The Crafter's Dungeon: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 1) Jonathan Brooks (sites to read books for free .TXT) 📖

time that she first saw him – walking aimlessly through the wasteland above – and she remembered she thought he looked drunk.  And then the Bearlings attacked, which prompted him to run into her—

The Bearlings!

Looking through her Jaguar, she saw that the Bearlings were still out in force, though none of the Orcs were looking in their direction; instead, they were blindly following the one tracking her Apes’ footprints.  She thought it might be about time to change that.

She gave orders to her Wolf – which she usually let operate by itself, because she wasn’t adept at running on all fours – and she watched it break from cover.  It ran almost directly at the warband, which quickly prepared their weapons at the sight of it, before it cut off towards a different direction.  Directly towards the Bearlings, in fact.

The Orcs obviously didn’t know what her Wolf was, but they knew prey when they saw it.  They immediately chased after her construct; her Mechanical Wolf was fast, but there were a couple of members of the Warband that were just as fast – or perhaps even faster.  The distance between her Dungeon Monster and the closest Orc giving chase narrowed from 50 feet to 10 within a few seconds, but by that time the damage had been done.

Because no one other than Sandra had been paying attention to where they were running.

A massive roar echoed through the wasteland and finally got the Orcs’ attention.  The lead Orc had almost reached her Wolf, but he stopped abruptly when he heard the roar and the scared look on his face was the last thing she saw from her Wolf’s perspective before his abrupt stop caused him to pitch forward.  There were 14 Bearlings arranged less than 20 feet ahead of him; when they saw him fall, they immediately charged forward and fell upon the Orc, who was just barely getting to his feet.  He got a single strike in before multiple claws sliced into him, literally tearing him apart into at least six pieces.

The others weren’t far behind, however, and the strung-out Orcs regrouped and took the fight to the Bearlings.  Kelerim had mentioned that the Warband frequently hunted the beasts, and it showed in their calm demeanor and group tactics; for Sandra, however, it was the first time she had seen Heroes – or in the Orcs’ case, Warriors – in action.

Human Heroes were more about the flashy manipulation of elemental energy in their attacks – or so she heard – as they formed attacks that targeted their enemies.  Orc Warriors, as she was beginning to learn, used most of their elemental energy to enhance themselves.  She saw lightning-quick reflexes narrowly avoid claw swipes, sword strikes that left a line of fire in their wake, and even someone who jumped back from an attack so gracefully that it looked like he was flying.  She even saw a slow-looking Orc take a full-on strike from a claw and survive with just a few scratches.

But the leader – Razochek, if she remembered right – was a powerhouse.  Each of his strikes hit with precision and strength; they were so powerful, in fact, that within a few swings he had killed two Bearlings – but it also broke his sword off at a point where she could easily see a flaw in the metal-crafting.  Shoddy work, that.

Razochek still used the remnants of the sword to do damage, though, but he had lost his reach advantage.  He took a razor-sharp claw to the top of his thigh, which easily cut through the Leather armor and at least an inch of skin underneath.  The pain that came with it also brought forth some sort of berserk state, as the warband leader grabbed another sword from a fallen comrade and went crazy as he helped finish off the rest of the Bearlings.

Sandra watched Razochek breathing heavily as he looked around wildly for any more Bearlings to slay, but he slowly calmed down enough to take stock of the situation.  They had taken casualties from their victory: 3 dead (including the unlucky one that had almost caught her Wolf), and another eight wounded in some way, half of which looked serious.

“Rynehorn!  Stabilize the worst and bring them back to the village; the rest of us will clean up here and we’ll bring the meat back when we’re done.  And then we’ll feast!”  A loud cheer erupted from the survivors, including the wounded Warriors.  Sandra watched as one of the unhurt Orcs started going from one wounded warband member to the next, a faint whitish glow emanating from his – on a second look, it was actually a female – hands as those hurt the most relaxed a little as their wounds stopped bleeding.  They weren’t completely healed, but they weren’t in danger of dying anymore.

She must be using Holy elemental energy to heal them, but she must not be that great at it if that is all she could do.  Sandra had seen Human Holy energy users heal some wounds that were practically fatal, so she was well aware of what the potential was for healing.  She had been seen by quite a few in her youthful years when she was a merchant, but none of them could do anything to fix her defective hands; because they were that way when she was born, there was nothing for them to “fix”.

Eight Orcs slowly walked away from the battlefield above her dungeon, which included the healer and seven wounded Warriors.  The eighth wounded Orc was Razochek himself, but he refused to go back because of a little scratch.  Instead, he spent an hour or so with the remaining eight members of his warband skinning, gutting, and chopping up the corpses of the Bearlings with practiced efficiency.

When they were done, they wrapped the meat up in the skins and then picked them up like large