The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) Jonathan Brooks (books that read to you txt) 📖

her Blademasters were quite deadly, so she had them move down the tunnel, blasting away everything in their path—or at least she tried.  It seemed as though the new Blademasters couldn’t move in a lateral or vertical direction while they were spinning, though they could rotate in place; as soon as she instructed them to move, they stopped their outrageously powerful attack and slowly moved while the rotation was winding down.  When she stopped them and started up their attack again, it didn’t quite take 15 seconds to get back up to speed, but the delay was still too long to make them effective “attacking” constructs.  They were better suited for defending an area than assaulting one – especially when Sandra found that they had a range of about 20 feet before the sound blades were nothing more than an annoyance.

But now she had an effective means of preventing more of the Beasts from getting through the tunnel: By creating a few more to bolster their ranks, she used the Behemoth and handful of Roaring Blademasters as shields, blocking any thrown objects meant to destroy her new constructs.  It wasn’t a foolproof plan, as a stray rock – or even a thrown boar that got shredded in the air at one point – would hit one every once in a while; by spreading them out so that they covered most of the tunnel and weren’t bunched up, they made a pretty good defensive force.

Meanwhile, Sandra was already at work with the other tunnels, spending her resources at an alarming rate.  The Goblins were next, as they were starting to make some dangerous headway versus her constructs there.  Looking at her list of potential Dungeon Monsters, and considering the sudden prevalence of Hobgoblin Mages being used to neutralize her powerful larger constructs, she decided to go small-scale for her defense.  If her much-stronger constructs wouldn’t do it because they were fewer in number, she would fight the horde of Goblins with a horde of her own.

Using 20,000 total Mana to create 800 tiny Monster Seeds and 800 Powered Arachnids, she sent the whole bunch of them down the tunnel.  Like the Clockwork Tarantulas, which were faster than their predecessor – the Clockwork Spider – the Powered Arachnids were faster still.  Not only that, but they were larger, at about a foot across, and they had a completely sealed body with no sign of any clockwork innards.  In fact, they were nearly silent as they swarmed down the relatively tight confines of the tunnel, which wasn’t as wide and tall as the others.  (The Goblins weren’t as large as the other Cores’ Monsters, after all).

To add to the defense of the tunnel, and to come to the aid of the few Jaguar Queens and Dire Wolves before they perished, Sandra spent another 10,000 Mana to create 180 Animated Iron Shears.  As soon as the larger, more substantial Shears appeared, she sent them into the tunnel as fast as she could.  Unfortunately, the sheer speed that her prior Reinforced Animated Shears possessed was missing from her upgraded construct; instead of zooming through the tunnel at an extremely high speed, they were probably only about half as fast.

However, what losses they had in speed were made up for by their durability and weight of impact.  Whereas her older Shears would normally be destroyed upon impact, when the new Iron Shears hit something, they didn’t crumple and fall apart.  With still enough acceleration to do some damage, dozens of her new Shears slammed into the Goblins, impaling them with devastating results.  Not only did the metal of the constructs not buckle under the pressure of impact, but they were able to remove themselves from Goblin chests, necks, and eye sockets, leaving their victims to bleed out.

A dozen of them were caught before they could escape and were crushed or bent by some of the stronger and larger Goblins, but the rest were able to retreat back down the tunnel and make another run at the assembled horde.  Another few impalements led to some additional attrition in Sandra’s Shears forces, but they had done their job; not only did they manage to kill 3 of the Goblin Mages, but they had allowed her other, already-present constructs to recover and push the enemy back.  By the time her Powered Arachnids arrived, there was a slight lull in the fight as casualties were traded back and forth without too much progress on either side.

That all changed when the smaller constructs arrived.  The upgraded Arachnids weren’t just bigger and faster, but they could jump long distances – which they demonstrated quite well by launching themselves at the Goblins when they were close enough.  The enemy Monsters didn’t know what hit them, as sharp, thin spider legs were rapidly stabbed into vulnerable exposed flesh; in no more than 10 seconds, dozens of Goblins were killed as they were impaled by hundreds of arachnoid appendages.  They didn’t stop there, either, because as soon as one Goblin fell, the Powered Arachnids would jump off the corpse towards their next target.

That wasn’t to say that they didn’t encounter any setbacks.  While they were fast and could jump at the other Monsters with surprising alacrity, they were rather weak in defense.  Even the weakest Goblin Scouts inside the tunnel could grab one of the Arachnids with their hands and crush them – if they could catch them, that was.  Not only that, but when the incoming Hobgoblin Mages cast their ice-based spells, they would catch 5 or 6 of the 8-legged constructs at once, leaving them frozen in place and easily dispatched.

Working together, though – along with a few dozen reinforcements for each of the smaller constructs – they could be extremely effective.  While a group of Goblins was distracted by the Arachnids, the Shears would swoop in to strike; when the enemy tried to grab the Shears, then the spider constructs would jump in