The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) Jonathan Brooks (me reader TXT) 📖

Using some of her Animated Shears from her AMANS, Sandra surveyed the surface of the barren wasteland from the air – and was surprised at what she found.  There were even more deadly creatures inhabiting the otherwise empty landscape than she had anticipated.

While she could see everything belowground, which was how she knew there were three Bearling lairs and six Territory Ant colonies, everything living on the surface was essentially invisible to her unless she had something nearby to observe it.  The other beasts she saw didn’t live in underground lairs, which was the main reason she had missed them – and because they camouflaged very well into the surrounding landscape she hadn’t noticed them before during her casual exploration.

Consulting with Winxa for more information on them – since she had never seen anything like them before – Sandra identified three more potential hazards for anyone crossing the wastelands.  The first was a massive pack of large wolf-like creatures with greyish-brown, stone-made “fur” lying in wait along the face of one of the smaller rocky hills; the Crag Hounds – which Winxa had identified them as – were half the size of the Bearlings but appeared much quicker despite being made at least partially of stone, with long claws that left marks in the hard rock of the landscape.

She hadn’t noticed them before because they blended in so perfectly that they were nearly impossible to see unless they moved.  Even when she brought the Animated Shears she was directing closer it took almost 10 minutes of staring at the hill to identify three dozen of the Hounds – and she wasn’t even sure she spotted them all.  There was a smaller pack on the opposite side of the wasteland that she managed to spot; Sandra figured there might even be more, but they were either camouflaged even better than the others or hiding somewhere she couldn’t see.

The next creature she found was a horrendously large cluster of Desolate Spiders. Their presence away from dark, hidden places was strange to her; from what she knew of other kinds of spiders, they were ambush hunters that preferred to lie in wait for something to come by or string up a web to catch unwary victims – but staying out of sight most of the time, regardless.  These Spiders, however, were technically in plain view of anyone that happened upon them, though there were so many clustered together that it would probably be the last thing they ever saw.

From above – and she found it was the same from below, when she brought her Shears down to that level – they were just as invisible as the Crag Hounds; while they were approximately the size of a Gnome’s hand, they were also the same colors as the dry dirt and dust of the wastelands.  Instead of inhabiting the hills like the Hounds, however, they blanketed the ground with their flat-backed, dirt-colored forms that seemed to fit together when they butted up against each other.  When they were completely still – which seemed like their normal state – they appeared like an additional layer of ground, innocuous and safe.

Sandra only discovered their presence when she saw a Bearling unwittingly get too close to the invisible Desolate Spider cluster.  In a cascading wave of movement, the ground seemed to lurch forward and envelop the large dangerous beast as thousands of the Spiders bit and stabbed their legs into the tough exterior of the Bearling.  For its part, the larger creature swiped and bit at the seemingly unending waves of dirt-colored arachnids, crushing, squishing, and destroying a hundred or more of them.

The result of the “battle” was a foregone conclusion, however; after less than a minute the Bearling slowed down, as whatever the Desolate Spiders were able to inject into its body through their bites took effect.  Eventually, the larger beast collapsed on its side – crushing another two dozen of its attackers in the process – where it was further swarmed and covered by hundreds of the horrifically effective cluster of Spiders.  Sandra stopped watching after a few minutes as small chunks of the now-dead beast was ripped from its corpse and carried away as the arachnids fed, only to be replaced by others looking for a taste of Bearling meat.

Coming back only an hour later revealed that the carcass of the larger creature was completely gone, as well as the corpses of the dead attackers; as for the victorious Desolate Spiders, they had gone back to where they had lain in wait, practically invisible again.  The biggest difference, though, was that there was a large hump in the middle of the cluster; bringing her Shears closer, she found that hundreds (or maybe even thousands, it was hard to tell) of translucent orbs – that she assumed were eggs – had been laid and were being protected by the group.  She didn’t know how long it would take for them to hatch, but it was obvious that the cluster had already begun replacing those that it had lost against the Bearling.  Even though she was just an observer, it was frightening how quickly all of that had been done.

Looking around for more Hounds or Spiders – both of which were extremely hard to identify – Sandra found one more creature that was likely to present a threat to anyone passing by.  Unlike all the others, which seemed to rely on packs, colonies, or clusters of themselves, the last beast she found was probably more accurately called a monster, as it was both bigger and more frightening than anything else she had seen so far.  Winxa didn’t even have a name for it, which surprised Sandra, because the Dungeon Fairy – while unable to discuss certain topics – had seemed to have well-nigh unlimited bestiary knowledge in her head.

She found it accidentally when she had brought her Animated Shears too close to the