The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) by Jonathan Brooks (e ink epub reader .txt) 📕

to cushion against the majority of the explosion.  Instead of hurting it, the monstrous bunny only seemed to become highly annoyed, going into a frenzy of destruction that saw many of the trees that hadn’t already been toppled torn apart as if they were little toys.  Quite a few Wyvines gave their lives at that point to save the Elven Rangers, who retreated back to their village in order to regroup and recover from the sudden onslaught.

The Shieldmen who went off to help Sandra’s constructs fight against the Goblins and Golems faced a similar situation, with a horde of weaker Monsters followed by a larger and more powerful variety of the enemy.  They both also revealed the latest additions to their roster of Dungeon Monsters, like the Mercury Slime and the Bunny Rabbit of Death and Destruction (which was what she decided to call it, as the name seemed fitting).

Logically, she realized the next step in the Golem hierarchy would be something even stronger than Steel.  While Titanium or Platinum were both a possibility, or even a metal she hadn’t heard of before, Sandra hadn’t counted on the Magnetite Golem that walked out of the dungeon entrance.  Granted, it was much smaller than many of the other Golems that made an appearance, being only about 9 feet tall, but that wasn’t what made it dangerous.  Any construct that came within 5 feet of it was pulled into the Golem, unable to move at all; one of the newer Shieldmen was nearly sucked into the powerful magnetic field it possessed, but he fortunately managed to run away before he could get caught.  Within a few minutes, the Magnetite Golem was laden down with a half dozen constructs, which were then smashed apart by some nearby Iron and Steel Golems, leaving the new Golem free to keep sucking up constructs still fighting the other Dungeon Monsters.

The Goblin-Classification dungeon…well, it produced something that couldn’t be allowed to roam free.  It also painted a target on the Dungeon Core that produced it, and Sandra immediately knew which would be the target of the group preparing to deliver the Prismatic Core into a dungeon.

Everything seemed as normal as it could be, with hundreds of Goblin Scouts spreading out in a wave with the initial push.  Then came Goblin Archers, Goblin Warriors, Goblin Chiefs, Hobgoblin Brutes, and Hobgoblin Mages, backed up by one of the more dangerous Dungeon Monsters the Dungeon Core was sending out, the Goblin Commander.  The Commander was huge in comparison to the lowly Goblin Scout, at just under 9 feet tall, 5 feet wide, and wielded what appeared to be a 2-handed Steel longsword – which it could use with a great deal of strength.  When the Goblin Commander was able to hit one of her constructs, which happened much too often in Sandra’s opinion, it could shear through the metal limbs of her Wolves and Jaguars with ease.  Added to that, its full-body armor that covered it from head to toe protected it from all but the most concentrated attacks on it – or by some Shears sliding through gaps in the armor – it was a dangerous foe, but certainly not unbeatable.

It wasn’t any of these that were a concern, though, because it was the introduction of a new Goblin in a black, hooded robe that painted a target on the Dungeon Core.  Innocuous-seeming at first, the new Monster turned out to be some sort of Goblin Necromancer; with a horrid twisting of Spirit energy that brought the dead back to life, each of the black-robed Goblins quickly amassed a small undead army completely under its control.

“Fall back!  We can’t fight them like this!” Delarthe shouted as soon as the first undead started to appear.  Unlike the powerful Dungeon Monsters that came from the Undead-Classification Core that was destroyed, these undead weren’t as deadly – but they certainly were more numerous.

He and 5 other Shieldmen had been trying to hold the line against the Goblin onslaught, and were doing an exemplary job.  By controlling some of the Iron Animated Shears and Powered Arachnids, in addition to scores of Mechanical (and the new Powered) Wolves and Jaguars, Titanium Anacondas, and a few new Platinum-banded Wyrms, they were absolutely devastating the Goblins as they came out of the dungeon entrance.  A half-hour into the assault, however, a hazy aura started to cover the Goblins as they ran out to attack the defenders.

“What is this?  Sandra, do you know?” The Dungeon Core responded that she had no idea, but by that time it was easy enough to find out by observation.  Each of the Goblins that were killed – and were surrounded by the hazy aura – didn’t dissolve and disappear right away, leaving behind a Monster Seed.  Instead, they rose back up to their feet and started to attack again, faster and more ferociously than before.  Goblin Scouts, who were the weakest of the small Goblins that blanketed the area around the entrance, soon became a deadly foe; with a ferocious lack of concern for their own well-being, they threw themselves at the Shieldmen and constructs without a thought to tactics or even using their weapons.  Instead, they used their increasingly superior numbers to overwhelm the defenders.

They weren’t the only undead to come back from death; Archers, Warriors, Brutes, Mages, and even Champions rose up from the field of battle after they were killed the first time.  The only saving grace was the undead’s inability to fire bows or cast spells, but that didn’t diminish the danger of their attacks much.  When the only way to kill the undead Goblins was to remove their heads entirely, it just made everything that much more difficult.

* It appears as if some new sort of Goblin Necromancer is controlling them from behind the lines.  I’m going to try to take them out using some of the Shears. *

Sandra had identified the culprits of the