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

she had discovered as part of the Advancement system plainly pointed her in a direction that would help the nearby races stave off annihilation: bonding with sentients and destroying other Dungeon Cores.  Luckily, she was already inclined to help them – though she didn’t know how she felt about targeting the nearby Cores.

Sandra didn’t really have time to worry about that, though, because she had bigger problems to deal with – namely the Elite Elves that were just entering the very last room with her Iron-plated Behemoths.  Porthel was looking absolutely ragged by that point, drained to the point where he appeared to be pushing himself forward by pure will alone.

“Porthel, you need to rest for a while – maybe even take a small nap so that you can restore some of your elemental energy.  You’re going to get yourself killed, otherwise,” Alanthia said concernedly to their leader.

“No!  We have to keep going, no matter if it kills me or not,” the drained Elf hoarsely replied with ragged breaths.  “You’ve all seen what this dungeon is capable of, and if we let a little something like my life get in the way of destroying the heart of the dungeon, then everyone is in danger of being killed by a dungeon that has access to all the elements!  We’ve gotten this far, and it can’t be much farther – I can feel it.”  Porthel stumbled forward with misguided determination in his step.

The other Elves just looked at each other in helplessness and followed after him.  Porthel pulled out some more of his waning Earth energy and nullified the Air trap that Sandra had placed in the room, which wasn’t surprising by that point – but they were about to face something they hadn’t seen in the dungeon before:  Sandra’s Iron-plated Behemoths.  The other constructs they had encountered were pale shadows in comparison to the massive Monsters she had in the final room – and this time their main member that could easily kill them was on his last legs.

The Elves stopped in surprise when they saw the Behemoth – all except Porthel; the leader stumbled forward drunkenly and activated what appeared to be the last of both types of his elemental energy.  That boost was all he needed to pick him up as he dashed forward, avoided one of the flailing tails, and then jumped up into the air, crashing down sword-first onto the back of the Behemoth.  The Earth-energy enhanced Titanium sword cut almost completely through her construct, though in the last couple of inches it stopped, the energy from the Elite leader’s sword spell having run out.

Looking at it in surprise, Porthel tried to pull it out of the cut, but the blade snapped in half when he yanked on it the wrong way; fortunately for him, the damage he had done to the Behemoth was enough to destroy it, which meant that it dissolved seconds later, leaving behind a broken blade and a Tiny Dragon Glass Flake.  The Elven leader looked at his half-a-sword in shock for a second, before collapsing to his knees in exhaustion.

“I’m…done.  I’ve got nothing left – you must…finish this without me,” he said breathily, before pitching forward onto his face as the continuous expenditure of elemental energy finally drained all of his strength.  Alanthia rushed to his side and rolled him over, ensuring that he was still alive.  Holy-based elemental energy poured out of her and enveloped his entire body, flowing through his armor and settling into his skin; Sandra assumed it was some sort of healing spell.  There was no change in him, of course – the exhaustion created from using too much energy too quickly wasn’t something that could be healed by anything but a good night’s sleep.

“What do we do?” one of the men asked; Sandra still hadn’t found out their names, so she could only designate him as the one who had grey and green accents on his leather armor.

The others were silent for almost a minute as they stared at Porthel on the ground, partially asleep but not full-on unconscious or in a coma like Sandra’s other visitors.  Finally, Alanthia got to her feet and turned to the rest.  “We go on, just like he said; we can’t fail now when we’re so close.”

“But…how?”

The Elf in white and red looked at the passageway leading to the next section where the Behemoths were in long hallways, eager to trample whatever invaded their domain.

“We hold nothing back, that’s how.  Use everything you have to get through; like Porthel said, if one of us falls, the rest have to go on even if it kills us all.  One of us has to survive long enough to destroy the heart of the dungeon, even if it means using all of our energy to do it,” Alanthia said with determination and a scary look on her face, before heading immediately towards the passageway, a red glow enveloping her left fist and a white glow enveloping her right.  The others followed afterward with equally determined looks on their faces.

Based on what happened next, Sandra easily understood why they were so confident in their dungeon-destroying job – because they were frightening.  The first behemoth that charged them got a beam of super-hot flames boosted with a swirl of white Holy light, which was more than enough to carve a line through her construct as the Iron covering its outer shell literally melted off.  It was destroyed within seconds, but not without a cost to Alanthia; she fell to her knees and panted heavily.  She waved the others on as she said, “Go on, I just need to catch my breath after that…I’ll catch up.”

In the next hallway, the leather-clad archer with the grey and green accents on his armor stepped up to the plate and used a spell on his arrow before he released.  The sheer amount of energy used in