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

she was glad she did, because she – as she had when first testing the Fireburst enchantment – had turned the energy transfer up way too high.

When her Steelclad construct used it against the ground, it caused an explosion of air to suddenly emerge from the tip of the warhammer, causing such enormous backwards force that the weapon was ripped away from the Ape’s control.  It rocketed straight up into the air, nearly 200 feet before it reached its apex and crashed back to the ground just a few feet from her Warrior – who was apparently missing two hands now, as they had been ripped off at the wrists and were still creepily clutching the weapon tightly despite being dismembered.  The whole thing gave her some ideas for later, but for now Sandra toned down the flow of energy to just a trickle compared to what it was before, and her second test was a success.  It was very similar to the Fireburst enchantment she had on the other warhammers, except instead of an explosion of fire, it was an explosion of air – much smaller, this time – that shot out directionally forward.  It was still powerful enough to make the weapon pop backwards from the force of the small explosion, but nowhere near what it had been like initially.

With the Steelclad Ape Warriors now fully equipped – hopefully – to destroy the Golems, it was past time when Gerold and the Shieldmen all needed to leave to start the process of destroying the nearby Monsters before they got entirely out of control.  Before they left, however, Sandra made sure to include two Multi-access Repair Drones in their party, so that each group would have their own healer along.

Gerold would be heading up his group of two Shieldmen and the Apes, while Delarthe would take the other two with him to fight Goblins; while Gerold had more experience fighting the Golems with an axe, in his Deep Diver suit he was using another copy of the Titanium warhammers the Apes were using.  To save on time and Mana costs, he also didn’t have any other enchantments in his suit of armor. Sandra didn’t think anything she had available would do too much good against the Golems they were going to fight, regardless.

As they took off into the late afternoon, eager to get started, she kept an eye on them – and on the various groups of Goblins and Golems out there waiting for them.

* I’ll help direct you to where more of the monsters are located, using my Shears to point you in the right direction.  If you get in trouble, escape as fast as you can and let my constructs protect you; they are expendable – you are not.  I’m leaving control of each group of helpers to Gerold and Delarthe; if for some reason one of them is unable to pass on instructions to the constructs, control will pass to the next closest Shieldman.  If necessary, I can take over control at any time, but I want you all to get accustomed to working with my constructs as part of your team, which you can direct much better than I ever could in a fight.  Good luck, and may the Creator bless you in your endeavors. *

She felt a little silly using the Creator’s name like that to wish them luck, but like she told Winxa – it couldn’t hurt to get on the divine being’s good side.  Whether or not it actually did anything didn’t really matter; what mattered was that she felt better invoking the Creator as the higher power directing their actions instead of just a Dungeon Core trying to throw her weight around.  In the end, she didn’t really think it was going to make that much of a difference other than to her own conscience.

With a portion of her focus on the Dwarves and the constructs with them as they traveled across the wastelands, she turned the rest of it to other matters.  For one, she needed to check up on Echo and Kelerim, since Sandra had been occupied with other matters after they left earlier….

Chapter 10

Echo was shocked to hear that Kelerim, despite being a Blacksmith that crafted deadly weapons, hadn’t ever learned how to fight with one of them.  Not that she could blame him after hearing about what sort of trash Orcs usually fought with, but she would’ve thought that a race as focused on fighting as part of their culture would teach all of their people to fight at least a little.  It seemed as though that wasn’t the case, however, as Kelerim hadn’t even been taught how to manipulate the elemental energy inside of him – which was another shock.  From what she could determine through some innocent questioning, first the Dwarves, and then the Orcs, had treated him badly growing up.  She thought that was because he didn’t really fit into either society, especially looking the way he did.

She could hardly believe it, because Kelerim was amazingly alluring.  While the Orcs thought he was too short and – because of that – too weak, the Dwarves thought he was too tall and therefore untrustworthy.  She had seen many of the Dwarven villagers look at her with distrusting eyes, because she was tall herself, so she knew of that prejudice from personal experience. She didn’t take offense, however, as it was almost ingrained in most of the races nowadays to have a natural aversion to the others. She herself was a little prejudiced against the filthy Orc brutes to the north of her homeland, and she still felt a tiny bit of superiority over the Gnomes to the east.

A lot of those feelings had been blunted after being exposed to Dwarves and Gnomes since being revived inside of Sandra’s dungeon, because she could see that everyone had their strengths and weaknesses,