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

had ended up with her being trapped inside of a Dungeon Core, after all; while she was getting used to it – and actually enjoying herself – she missed the freedom of being able to leave a dungeon if she chose to do so.

That was all in the past, however, and there was nothing she could do but look towards the future.  She was already making good progress by that point. A mere 2 weeks after the 2 Hill Dwarves had become her first visitors, there already were very few times that there wasn’t some sort of Raider presence inside her dungeon.  Over the last 3 days, in fact, she had regulated her use of Dungeon Force so well during the restocking of all her rooms that there was not even 2 hours total during which she didn’t receive a CIP from Raider presence inside of her dungeon.  All told, since she had really opened up to the hordes of brand-new Raiders, she had gained 135 Points during her current monthly countdown – an impressive haul by any standards.  Not even the 95% reduction in her earned CIPs made much difference, because the most she could earn per hour was 5 Points, and that was for powerful individuals or groups being inside her dungeon; as it was, she was on a fairly even playing field with every other dungeon when it came to Raider presence.

When it came to Raider deaths, however, that reduction hurt quite a bit.  So far, a total of 22 Raiders had died inside her dungeon – counting the 4 who had perished in that first disastrous delve by the intoxicated group.  All the other deaths had been individual casualties, and all of them had been inside of her Boss room; the less-experienced groups were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of Tacca’s creatures when they pushed too far, too fast.

When she added in the fact that very few of the groups had the ability to disarm her traps, she was actually surprised that the number of deaths wasn’t larger than it was.  Most of those who delved through had either purchased a map or had a fairly good accounting of where all of the dangers were; at least, that was her impression as she watched them navigate their way around without too much difficulty.  A lot of the time, her Enchantment traps were unavoidable and would be triggered no matter what; somehow, though, there was almost always some sort of “lucky” incident that happened to prevent more than only superficial wounds on those who were caught within the traps.

In one incident, a Fighter-type Raider triggered her Rage-inducing Enchantment and immediately turned on his groupmates, but a Frond Coyote ran in front of him at the “wrong” moment – “wrong” being unfortunate for Tacca – and tripped him up.  As he landed, he appeared as though he were going to impale himself with his sword, but it ended up being angled just enough to only cut a large rent in his leather chestpiece – and to impale the Coyote that was jumping on his back to take advantage of his fall.  By the time he extricated himself from that, the other creatures had swarmed him and given him a target for his rage before it disappeared.

Another time, a Caster-Class Raider accidentally triggered the Confusion-inducing Enchantment trap inside the sixth room with Jackals, Coyotes, and Root Foxes. The trap ended up hitting everyone in the room, and it was a chaos of confused attacks and flung Magistrike spells, one of which hit their Fighter in the back.  Instead of hurting him too badly, it made him fall forward, squashing a Root Fox just about to pounce on him, and causing the two Branch Jackals intending to hit him from their downward jump to collide together and snap their necks.

There were at least a dozen other examples of luck going the Raiders’ direction in small ways, which weren’t particularly significant – individually, at least.  When put together – and having the unique opportunity to see it all happen in her dungeon, hour after hour – Tacca could begin to see a pattern forming.

“Do you really think that is what’s happening?  Is your ‘bad luck’ really doing that?  Or should I even call it ‘bad’ anymore?” Shale asked, after the ill-reputed Core had explained what she thought was going on.  He had been able to see many of the incidents first-hand as he followed the groups through the dungeon, so it wasn’t just something Tacca thought she was seeing.  Not only that, but even he had to acknowledge that the occurrences were too numerous to account for coincidence.

I…think so.  It’s hard to tell, exactly, because I’ve never heard of something like this happening before.  Regardless, I think that these lower-Leveled groups are being “saved” by luck in situations where they should win based on their skill and experience – even when they don’t have much of either.  When they push too far beyond their capabilities, such as into my Boss room when they aren’t ready for it, either that same luck turns against them or is absent altogether. 

Tacca had noticed that a few of the groups that had confidence in their capabilities – which indicated to the Dungeon Core that they had an additional Raider Level or two already – tended to have no problem finishing her Boss room off, either with or without that extra help that could be attributed to “luck”.  On the other side of that, however, there wasn’t anything obvious to her that indicated that those who had major trouble completing her dungeon – or who lost one of their group members in the final fight – were suffering from “bad luck”.  If anything, after losing one of their people, they were able to rally remarkably well to escape through the exit staircase tunnel before they could all become victims of her dungeon.

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