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

there.  The jets were powerful, but they couldn’t shift something such as her Ironclad Apes more than an inch or two when they were blasted.

She lost another dozen Shears in the process with some unlucky movements of her constructs, but overall they came through rather unscathed.  She could only imagine what those jets would feel like if her constructs were flesh-and-blood; if they were powerful enough to crumple metal – granted, it was a softer metal – then against skin or even clothing it would probably feel like an extremely powerful punch.

The next room was through a long downward-sloping tunnel, which emerged into a huge room that had two very large tunnels on opposite sides across from each other.  A very slow-moving stream was exiting from the short tunnel on the left and flowing across a gradual slope of smooth rocks that led to the other large tunnel.  There wasn’t anything else in the room, and by looking outside of the dungeon with her AOI view, she could see that the way leading to the next large void was heading to the right.

This room was obviously supposed to be filled with Dungeon Monsters, otherwise it wouldn’t be this easy.  Wary of sneaky traps, she sent a dozen of her Shears forward and had them spread out throughout the room, hoping to trigger the trap – if there indeed was one.  Nothing happened, so she sent them down the large tunnel on the right.  Still nothing happened as they flew down the passageway, until they came to a sharp left turn that led a short way to the next room.  Without any obvious danger, she sent the rest of her force forward into the right tunnel so that they could progress to the next room.

Halfway down the passageway, she heard a loud roaring sound behind her constructs.  One of her Apes was just turning the corner to the next room when it managed to look behind the rest of Sandra’s construct army; a huge wall of water was emerging from the short left-hand tunnel in the previous room, heading straight for Sandra’s forces.  She tried to get all of them to run quickly into the next room, but the delay between her command and their action was entirely too slow.

The rushing wall of water slammed into the back of her forces and the sheer power of it flung her constructs around like they were made of wood and not metal.  Thousands of her Small Animated Shears were picked up and slammed against the tunnel wall leading to the next room and were instantly destroyed, along with more than half of her Singing Blademasters.  She lost two of her Basher Totems as they were smashed top-first into the wall and crumpled like an accordion, and six of her Ironclad Apes slammed up against each other in succession, their heavy weight doing most of the damage to themselves – and doing enough to damage them so much that they couldn’t move.

Her Mechanical Wolves and Jaguars were mostly okay after the wall of water hit them, as a lot of the water just passed through them and only carried them along the wave instead of smashing them apart.  A handful were damaged fatally when they impacted other constructs – like an Ironclad Ape or two – but overall they came out relatively unscathed.

The only constructs that didn’t sustain any damage at all were her Steel Pythons.  They were picked up and flung away, of course, but their Steel bodies were more than a match for the impact that destroyed so many others.

In all – if she considered her vast quantity of Shears as part of her force – she had already lost over 75% of her constructs…and she had only progressed through two rooms!  Sandra wasn’t sure what she could do to be more careful to avoid a disaster like that, but she knew she had to destroy the Core at the end of the dungeon so that it wouldn’t harm any more people.  Thankfully, the majority of her remaining constructs were fairly powerful, and she still had over 1,000 Shears that had made it around the corner and slightly into the next room before the wave had hit them.  Using them as more sacrificial pieces, she sent them into the smaller third room and saw them freeze halfway across to the exit.  A barely visible frost covered them at first before expanding quickly, and soon enough she could see that a column of frigid moisture was filling up a square middle portion of the room.

The frozen water adhered to her constructs and froze them so solid they couldn’t move; within 15 seconds, they were practically covered with ice – and then Sandra heard a series of cracks as the ice apparently contracted and snapped her constructs apart.  As soon as they disappeared, the trap deactivated and their Monster Seeds dropped to the floor, only to be absorbed just like the thousands that had dropped a few moments ago from her destroyed constructs.  Actually, when she turned to look at the Monster Seeds that had dropped from the results of the big wall of water trap, they were still being “consumed”; she knew from experience that she could only absorb them so quickly, and the amount that was there was quite a meal.

Avoiding the trap in the third room was blessedly easy after she knew about it, so she was able to direct the remainder of her constructs around it.  The fourth room was almost as easy, as there were more water jets similar to the first room that needed to be avoided – though there were more of them (and more powerful) in this long, hallway-like room.  She lost another two-dozen Shears when one of the jets appeared to be able to shoot downwards to the floor where her constructs were trying to sneak by, but only a few dents and cracks were