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

center elevated section where everything emerged was a small sphere of metal that glowed even in the daylight.  It was behind several low barricades that blocked it from being seen from the ground, but she would’ve bet anything that the glowing sphere was its…energy source?  Heart?  Whatever one of Sandra’s constructs had that powered it, at least.

Craziest of all – if she had to pick one thing – was that the cube construct started to move.  First, it slammed down its hammer into the struggling green-furred monstrosity, cracking the rest of its chest open in the process, and then another few smashes on its lower torso and finally its head ended its life, and it dissolved into whatever dungeon loot it left behind.  Then, it scuttled over the ground by lifting up its eight legs like some enormous metal spider and hunted down the scattered beasts, slicing into them with swords, tearing them apart with its spinning sawblades, and smashing others flat with its hammer that it repeatedly slammed into the now-fleeing beast monsters, until nothing was left alive.

Chryla could only sit there stunned while she watched one—one—of Sandra’s constructs completely obliterate hundreds of dangerous beasts.  She absently turned around to look at the other side of the field, where the Rangers there and those that were still on their feet on the beast side were assisting to finish off the rest of the slimes, though she could see a few places where the root wall had been eaten away.  She did a quick count and noticed that there were only 36 Rangers on the wall other than herself, though she found another three when she looked inside of the village.

Mistal, of course, had been killed when the bear-monkey had slammed into her, but the damage was apparently enough to kill the thrown monster as well as there was no sign of it.  The other two were thankfully alive after being blown off the wall from her massive explosion, though they were currently being healed of what appeared to be serious injuries by two of Sandra’s strange healing constructs.  She knew how well they worked and didn’t have a doubt that the two that had been hurt would be back on their feet in a short time.

She pulled herself up and jumped down to grab more bolts to help with the cleanup of the rest of the slimes, which appeared to have dwindled in number significantly.  In fact, by the time she climbed back up, the last few were being skewered by bolts at extreme range as they tried to flee.  With their winged lizard slime tackled out of the sky by the massive bird – which she didn’t see either of anymore – the Rangers, metal snakes, and even the loud spinning blades (though they didn’t work quite as well against slimes) – were able to concentrate on killing the “normal” slimes.

“Sandra?” Chryla asked the air as she saw the metal cube surveying the field where it had just slaughtered hundreds of beasts stop where it was.  Then, as if by some spell, all of the flung spears of metal that were shot out at the beginning were sucked up into the cube from where they fell, the swords along the legs turned back into little bubbles and returned to the cube, the arms with sawblades were pulled back inside along with the massive hammer, and then a few other pieces that had been knocked off (apparently, a sawblade arm and three swords had been broken off during the slaughter that she didn’t see) were sucked inside the cube as well.  Finally, the eight legs let down the metal construct so that it sat on the ground again before they too were sucked back inside.  In less than 15 seconds, it was back to being a 15-foot-tall metal cube that sank nearly a foot into the soft dirt of the field.

* Umm…I swear I didn’t know it would do that, though I’m glad it did.  I couldn’t get it to do anything but move as a cube before, but now I know why it was so expensive Mana-wise. *

Of all of the things that Sandra had told her, the news that the dungeon didn’t even know what one of its monsters could do was the most frightening.  It was scary that such an entity had such power and she was glad that Sandra was on their side.  At least she hoped that was so.

“Thanks, Sandra.  Do you think we can continue borrowing that in case they attack again?”

* Absolutely, it’s all yours. *

That was good, because she was sure another attack would be coming…as soon as the dungeons built up their forces again. She was worried what the next attack would bring, and she prayed to the Creator that Echo and the Elder got their task done in the capital and got them some help, because she knew the wait for the attack would be even more stressful than the attack itself.

Chapter 32

Wow.  I was certainly not expecting that.

The transformation of the 15-foot-wide Steel cube that comprised the Mobile Fortification was a complete surprise; it was a welcome surprise, but a surprise, nonetheless.  Sandra was just hoping that by moving it towards the 50-foot-tall Beast she could run it over, though what actually happened was that it basically delimbed the bottom portion of the Dungeon Monster.  It occurred so quickly that it was hard to see it happen, but the results spoke for themselves.

The problem was that Sandra still wasn’t exactly sure how the Fortification was activated in the first place.  She watched as the gargantuan green-furred Beast tried to attack it even after it had its legs cut off, which seemed to initiate the change; however, when she tried to attack it with various constructs back in her Home room, nothing happened.  The fact that it happened at all was amazing, so