The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) by Jonathan Brooks (miss read books .txt) 📕

Dwarves – and possibly others that might be present even beyond her own Area of Influence.  It was sadly better to eliminate the problem now rather than have to worry about it in the future.

She thought that it would only be a simple matter of enchanting some of her Steelclad Ape Warriors’ warhammers and learning from Echo how to cast spells, but it wasn’t going to be that easy.  Not because it wouldn’t work, but because there was some unexpected pushback from the Gnomes she was going to ask for help with the enchanting.

“I want to help with the culling of them outside of the dungeon; it’s still technically my duty, and I need to do it.  If you get my War Machine working, we’ll do whatever you want – which includes finishing the rest of your Enchantment Repository with the new rune on the Fields,” Felbar told Sandra as soon as her attention was back from her Rolling Forces.  It was unmistakably an ultimatum – and one that she would normally be all for if the circumstances had been different.

* I told you what I saw there; you can’t deny that it’ll be extremely dangerous.  How about we take care of the Undead-based Dungeon Core first, then we can concentrate on your War Machine? *

Her plea fell on deaf ears, though Sandra could tell that Violet was wavering and would probably fold if pushed far enough.  However, the entire ultimatum appeared to be Felbar’s idea and he wasn’t budging; the Dungeon Core almost decided to try to do it herself and not rely on their help, but the fact of the matter was that she hadn’t even come close to perfecting the incorporation of the Limiter rune yet.  Without seeing the relatively complex sequence constructed a few more times – as well as lots of subsequent practice with her Shapeshifters – she wasn’t sure she could reliably create it.  The last thing she wanted was to accidentally make a mistake and blow up half of her dungeon because she thought she could do it without help…so she decided to be the one to fold to their – not wholly unreasonable – demands.

The learning and teaching coming from Echo was going to have to wait until she was back, anyway, because she was gone after taking the few Energy Orbs that had been completed.  She was supposed to tell the Elder that she was going to be in and out of the village for the next few days, but would be bringing more shipments when she could; Echo was going to need to stay close at hand so that she could be there to instruct Sandra on the basic art of energy manipulation.  While it was vaguely similar, she felt that at its heart, it was entirely different from Enchanting.

Meanwhile, before they could get started with that, Sandra took a look at the War Machine and conveyed her earlier ideas about how to get it enchanted in a way that didn’t require it to be done all at once.  Violet instantly rejected the idea as impossible at first, but as the Dungeon Core explained it further, she could start to see that the Gnome was warming to the concept she was trying to convey.  After describing what she envisioned for nearly half an hour, the Apprentice Enchanter finally nodded and said, “I…think that might work.”

The problem she had identified as needing to be overcome was linking up all the enchantments as a cohesive whole; the Master Gnome Enchanters could create an entire enchantment sequence that would cover the entire War Machine, but they didn’t have that luxury.  Instead, they were going to have to create 10 different smaller enchantment sequences (2 for each leg, 2 for each arm, 1 for the torso, and 1 to link them all together) that would work in the same way.

The individual Natural-based enchantments on the War Machine that allowed the normally inanimate material – like wood and steel – to stretch, bend, and move to the will of the pilot Violet knew quite well; she had been tasked with replacing and maintaining them in her time there in the village.  It was the Spirit-based enchantments that she didn’t have as much knowledge of, since those were what controlled everything; the Master Enchanters of the Gnomish people had created an intricate network of interlinked sequences that were easily manipulated by the pilot.  It was this that they needed to replace and still have it function in essentially the same way – but it was going to take some trial and error experimentation to get it to work.

Sandra had already made a much smaller model of the massive War Machine to assist with the process, so Violet dove straight into working on it.  Starting with a single lower leg and foot, the Gnome used a variation of Transform, Flex, Movement, and Conform runes in an enchantment sequence made with Natural elemental energy to manipulate the materials used in its construction; at the same time, she interwove a Spirit enchantment comprised of various Activate runes connected to those Natural runes which would trigger the motion the pilot wanted to achieve.  On the small model, it was a lot to fit into the small leg section – but Violet was able to somehow connect it all together in a single enchantment sequence.

Of course, that was a gross oversimplification of the entire process which ended up taking a few hours just for that single lower leg.  She had to make sure she had the foot joint properly aligned with the enchantment so that it would flex properly – ensuring that the War Machine didn’t stomp around flat-footed and trip itself up – as well as making sure the lower leg portion could bend and absorb the sheer weight of the entire War Machine while it walked.

The upper leg took a little less time even though it encompassed the