The Crafter's Defense: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 2)

by Jonathan Brooks

  She concentrated on the battle again and saw that the nearly 200 smaller lizards and crocodiles were racing across the distance towards the Gnome village, where they would soon join their brethren and quickly overwhelm the defenders. That was especially true, because the Gnomish machines somehow sensed the presence of a bigger threat behind them and turned towards the Ancient Saurian. Sandra wasn’t sure what they could do against the massive monster, but she was determined to help.

  To that end, her ground forces were finally starting to arrive. Her Steel Pythons actually arrived first, having overtaken the others with their spectacular speed. All six of them immediately latched onto the nearest enemy they saw near the wall, whether it was a lizard, a crocodile, or a giant turtle. Lizards were quickly crushed by the Steel jaws of her Pythons, crocodiles were wrapped up by their ultra-strong bodies and squeezed to death, and the turtles had their legs crippled by the lightning-fast strikes her constructs could deliver.

  Steel Pythons were much more powerful and quicker than the flesh-and-blood reptiles assaulting the Gnome village, but that didn’t mean that they were invulnerable; the utter force behind a crocodile’s snapping jaws crippled the lower half of one of her constructs when it was able to snatch it up as it passed by. One of the giant turtles – which Sandra hadn’t really seen as very effective up to that point – surprised her by extending its neck out from its shell almost four feet, and it bit down on the tail end of an unsuspecting Python with its own powerful bite. It was so powerful, in fact, that it sheared through the entire Steel form and left the Python semi-crippled with about two feet missing from its lower half.

  For all that, though, Sandra’s constructs were doing quite a bit of damage – but it all took time. By the time they were starting to get closer to the wall and the reptilian staircases being made with pure Dungeon Monster bodies, the enemy reinforcements from the forest had arrived. Looking along the walls, she saw that all but one of the crossbows were now out of bolts and the Gnomes were fighting with their Steel knives – and they were slowly being pushed back.

  The additional force of reptiles only made it worse; the initial surge of bodies being recklessly flung up to the walls pushed back and overwhelmed half of the remaining defensive positions, leaving only four intact groups of Gnomes barely holding on. The majority of the newcomers had gone to the now-destroyed positions first, but it was only a matter of time before they fell under the onslaught.

  Sandra wasn’t going to let that happen if she could help it.

  The rest of her constructs (less her Repair Drones, which were much slower and were still about 15 minutes or more away) arrived just then and literally tore a swathe through the assembled reptilian army. Her Basher Totems swung their fists over and over, caving in skulls on the smaller lizards and cracking the backs of crocodiles, crippling them and preventing them from moving much. Her Ironclad Apes picked up the giant turtles (which comprised much of the staircases leading up to the walls) and tossed them away like a flying discus, where they landed at least 100 feet away. They were hurt by the throw, but not fatally; a few ended up on their backs and had trouble turning over. The main point was that they were out of the fight, albeit temporarily.

  Her Mechanical Wolves and Jaguars went to work on all of the smaller snakes and lizards by snatching them up with their metal jaws and chewing them to pieces, before spitting them back out again. A few of them even raced up the remaining reptile staircases and fought alongside the Gnomes, who – at least at that point – were so relieved for the help that they barely even paused when her constructs appeared.

  The help her constructs provided turned the tide of the battle significantly, but – just like every other fight thus far at the Gnome village – it wasn’t without casualties on her side. Getting over the initial shock of her forces appearing, the reptile army turned away from the Gnomes to deal with her constructs; though they had proved fairly resilient – in general – against the Orcs that had invaded her dungeon, against the concentrated assault of a Dungeon Core’s retaliation attack…they didn’t fare so well.

  The smaller lizards and snakes weren’t much of a threat, though some of the latter managed to entangle a few of her Mechanical Wolves and Jaguars, leaving them to be finished off by the stronger reptiles. The crocodiles and turtles – once they were totally focused on attacking her surprise force – were deadly. For the large-jawed crocodiles, they were able to whip their heads around quickly and bite down on to one of her constructs’ appendages – for instance one of her Basher’s arms; that bite, while powerful in its own right, wasn’t enough to do more than crush the metal it was made of a little. Once it had latched on, however, it would spin its body in some sort of death roll, which would rip off limbs or tear apart some of the smaller constructs like they were nothing.

  The giant turtles grew wise and hid their feet inside their shells, where they were difficult to get to; when her Ironclad Apes tried to approach them from behind, they would quickly smash their heads into the ground at an angle and literally spin themselves toward her construct. Then, with powerful bites of their spiked mouths, they could rip off entire chunks of iron from her Apes and cripple parts of their bodies.

  Even with that, Sandra’s forces were superior to the reptiles because of their basic nature; poison, wounds to their basic frame or extremities, and trying to squeeze them to death didn’t slow them down like it would a flesh-and-blood monster. Her constructs were slowly gaining the upper hand, which was only helped when a brave Gnome – once the attention was off of them – jumped down off of the wall and started chucking the spent bolts back up to the crossbow positions. There were dozens of them just lying on the ground where they had struck and killed some of the reptiles earlier; when the monsters disappeared and left behind their loot, they also left behind the bolts. Some few were bent from the force of the impacts, but many more were still quite usable.

  While they were gaining the advantage – despite the losses her forces were sustaining – over the “smaller” reptiles, the Ancient Saurian was still slowly lumbering towards the village from the forest. It was very slow-moving, fortunately, so it gave the Gnome machines time to close the distance. Splitting up, they approached from different directions, their 12-foot-tall constructs facing off against the 20-foot-tall, 40-foot-long reptile with bravery. At least, Sandra thought it was bravery; she didn’t think they were foolish, so they must’ve had a plan in mind.

  When they were within range, they quickly – well, as quick as they were able to move – ran to either side of the massive lizard and started to pound and slash at its belly. Sandra could see a few indents in the Saurian’s flesh where their spiked warhammers impacted it, but she didn’t think they broke any bones; their double-bladed axes, however, were able to slice big gashes in its side and blood started to run freely from the wounds.

  A massive head whipped around from the front of the giant lizard faster than Sandra thought it was capable and bit down on the Gnome machine on its right side, its mouth wide enough to slip over the entire top half. She could hear cracks and creaks as the jaws compressed together, but the construct held its basic form quite well; after a few moments, the Saurian couldn’t bite down any harder to do any more damage. Instead of continuing to try to crush it, the massive lizard brought its head down over and over, smashing the Gnomish machine into the ground, battering it and essentially destroying its lower limbs in the process.

  The other Gnome construct wasn’t forgotten, however; it had widened a huge vertical gash in the skin of the Saurian and Sandra could practically see its insides. The pain was likely enough for the giant lizard to want to do something about it – and it did.

  Taking one large step to the right with its front leg, the lizard planted its foot and pulled the rest of its body around – including its long and powerful tail. The momentum from its half-spin was enough to catch the Gnome machine with a force capable of crunching wood and metal, and the impact was so tremendous that the heavy, rune-en
chanted construct went flying. It was hit so hard, in fact, that it was launched the remaining 300 feet between the Saurian and the Gnome village.

  It bounced once with bone-crunching force off of the reptiles who were starting to bunch up for a counterattack versus Sandra’s forces – crushing a dozen crocodiles and three giant turtles – before taking to the air again. Fortunately, it completely missed hitting any of her dwindling construct army; unfortunately, once it bounced off the reptilian forces, it smashed right through two of the four remaining crossbow positions.

  The Gnomes there were caught completely unprepared; they didn’t even get a chance to scream as the large construct smashed into them, wiping them off their roofs and tossing them aside. Sandra couldn’t see if they had all been killed outright, but it didn’t look good; a few rapid influxes of Mana proved that at least some of them had landed near either her own Dungeon Monsters or some of the other Core’s, but it was hard to tell with everything going on. She did see where the Gnomish machine landed, however, and it was a broken mess of wood, metal, and destroyed runes; the Gnome controlling it was miraculously alive – injured, but alive – inside of it, but without some major repairs, the construct was essentially a pile of parts.

  The wiping out of a portion of the smaller reptiles was enough to give her constructs an even greater advantage, despite the loss of two of the Gnomish crossbow positions. They attacked with renewed determination, whittling down the enemy army from just under 200 to less than 50 in a matter of minutes. The last two Gnome crossbows ran out of ammunition again, but by that time it was only a matter of cleaning up the rest with the now-more-equal amount of Dungeon Monsters on the field. Without the advantage of numbers, the reptiles finally fell under the fists of her three remaining Basher Totems, four Ironclad Apes, four Steel Pythons, two Singing Blademasters (who had broken off from the Gnome machines when they went after the Saurian), fourteen Mechanical Wolves, and thirteen Mechanical Jaguars.

  By that time, the massive lizard had finished smashing the lower half of the Gnome construct apart; with a release of its jaws, the crushed-but-still-largely-intact upper half fell on the ground, the Gnome inside looking dazed, slightly injured – but alive as well. The machine’s arms had been trapped inside the jaws while it was held, but now they were free. With a visible effort of will, the Gnome inside used its arms to sit the entire construct up; without legs or feet, though, it couldn’t really move. It started to swing its arms though, trying to attack the nearby Saurian…but was stilled when a tree-trunk-like leg came crashing down and smashed right into the construct.

  The frame cracked but held for the moment. A feeble arm movement was the only sign of life inside the machine, but even that faded after the Saurian’s foot stomped down three, then four more times. On the fifth stomp, the construct finally cracked completely, destroying the Gnome and half of the wood and metal comprising the machine at the same time.

  That happened just as Sandra’s own constructs finished off the rest of the smaller reptiles, and she turned them toward the greater threat.

  Chapter 16

  During the battle, Sandra had been using all of the Mana that she had been – unfortunately – receiving from the slain Gnomes to replenish those constructs that she had sent to help. At the first sight of the massive lizard, however, she had started to send most of those she had created out to help as well, but they weren’t going to arrive in time. The Ancient Saurian was going to reach the Gnome village before the dozen Apes, two dozen Bashers, and even the four Steel Pythons could make it.

  She briefly thought about utilizing a portion of her AMANS for some sort of concentrated Shears attack, but she didn’t think they’d be able to penetrate the Saurian’s skin effectively enough to make it worthwhile. It was more likely that they’d just bounce off like they had against the shells of the turtles they had inadvertently hit earlier.

  That meant she only really had the constructs she currently had there to fight the 20-foot-tall Ancient Saurian. While it was heavily wounded along its side, it didn’t look like it was a fatal wound; in fact, the blood was already starting to slow down in its effort to leave the massive lizard’s body as it began to clot. Therefore, she couldn’t expect it to be too weakened from blood loss to make it an easier fight – she was going to have to use some strategy to defeat it.

  It was too bad that her superior knowledge crafting didn’t really lend itself to the art of fighting and warfare strategies.

  Most of the fights so far had been essentially slugfests, where she just sent her constructs in and hoped they knew what they were doing. There were a few times when she directed particular ones in where to fight, but she largely left the how to them. She had a feeling that if she sent them in as they were against the massive lizard, they would end up just like the Gnome machines – broken and destroyed. But…she didn’t have a clue what else to do.

  Fortunately, she wasn’t alone in the fight.

  The Gnome that had been controlling the construct that had inadvertently wiped out two of the crossbow positions had managed to free himself from the wreckage, drag his battered and bruised body to the closest house where there were still other Gnomes present, and climb up the rope ladder they tossed down to him. Despite his age, which Sandra had no frame of reference to – she was only going by the white hair, wrinkles, and scars all over his face – he was sitting down on the roof and barking orders. It looked silly for him to just sit there, until she realized that the lower portion of his left leg was jutting off at an angle it probably shouldn’t have been. Her respect for the grizzled Gnome rose a few notches as she realized he had literally dragged himself there through sheer force of will.

  “Aim for the wound I made on its side! The only way to take it down is to pierce its heart – any other way will take too long!” he belted out, easily heard by the adjacent crossbow position. One of the four Gnomes at each position dropped down to the ground outside of the village and started tossing up more bolts, all the while keeping a wary eye on Sandra’s constructs.

  “Felbar, have you ever seen these things before? Are they something new from the Warmaster’s College sent here to help?” a female gnome with long brown hair and blue/purple-colored eyes asked softly. She was standing near the old Gnome who appeared to be keeping himself upright through pure determination alone.

  “What? Of course not, Violet. Do you see any runes on them? No – they’re not from the College or from one of the few Master Enchanters we have left. If you’ve been paying attention like I’ve been trying to teach you, you’d see that when these new ones die, they disappear just like those blasted lizards.” He looked at the female Gnome for a second as if waiting for a response; when nothing was forthcoming, he sighed heavily and said, “They’re a dungeon’s monsters, Violet.”

  “What? That doesn’t make any sense – why are they helping us then?”

  “I have no idea. But unless one of you slackers can manage to strike the heart through the wound in its side, they’re our only hope,” the one Sandra guessed was called Felbar responded, raising his voice so that everyone could hear him. Including herself; she now had an objective, she just needed to figure out how to do that.

  The Ancient Saurian was already headed towards the village by that time, after making sure that the other Gnome construct was completely destroyed. Its slow, lumbering steps made it look like it was moving in slow motion, but its stride length was still impressive. In less than a minute, the massive lizard was within 100 feet of the village’s walls, and the crossbows let their payloads fly.

  Since it was facing directly at them, it was difficult if not impossible to hit the wounded side of the Ancient Saurian. Instead, they had aimed at its face in the off chance that they scored a critical hit in its eye, its large nostrils, or even its slightly open mouth. Unfortunately, the same quick movements that it had displayed before with its neck allowed the massive lizard to twitch its face out of the way in more than enough time, and one of the bolts missed c
ompletely, shooting off into the distance when it didn’t hit anything.

  The other bolt hit its neck and stuck in its thick skin, having penetrated a couple of inches but was unable to go any farther. It hung off the throat of the Saurian like a large needle, just deep enough to get stuck but with not enough penetrating power to even draw any blood. Seeing that, she was doubly glad she didn’t bring her AMANS in for an attack, because they likely would’ve bounced off without being able to do any damage.

  What they needed was for the massive lizard to turn to the side, so that they would have a chance to penetrate to its heart; while its skin was really tough, its insides were just as squishy as any other living being’s internal organs. That was where Sandra’s constructs came in.

  Knowing that it was a suicide run for most of them, she spread out her constructs and sent them to the Saurian’s left side where the wound was located; instructing them to stay back and make only quick attacks before retreating, they got into position out of range of the head – were it to swing towards them. Then, starting with her Mechanical Wolves and Jaguars, she sent them to start biting its left hind leg, far enough away from the front where the neck couldn’t stretch around and let its massive mouth snatch them up.

  After the tenth attack, her plan had the desired effect; just as had happened when the Gnome machine had been attacking it – it was the grizzled old Felbar once she thought about it – the Saurian’s right front leg stepped to the side and dragged the massive lizard to the side. A humongous tail whipped around and smacked right into the Wolf attacking it, launching it straight ahead, where it impacted the village’s stone wall and shattered a portion of it. Her construct didn’t fare that well, either, as it was mangled and destroyed upon hitting the barrier.

  Two large crossbow bolts came flying out from the village, aimed almost perfectly; both hit the wounded side with precision, but one of them impacted a bone underneath the fleshy meat and was stopped cold, while the other went in at a strange angle and didn’t hit anything vital. The lizard hissed in pain, however, so maybe it had hit something vital.