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

will take too long!” he belted out, easily heard by the adjacent crossbow position.  One of the four Gnomes at each position dropped down to the ground outside of the village and started tossing up more bolts, all the while keeping a wary eye on Sandra’s constructs.

“Felbar, have you ever seen these things before?  Are they something new from the Warmaster’s College sent here to help?” a female gnome with long brown hair and blue/purple-colored eyes asked softly.  She was standing near the old Gnome who appeared to be keeping himself upright through pure determination alone.

“What?  Of course not, Violet.  Do you see any runes on them?  No – they’re not from the College or from one of the few Master Enchanters we have left.  If you’ve been paying attention like I’ve been trying to teach you, you’d see that when these new ones die, they disappear just like those blasted lizards.”  He looked at the female Gnome for a second as if waiting for a response; when nothing was forthcoming, he sighed heavily and said, “They’re a dungeon’s monsters, Violet.”

“What?  That doesn’t make any sense – why are they helping us then?”

“I have no idea.  But unless one of you slackers can manage to strike the heart through the wound in its side, they’re our only hope,” the one Sandra guessed was called Felbar responded, raising his voice so that everyone could hear him.  Including herself; she now had an objective, she just needed to figure out how to do that.

The Ancient Saurian was already headed towards the village by that time, after making sure that the other Gnome construct was completely destroyed.  Its slow, lumbering steps made it look like it was moving in slow motion, but its stride length was still impressive.  In less than a minute, the massive lizard was within 100 feet of the village’s walls, and the crossbows let their payloads fly.

Since it was facing directly at them, it was difficult if not impossible to hit the wounded side of the Ancient Saurian.  Instead, they had aimed at its face in the off chance that they scored a critical hit in its eye, its large nostrils, or even its slightly open mouth.  Unfortunately, the same quick movements that it had displayed before with its neck allowed the massive lizard to twitch its face out of the way in more than enough time, and one of the bolts missed completely, shooting off into the distance when it didn’t hit anything.

The other bolt hit its neck and stuck in its thick skin, having penetrated a couple of inches but was unable to go any farther.  It hung off the throat of the Saurian like a large needle, just deep enough to get stuck but with not enough penetrating power to even draw any blood.  Seeing that, she was doubly glad she didn’t bring her AMANS in for an attack, because they likely would’ve bounced off without being able to do any damage.

What they needed was for the massive lizard to turn to the side, so that they would have a chance to penetrate to its heart; while its skin was really tough, its insides were just as squishy as any other living being’s internal organs.  That was where Sandra’s constructs came in.

Knowing that it was a suicide run for most of them, she spread out her constructs and sent them to the Saurian’s left side where the wound was located; instructing them to stay back and make only quick attacks before retreating, they got into position out of range of the head – were it to swing towards them.  Then, starting with her Mechanical Wolves and Jaguars, she sent them to start biting its left hind leg, far enough away from the front where the neck couldn’t stretch around and let its massive mouth snatch them up.

After the tenth attack, her plan had the desired effect; just as had happened when the Gnome machine had been attacking it – it was the grizzled old Felbar once she thought about it – the Saurian’s right front leg stepped to the side and dragged the massive lizard to the side.  A humongous tail whipped around and smacked right into the Wolf attacking it, launching it straight ahead, where it impacted the village’s stone wall and shattered a portion of it.  Her construct didn’t fare that well, either, as it was mangled and destroyed upon hitting the barrier.

Two large crossbow bolts came flying out from the village, aimed almost perfectly; both hit the wounded side with precision, but one of them impacted a bone underneath the fleshy meat and was stopped cold, while the other went in at a strange angle and didn’t hit anything vital. The lizard hissed in pain, however, so maybe it had hit something vital.

Either way, even if they had been able to reload and fire again almost instantly, the Saurian turned away before they could’ve gotten a shot off.  It continued to drive itself forward towards the short village walls, undeterred, and Sandra tried to get it to attack the same way again by attacking its flanks a second time.  Ten, then twenty, then thirty attacks went by without any result and – while her attacks were beginning to wear away some of the skin and caused the massive lizard to bleed a little, it completely ignored her efforts.

They had less than a minute before it was in range of the village, so Sandra threw everything she had at the Saurian to get it to turn.  When nothing seemed to work, she grew frustrated and worried for the still-living Gnomes.

“You have to remember that it’s likely being controlled by the other Core right now; while they might be insane, murderous psychopaths – they’re not stupid.  It knows by now that your constructs are worth nothing to it, so the only objective it has is to kill the other sentients