The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3)

by Jonathan Brooks

  Why was he here in the first place? She was actually a little thankful that he was there, because he provided a much-needed distraction that allowed the vanguard of her construct, Shapeshifter, and Goblin fodder force to spread out from the cave entrance enough to stand a chance. While his presence was beneficial for her in the end, it still didn’t explain why he was there at all.

  Unless…

  She quickly tasked the Shears she had keeping an eye on the Dwarven village check on their status; a quick peek showed that they were fine, and a few minutes of looking around the forest nearby showed nothing there, either. If the Undead Core had managed to send some of its Dungeon Monsters there, the presence of them might have alerted the Dwarves to what was happening near her dungeon…maybe? It was a working theory, but until she got some better information that was the best she could come up with.

  With everything there looking like it was as normal as could be, Sandra resumed her perusal of the battlefield – while at the same time producing Rolling Force after Rolling Force down by her Core. She immediately sent them out in a constant stream with orders to scatter and hunt down skeletal rats; the previous mistake she made earlier was keeping them all together in a group, because that seemed like the best method at the time – strength in numbers and all that. However, it was already proven that her constructs were faster than pretty much anything but those Specters when they were determined enough, and they could also easily destroy the rats by themselves one-on-one.

  She couldn’t let the Undead Core continue to accumulate so much Mana without any opposition, so destroying as many of those rats as possible was essential to reducing that amount. In fact, to offset what she was using to produce the Rolling Forces, every fifth one she created she added another pair of Shears to her AMANS to replace the over 1,200 that she had lost during the battle. She had to dig down deep into her treasury to keep up with what she was spending, but the current situation was exactly why her father always stressed keeping as much in savings at the bank as possible. This was a rainy-day scenario if she ever saw one, and everything she knew about Dungeon Cores told her that it would take the Undead one causing so many problems a while to recover from the loss of so many of its Monsters.

  A quick glance inside the workshop showed that the Repair Drone had finished its work and the Dwarf looked much healthier – but was still asleep for some reason. Sandra was really hoping that he wasn’t in a coma, but she figured only time would tell.

  After exploring the destruction while continuing her construct production below, she finally came to the spot underneath where the Sphere had done its thing earlier. At the bottom of the carved-out semi-circle of dirt and stone was another sphere-shaped object; initially she thought that the Devastation Sphere had survived, but it was smaller and multi-colored as well – unlike the large plain-looking metal ball the Sphere had been.

  Looking closer at it brought no more explanation of what it was; the only thing she could see was that it was apparently very heavy, as it was starting to crack a small stone underneath it with what appeared to be sheer weight alone. Sandra watched as the stone finally burst apart and practically disintegrated, but when the strange sphere slammed into the packed dirt below it seemed to settle a little. She could still see that it was pressing down into the dirt with great weight, but the fear that it would continue dropping through the ground – and her dungeon below it – was relieved at the sight.

  Apart from that, though, there was nothing left. Curious about what the sphere really was, she had her remaining Steelclad Ape inside the workshop come out and bring it into her dungeon; at least, that’s what she intended, but when her construct came to pick it up, the sphere barely twitched despite the Ape’s not-insignificant strength.

  * Felbar, do you think you can use the War Machine to move this thing? I’ll keep an eye on the Dwarf. *

  The Gnome nodded, using some stacked empty wooden boxes that Sandra had left over from filling the wagon – which was still intact and waiting to go back to the Gnome homeland – to climb his way up into the massive construct. When he stomped off, making the ground shake a little as he moved, Sandra looked at the Dwarf and wondered why he hadn’t woken up yet. Why does it seem like everyone likes to be unconscious here, at least lately? First, Violet collapsed into unconsciousness after creating the linking enchantment – and now there was a Dwarf lying in the middle of what was left of the workshop.

  Violet, however, was already awake and asking about what happened—

  Wait! I feel stupid for not putting it together before now.

  Violet had expended pretty much all of her elemental energy in the process of creating the enchantment, so her unconsciousness made sense because Sandra actually saw her do it; the Dwarf, on the other hand, hadn’t actually done anything – but his energy had been drained completely, nonetheless. That much was obvious by the way his armor had disintegrated off of his body while he was being pulled into the Sphere, but the Dungeon Core hadn’t really put it together until now.

  Her remaining Unstable Shapeshifter – the original one, with the samples taken from the Elite Elves – was still alive in the workshop mainly because Sandra hadn’t wanted to lose access to those forms. The other Shifters had been destroyed in the attack against the Undead, but she made sure to keep it back, figuring that an extra Elf tossing out Holy-based spells probably wouldn’t that much of a difference. As a result, it was available to help her because her Ape was still outside, acting as a guide to Felbar on where the strange object was located.

  Sandra shifted it into Echo’s form and had it grab a Water and Nether Energy Orb – which matched the tints on his now-destroyed armor – that were packed away in the Gnome’s wagon, figuring that she would replace them later; they weren’t doing much good there, anyway, so she figured they might as well be used. The Shifter then walked over and placed them on the bare skin of the Dwarf’s chest, where his shirt was open; almost immediately, the transfer of elemental energies started, and the stirrings of movement came from their unexpected visitor.

  He wasn’t exactly awake yet, but she was hopeful that it wouldn’t be long. In the meantime, she watched as Felbar in the War Machine approached the spherical object with a little hesitation; she couldn’t blame him – the destructive power of the original sphere was so great and admittedly quite scary that seeing anything of the same shape would probably make Sandra hesitate as well. Regardless, he was next to it within a minute, after having navigated his way out of the workshop through the open top – apparently he could jump relatively small distances if he wanted to (and by “relative”, she meant half of the War Machine’s height of 20 feet) – and he cautiously attempted to move the sphere with his warhammer arm.

  It moved more than it had with the Ape…all of an inch before settling back down in the packed dirt again. Using a little more force, Felbar smacked it with the warhammer, getting it to move roughly a foot before stopping – and slightly bending the shaft of the Titanium weapon in the process. As for the strange sphere itself, it showed not even a single mark on it even after being thwacked with enough force to shatter stone.

  “Uh…this thing is really heavy; I don’t want to destroy all our hard work smacking it like this.”

  * Don’t worry, I’ll be able to easily fix any of the minor damage and it shouldn’t affect the enchantments at all. Maybe try kicking it? *

  As Sandra had suggested, Felbar kicked it with the War Machine’s foot, which actually worked fairly well – though it left significant dents in the solid Titanium of the construct’s foot. Still, it was relatively minor damage in the scheme of things, so he kept on kicking it and alternating his feet. By the time it got up the curvature of the hollowed-out space left by the Gravitational Devastation Sphere – which was difficult, because it kept wanting to roll back down – and tipped over the edge into her workshop, the War Machine’s feet were basically unrecognizable lumps of battered metal. Still, they were functional, and Sandra knew they could be f
ixed with a little effort.

  The floor of her workshop – which had been heavily reinforced stone to handle even the War Machine as it stomped around – didn’t fare so well when it was hit by an extremely heavy sphere dropped essentially from the ceiling. Not only did the stone crack, but it practically shattered and disintegrated into dust underneath the multi-colored ball; the only reason it stopped moving was that when it hit the dirt below, it settled into a hole three feet deep. When the sphere itself was only approximately two feet across, that meant it had gone so deep that it wasn’t even visible from the surface of the workshop anymore.

  The destruction of the floor wasn’t the only side-effect of the heavy ball falling down from the ceiling; the impact also shook the ground so violently that some of the ceiling that hadn’t fallen previously cracked off and fell inside the room. In addition, the jolt finally woke up the Dwarf, with what Sandra assumed was now with a little of his elemental energy restored.

  Chapter 21

  Gerold struggled to wake up from the incessant nightmare that he was being sucked into a strange vortex before falling from a great height and smashing into the ground. He wasn’t sure how many times he dreamt the whole weird and frightening sequence over and over before he started to panic in his mind; he couldn’t wake up from it no matter how much he tried, and he was beginning to think he was dead, and this was his eternal punishment.

  Miraculously, one of the times when he dreamt he was smashing into the ground again…he woke up. It was a gradual awakening, but he could definitely tell he was awake – though when he opened his eyes and looked around he immediately wished he was back in that seemingly endless nightmare cycle. Above him was a tall ceiling made all from one piece of smooth stone, though there were a few cracks running through it; such a thing was nearly impossible to achieve even by the Master Stonemasons like his father was back at home. For one, it required that there be a large enough stone to carve out like that in the first place; for another, there wasn’t even the slightest sign that it had been worked at all – there were no chisel marks or repair joins where potential faults in the stone may have been found.

  All of which meant one thing to Gerold – he was looking at the ceiling of a dungeon; that was the only explanation he could think of after listening to his father lovingly talk about stone for most of his life, and how he had once heard that dungeons could craft with stone and dirt without having to use tools at all – which was “so unfair” and all that. He remembered blocking out most of what he had lamented about, but the main concept behind what he was going on about was definitely something he remembered.

  Moving his head to the side, his fears were only confirmed when he saw a large multi-colored blob of some unknown material sitting in the corner of the strange room he was in, though he couldn’t look at it long or his eyes went all funny. In the other corner was something even stranger and he thought shouldn’t even exist in a dungeon – a forge. Being Dwarven, Gerold knew instinctively what it was and the sight of it he supposed should have made him more comfortable, but it had the opposite effect.

  Just as he turned his head the other direction, he saw the massive Goblin machine fall out of the open ceiling, slamming down on the stone floor and cracking it in the process. Its feet appeared to be damaged and it stumbled upon impact, though it was able to catch itself before it fell on its front. Gerold felt paralyzed as he stared at it, seeing that it was even larger this close to him than he had first thought; it had to be at least 20 feet tall and looked capable of slicing him apart with its double-bladed axe even in his armor.

  The thought of his armor and his own battle-axe brought the memory of what happened crashing down on the Dwarf; Gerold felt intense despair at the realization that his weapon, his armor, his livelihood even, had been completely destroyed. There was no way he’d be able to convince the Master Blacksmiths back home to create another set for him; it was rare that any Shieldmen got a replacement for their armor, and those that were lucky enough to survive their destruction were usually First or Second-shield ranked. For a Fifth-shield like him, the possibility of being re-armored was almost nil.

  It’s probably better just to die here than to go back to Nurboldar and Bregan in shame over losing my armor. If it were just my weapon, there might be a way to have another one made, but without protection I’d be doomed to die in my first fight.

  His new disregard for his own life actually helped knock Gerold free of his temporary paralysis and he sat up, wanting to face his death on his own two feet rather than lying on his back. As he was sitting up, however, he could feel something fall off his chest and run down into his lap.

  Two glowing orbs – one a light blue and the other a deep black – had rolled down to settle just above his legs; not knowing what they were and if they were there to harm him further, he immediately grabbed them to throw away. One touch, though, was all he needed to dismiss that idea, as they called to him and seemed to fill him with strength.

  Or, more accurately, energy.

  For the first time since he woke up, he realized that his Water and Nether elemental energy levels in his body weren’t completely empty; either he had slept for longer than he realized and gotten some of it back, or the two orbs he was holding was helping to recharge them. After a few seconds of looking down at them in his hand in confusion and then wonder, it was more than obvious that it was the latter – which was an impossibility, as far as he knew.

  Speaking of impossibilities, he had been so distracted with his whereabouts and the strangely wondrous orbs he was holding that he hadn’t noticed that he didn’t feel even the slightest amount of pain. His memory of the last few seconds of being sucked up into the vortex and then falling towards the ground far below were a little hazy but dropping over a hundred feet from the sky onto hard dirt and stone had to have damaged him a little. He distinctly remembered his head being hit hard and the hollow sound of cracking bones somewhere on his body before he blacked out; reaching up to his head and neck – followed by the rest of his body – with his hands each holding one of the colored orbs still, he couldn’t find a spot that felt injured or even sore.

  How…what...?

  His thoughts were interrupted when he heard a noise coming from the Goblin contraption and he tensed up, chastising himself for losing focus – he had completely forgotten the danger he was in after being distracted by pretty orbs. He quickly got to his feet and faced towards the machine, bracing himself for an attack even though he knew he would probably die with one sweep of its axe or pounding of its warhammer. Instead, he watched the metal grate on the front of the contraption swing open, revealing the Goblin inside, which immediately jumped down and out of the massive machine.

  It only took him a few seconds to realize that it wasn’t actually a Goblin, but what couldn’t be anything other than a Gnome. First of all, he didn’t have the right color of skin, but also because he started talking to nothing in the air in some sort of gibberish – but Gerold figured it was Gnomish or another language, because he had never heard a Goblin speak before. Even if he had heard one say something, he doubted it would sound so…normal.

  The Gnome looked older and battle-hardened, at least judging by the scars he could see – and the intense stare coming from his eyes, despite being shorter than even the Dwarf. Still, jumping down 10 feet from the chest of the machine he was obviously piloting didn’t seem to be much of an effort for the little person, which just went to show that the look of old age could be deceiving.

  Even given the Gnome’s smaller stature, Gerold wasn’t confident he could win in a fight; still, he kept his body ready to defend itself as the smaller person walked by him with seemingly no care as to the Dwarf’s defensive stance. He watched as the Gnome made his way over to a large wooden wagon and picked up two orbs that looked very similar to the ones Gerold held in his hands; they appeared to be negligently discarded earlier, which was strange to the Dwarf considering that they seemed to be so powerful.

 
Before he knew it, the older Gnome was in front of him offering the glowing orbs to him in either hand. Gerold looked at him and then the orbs in confusion, wondering what this was all about; with some obvious gestures that indicated that the Gnome wanted him to take the orbs followed by some words that meant nothing to him, the Dwarf said, “You want me to take these? Why?”

  The Gnome seemed to be listening to something in his head as he looked blankly past Gerold, before he nodded a couple of times in acknowledgement. Then, strangely, he pulled up his shirt and revealed a very strange bronze-colored tattoo of what looked like a gear on his chest, accompanied by flecks of grey and red. It looked strangely familiar – the flecks, not the gear – and it took him a moment to realize why. Second-shield Bregan had Fire and Spirit as the elements he could access, and his armor reflected that with tints of red and grey, which was crazily similar to what he was seeing on the tattoo.

  “I have no idea what that is, but do those colors mean you can use Fire and Spirit?” he asked, forgetting for a moment that they had a language barrier.

  The old Gnome looked away like he was listening again, before he nodded again, pulling out a necklace that was hidden before behind his back at the same time. Gerold saw that two of the glowing orbs were tied loosely to a leather string – one red and one grey, exactly what he had assumed it would be. I still have no idea what is going on here, though.

  It didn’t look like the Gnome or anything else there meant to hurt him, however; they had ample opportunity to kill him before he woke up, and with that Goblin—Gnome—machine he would’ve been dead in moments if it had attacked. Therefore, with a shrug he took the again-proffered orbs, which was a little awkward considering that he already had one of each in his hands; he wasn’t sure if it was happenstance or by plan, but he now had matching pairs – two blue in his left and two black in his right.