The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) by Jonathan Brooks

Author:Jonathan Brooks [Brooks, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-26T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

Gerold hesitated before he joined in with the chaotic battle ahead of him. Not because he was afraid, but because he wasn’t sure where he might be best used to shore up the failing defenses of the Shieldmen and civilian fighters ahead of him. Doing a quick estimate, he determined that there were at most 40 Shieldmen and 100 civilians wielding battleaxes and wearing non-Shieldmen armor that appeared to have seen better days. Almost everyone in their strongholds knew how to fight and defend themselves, but they were much less effective at it than the more specialized Shieldmen, of course.

Sadly, as he glanced around, there were at least 200 civilians – residents of Stonebrink Hall that he recognized – lying in jumbled heaps, pushed to the side of the Whiskeyflow Tavern floor to make room for the rest of the defenders. Noticing a few others that he recognized for a different reason, he realized that they weren’t all civilians; some faces belonged to at least a half-dozen Shieldmen he knew, and since he couldn’t see all of them, there were no doubt more.

“This…this is bad. Maybe I should’ve just left instead,” he said out loud. No one seemed to hear him, fortunately, because there were too many screams and the sounds of a fierce battle overwhelming the senses.

As for what they were fighting against, Gerold immediately recognized two types of dungeon monsters that were known to come from dungeons relatively nearby. To see them working together, utilizing the same tunnel leading into the Tavern, was a very bad sign.

The first were classified as Werebeasts, a variation of the common Beast-type dungeons – a variation that made them even more dangerous, unfortunately. Basically, take all of the different beasts – wolves, bears, boars, large cats, and worse – and combine them with the basic shape of a Dwarf (or, from what he heard was more accurate, an Orc or a Human based on their proportions), add in some heightened intelligence, and you ended up with some dangerous combinations. Beasts normally didn’t scare Dwarves because rarely could they bite or scratch through their armor, unless they were extremely powerful; Werebeasts, however, were dangerous because they thought about where to attack instead of attacking whatever they could reach. Many a Shieldman had been injured or killed from a claw sliding perfectly through a joint in their armor, or from the Werebeasts working together using simple-yet-effective tactics to isolate and tear apart a single Shieldman.

The only thing the Shieldmen had going for them when facing off against any of the Werebeasts was the fact that none of them were as large as their Beast counterparts; there weren’t any 900-lb Werebears, for instance, nor were there any 15-foot-tall Dire Werewolves to menace them. At least, none that anyone had seen in the past. Most of them were between 6 and 8 feet tall, weighing anywhere between 200 and 400 lbs; still larger than any Dwarves – except for Gerold in his Deep Diver suit, of course.

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