessarily going to be overrun, but there would likely be casualties before they could be relieved.

The Undead dungeon had either gotten lucky or had planned exactly when their Core would be upgraded, because the attack turned out to come at probably the worst time possible for the Dwarven Shieldmen; after only 30 seconds of defending the line admirably against Ogre Skeletons, ghouls, the armored Undead, and a variety of zombies (there weren’t any smaller skeletons other than the rats), the first of the Dwarves fell, his armor disintegrating around him as he fell unconscious when his energy ran out.

Sandra could only imagine how different this would’ve gone if they had listened to Gerold and at least taken the Energy Orbs, because after a long day of culling the Dungeon Monsters in either forest hemming them in, most of the Shieldmen were dangerously low on energy already.  When their sleep was interrupted – the