The Dungeon Fairy: Two Choices: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 2) by Jonathan Brooks (free e books to read .txt) 📗

Life-based traps without the protection of the glowing aura – and the results were spectacular.  Between one step and the next, it ballooned up to twice its original size, with muscles sprouting on top of muscles all over its body; at the next step, it was at least three times its size…and then it imploded with a wet *pop*, collapsing in on itself and skidded forward dead.  A few seconds later, the muscles and strength that it had gained deflated, leaving behind the corpse of the six-armed behemoth of a person.

The others either didn’t notice or were having problems of their own, because they didn’t stop; one after another, they each hit their own Life-trap and imploded—and here I thought they would explode—with the last one getting so far into the room that it collapsed and landed on one of her Human Fighters, crushing but not killing it because of the enchantments inside.

I did it—well, almost.  Four of the blue-skinned invaders were dead, but the purplish-colored leader was still alive; it was standing, watching what had happened to its comrades from the entrance of the room with an unreadable expression upon its face.  When the last of the blue-skinned monster people perished, the purplish one rushed forward, following the exact pathway of the lead invader, down to the precise placement of steps – which was unfortunate, because it avoided a few of the traps that had been missed the first time around.

When it got to the corpse of the lead blue-skinned monster person, it leapt forward at a run, passing over the body, and landed in the middle of her creatures’ formation, which was already in a little bit of disarray because one of the Human Fighters was trying to extricate itself from underneath the body of another monstrous person.

There were a few traps nearby still, which were activated as the purplish-colored leader moved around and started hacking and slashing its way through Tacca’s creatures.  The enchantments on their armor prevented a lot of Physical damage – but they weren’t invulnerable; the sheer force of being pounded into the ground by each strike of a mace or a hammer, or being sent across the room by a slice of a sword, started to take a toll on them.  Within a minute of getting back up after suffering through attacks that would’ve sent almost anything else to the grave, their armor started to break apart from the abuse, shattering the enchantments upon them at the same time.

A single smack against its leg with a mace from her Gnome Healer – which did absolutely no damage, glowing aura or not – and an arrow that bounced off of the purplish-colored leader’s eyeball were all the attacks that her creatures got off before their armor failed and broke apart, which left them without any defense.  Within seconds of that happening, all of her remaining defenders in the room were destroyed, their armor – for the most part – now just piles of useless junk.

Consequently, there was nothing preventing Tacca’s doom from walking right into her Core Room.

Chapter 28

I still need a little more than a minute! 

The leader of the six-armed invaders walked with a purpose into her Core Room, visibly bracing for an attack that didn’t come.  There wasn’t anything to hurt it, after all, because her Core Room, just like more than half of her new dungeon section, was completely empty.  There weren’t any hidden traps, no creatures waiting to pounce from ambush, and no clever ploys to keep the monstrous purplish person contained until it ran out of air or starved to death.  No, the only thing visible other than her Core near the upper edge of the room were two small, brown pouches sitting in the middle of the floor.

Contrary to what every other Dungeon Core did with bottomless bags – as in, absorb them – Tacca had kept them.  She wasn’t exactly sure why she had done that, at the time; thinking back, she assumed that she was probably going to hold them to give as rewards to her 2 Bonded Hill Dwarves, Sterge and Gwenda, at some point.  While she couldn’t re-key them for access to their contents, those two certainly could do it for themselves.

Almost as if she had summoned them, she felt those 2 Hill Dwarves walk through her entrance up above.  She had trouble concentrating on them, however, because of the interference brought by the purplish invader staring at her Core.  It paused as it stared unblinkingly at her—huh, it has no eyelids—for a moment before running forward, its arm with the warhammer raised and cocked back a little, ready to throw.  Tacca panicked, sure that her end was coming soon, as she tried to figure out what to do.  She still needed a minute for the rest of her plan to come together, and she had nothing to stop the charging monster from destroying her; if only she had some way to delay—wait!  But will it even work?

Everything that Shale had tried to do with his Fairy Mana had been blocked somehow, as his Invisibility had faded, and he wasn’t able to Translocate.  Tacca’s own Dungeon Force Regeneration had shut off, and she had thought that her own Fairy Mana had as well – but she hadn’t even tried to do anything with it.  The only thing she used her FM for lately was to share informational screens with Shale, but she hadn’t needed to do that since this deadly and destructive invasion.

Hoping that whatever entity or force that had cursed her with bad luck was looking away for a moment, Tacca activated her Electrified Pacification Ability.  A field of crackling energy emitted from her Core and spread out quite a distance, enveloping the murderous purple form.  Yes!  It worked!  At first, though, nothing happened; after it took another half-step, the stupid glow appeared again around the invader and