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

My Deep Diver suit!

Near the far wall, scrunched up in a crouch, was his suit.  Gerold immediately sprinted towards it, all weakness in his body ignored as he got closer, only to be crestfallen when he saw the damage to the Deep Diver.  “Oh, no – what happened to you?!” he asked it, as if it could answer.  While it wasn’t the same as his armor made for him by Master Blacksmith Jespin, it was the next best thing; to see it all banged up, dented, and scuffed was like being hit right in the chest.  “And how did you get so dirty?!”

Running his hands over the outside of the suit, he was relieved to see that – despite the minor damage – the Deep Diver suit still appeared functional.  Through analyzing some of the worst dents, he immediately realized what happened; in his efforts to unstrap the suit from the Roc, he must have at least partially succeeded before he was surrounded and brought inside, because his mobile armor suit had fallen off at some point after he told the bird to escape.

“I’m guessing that they just recently found you and brought you inside; some of this dirt still seems moist, so it probably wasn’t more than a day ago.”  That no one was using it to help defend the Hall wasn’t much of a surprise; even if they figured out how it worked, most of the defenders were Shieldmen in their armor – and armor wouldn’t fit inside the suit.

“With this, I can definitely get that crossbar off…” He trailed off as he was interrupted by a scream coming from down the passageway where the fighting was going on.  “But, I could help them out with my suit!  It’s my duty as a Shieldman to defend my people, after all.”

Now he was arguing with himself as he looked between the entrance and his freedom, and the passageway where danger lay just out of sight.  “Yes, but even if I help, they’ll just lock me up again afterwards.

Gerold wasn’t sure if the Master Blacksmith would’ve stayed to defend the Hall, or would’ve evacuated with the rest; he was vaguely certain that Jespin said that he had stayed during the last attack, so it was possible he was still there.  “There’s no point in leaving empty-handed, like I said before.  Perhaps I can find Jespin somewhere?  The whole point of coming here was to get help; if I leave without him, this whole thing will have been a failure.

“But I could die, not helping anyone in the process.  Sandra will never know what happened.

“I’ll just have to take that chance, and hope that seeing my suit in action will convince the other Shieldmen that I did my best to make up for the destruction of my armor,” he finally decided.  “Besides, they are the only ones who might know where Jespin is located.”

So saying, he crouched down in order to get inside the back of the Deep Diver suit, which was a little more difficult than normal; it seemed as though its crouched form, which was good for transportation, had been bent over even more than it used to be, and it was hard to get his body parts inside.  After some wiggling, straining, and sheer force, he managed to get his body inside, placing his hands in the spots where he could control the suit.

Immediately, the metal of the suit came alive, and he could straighten himself up, taller than any other Dwarf by a few feet as he reached around and clumsily tried to close the back up.  After fumbling for a minute or so, he realized that something had been bent out of shape and it wouldn’t close, so his back was essentially going to have to stay exposed for the time being.  Looking down at his suit, the flexing of the metal as it was activated seemed to have smoothed out a portion of the smaller dents, though the larger dents remained as well as it still being scuffed up and dirty.

Testing everything else, he found that nothing had been permanently damaged other than the hatch in the back, as he was able to operate the suit with a full range of movement.  Testing out the other enchantments, he was pleased to see that his right arm created a 3-foot-long pole of ice, which was attached to the crudely beautiful axe head he had seen before he left for home.  He was eager to test it on something other than a rock, and to see how well it performed.

As for the dark fog that was supposed to act as a buffer against tremendous hits, he activated it and immediately couldn’t see anything, just like it had done so before.  “I really wish Sandra had the time to fix this; maybe when I get back?”  Deactivating it was a simple process, at least, and he figured that if there was dire enough need, it could at least keep him from being knocked halfway across the Hall.

With only the slightest hesitation, as he wasn’t exactly happy about helping those who had intentionally locked him up, Gerold raced down the passageway leading to the fighting, rounding through 2 different curves in the tunnel, until it finally let out in a relatively smaller space than the cavern he just came from.  From previous knowledge, he knew that this was the Whiskeyflow Tavern, a large establishment that held nearly 200 people comfortably, or a maximum of twice that number if they were packed together.

Skidding to a stop, Gerold wasn’t shocked to see that the Tavern was at capacity – and that there were plenty of uninvited guests that needed to be tossed out.

Chapter 19

“Palzerk Gorerender, oh Great One.”

Furbrea was prostrating herself on the floor of the workshop,