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

coming, Kelerim, and I don’t think I can stop them all from getting to you.  Why don’t you hide in one of the VATS rooms; I have a trap that should hopefully stop them from getting to me, so there’s no reason for you to fight. *

“No, I’m staying here.  I have a bone to pick with Razochek Bloodskull for kicking me out of that village; besides, if your trap doesn’t work, I couldn’t live knowing that I didn’t help,” Sandra’s friend said with obvious false-confidence.

If I’m destroyed, you wouldn’t live anyway, she couldn’t help but think – but she didn’t tell him that.  If he hid near the VATS, there wouldn’t be anything that could open the doors, meaning that he would end up starving to death.  She was confident in her final trap’s ability to stop anything coming for her, but she appreciated Kelerim’s show of support.  Though something else he mentioned tickled her mind and she searched for the reason behind it.

Unfortunately, she was distracted as the Orcs arrived at the fourth room, and they approached even more cautiously than before.  Every single one of the five were injured in some way or another, though two of them were seriously hurt in one of their feet, where an ice spike had impaled it.  They were brave Warriors, though, and they pushed on – with a limp, at least.

Razochek sent one of the less injured Orcs to investigate the room; the warband member almost tiptoed inside and watched where he put his feet, as if he could see where the triggers were for the trap Sandra had placed inside.  She didn’t think they could see it, but she wouldn’t have put it past them to be able to; it didn’t really matter, though, as the trigger was a long line that bisected the entire room two steps inside.

Intensely hot flames erupted from the ground throughout the entire room, one of which missed hitting the cautious Orc by only a few inches.  The heat was enough to start to burn though most of the Leather on his right side, however, but he was saved from being burnt to a crisp when Razochek reached in and yanked him back into the tunnel.  The temperature was so hot, in fact, that they all retreated back up the tunnel and stopped right at the edge of the water pool.

“Did anyone see any monsters in there?” Razochek asked the others.  When they all denied seeing any, the warband leader grunted.  “This dungeon is odd; in my experience and from the stories of others that have participated in the destruction of a dungeon, there’s usually only a few kinds of traps inside a dungeon, and they’re usually restricted to one or two elemental energy types.  But these flames make four that we’ve seen so far, which means it is even more important that we take this dungeon down before it gets any more powerful.”

Sandra could see the agreement in the other Orcs’ eyes, as if they instinctively knew the importance of their endeavor.  I wonder if the story of the dungeon that ended up creating this wasteland is handed down from generation to generation?  She didn’t have the answer to that, but she supposed it didn’t matter – because the Orcs again charged ahead.

This time, they had put their weapons away and ran at a full sprint toward the exit they could plainly see nearly 25 feet across from where they entered.  Most of them were quick enough to avoid being burned too badly – with only superficial wounds and some charred Leather armor, but one of the Orcs that had a damaged foot couldn’t keep up.  As a result of his extreme limp, he accidentally fell and landed right on a flame jet shooting straight up, which quickly burnt his upper torso and head beyond recognition.

The flames didn’t last long after that – needing to recharge the Mana inside of the Fire trap – but the damage had been done.  Razochek looked back at another lost member of his warband and Sandra could see him grit his teeth in apparent frustration.  Of them all, he had taken the least amount of injury, but even she could see him starting to slow down from all the activity over the last few hours – which included the battle with the Bearlings aboveground.

With only three members of his warband left other than himself, the leader pushed on to the fifth room, where he was initially met with yet another seemingly empty room with short walls that needed to be navigated.  His warband’s cautiousness was met with a poison cloud that started them all choking, coughing, and rubbing their eyes in an effort to get it out of their bodies.  They ran for the exit – quickly climbing or jumping over the short walls – but the other Orc with the limp lagged behind; when he passed through a certain point, Segmented Centipedes fell onto him from the ceiling and hit the ground around his feet.

They immediately crawled all over him and sliced apart his Leather armor with their sharp mandibles.  A few even managed to crawl under his Leather chestpiece and started to burrow their way into his skin.

The Orc fought back, of course; a few slaps with his powerful hands were enough to crush the lightweight and malleable metal of Sandra’s constructs, but there were too many of them and they kept going even when the majority of their segments had been destroyed.  Razochek and the others bravely ran back, suffering the poison gas again as a result, and managed to get most of the Centipedes off of him before they did too much damage.

They all left the room, coughing and spitting up blood from the poison inside the exit tunnel, when the Orc that had been attacked by the Segmented Centipedes collapsed, dead before he even hit the floor.  “What