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

took to arrive at the threshold of the first room, and she got a better look at it.  Not that it helped, because she still couldn’t see anything – it looked just as empty as it had from the entrance.  While Echo had only been in a single dungeon before – albeit briefly in a quick training mission decades ago – she had heard that they were generally all the same.  Monsters would be filling the rooms, traps would be laid for the unwary, and death awaited around every corner.  The room she stared at for almost a minute, however, looked quite unlike what she remembered – or had heard – about.

With her bow still out in front of her waiting for an attack, she took a single cautious step inside the room and everything abruptly went dark.  She almost yelped at the sudden loss of light, but her Ranger training had drilled into her the need to be unseen and unheard – so she held it back.  Besides, the darkness was only temporary as she used the dwindling supply of Holy elemental energy she currently possessed and wrapped a band across her eyes.  The darkness lit up in her vision a bit; it wasn’t quite what it was before the darkness descended, but she could at least see an outline of the room again.

A sound off from the left of the room caught her attention, and she jumped in astonishment when a big, heavy form stomped its way from around the corner and slowly headed in her direction.  A quick look with her eyes around the corner showed other forms, though with the very low light and lack of movement, she couldn’t really tell what she was looking at.  Either way, her twitch must’ve been enough to show some of her own form, because the big heavy thing walked faster.

Before she could think, her fingers pulled back her bowstring and released her arrow.  A split second before it left the string, she pumped a little bit of Holy elemental energy into the arrowhead – not as much as she wanted, but some – and it flew toward where she thought the head of the creature was.  If it was an undead like she was now suspecting – given the darkness and obvious Nether-element-based trap – then even that much would do a bit of damage.  She nocked another arrow even as the previous one flew and watched it hit, creating a brief flash of light as the Holy energy discharged…and it didn’t seem to have any effect.

In fact, it almost sounded like her iron arrowhead smacked right into a metal wall, for all the effect it had; Echo also heard the shaft snap into pieces, and she lamented the loss of one of her newish Ironwood arrows.  Rather than stick around however, she turned around and ran; she ran faster than she ever had before, pushing all of her energy to speed her along as fast as she could.  She left up her active camouflage as long as she could, but three-quarters of the way back to the village she had exhausted her capacity for the moment. That was fine, though, because she was pretty sure she was out of direct danger from the dungeon and its strange monsters outside.  She turned around and walked backwards to see if any were following her, but she didn’t see anything; she glanced upwards to see if there were any of the metallic objects, but either there weren’t any there or it was now too dark to see.

She was exhausted, but she needed to get back to warn everyone about the threat out in the wasteland, so she pushed herself to run as much as she could.  As she got closer, she could see Wyrlin – one of her fellow Rangers – on the outside border of their arborents, the dwellings that were quickly grown from a small brown Boren seed with Natural elemental energy.

“You’re late – I was starting to get worried about you; though, I guess I shouldn’t worry since none of those monsters can see you enough to hurt you,” said the bronze-haired Ranger good-naturedly.

Her breathing had returned to normal by that time and the panic she had experienced had died to a small simmer, so she was able to respond to him without sounding like she was in pain while she closed the distance between them.  “That’s a good point, though that’s not why I was late…is Elder Herrlot still up?”

He looked confused at her question.  “Of course she is – you know she doesn’t sleep nearly as much as she used to; besides, it’s barely dark out here.  Do you want me to go get her?”

She was finally close enough that she didn’t have to speak loudly to be heard.  “Yes, but while you’re at it, bring everyone you see to the gathering circle – I have some grave news,” she told him seriously.  “I’ll help, but hurry – this can’t wait.”  All sense of joviality that Wyrlin possessed before she spoke was gone as he turned to go fetch the Elder.

There wasn’t an arborent large enough to contain every villager, so when they had to have a meeting with everyone in attendance, they used the open circular center left for that purpose in the middle of the village.  As much as she wanted to run shouting in a panic about what she had seen, Echo helped to quickly round up the rest of the village inhabitants – which didn’t take long.  The commotion of her arrival had caused most of them to emerge from their dwellings, anyway, so within minutes everyone was present and accounted for – including the leader of their little village, Elder Herrlot.

The rest of the villagers were, for the most part, hunters or Rangers, tasked with culling the nearby dungeon monsters or gathering meat from the wild beasts still alive