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

other obstacle that you may not have thought of quite yet.”  He paused for a moment, as to emphasize his point.  “How are they supposed to be transported back here?”

“Well, the same way that we brought—oh.  I see.”  Yes, if she could somehow figure out how to make more than one a day, they only had one Roc to use; if it took a little less than a day to make a round trip between the capital and Sandra’s dungeon, then it would still take weeks of constant transportation to bring in enough War Machines to make a difference.  Maybe she could create more Rocs?  That was always an option, but from what Violet remembered, there had been times in which Sandra had been limited in what she could create, due to scant resources.

That was another stumbling block she hadn’t even considered.  Violet had been thinking about devoting Sandra’s full resources to War Machine production, but that may not even be possible.  With the sheer quantity of monsters she had to create just to maintain the culling of the nearby dungeons, the state of which was a bit of a mystery at that point, there may not be much to go around.  That was why Violet and Felbar were there in the first place, in order to gain help from her people; Sandra had been more than cognizant that she couldn’t do it all herself, and sending help to alleviate some of the nearby pressure would allow her to do things like make War Machines.

If the Gnome people couldn’t provide that relief, then there wouldn’t be any resources available to help them – they would instead be used to maintain and contain the other nearby dungeons.  As much as Sandra had an altruistic bent to her personality that wanted to help everyone, this was a matter of needing to give aid in order to get aid in return.  Right now, the problem was that they didn’t have any aid to give.

“I…see,” she repeated, now that she had really thought things over.  From his face, Felbar had already divined all of the information she was just now processing, so his despondent expression made a whole lot more sense now.  “So, what do we do?”

He sat back and looked at the ceiling, letting out a big sigh as he appeared to be at a loss.  She couldn’t blame him, because they were in real trouble if they couldn’t figure out something soon; it wasn’t as if Gnomeria would be overrun in the next few months if they didn’t figure out a solution, but she could already see this as the turning point toward the end.  But just like she had helped defend Glimmerton with everything she had, Violet wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

She just hoped her people didn’t end up like her village.

The Journeyman Enchanter in her tried to come up with a solution to their problem with enchantments, but since greater minds than hers hadn’t figured out how to save their people after the attack that left many of their Master Enchanters – and her parents – dead, she doubted it was something she could figure out.  Then again, Violet had learned quite a bit from Sandra and had helped to create some interesting enchantment designs while she was in the dungeon.  Not that any of that would help them now.

She sat there in silence as she listened to the continued murmur of the council members discussing defense placements in every place other than the northwest.  Time passed as she wracked her mind for a solution, as she idly watched the light from the setting sun shining through a window at the far side of the room, reflecting off the glass pane in such a way that it created a beam that moved across the room.  For some reason, the beam of light reminded her of the spells that she watched Echo try to teach Sandra; thinking of that led her to speculate on what was going on there at the moment, and how much she strangely missed being there.  It’s too bad that we don’t have the kinds of resources here that we’d have in her dungeon.  Especially those Energy Orbs; I can only imagine what the great minds of my people could come up with if they have access to a portable elemental energy source—

Wait.

“Felbar?  Do you happen to know if that giant bird is still around?”

He looked down at her with a confused expression on his face.  “Yes, I believe I heard that it has been circling the palace at a great height for 3 straight days.”

What?  “We’ve only been here for 3 days?  It felt like much longer inside of that room.”

“Yes; a little bit more than that, but that’s fairly close,” he said matter-of-factly.  “Anyway, I don’t think that even using the Aerie Roc will help us clear out the problems in the northwest.”

“You’re right about that, and it would only be a temporary solution, anyway,” she agreed.  “But the main thing that we need to consider is how to accomplish what Sandra tasked us with.”

“What task?  Bring all our people to the wasteland, ready to lend whatever aid we can?  I don’t know how we would accomplish that, and not leave the rest of our land vulnerable to monster attacks.”

Violet shook her head.  “No, we don’t need to bring everyone there, nor would we need to deplete the few defenses we have stationed around the forest borders, keeping the rest of us safe.  All we need to do is to cull the dungeons already affected by these enhancements Sandra told us about, in order to free her up to help us.”

“Yes, obviously – but we don’t have the War Machines and effective weaponry to do that without taking them from where they are also needed.”

  “True, we don’t have the weapons right now, but