But that was for later, as she now had plenty of things to occupy her time. She needed to build a place where she could grow different plants, get started on her Pottery, and a number of other crafts she was excited to get started on.
* Ooh, this is good. This is exactly what I needed— *
Something tickled at the edge of her awareness. Curious, she found her Mechanical Jaguar alerting her to something aboveground; she wasn’t sure why it worked that way, but if she didn’t give her cat-like construct specific instructions, it tended to like to bask in the sun on the small hill above her dungeon. That didn’t bother her, because it also kept a lookout for any approaching danger – which was exactly what it saw now.
She found her Mechanical Wolf, which was even now only about 50 feet away from the Orcish warband that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, though it appeared to be only half of the 40-strong group that had been in the village. Sandra’s Wolf was lying completely still under an overhang nearby, which made it extremely hard to spot unless you knew what you were looking for. Because they didn’t see her construct, she was able to hear the tail-end of their conversation.
“…told you, Razochek. Those prints looked just like a Bearling’s; if there are lairs of them out in the wasteland, we can save days off of our hunts! See, look here…and here…and here…it looks like we’re getting close to their location,” a smaller Orc was walking in front of the biggest of the bunch, pointing at the ground as he saw something Sandra couldn’t see from her location. I wonder if he’s seeing the prints left from my Apes? They are pretty heavy, and I didn’t even think about what kind of trail they probably left behind them.
“Those aren’t like any Bearling I’ve seen before,” the leader of the warband – Razochek she assumed – smacked the smaller Orc on the back of the head as he responded. “But I agree, we should check it out in case there is something else out here that might pose a danger to Grongbak. Those worthless villagers couldn’t kill a cat, let alone a Bearling or whatever else is out here.”
She watched for another minute or so to see where they were going, and her figurative heart dropped when she saw them start to follow her Ironclad Apes’ tracks toward her dungeon entrance.
* We’ve got a problem – you were followed. *
Sandra let both Kelerim and Winxa know about the incoming danger, while she started to panic a little. What am I going to do? What am I going to do?! It was one thing defending herself against wild beasts like the Bearlings who wanted to do her harm, but it was something else entirely to hurt or possibly kill the Orcs heading in her direction. She kept thinking how much of a disaster this was going to be, when Winxa shouted and knocked on her Core.
“Hey! Listen up! Don’t panic in there – this is literally what you were made for. You might not want to do it, but you have the tools necessary to defend yourself. Just remember, if they get down here, they will destroy you! You may have made a friend of one of them, but the rest don’t care about anything but killing – unless there is a reason to keep you alive, of course.”
She calmed down a little, as what Winxa said made sense – as much as she didn’t want to believe it. The mention of an ally made her check in with Kelerim, who was busy strapping on the few pieces of thin Steel armor that she had felt like making for him, though they were highly mismatched. One greave for his shin, a single vambrace for his forearm, and a solitary pauldron for his shoulder; she had just been experimenting with the Leather that she had recently had access to and was starting to move her personal crafting focus from primarily weapons to armor.
* What are you doing? You said that you don’t know how to fight. *
“I don’t, but I’m not going to let my friend do this all alone. This is my home now, and I’m not letting it go without putting up a fight,” Kelerim replied, as he finished strapping the pauldron on his shoulder all wrong. She absently told him the correct way to put it on, while she thought about what he said. His statement that he would fight for his friend made Sandra think back to the circumstances of how their strange friendship came about. She could picture the 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’l
l 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 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 interesting aspect of her trap was that it required someone to trigger it by stepping over the threshold into the room – and then staying inside; if they left, however, it reset after 5 seconds so that it wouldn’t use all of its accumulated Mana up all at once. Her initial thought when she made it was to prevent someone from sticking their foot over the trigger and then stepping back, waiting for it to run itself out – but all her precaution brought now was the sight of her 8 Totems in plain view for the assembled Orcs.
“This dungeon shouldn’t be here, but I can see now that it is exactly what this is. We need to destroy it before it becomes larger; leaving it for even a couple of days might make it too powerful to take down later. And allowing it to stay here is out of the question, as we can’t afford to maintain this dungeon’s monster population in addition to the ones we are already doing. This should be pretty easy, though, because it appears as though this is a newly opened dungeon,” Razochek told his warband.
This isn’t good – why won’t they just go away?
“Why do you think its newly opened?” one of the Orcs Sandra hadn’t heard speak before asked from the back of the group.
“Because we didn’t see any type of dungeon monsters aboveground. They always attack when you get near their entrance, and those Bearlings were definitely not part of this dungeon. My guess is that it just recently opened up to the outside and hasn’t been able to spawn any monsters capable of
taking out those beasts we just slaughtered. If that’s the case – and I believe it is – then other than a few tricks inside here, we won’t find much resistance,” the Orcish warband leader stated confidently, before urging his subordinates on. “Alright, we’re pushing ahead – standard formation, but give yourself some room to swing; I don’t want anyone hitting each other. Thornhix, you stay back until this room is cleared, as you’re injured. And…go!”
And just like that, the Orcs rushed into the first room, which triggered the Nether trap again, and started swinging wildly around at what they couldn’t see. Three of her Basher Totems were destroyed within the first three seconds, but the rest managed to regroup and focus their efforts on a single Orc. Powerful blows rocked the unlucky and blind warband member, hitting him mainly in the sides because it was the easiest to reach, but the Orc withstood the majority of the blows with only minor damage. He must be utilizing his elemental energy to make his body tougher.
With twenty arms bashing away at his defenses, though, the strong Orc couldn’t hold up his defense forever; in less than 10 seconds, his ribs had taken one too many blows and his defense cracked, along with a large portion of his ribcage. He collapsed on the floor and the Bashers followed up their advantage and beat the rest of his life out of him.
Sandra hated watching her constructs take a life of one of the sentient races; she wanted to help them all against the dungeons and killing them quite defeated the purpose. She wished she could just speak to them and tell them to stop, but there was no way to communicate with them – except through an intermediary. Kelerim was slightly hesitant to throw himself into the thick of battle, though, despite his insistence that he help protect the dungeon.
“You want me to what? I doubt that they’d listen to me, especially if Razochek is there – I’m the last one he’d listen to. However, if that’s what you want me to do, I’ll do it,” he told her.
The Crafter's Dungeon: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 1) Page 29