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

practically disintegrate upon impact from such speeds; as such, they were forced to add a thin iron core to the bolt and bands around the shaft to keep it together.  This increased the weight, of course, which reduced the distance it could travel, but it also helped the bolt to penetrate its target even further.  Not only that, but the bolt could be reused if the wood wasn’t too badly damaged. Were it not for the fact that the Buoyancy enchantment rune needed to be created on wood to be effective, they would’ve used an all-metal projectile instead.

Six of these Mass Accelerators were mounted on an oversized Hauler, where crews could swivel their weapons in relative freedom.  As resources were scarce enough, the Hauler was made primarily of wood, other than its axles and tracks.  Atop the vehicle was a wooden canopy that would help protect those inside from being attacked from above, while allowing sufficient freedom that they could vacate the entire Hauler if there was reason enough.

“I can’t believe you managed to replicate one of my War Machine’s special attacks; granted, it’s on a lesser scale, but it’s still impressive.”

Felbar was talking about the next Weapon of War, the Flame Thumper.  Whereas Felbar’s War Machine could produce a jet of Flames that could roast whatever it was pointed at, the heat of which was intense because of the Energy Cube connected to it, Violet and the other Enchanters had come up with something a bit different.  Instead of a long gout of ultra-hot flames that emerged from the War Machine’s “hands”, they had created a long wooden lance with a flat metal head that could be shoved right up against a monster before it was activated via an Activate rune near the handle.

It wasn’t a stream of flames that happened when the Flame Thumper was activated, however.  Instead, using a Limiter rune to transfer the Fire energy stored up in the enchantment, a contained explosion occurred on the flat of the lance. This created a *thump* sound that gave the weapon its name, and a flash of intensely hot flames exploded outward, pushing with tremendous force.  Anything touching the end of the lance would be blasted away, or at least severely hurt in the process.

Unfortunately, each Flame Thumper only had about a dozen charges before the energy contained in them ran out.  They had created hundreds of the explosive lances, however, so they would hopefully last long enough to get the job done.  The best part of them was the fact that the enchantments could be easily replicated and produced even as a temporary enchantment while in the field, as long as they knew the Limiter rune.

The next design for a Weapon of War was based on an enchantment she had helped Sandra come up with to improve Gerold’s Deep Diver suit before she left for home.  The ability to create melee weapons was a unique one and would be powerful in the right hands, but it wasn’t something that the Gnomes would excel at; close combat without the use of ranged attacks or War Machines was dangerous for them, as they were a lot smaller and physically weaker than the other races.  That wasn’t the only option for the enchantment, though.

The way the effect worked on Gerold’s Deep Diver was it would pull a bit of moisture from the air to create an ice-formed battleaxe, utilizing the Energy Orb inside to amplify that water into a new form.  It was a brute-force enchantment that worked against the metal of the Deep Diver to manipulate water; the material used in the suit’s construction wasn’t necessarily suited to enchantments that dealt with Water, or even Air for that matter.  Materials that worked better with Water were just about any type of material that allowed for absorption, such as cloth, soft wood, or even loosely packed dirt – none of which would work well with the Deep Diver.

The Gnomes weren’t restricted to using only metal, however.  In fact, it was better to leave any type of metal for other weapons, because some of them required harder materials to make them work.  Therefore, the cloth-wrapped wooden spheres they used as a medium for the Ice Bombs were more than adequate for their purpose.  With the enchantment sequence utilizing the Absorption, Condense, Solidify, and Limiter runes laid upon the inner wooden spheres of the Ice Bombs, anything within a few feet of the weapon would have a bad day.

There was a clearly marked Activate rune on the outer cloth, along with a Delay rune in the sequence.  When it was activated, the Gnome using the weapon would have 5 seconds before the weapon exploded into multiple shards of ice 3 feet long.  Using a long, curved, hand-held launcher that they could whip forward, the Gnome could send the Ice Bomb up to 100 feet away – though at that distance, the Bomb would most likely erupt in midair.

At only a single use per activation, because all of the energy in the enchantment would be expended instantly, it was a costly weapon, but an effective one.  Especially when they accidentally discovered that they could invert and rearrange the Absorption, Solidify, and Limiter runes to produce an unexpected effect: the wholesale absorption of any moisture nearby.  This didn’t seem that effective at first, but seeing it in action was an eye-opener.

When thrown into a field of grass, the Absorption Bomb caused the organic matter to dessicate completely and fall apart within seconds, and the ground beneath was brittle and crumbling apart.  A small mouse within a foot of the target area – not seen before the Bomb was thrown – had all of the moisture from its blood, skin, muscles, and even bones sucked out of it, leaving it a dead, dried-out husk that was barely recognizable as an animal anymore.

Powerful, and yet the effect was relatively small in area: A spherical