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

she wanted to do everything she could to kill him.  However, other than sending in additional constructs – which she did from behind, as she sent half of the constructs that were fighting outside racing through the Roc tunnel – there wasn’t much that she could do to directly influence the battle.

The Air trap worked beautifully, though it had been delayed from fully activating until one Orc happened to step just past the trigger she had placed; it had normally been set up to divide the intruders up on either side of the room so that they could be picked apart by the two Rocs, but that didn’t happen because one was already dead.  The second one had just been beat down by the Warlord, with the Elite leader helping, when she finally activated the two Mobile Fortifications she had placed in there as insurance in case things went wrong.

After the remainder of the Orc Warriors, Elven Rangers, and Wyrlin were squished by the Fortifications, Sandra instructed her Automatons inside of the stone wall blocking most of the tunnel exit to drop their bombs.  They exploded in spectacular fashion near the base, blowing out massive chunks of stone that Sandra was disappointed didn’t hit the powerful Warlord and Elite standing in the middle of the room, looking on in shock as the wall collapsed, sealing off the tunnel from her Home room.

Instantly, Sandra lost all connection to the tunnel and all of the traps in the previous rooms disappeared.  She also nearly lost all connection to the final room where her Mobile Fortifications were, which she hadn’t even thought of when she put the fail-safe wall into place; she couldn’t really look outside the non-existent “eyes” of the Fortifications, and trying to do so for a second or more was painful.  If it hadn’t been for the fact that one of her Hyper Automatons had survived being buried inside the wall, where it had been knocked to the edge and its lower legs pinned under multiple tons of stone, she would’ve been entirely blind.

As it was, she had an obstructed view of the room from up high, just enough for her to direct one of her cube-shaped constructs to turn and ram into the Warlord. She thought that would do it, but Kelerim’s father surprised her again as he managed to punch forward right as he was about to be rammed, which knocked the cube backwards in an uncontrolled roll with a massive dent in its side.  When it settled to a stop, it immediately started its transformation, but Sandra could instantly see that something was wrong; only 4 legs extended out and lifted the Fortification off the ground, half of the swords that emerged from those legs were broken, and only a single sawblade arm extended out from its central platform.  Even the power source up top was partially exposed and seemed cracked, showing that the powerful punch had done some serious damage to the cube of solid Steel.  The hammer that seemed to be its “main” weapon was the only thing that seemed undamaged.

The Fortification walked unsteadily towards the Warlord, swinging its swords and spinning its sawblade, ready to take the Orc apart.  Unfortunately, the powerful Orc wasn’t done, because he immediately closed with the powerful construct and leapt onto one of its legs, punching downwards and bending the steel enough that it caused the leg to fold nearly in half.   The collapse of the leg sheared off the appendage at the point of impact even as the Orc ran up the upper leg of the falling Fortification, leaping again and landing on top of the central cube platform, where he pounded down on the power source a few times until it cracked – and then exploded with as much force as one of her bombs she had made for her Goblins in the second room to throw.

Even that didn’t kill him, but it did fling the Orc across the room, where he landed and rolled to a stop in a heap.  Sandra knew it didn’t kill him for two reasons: one, she didn’t feel the surge of Mana from his death; and two, because he began to stir and pick himself up.  She couldn’t allow him to recover too much, however, so she attempted to instruct her other Mobile Fortification to move and smash into him before he was ready, but her view of it was obstructed.  When she thought she had her construct turned and lined up correctly, she had it move forward, but instead of hitting him, the Fortification hit and completely demolished the body of the Elven Elite woman, flinging her across the room so hard she practically adhered to the far wall.

Her large construct was then frozen where it was for 10 seconds before she could move it again, which gave Kelerim’s father the chance to get to his feet, shake his head, and then see the other cube of metal in the middle of the room.  He rushed it and swung his fist out at it – but the construct wasn’t in the process of moving this time and it dodged out of the way like  she’d seen it do before, immediately expanding into its other form.  Steel spears shot in all directions but managed to miss the Orc somehow, but its other weapons would hopefully be more than enough.  The Warlord was imbalanced as his punch didn’t land the way he thought it would and he turned halfway around as he tripped and fell to the ground.

The difference in him since he had been flung away by the explosion was staggering; Kelerim’s father looked exhausted, not only from the fighting, but she could see the tell-tale sign of elemental energy overuse.  She was actually surprised that he hadn’t been knocked unconscious, because he looked exactly like her mercenaries looked when they used all of their energy in an attack.

He got