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

down the hill he was on to look for the best way down – he wanted to flee before the undead remembered he was there.  However, another strange noise coming from the large cave stopped him.

Emerging from the cave was a 20-foot-tall wood-and-metal machine of some sort; on the front of the strange contraption was a small metal grate, which – unless his eyes were still playing tricks on him – held another, paler Goblin…and it seemed to be controlling the machine.  One of the arms on the contraption was fused to a mighty-looking warhammer, while in the other was a massive double-bladed axe; looking closer, Gerold’s Dwarven senses kicked in and he immediately determined that they – and the rest of the metal on the machine – were made entirely of titanium, which was astonishing in and of itself.

The weapons were crossed in front of the large contraption, however, and it appeared to be carrying some sort of metal ball.  Gerold watched as the machine took two giant steps out of the cave, just barely out of range of the rampaging undead that were barely being held back by the metal creatures, Elves, and other Goblins.  Before it could be overwhelmed, the two arms on the contraption quickly lifted up into the air, tossing the metal ball nearly 15 feet; the Goblin-controlled machine stepped its right leg back, turning the entire thing so that it was looking to the side.

With the piercing sound of metal striking metal that reverberated throughout the broken wasteland valley, the massive contraption swatted the large ball out of the air with the flat of its double-bladed axe, sending it over the heads of the undead closing in.  Gerold watched the ball fly through the air – with one side slightly dented from the impact with the axe – and land just feet from the front of the gigantic corpse blob.  The group of undead from the other cave were just passing by it when the disgusting abomination rolled a little more forward; the gigantic undead just barely touched the metal sphere…when the world seemed to explode.

On second thought, implode would probably be the better word.  After an initial flash of light that almost blinded him, a weird vortex of glowing energy had taken the place of the metal ball.  Gerold could see blue and black prevalent inside of the glowing vortex and he could sense the Nether energy in it – more than he had ever felt before, even compared to all of the undead in the valley.  It felt more raw than what he sensed from the undead, so he thought that also might have something to do with how powerful it seemed.

For almost five seconds, everything seemed to freeze, though Gerold could see out of the corner of his eye that the Goblin and its machine had retreated back into the cave and was now nowhere to be seen.  After those five seconds, however, the vortex started to pull at everything around it; the corpse-blob next to it was the first to get sucked in, shrinking at the same time as it was absorbed faster and faster.  In less time than the Dwarf thought possible, it was completely gone, having been sucked completely inside the raging vortex of energy.

It wasn’t done yet, however; undead up to 30 feet away were picked up off their feet or pulled out of the air and were immediately sucked into the vortex and disappeared.  Then those farther out at 40, 50, and then 100 feet were pulled in and destroyed one after the other. It wasn’t just the undead monsters that were sucked into the maelstrom of energy, but rocks, loose dirt, and desiccated sticks were also pulled in; when the range of the vortex reached 150 feet away – which in reality took less than 10 seconds from when it first started – Gerold watched and felt unsteady as the ground started to tremble.

Below the vortex, the ground in which it was sitting broke apart and was sucked in as well, leaving a bowl-shaped crater in the stone and dirt.  That only seemed to increase the speed of its expansion, as it started grabbing at all of the rest of the undead now starting to flee.  Not only that, but it also indiscriminately picked up and destroyed the remaining metal creatures, Elves, and Goblins still out keeping the undead horde back.  Soon enough there wasn’t a single dungeon monster left out in the broken valley as they were all pulled in and destroyed.

But the expansion didn’t stop.

“Oh, no…”  Too late, Gerold realized he should’ve moved from his perch on top of the nearby hill earlier.  He could feel himself being picked up, so he held onto an outcropping near the apex of the craggy hill to prevent himself from being sucked into the vortex.  His battle-axe was ripped off his belt and he looked back to see it fly straight toward the energy maelstrom, disappearing in seconds; as his hands started to slip, he could feel his armor strengthening him as it enhanced the strength in his fingered gauntlets.  Even that wasn’t enough, however, because he was still slipping – and his elemental energy was being drained quickly.

He knew it was over when he felt the last of it give out and it felt like he got punched in the head; if the backlash of using too much energy in such a short time wasn’t bad enough, his armor – that took weeks of work for the Master Blacksmiths back home to design and create – disintegrated around his body, including his fingers.  Gerold immediately lost his grip on the outcropping and felt himself being quickly sucked towards the vortex. Closing his eyes, he tried to shut out everything in an attempt to block out what he expected to be a tremendous amount of pain.

He was spared that particular pain, however, as