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

tree, where even all the armor he was wearing couldn’t save him.  His broken body fell to the ground, lifeless before he hit the dirt.

A roar that rivaled one of the Monsters’ emerged from the throats of the other mercenaries, and they all attacked with a greater ferocity than she had seen before.  Perceine, the Orc using the double-bladed sword, used her elemental energy to run forward and leap high into the air straight for the Beast’s head, where she rammed her weapon deep into its eye and into what Sandra suspected was its brain, before falling back to the ground bonelessly as the rapid expenditure of Air energy knocked her unconscious.  Bones were broken when she impacted the ground, and there were likely internal injuries, but she was alive.

The others concentrated on the second Beast, where they too expended most or all of their energy in a single or few uses.  They increased their strength enough to practically shear through one of the Beast’s legs with their strikes; the Earth-energy mercenary punched a knee so badly that the Monster lost its balance and fell down on its front; the dual-wielder stabbed it in the back and pumped venomous toxin into the wound, paralyzing the Beast, and the Holy-element wielding Orc seemed to shine with an inner light as he swung down his greatsword and cut through half of the Monster’s spine around its neck.

“Uh…what was that?”  Chryla had been one of the Rangers that had been assisting the mercenaries, and she was astonished at what had happened.  One of the Orcs was dead, while the others were unconscious after using all of their elemental energy.

* It seems as though they can be a little…hard to control at times.  Fortunately, it looks like their rage is all focused on the Monsters, so you shouldn’t have any problems from them. *

“Good to know.”

They recovered from their unconsciousness fairly quickly, though they were finally exhausted when they woke up.  Luckily, there were no other breakouts at that time, so they were able to heal them up via a nearby Repair Drone and then to rest when she sent them back to Grongbak.  There, they took possession of one of the huts, and were instructed by Sandra not to mention anything about her dungeon.

“There won’t be any problems with that.  I barely believe it myself, and we are all too grateful for what you’ve provided to want to jeopardize that,” Perceine said as they were getting ready to sleep for the night, their weapons close by in case they were needed.

* But…one of your friends died today?  Are you sure that you’re still grateful? *

Perceine laughed quietly, not wanting to disturb the others.  “He died exactly the way we would all like to die – fighting a monster.  It’s the challenge that we crave, what we live for, and you’ve provided exactly what we needed.”

It was a strange way to look at it, but Sandra thought she understood. She wasn’t going to complain, either, because she’d rather they be grateful than resentful for letting one of their number perish.

The days blended into one another after that.  It took all of one day for more Warbands to come and take the deal of exchanging their members for weapons and armor, providing her with more mercenaries.  With the help of her original 7—6, now—it was much easier to get them caught up to speed with their new life, and every single one of them was thoroughly appreciative of the opportunity that she had given them, as well as the Energy Orbs, weapons, and armor.  They were especially happy to hear that she was going to let them all keep what they were using after they finished their year helping with mercenary work.

All four dungeons continued to try their best to break out of their entrances, to varying success.  There were a few occasions where the Rangers and Orcs had to retreat back to the village and fight from there, which was made a little easier to convince them to do after the first deadly fight when they didn’t listen to Sandra and one of their number perished as a result.  The Mobile Fortifications proved to be the savior of the day, as well as her Aerie Roc that she had flying around the wastelands in case it was needed.  Though to be fair, the Rangers had done a superb job of keeping the Slimes contained, eliminating further Dragon Slimes before they could transform outside of the dungeon.

The third day of besieging the entrances saw a change in the behavior of the Beasts and Slimes, and then later the Goblins and Golems.  A half day of extra time in between assaults led to a massive exodus out of each secondary entrance, so much that the teams watching the smaller, main entrance were pulled away.  As soon as that happened and they were engaged at the main battle near each dungeon, swarms of smaller Dungeon Monsters emerged from the main entrance, scattering to all parts of the Core’s Area of Influence instead of trying to attack.

That led to even more constructs being built to attempt to cover everything, and Sandra managed to make enough constructs so that each dungeon was fully covered at all hours of the day.  There were at least 1,000 constructs on each entrance of various kinds, except for the Golems, where there were only 250 Apes armed with enchanted warhammers.  Still, 250 Apes was a significant number that could absolutely devastate any Golems that emerged, including the newer Iron Golems that had started to make an appearance.

Things eventually became a stalemate; the Cores were having no success getting many – or any – of their Monsters out of their dungeon, and every time they tried the combined forces of Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs (along with Sandra’s own constructs and Dungeon Monsters) were able to fight them back,