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

moved at the speed of their slowest monster – the giant turtle.  Even given that it couldn’t move faster than Sandra could quickly walk in her old Human body, it was still much faster than the Ancient Saurians in the second group.

When the village was cleared by the other group, the massive lizards immediately turned to follow after Sandra’s constructs as well.  They moved so slowly, however, that unless they used that special ability that she had seen from the first one just before it died, it could take them a full day or more to reach Sandra’s dungeon.  That didn’t seem to perturb them, though, because they just plodded along, intent on getting to the Gnomes she had stolen away.

Before she had her pair of Shears leave the village and follow after the reptilian army, she noticed a veritable swarm of much smaller lizards emerge from the forest where she assumed the other Dungeon Core was located.  They were at most a foot long and only half that tall, so Sandra was confused at what purpose they could serve; they reminded her of her smaller constructs that were useful when she had been growing and expanding her dungeon, but they weren’t as useful for defense now as her other bigger and deadlier Dungeon Monsters.

Her answer was quickly delivered as the surprisingly quick lizards roamed over the field in front of the village and started to pick up in their jaws the Monster Seeds left behind not only from its previous own killed monsters, but from Sandra’s as well.  She saw them run back to the forest, where she assumed they would deposit them inside the dungeon where the Core there could either reuse them or absorb them for Mana and Raw Materials.

When the field was clear, dozens of them roamed through the village and literally plundered it, stealing whatever was small enough to carry off.  Sandra couldn’t help but think how many materials she could’ve found inside there too, which she had a feeling would be completely wasted when it came to the other Core.  They would likely all be only used as Monster Seeds instead of actual materials, which was a shame.

The one thing they didn’t carry back, however, was a shiny blue stone clutched in the jaws of Sandra’s Steel Python; she didn’t have a lot of time before they had to leave the Gnome village, but she made sure she grabbed the Seed dropped by the Ancient Saurian before they escaped.  While she didn’t get a chance to get a good look at it before her construct snatched it up, she had a suspicion of what it was – but she’d have to wait until it was back in her dungeon to be able to tell for sure.

Which was only a relatively short time later as her constructs carrying and protecting the Gnomes arrived at the entrance of her dungeon within a half hour.  Sandra’s Mechanical Wolves could’ve run even faster, but they had to match the speed of the Ironclad Ape holding the broken and unconscious body of the old Gnome.  Felbar, if she remembered correctly what the young woman had called him earlier.  He was definitely still alive, but there was a sporadic blood trail being left behind them as they ran, which meant that he needed some healing before he lost too much of his precious life-sustaining fluid.

Fortunately, she had prepared as much as she could while they had been traveling.  She knew it was a bit of a risk letting them all into her dungeon’s safe rooms, but she knew she had to start somewhere.

“Just make sure you’re protected; you don’t know these Gnomes like you knew Kelerim, and it’s always possible they could betray you.  Especially if they end up learning what actually happened…unless you choose to keep that a secret,” Winxa noted, as Sandra’s Wolves slowly brought the refugees inside her entrance.  As soon as they passed the threshold, she felt her ability to manipulate many of the things of her dungeon dampened like they did when there was an “invader” present.

I’m not going to keep that from them, as I want to be as honest as possible.  Of course, that is probably the biggest risk, but I’m hoping that once they get to know me a little, they’ll understand that it wasn’t intentional.  Besides, even if they do decide to attack me out of revenge, I have plenty of traps and defenders in my Home to protect me.  As soon as she had decided on her course of action, she brought quite a few of her new constructs into her Home for protection, before sealing off both entrances with her deadly Fire trap.  She had already moved everything out that she’d thought she’d need over the next couple of hours, so keeping herself essentially sealed up wasn’t going to cause her any hardships.

Sandra watched as the Gnomes entered her dungeon and she thought again about carving some sort of mural or something like that on the entrance tunnel to portray her non-threatening nature.  Or, if I can learn how to carve the stone along the outside, I can control one of my Apes and have them do the work for me.  That would require quite a bit more effort than just visually eliminating the stone through her normal Core absorption process, but she thought it could be done.

Despite the danger coming toward her dungeon, she had eliminated the Nether trap in the first room and the Holy trap in the second, so that it wouldn’t freak the Gnomes out and cause them to want to attack blindly – literally.  If Sandra didn’t have the newer rooms completed farther down, then she would’ve hesitated to remove them; as it was, however, she was fairly sure that they wouldn’t be as effective against the reptiles as she would hope, as she knew that most of them relied on senses other