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

been half-crouched in her walk so she was glad that she could finally straighten up and travel normally, now that she didn’t have to worry about being seen.

Echo was just about to stand up and walk out of the trees when she saw something out of the corner of her eye.  About 100 feet away, a glint of metal reflected off the weak setting sun and caught her attention; instead of it being on ground level, however, it was nearly 30 feet up in the air next to the spreading branches of the oak tree that comprised that section of the forest.

She froze and used her Holy element to activate her active camouflage while she tried to find what had caused the glint…and struggled to see anything out of the ordinary.  She was beginning to think that it was just a trick of her mind after a lengthy day of hunting, when she saw a branch near where she had thought she saw the light sway a little in the relatively windless day.  The next thing she knew, one acorn dropped down to the ground, followed a few seconds later by another.  A third dropped to the ground almost 20 seconds later and then all was still…for about a minute.  The branch she was staring at intently started to violently jostle back and forth for a short time – and then a small branch broke off from the tree seemingly all by itself. Echo watched in confusion and astonishment as it flew off into the distance.

But it wasn’t heading toward Avensglen or anywhere else in Symenora; no, it was flying straight into the wastelands.

As much as practicality and prudence warred with her now-insatiable curiosity, she knew that playing it safe in this case had no chance against the need to know.  This was a completely new development and she knew she had to check it out; only the slightest hesitation made her pause as she followed the direction that she saw the branch flying.

Besides, everyone knew there wasn’t anything too dangerous in the wasteland – or at least nothing that could see her.  Right?

Chapter 7

The twelfth room down from the entrance – the one right after the room with the vines and stone blocks in the ceiling – was one of the easiest traps she had created for defense; upon reflection, it was probably one of the more devious ones as well.  She combined Water and Nether elements together to create a dark, sludgy, swampish bog that had thick fog drifting through the air above it.  She pumped enough Mana inside the trap that it didn’t even need to be triggered – it was always on and wouldn’t disappear.

On the surface, all it really did was make it difficult to move through the room, because the likelihood of being sucked beneath the surface and drowning was very low.  Of course, the dozen Steel Pythons hidden underneath the sludgy water didn’t allow anyone passing through to do so unscathed, nor did the thirty Shears hiding in the fog waiting for an opportune moment to glide down and attack.

Overall, though, if whoever was passing through was careful and could avoid being killed by vicious Pythons, then they would move on to the thirteenth room – which was where the deviousness came in.  She created a narrow pathway very similar to the one in the room with the vines and stone blocks; instead of stone spikes at the bottom of a pit, however, she filled it with lava using Earth and Fire elements in a trap.  It took all 12,517 of her maximum Mana to maintain the large pools of lava for all of 5 minutes and 13 seconds, but it was more than worth it – especially when it was so close to the edge of the pathway.

She had to coat the whole pit and even the narrow pathway with Dragon Glass, which took quite a bit of Mana to do – over 180,000 all told – but it ensured that the intense heat wouldn’t damage her dungeon while the lava was active.  She added some Blademasters to the room to add some obstacles to getting across, but that wasn’t the deviousness she was so excited about!

Since the lava was so close to the pathway, even a small disturbance in the pool would cause it to flow over and cover anything in its way – including anyone trying to pass by.  She left the ceiling of the room relatively unfinished and placed an Automated Digger up there – which she also used as a catalyst for the room’s trap; when someone entered, it would start to dig out more of the dirt and rocks above and drop it down into the lava pool, causing it to splash and overflow onto the pathway.

And best of all – the sludgy Nether-Water residue from the previous room was highly flammable.  Anyone getting any type of flame or heat on them if they were still covered in the sludge would go up like a torch.  She’d like to see someone get past that!

The intense satisfaction and desire to see someone die to her traps and Dungeon Monsters running through her take a mental step back in horrified shock when she realized what she was doing. Where did all of these feelings come from, I wonder?  Sandra hadn’t been as consumed with perfecting her traps and making them as lethal as possible before, but then again, she hadn’t been so directly threatened with complete destruction by people, either.  The Territory Ants and even the Bearlings she could kind of understand – it was in their nature and they couldn’t really help themselves.  But the Orcs…the Orcs had made a conscious choice to come after her.

And that scared her – badly.

She knew that she would try to avoid conflict when it arrived so that it didn’t result in the deaths