The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4) by Jonathan Brooks (e book reading free txt) 📕

don’t think that is necessarily safe for your dungeon,” the Dungeon Fairy said after she had recovered enough to form a coherent question.

That was an understatement.  Without the literal limiting factor of the special Limiter rune to keep it at a reasonable transfer of Mana towards the Fireburst enchantment, all 800 Mana involved in the creation of the Energy Orb was consumed instantly.  Sandra had thought that it would just be a more impressive explosion than the one that had nearly destroyed her Ape, but the result was much different than even she had expected.  Looking at the damage that the explosion of flames did to her Goblins in the room was bad enough, but seeing what it did to her dungeon was even worse.

A hemispherical-shaped hole was blasted into the hard stone floor of the room about 15 feet across, with stone shards from the enormous force embedded into the stone platforms and even the ceiling; upon further investigation, she discovered that some even went down both the entrance and exit tunnels of the room, reaching incredible distances.  It was only by luck that Winxa hadn’t been hit by one – and she didn’t think it would be a good idea to mention the near-death experience to the Dungeon Fairy.  She was fine, after all, though she would make darn sure she experimented with anything before she saw it for the first time.

There were also large cracks on the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room which were likely caused by the shockwave slamming into them, which was just another indication of how powerful it had been.  There was no way she could use something like that without compromising the integrity of her entire dungeon, mainly because the explosion seemed to be felt even by the Dwarven villagers, who were miles away from it.

Ok, yeah – that was a bit too much.  I think if I stuck to some smaller Energy Orbs…

“You’re dangerous, you know that?”  Winxa interrupted her thoughts on how to scale back the explosion, though Sandra could see a smile on her face – even despite being almost killed.

Uh…thanks?

The Dungeon Fairy responded with something, but Sandra was distracted and didn’t hear what it was.  That was because, one right after the other, the 4 Dungeon Cores nearest the Dwarves and the Elves suddenly finished their Core Size upgrades.

Chapter 28

Wyrlin’s legs and feet were exhausted and his lungs burned in his chest with every breath he took.  He and his group of Rangers had been walking practically non-stop since they had been taken captive back near the forest’s border, with only a few rest stops along the way.  He had gotten perhaps 4 hours of sleep over the last three days and he could feel his eyelids wanting to droop of their own volition.  The only thing keeping him awake was the fact that they were surrounded by hundreds of huge Orcs that seemed capable of snapping him in half with one green-skinned hand.  While he (and many other Elves, he was sure) thought of them as little more than savages that would prefer to rip the leg off a beast and beat it with its own limb rather than adopt the much-safer practiced stealth of a Ranger’s hunt, he had to admit that they were stronger, fitter, and had much more endurance than he or his group did.  Savages they might be, but they were powerful savages, nonetheless.

Well, I guess I can’t complain too much; at least I don’t look ready to kill myself like Fyola and the other robe-wearing Elites.

The bow-wielding Elites were in relatively the same shape endurance-wise as Wyrlin and his Rangers, but Fyola and the others were like walking corpses.  The thought of the undead made him shiver in the midday heat, but it was an apt description; no amount of pleading from their “leader” could get the Orcs to stop for more time than they were allotting.  She even refused to move one morning after only being given an hour of rest, but the Orcs were having none of her protestations – and Wyrlin was loving it.

They weren’t going to carry her and weren’t going to leave her behind, so they resorted to pushing her body with their feet (which such prodding did absolutely nothing to convince her to move) and then kicking her hard enough to shift her forward a few feet (which worked marvelously to change her attitude).  Especially when there was a conversation he couldn’t understand, but which he could easily translate to, “We will kick you the entire way to our camp if we have to.”

Wyrlin was forced to admit that he admired her – and the other Elites’ – restraint, because despite being kicked around and forced to march in the hot sun and even through the night for hours on end, she hadn’t once retaliated by manipulating her elemental energy.  He grudgingly also had to admit that if he were in the same position, he would have had a difficult time not making his severe displeasure known, which probably would have ended up with his death when he killed the Orc kicking him.

From what he could determine, it was only through Mercyll’s efforts that they were all still on their feet.  The soft-spoken Elite used his Holy element to soothe some of the aches from everyone’s bodies caused by the forced march, though even that took its toll after a while.  He had been forced to use the spell more and more on the robe-wearing Elites (including himself) and it was slowly robbing them of their endurance.  From what he understood, the Rejuvenation spell was perfectly safe when it was used in temporary situations, but the prolonged use tended to sap physical energy away quite rapidly.  That was why those Elites who needed it more looked like the walking dead, reluctantly putting their feet in front of each other without