The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4) by Jonathan Brooks (ebook reader with android os TXT) 📗

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 Warlord’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