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

Her Mechanical Wolves and Jaguars went to work on all of the smaller snakes and lizards by snatching them up with their metal jaws and chewing them to pieces, before spitting them back out again.  A few of them even raced up the remaining reptile staircases and fought alongside the Gnomes, who – at least at that point – were so relieved for the help that they barely even paused when her constructs appeared.

The help her constructs provided turned the tide of the battle significantly, but – just like every other fight thus far at the Gnome village – it wasn’t without casualties on her side.  Getting over the initial shock of her forces appearing, the reptile army turned away from the Gnomes to deal with her constructs; though they had proved fairly resilient – in general – against the Orcs that had invaded her dungeon, against the concentrated assault of a Dungeon Core’s retaliation attack…they didn’t fare so well.

The smaller lizards and snakes weren’t much of a threat, though some of the latter managed to entangle a few of her Mechanical Wolves and Jaguars, leaving them to be finished off by the stronger reptiles.  The crocodiles and turtles – once they were totally focused on attacking her surprise force – were deadly.  For the large-jawed crocodiles, they were able to whip their heads around quickly and bite down on to one of her constructs’ appendages – for instance one of her Basher’s arms; that bite, while powerful in its own right, wasn’t enough to do more than crush the metal it was made of a little. Once it had latched on, however, it would spin its body in some sort of death roll, which would rip off limbs or tear apart some of the smaller constructs like they were nothing.

The giant turtles grew wise and hid their feet inside their shells, where they were difficult to get to; when her Ironclad Apes tried to approach them from behind, they would quickly smash their heads into the ground at an angle and literally spin themselves toward her construct.  Then, with powerful bites of their spiked mouths, they could rip off entire chunks of iron from her Apes and cripple parts of their bodies.

Even with that, Sandra’s forces were superior to the reptiles because of their basic nature; poison, wounds to their basic frame or extremities, and trying to squeeze them to death didn’t slow them down like it would a flesh-and-blood monster.  Her constructs were slowly gaining the upper hand, which was only helped when a brave Gnome – once the attention was off of them – jumped down off of the wall and started chucking the spent bolts back up to the crossbow positions.  There were dozens of them just lying on the ground where they had struck and killed some of the reptiles earlier; when the monsters disappeared and left behind their loot, they also left behind the bolts.  Some few were bent from the force of the impacts, but many more were still quite usable.

 While they were gaining the advantage – despite the losses her forces were sustaining – over the “smaller” reptiles, the Ancient Saurian was still slowly lumbering towards the village from the forest.  It was very slow-moving, fortunately, so it gave the Gnome machines time to close the distance.  Splitting up, they approached from different directions, their 12-foot-tall constructs facing off against the 20-foot-tall, 40-foot-long reptile with bravery.  At least, Sandra thought it was bravery; she didn’t think they were foolish, so they must’ve had a plan in mind.

When they were within range, they quickly – well, as quick as they were able to move – ran to either side of the massive lizard and started to pound and slash at its belly.  Sandra could see a few indents in the Saurian’s flesh where their spiked warhammers impacted it, but she didn’t think they broke any bones; their double-bladed axes, however, were able to slice big gashes in its side and blood started to run freely from the wounds.

A massive head whipped around from the front of the giant lizard faster than Sandra thought it was capable and bit down on the Gnome machine on its right side, its mouth wide enough to slip over the entire top half.  She could hear cracks and creaks as the jaws compressed together, but the construct held its basic form quite well; after a few moments, the Saurian couldn’t bite down any harder to do any more damage.  Instead of continuing to try to crush it, the massive lizard brought its head down over and over, smashing the Gnomish machine into the ground, battering it and essentially destroying its lower limbs in the process.

The other Gnome construct wasn’t forgotten, however; it had widened a huge vertical gash in the skin of the Saurian and Sandra could practically see its insides.  The pain was likely enough for the giant lizard to want to do something about it – and it did.

Taking one large step to the right with its front leg, the lizard planted its foot and pulled the rest of its body around – including its long and powerful tail.  The momentum from its half-spin was enough to catch the Gnome machine with a force capable of crunching wood and metal, and the impact was so tremendous that the heavy, rune-enchanted construct went flying.  It was hit so hard, in fact, that it was launched the remaining 300 feet between the Saurian and the Gnome village.

It bounced once with bone-crunching force off of the reptiles who were starting to bunch up for a counterattack versus Sandra’s forces – crushing a dozen crocodiles and three giant turtles – before taking to the air again.  Fortunately, it completely missed hitting any of her dwindling construct army; unfortunately, once it bounced off the reptilian forces, it smashed right through two of the four