The Crafter's Defense: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 2) Jonathan Brooks (large ebook reader TXT) 📖

Mana to check out her new Mechanical Jaguar Queen – and she was definitely impressed.  The old Jaguar had been maybe five feet in length from nose to tail and no more than three feet tall; the Queen, on the other hand, was easily twice that – and made from heavy Iron.  Despite the size and weight differences, it could still move as fluidly and deftly as a big cat and could easily outdistance all but her Steel Pythons in a race.  Its jaws looked wicked enough to pick up and crush a Gnome whole (which she had no desire to do – just an observation).  Due to its size, she placed it to guard the Assembly and Storage room up top, as it would make a good door guard for the time being.

That was about all she could do as her constructs finally arrived at the dungeon.  Remembering what Winxa had said about some dungeons leaving an open tunnel towards their core so that their larger Dungeon Monsters could pass through, she had one of the Shears that came with the group fly over to the hole that the Saurians exited and checked it out.

After about a minute of exploration, however – and despite the hole going very deep underground, the end was sealed off completely.  Sandra could see where the opening to what she assumed was the other Dungeon’s Core Room was closed off, as there was a distinct outline of dirt that was subtly different from the surrounding earth everywhere else in the hole.  It wasn’t covered in stone, at least, but then she wasn’t sure how deep the dirt went, either; her constructs could potentially dig a hole, but if it was 50 feet or more to get there that would take entirely too long.  She used her Area of Influence to check it out and was instantly discouraged from pursuing that path; the thickness of the filled-in portion of the wall was currently at 30 feet – and growing.

With that avenue closed to her, Sandra directed her force to go through the main entrance.  As soon as the first sacrificial pair of Shears passed over the threshold, her connection to it was severely narrowed.  What’s going on?

After Sandra quickly explained what was happening to the Dungeon Fairy, Winxa answered worriedly.  “Remember when the reptiles attacked your dungeon?  And how single-minded they were and didn’t even try to deliberately avoid any of your traps?  I thought it might be different for you due to your unique circumstances, but it seems that the limitation affects you as well.  While your constructs are inside another dungeon, the influence of the other Core sort of mutes your control over them.”

What does that mean, exactly?

“I’m not exactly sure, but I assume it means that you at least can’t control them directly.  It might also limit how much you can actually order them to do other than very basic actions like ‘go forward down the tunnel’ and ‘attack’.  You’ll have to play around with it to see what you can and can’t do.”

Sandra didn’t have too much time to do that, however, as she was on a bit of a time constraint – because the other thing that happened when her construct passed over the threshold was a complete halt to the reptile army heading towards the Elven village.  Her Shears were watching as half of the lizards, crocodiles, and turtles turned around and headed back very quickly towards its dungeon, while the others (including the Ancient Saurians) kept their plodding pace.  The other Core obviously thinks its defenses in the dungeon are enough for me.  Either that, or it didn’t exactly know what Sandra had to bring against it.

With a quick experimentation, because she didn’t have a lot of time, Sandra gave orders to her pair of Shears that had entered first…and found that it was delayed by nearly ten seconds.  After that, though, the construct flew down the tunnel at a quick pace, crossing into the first room (which looked fairly plain with dirt walls and crudely carved-out angles) – where it was immediately shot with a powerful jet of water.  The force was so great that her Shears actually bent at the impact with the water and was flung against the surprisingly firm dirt wall, cracking fatally and her connection to it was lost.

She didn’t even really see where the jet of water came from; all she knew was that – at least in the first room – there were no obvious defending Dungeon Monsters to contend with.  Knowing that her larger constructs were currently more valuable to her, she sent another dozen pairs of Small Animated Shears inside the dungeon to “test the waters” again, and they survived long enough to see that the water jets were coming out from various holes in both side walls – and that there were at least three dozen holes that she could see.  The only other thing that she noted was that the Tiny Copper Orb that the first pair of Shears had dropped upon its destruction was already gone – absorbed by the Dungeon Core.

I guess we’re going to have to do this the hard way.

Chapter 42

Sandra’s orders to her constructs were almost useless, as they didn’t know how to avoid traps that well; they were more suited to going up against other creatures, people, or even other Dungeon Monsters – not testing their wits against dungeon traps.  Fortunately, she found that the holes blasting out strong jets of water were stationary and couldn’t move to target her constructs, so the best alternative was to have everything move through the room as close to floor height as possible.  The jets missed most of the Shears when they did that, and the Steel Pythons made it through without even getting wet, but the others took a few dents and a crack in their metal shells here and