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

Floating down even closer, Sandra was able to see what appeared to be a Gnome suspended by a rope around his waist, located behind a sturdy metal grate inside the middle of the construct’s body.  More enchantment runes covered everything but his head, and she instantly saw that they were actually covering a strange suit that he – she assumed it was a “he” by the beard – was wearing.  It didn’t take more than a few seconds of watching to see that the movements he made were instantly copied by the construct he was…operating?  It was just plain genius, and Sandra wanted to know how it was done; there was absolutely nothing like it back in the Human land of Muriel.

Tearing her attention away from the spectacular enchanted constructs was difficult, but she eventually turned back to the battle.  Her 100-strong group of Shears arrived, and she immediately sent them to help clear off the encroaching lizards – and even a few deadly crocodiles – that were getting too close to the remaining crossbow teams.  They dropped down from about 100 feet up in the air, using their speed to impale themselves into the reptiles with great force, killing over twenty of the smaller lizards instantly.

The others did quite a bit of damage as well, maiming limbs and opening gaping wounds in some of the larger crocodiles, crippling them so that they would eventually succumb to their wounds later.  A few missed their targets that moved out of the way unexpectedly at the last moment; some drove themselves into a nearby reptile, causing some damage but nothing fatal; a few even managed to hit the shell of a few turtles, which were a lot harder than Sandra had expected.  They bounced off the shells while leaving just a small gouge and the relatively soft metal of the Shears were mangled and destroyed by the impact.

When they had all made their initial attack, she attempted to bring them back up into the air so that they could strike again, but only a single one lifted into the air, damaged but still serviceable.  The rest, when she looked for them, had already disappeared and left behind a Tiny Copper Orb; the impacts coming even from a perfect strike were enough to destroy them in the process.  She saw that many of the reptiles that had been killed left behind various small sizes of Steel Orbs as dungeon loot, which might be why the Gnomes were there in the first place; Steel was a valuable commodity, and she knew that if Human Heroes were around, they’d be doing all they could to cull the surrounding forest every chance they got.

The Gnomes all paused in confusion when her Shears had attacked, which was the opposite of Sandra’s intention – because the attacking reptiles didn’t care in the slightest.  As a result, they took advantage of their victims’ inattention to ramp up their attack, sending up replacements for those she had killed.  She used her last remaining pair of Shears to impale the head of a crocodile that was just about to bite an inattentive Gnome.  It didn’t kill it outright like she was hoping, but the action spurred the others into action, who pulled out their long Steel knives and finished off the wounded reptile.

Unfortunately, the delay in continuing their defense was costly.  They fought valiantly still, but two of the defensive placements were overrun before they could recover.  With fewer targets to concentrate on, the rest of the reptiles piled up quickly towards the remaining Gnomes; things were looking bleak, but then the first of the Gnome constructs arrived and started tearing into the rear of the Core’s army.  With a tremendous smash of its spiked hammer, it practically shattered the shell of a giant turtle nearby, while its other hand swept back and forth repeatedly just over the ground, slicing off lizard heads and crocodile heads in the process.

Its success was short-lived, however, as the reptile army wasn’t taking that without fighting back.  The powerful construct was soon swarmed by dozens of snakes that had been slithering around, unable to successfully climb up the smooth walls of the Gnome village either on their own or through the use of the other reptiles as platforms.  What they could do, however, was “snake” their way up the legs of the large construct and wrap around its limbs, constricting so tightly that even the rune-enchanted appendages had difficulty moving.  Sandra could hear creaking and cracking as the wood and metal components were strained and compressed tightly; finally, there was a shearing noise as the right leg had some critical part snap inside of it, and it fell to a knee.

The Gnome inside the construct wasn’t giving up without a fight, however, as he managed to smash its right arm against the ground, crushing the two snakes that had been constricting it.  Freed up – at least momentarily – the Gnome construct swept its axe towards its other arm, slicing up the snake there and freeing the warhammer, though she could tell that the left appendage was now damaged.  It still worked well enough to flail wildly, at least, and smash apart another turtle in the process.

But the recovery was only temporary.  Unbeknownst to the Gnome, another, smaller snake had crawled up its body and managed to squeeze through one of the holes in the metal grate protecting him; when it was close enough, the small red/orange-colored snake struck directly at his face, biting him just under his eye and latching on to his cheek.  The Gnome screamed, and instinctively raised both his hands quickly up to his face – which caused the construct to smash itself with both an axe and a warhammer.  The impact was so great that it caused the entire enchanted machine to fall on its back, where it squished a