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

Chapter 22

Nipping at the heels of Felbar’s War Machine was only the first wave of smaller Dungeon Monsters, coming from a pair of dungeons that had orchestrated the ambush from before. Actually, looking at what they were, Violet had to revise her original assessment: There were three distinct types of monsters there, one of which they hadn’t been planning on.

They knew they were going up against a Beast-type dungeon, which was the most common of dungeons around.  Not only was there one near the Elven village near Sandra’s dungeon, but there were 5 of them spread throughout Gnomeria, as well – including the one near here.  Bears, wolves, and boars were the most common type of monsters that came from those dungeons, at least when they were culled frequently and contained within the area right around the forest sections they were located.

For one that had expanded as far as this one obviously had, there were giant cats that looked capable of eating a Gnome whole, large monkeys with bear-like heads that appeared extremely strong, and even something that looked very much like one of Sandra’s Behemoth constructs, but made from flesh and blood.  This was what they had expected; it wasn’t surprising that some of the smaller wolves and boars were charging ahead, following just behind Felbar on his race to get back to their defenses.

Defenses which were currently being deployed, as half of the Defensive Force dropped down from the Haulers and grabbed Flame Thumpers, Ice Bombs, and Absorption Bombs.  The Burning Darkness defenses were laid out and activated, giving them a long fence of darkness that encircled most of the Haulers; fortunately, the Mass Accelerator operators on their transports could see over to shoot the monsters as they approached.  The 4 Shredder Cones were also unloaded from their large wagons and those operating them got inside, ready to protect the flanks or contain any breakthroughs.

Behind the smaller beasts came the first wave of a Flora-based dungeon, which specialized in plants that were both mobile and deadly.  Dense collections of vines (nicknamed Vine Crawlers) crawled along the ground, a central nexus in them representing their “heart” that needed to be destroyed; bushes filled with thorny stems rolled along the ground like tumbleweeds, but instead of the lightweight nature of tumbleweeds, these “Thorny Bushes” were quite heavy and could knock a Gnome over if they weren’t prepared for it – before being cut and strangled to death; and small “Snaplings”, which were 8-foot-tall trees, ran with their uprooted lower appendages acting as legs to become mobile, using their sharpened branches to hit a person hard enough to snap their bones.

Coming over the hill, following the smaller monsters, Violet could see the larger Beasts like the ginormous hunting Panthers and behemoth-like Tuskaphants.  Behind them were the larger Flora monsters, such as the 25-foot-tall Wandering Oak Bashers, the Mossy Ditches that were almost like gigantic Slimes but weren’t as acidic, and even a couple of Sunflowers.  Those last were especially worrisome out in the full sun of the day because they were able to convert sunlight into a deadly airborne toxin that could envelop a hundred-foot radius in a matter of seconds.  It was best if they destroyed those from afar if at all possible, before they became a major problem.

Those were all basically accounted for; defensive mechanisms already existed, to defend against those, in some way or another.  The fighters were aware that another dungeon may have been in on the attack, but the reports by the survivors couldn’t say for sure what it was, other than the monsters were large.  Thinking that they might be Golems – similar to the dungeon that was next to the Dwarven lands near the wasteland – had prompted Felbar to include the weighted ends to the chains on the Shredder Weapons, as they would most likely help to eliminate those as a threat.  There was a Golem dungeon relatively nearby, though it was thought that it hadn’t expanded that far as of yet; just to be sure, they had prepared for it.

What they hadn’t prepared for was the small, nearly forgotten dungeon on the opposite side of the Beast and Flora dungeons to finally emerge as a threat.  The reason it hadn’t been considered was that ever since it had been found over 50 years before, it hadn’t released even a single monster.  No one had ventured inside, afraid that an appearance might suddenly start it spewing out monsters – which was something they didn’t need in the area if they could help it.  Unfortunately, it appeared as though it was ready to show itself to the world, and Violet understood why it hadn’t really produced any monsters until then.

Because they were giant.  As in, Giants.  According to what she knew about Sandra’s dungeon and the constructs she created, the bigger and deadlier the construct, the more “Mana” it cost her to create.  For these literal Giants, the cost must have been astronomical.

They were almost Orcish in general appearance, though their skin was not green; instead, they were a pale peach-ish color, with tiny, beady eyes just above their massive balloon-like noses.  Their mouths were also tinier than she would’ve expected; only a very small line across their otherwise-expressionless faces indicated that it was a mouth at all.  They were also bald without a hint of hair anywhere, with mottled skin on top of their heads that nearly looked like some sort of fungus.  The clothing they wore was plain cloth of different kinds, patched together from a dozen different sources and colors, creating a quilt of randomness that was disturbing to look at.  Upon closer inspection (and seeing that a few of the patches were green), she wasn’t sure if it was actually cloth, leather, or…something else she didn’t even want to think about.

That all wasn’t even considering how literally giant they