The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) Jonathan Brooks (me reader TXT) 📖

of her own to destroy them.  Everything she sent out would be immediately destroyed, as nothing would be able to work together to take the Nether-based Dungeon Monsters down.  The Undead Core didn’t need to invade her dungeon to attempt to destroy Sandra; all it had to do was keep her bottled up while it went about its business.

Sure, she might eventually wear the Undead down by a constant stream of constructs thrown out the entrances, but she could already see reinforcements coming from the trees in ones and twos.  There were a few tricks that Sandra had up her sleeve, of course, but she felt like she was always one step behind the other Core; what else will I have to defend against after I destroy these Undead?

She mentally spoke too soon, because emerging from the forest near the Undead dungeon was a gigantic, horrendous-looking abomination.

Well, I guess I know what I’m going to have to do now…

Chapter 19

Fifth-shield Gerold agilely stepped out of the way of a slow and clumsy strike by the Dirt Golem in front of him…only to be slammed from the side by its other appendage.  He went flying through the air a dozen feet before he crashed to the ground, tumbling a couple of times before he smashed into a nearby tree.  The young Dwarf heard cracking and worried that either his body or his armor was damaged, but looking up from where he had fallen, he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that it was only the tree itself that had suffered the ill effects.

Picking himself up from the ground, he was surprised to find that he hadn’t lost hold of his battle-axe even through his flight and subsequent acrobatics.  His full-plate armor also looked pristine – like it should – though he could feel that absorbing the impact and protecting Gerold had drained him of a little elemental energy.  It was probably only about 5% of what he had available, but the day was just starting; if he wasted all of it now because of stupid mistakes, then he’d be useless halfway through the day.

The Dirt Golem was already heading in his direction, so the Dwarf readied himself, determined not to fall for that kind of sneak attack again.  This was his first solo outing to cull the dungeon monsters outside the village of Nurboldar, and he winced internally when he imagined what Second-shield Bregan would say about his performance so far.  His mentor would doubtless chastise him to no end, pointing out his mistakes, and berating him until he shaped up. Despite the abuse from the veteran Shield he had withstood over the last month of training, Gerold knew that it was all done to make him a better fighter – and to help him not die when fighting his first monster.

I’m not doing such a good job of that so far, am I?

“Come on, Gerold – get your act together,” he mumbled to himself.  The Dwarf stepped forward with his shield strapped to his left arm and his battle-axe in his right hand, trying to exude the confidence he knew he should feel; it was difficult, however, especially when there wasn’t the safety net of his mentor there to help if he messed up.  Nevertheless, Gerold knew that the 8-foot-tall Dirt Golem shouldn’t present that much of a challenge – or at least the ones he had killed before hadn’t been in the past.

Giving himself a little shake to get rid of his nerves, Gerold stepped towards the Golem, while at the same time funneling a trickle of his Water elemental energy to the edge of his battle-axe.  He did the same with his Nether energy, mixing the two until it made the edge an interesting combination of black and blue that crackled with power.

Quickly dodging another obviously clumsy strike from the Golem as he closed with it, he saw the other arm of the vaguely person-shaped monster come flying towards him out of the corner of his eye and ducked by practically throwing himself to the ground.  The dirt appendage passed a beard hair’s-length over his head, and Gerold swiftly straightened up and counter-attacked.  With a sweep of his Water-and-Nether enhanced axe, he sliced completely through the thick right lower “leg” of the Dirt Golem; the Water instantly turned the dirt it touched to mud, making it softer and easier to cut through, while the Nether did something equally important: it prevented the wound to the monster from “healing”.

Regenerating or Reincorporate might be a better word for how the Golems could normally use their unique abilities to reattach sliced-off parts of themselves by absorbing and reforming whatever got chopped off.  It wasn’t instant, of course, but even if you completely dismembered a Golem, after a few minutes the different parts would slowly come back together and reform the monster – though usually it lost a portion of its original size in the process.  If a Dwarf didn’t have access to elemental energy to prevent that from happening, then constantly dismembering the Golem was the only method to really destroy it; that process worked, of course, but it took a while.

Gerold’s Nether element applied to his battle-axe, however, sealed the ends of the “wounds” he inflicted with necrotic energy, preventing the pieces from rejoining.  There were other methods with other elements, of course – including Water if he really needed it – but using Nether energy in that matter was the best and most efficient course of action for him.

The Golem – now missing a leg that was chopped off just above its dirt “knee” – toppled forward onto its arms and remaining knee, and Gerold narrowly missed being crushed by half a ton of dirt by stepping out of the way.  He knew that just because it was missing a leg, that didn’t mean it wasn’t still dangerous; a quickly flung-out