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

The Gnomes there were caught completely unprepared; they didn’t even get a chance to scream as the large construct smashed into them, wiping them off their roofs and tossing them aside.  Sandra couldn’t see if they had all been killed outright, but it didn’t look good; a few rapid influxes of Mana proved that at least some of them had landed near either her own Dungeon Monsters or some of the other Core’s, but it was hard to tell with everything going on.  She did see where the Gnomish machine landed, however, and it was a broken mess of wood, metal, and destroyed runes; the Gnome controlling it was miraculously alive – injured, but alive – inside of it, but without some major repairs, the construct was essentially a pile of parts.

The wiping out of a portion of the smaller reptiles was enough to give her constructs an even greater advantage, despite the loss of two of the Gnomish crossbow positions.  They attacked with renewed determination, whittling down the enemy army from just under 200 to less than 50 in a matter of minutes.  The last two Gnome crossbows ran out of ammunition again, but by that time it was only a matter of cleaning up the rest with the now-more-equal amount of Dungeon Monsters on the field.  Without the advantage of numbers, the reptiles finally fell under the fists of her three remaining Basher Totems, four Ironclad Apes, four Steel Pythons, two Singing Blademasters (who had broken off from the Gnome machines when they went after the Saurian), fourteen Mechanical Wolves, and thirteen Mechanical Jaguars.

By that time, the massive lizard had finished smashing the lower half of the Gnome construct apart; with a release of its jaws, the crushed-but-still-largely-intact upper half fell on the ground, the Gnome inside looking dazed, slightly injured – but alive as well.  The machine’s arms had been trapped inside the jaws while it was held, but now they were free.  With a visible effort of will, the Gnome inside used its arms to sit the entire construct up; without legs or feet, though, it couldn’t really move.  It started to swing its arms though, trying to attack the nearby Saurian…but was stilled when a tree-trunk-like leg came crashing down and smashed right into the construct.

The frame cracked but held for the moment.  A feeble arm movement was the only sign of life inside the machine, but even that faded after the Saurian’s foot stomped down three, then four more times.  On the fifth stomp, the construct finally cracked completely, destroying the Gnome and half of the wood and metal comprising the machine at the same time.

That happened just as Sandra’s own constructs finished off the rest of the smaller reptiles, and she turned them toward the greater threat.

Chapter 16

During the battle, Sandra had been using all of the Mana that she had been – unfortunately – receiving from the slain Gnomes to replenish those constructs that she had sent to help.  At the first sight of the massive lizard, however, she had started to send most of those she had created out to help as well, but they weren’t going to arrive in time.  The Ancient Saurian was going to reach the Gnome village before the dozen Apes, two dozen Bashers, and even the four Steel Pythons could make it.

She briefly thought about utilizing a portion of her AMANS for some sort of concentrated Shears attack, but she didn’t think they’d be able to penetrate the Saurian’s skin effectively enough to make it worthwhile.  It was more likely that they’d just bounce off like they had against the shells of the turtles they had inadvertently hit earlier.

That meant she only really had the constructs she currently had there to fight the 20-foot-tall Ancient Saurian.  While it was heavily wounded along its side, it didn’t look like it was a fatal wound; in fact, the blood was already starting to slow down in its effort to leave the massive lizard’s body as it began to clot.  Therefore, she couldn’t expect it to be too weakened from blood loss to make it an easier fight – she was going to have to use some strategy to defeat it.

It was too bad that her superior knowledge crafting didn’t really lend itself to the art of fighting and warfare strategies.

Most of the fights so far had been essentially slugfests, where she just sent her constructs in and hoped they knew what they were doing.  There were a few times when she directed particular ones in where to fight, but she largely left the how to them.  She had a feeling that if she sent them in as they were against the massive lizard, they would end up just like the Gnome machines – broken and destroyed.  But…she didn’t have a clue what else to do.

Fortunately, she wasn’t alone in the fight.

The Gnome that had been controlling the construct that had inadvertently wiped out two of the crossbow positions had managed to free himself from the wreckage, drag his battered and bruised body to the closest house where there were still other Gnomes present, and climb up the rope ladder they tossed down to him.  Despite his age, which Sandra had no frame of reference to – she was only going by the white hair, wrinkles, and scars all over his face – he was sitting down on the roof and barking orders.  It looked silly for him to just sit there, until she realized that the lower portion of his left leg was jutting off at an angle it probably shouldn’t have been.  Her respect for the grizzled Gnome rose a few notches as she realized he had literally dragged himself there through sheer force of will.

“Aim for the wound I made on its side!  The only way to take it down is to pierce its heart – any other way