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

sacks, two to a person – other than Razochek himself.  He instead grabbed all of the personal effects of the three warband members that had fallen in battle, muttering something that Sandra couldn’t hear from her Wolf’s position hidden behind a small hill about 100 feet away.

He followed behind the rest of his warband as they made their way back towards the village, and Sandra started to relax.  Not only had they avoided detection, but their Bearling threat had been eliminated.  Granted, she wasn’t excited to see the deaths of so many – Orc or Bearling – above her dungeon, but at least the meat and skins of the beasts wouldn’t go to waste.

They were just passing the point where her Wolf had led them the other way when he stopped and looked at the ground.  “Hold up!  These prints lead in the other direction.  We’re going to check it out before we head back.”

Uh, oh.

Chapter 37

Sandra had been keeping her two visitors apprised of what was happening, so Kelerim for one was ready when she told him about the incoming Orcs.  Winxa was relatively indifferent, as she just repeated her little pep-talk from earlier.  The Dungeon Core appreciated her loyalty and confidence, but as she wasn’t in as much danger from the leftover warband as Sandra and Kelerim, she didn’t have as much at stake.  The ability to create a portal in the middle of the air and leave anytime she wanted meant that she had a lot more freedom.

She belatedly realized that she had completely idle during the battle aboveground and the subsequent butchering of the Bearling corpses.  What she should’ve been doing was increase the number of constructs in her dungeon, add another trap or two, or even craft some more armor for Kelerim, but now it was too late.  She even realized that she was completely full of mana, because her Wolf had been just barely close enough to the battlefield to absorb a portion of the Mana from the deaths of 14 Bearlings and 3 Orcs – the sheer amount of which was staggering.

She couldn’t see it to quantify it, but by putting herself in her Mechanical construct’s body, she could almost feel that it was more than enough to finish off the last 5 of the 9 stages she needed to get to Core Size 17 – and maybe even to 18 when it came down to it.  Of course, from what Winxa told her, the ambient Mana from their deaths would dissipate within a few hours, so she wouldn’t necessarily be able to take advantage of it.

In fact, it already seemed to be slowly disappearing, so she quickly had her Wolf run over and start soaking up as much as it could, while the Orcs were closing in on her entrance.  She immediately funneled all that Mana into finishing all but the last stage of her Core Size upgrade, and then spent some more on making sure her Flame Wall trap in her Home room was set back up, since she had taken it down while she had some constructs going in and out.  It meant that she wouldn’t be able to make any new Dungeon Monsters while it was active, but it was almost guaranteed to stop anyone from getting to her.

By the time she was done with all that, Razochek and the seven members of his warband had arrived at her dungeon.  The moment the one in the lead put his foot inside her tunnel entrance, she felt her ability to change much of anything in the dungeon relatively muted.  She felt as if she could remove traps if she felt like it, but putting them back was a no-go, as well as absorbing any new material from the area – other than dead bodies, of course.

There was one advantage, though: she could hear and sense them as well as anything in her dungeon now.  She didn’t have any constructs close enough to hear them after they turned toward her dungeon, though she was at least able to see them from her Mechanical Jaguar perched up above on the hill.  But now she could hear everything.

“…don’t like this.  This cave is carved out too regularly, even when you ignore what are obviously Bearling claw marks on the outside.  See, it appears as if these walls are made entirely of stone, and the surface is too flat to be natural.  If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is the entrance to a dungeon,” the same tracker from before was explaining to the warband leader.

“But there aren’t any dungeons out in the wasteland, and we didn’t see any monsters outside.  Those Bearlings certainly weren’t part of any dungeon, as they didn’t drop any loot when they died – and they didn’t disappear.  Those were definitely real; this, however, is something that shouldn’t exist.  Unless this is an old one that was abandoned for some reason…” Razochek muttered as he followed behind.

It didn’t take long for the leader to be dissuaded from that notion, because as soon as the tracker stepped cautiously into the first room, the lights went completely out, and Sandra’s Basher Totems went to work on the lead Orc’s face and upper body.  Unlike the Bearlings that had attacked when Kelerim had first arrived, however, the Orcs had a better sense of self-preservation; as soon as the tracker started taking a few powerful hits from the Totems, he fell back into the tunnel with a yell, hurt with possibly a broken rib or two – yet alive.

“What was it?  What attacked you, Thornhix?” Razochek asked, trying to peer ahead into the darkened room and failing.

“I…have no idea.  I couldn’t…see anything,” Thornhix replied, his injuries making it hard for him to talk.  Within a second, though, the Nether trap from the room disappeared and the room – and her Basher Totems were visible.  One