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

the winged-lizard slime was finally heading their way, so she readied another explosive bolt to shoot towards it…but hesitated when she saw a massive blur out of the corner of her eye smash right into the flying slime, both objects crashing down 500 feet to the southwest of the village.  She could barely make out an even larger bird literally pecking out the tiny nuclei of the flying lizard, which looked like it had suffered some major damage to its entire form and was now a blob of goo that was spread all around.

A tremendous roar that seemed to shake her very bones coming from behind her made Chryla want to wet herself and throw her hands over her ears.  She turned around and saw that the others had continued their assault on the enormous monster, who was having none of it; turning to the side, the four-armed beast picked up one of the smaller bear-headed monkey monsters running past – which had to have been 10 feet tall still – and literally tossed it towards the walls, smashing right into Mistal and carrying them both off the walls, where they landed with bone-crunching force against one of the arborents.  In a rage, Chryla turned her attention back to the monster and shot out another explosive bolt, applying the enhancing spell 6 times to the bolt before she released, which made her sag in exhaustion and fall to her knees.

The monster didn’t even try to dodge, but instead nearly walked into the bolt as it hit it in the chest.  The explosion that resulted was larger than she had ever seen before and as it was only about 50 feet away from the walls, the shockwave knocked a few of the Rangers off their perches on the wall.  If she hadn’t already been kneeling, she probably would’ve been knocked off as well, but she managed to steady herself as a wave of hot air washed over her momentarily, taking her breath away – and burning her skin enough that she knew she would be in serious pain later…if she survived the next few minutes, of course.

Her temporary blindness from the explosive flash passed and she didn’t see the monster standing there anymore.

“Yes!  I did it—oh, no…”

She hadn’t seen the monster at first because it had been blown backwards at least 20 feet along with dozens of other beasts.  Right when she started celebrating prematurely, she saw the massive green-furred monster pick itself up off the ground with another massive roar that made her want to weep.  She had hurt it, certainly, because half of its chest had caved in and it was missing one arm on either side of its gigantic body – but she seemed to have just ticked it off.

Chryla reached for another explosive bolt, ready to try again with a slightly less enhanced bolt – because she was getting fairly low on Fire energy despite her regeneration – but she couldn’t find it next to her where she had placed it.  She looked around and saw that the shockwave had blown them all off the wall and into the village, where they had scattered all over the ground.  They were fortunate that none of the explosive bolts had been accidentally set off, or else their village might be in shambles at that point.

She scrambled to her feet to jump down and grab at least a few so that she could fight back, but she was interrupted.

* Hold on, I’m going to try to ram that thing with my Mobile Fortification. *

“Uh…what?”  The explosion seemed to have rattled her more than she thought, because she couldn’t for the life of her understand what Sandra was saying.  However, it all came back to her as the strange block of metal that had been sitting near the side of the southern side of the village rose into the air a foot or so and shot forward so fast she could barely see it move – though she saw where it ended up.  It didn’t hit the green-furred monster so much as take its place, cutting through its legs as if they weren’t even there and causing its upper body and the higher portion of its lower limbs to fall to the side.

* Well, that worked better than I thought it would— *

The monster wasn’t done yet, though, and even if it had basically lost its legs, the giant beast reached up one of its viscous clawed hands and swiped at the metal cube.  Miraculously, before the claws could make contact, the cube almost seemed to suck in that side of itself, preventing any damage.  Then something happened that she barely comprehended.

The cube rapidly expanded and tossed out eight “legs” of pure metal 30 feet out from its center mass in different directions, which slammed into the ground and raised the now slightly smaller cube off of the ground at least 15 feet.  Then the cube underwent a transformation into something out of a nightmare – a nightmare for the beasts that were caught out near it.

Spears of pure metal shot out in 30 directions in a 50-foot radius, moving through the air with such speed that they pierced through anything unlucky enough to be caught by them; bubbles of metal were fed through the “legs” which soon dripped down at staggered intervals, forming 10-foot-long swords a foot wide, which started swinging back and forth in repetitive motions, slicing through anything unlucky enough to be caught underneath; a dozen thin jointed limbs that looked like arms extended out of the central cube with what appeared to be spinning circular sawblades on the ends; and finally, though she could only see the side of it, the front face of the cube formed into a hammer that had a 5-foot-thick head on it.

The once-solid cube was now equipped with dozens of weapons all over its form, but in the