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

nothing inside, of course, because she hadn’t had the time nor Dungeon Force to populate it with anything.  In fact, all of her deeper rooms were essentially empty, just waiting until she could increase her Core Improvement Level and create some more difficult sections for the Raiders to delve through.

She placed herself in the upper corner of the room and turned on her Invisibility using her Fairy Mana.  While she could theoretically keep the Invisibility active perpetually, since she was regenerating more than enough FM every minute, it took a bit of concentration to keep it going – and it normally wasn’t needed 99% of the time.  Now, though, she devoted a portion of her focus to keeping it active, as it would probably be the only thing that could stop her from being destroyed.

Quickly, can you think of anything that I can create that might kill these people?

Shale was silent for a few moments as they both watched the enraged Fighter and his companions tear through the third room with the Branch Jackals without difficulty, slaughtering the creatures almost as soon as they jumped down from the trees.  Again, the trap that was supposed to induce Fear was ineffective, though this time Tacca could see that the helmet on the second Fighter, as well as a thin gold circlet on the Elf’s head, glowed yellow with their own enchantments.  The Scout and Healer weren’t close enough to be affected by the trap, but the Dungeon Core was fairly confident that they had something similar in their own accoutrements.

“I can’t see any of your creatures being terribly effective against them, unfortunately – especially those two Fighters.  You might be able to kill or incapacitate the others if you overwhelmed them with numbers, but I doubt even your large Mastiff dogs would be able to do more than annoy the heavily armored Raiders.”

I can think of a few traps that might work, but they aren’t Enchantment traps; just like my Soil-covered Pit Traps, they would take too long to initially set up.  Not only that, but I don’t have enough Dungeon Force to create them, since I’ve been running pretty tight on my resources to keep the constant delving flowing.  The final defense traps I have in my Core Room might slow them down a little, but I have no doubt they will be able to survive them. 

  The Raiders basically sauntered through her fourth room with the Healing Paralysis trap, which again didn’t affect them – though this time it was because they weren’t injured.  They were entering the fifth room with the Forest Wolves when Shale spoke up.

“Absorb all the rest of your creatures in the other rooms!  They are low-Level enough that you should be able to finish before the Raiders arrive, and it’ll give you a large chunk of Dungeon Force.”

It sounded like he had a plan, so Tacca initiated the reabsorption process, which was going to take about 5 minutes to finish completely, especially inside the Boss Room.  However, the creatures inside of the sixth room were likely to be fully absorbed before the delvers arrived – especially as the Forest Wolves the Raiders were fighting were doing their best to avoid being killed right away, by staying out of range of the rampaging Fighters out front.  It was almost as if they knew they had to delay their demise to help Tacca, but that was a bit far-fetched even for her unique circumstances to even consider as the truth.

Ok, it’s under way.  What’s your plan?

Tacca didn’t have a good solution in mind, other than to hide and hope they left out of frustration of not being able to find her.  She could only pray that Shale had something else in mind, because it was entirely possible that the group had some means to locate her Core despite her Invisibility being active.  Teleporting away wasn’t even an option, because she couldn’t Teleport past the Raiders; just like the limitation where she could Teleport into the same room with them and not Teleport out, another limitation was that she couldn’t Teleport past their furthest explored room.  It was this limitation that ended up with so many of her Bonded Cores being destroyed in the past; while it might seem easy enough to just keep bouncing around their entire dungeon while the killers tried to track them down, the Core Option didn’t work that way, unfortunately.

“Well, obviously your – normally – most effective traps aren’t working, and like you said, you don’t have enough time to create anything deadlier…if those would even work, anyway.  Your current creatures are basically useless, sorry to say, but those aren’t your only options.”

Wait, what?  You’re not saying what I think you’re saying, are you?

“Yes, I am.  Use those new creature types that you unlocked.”

But those will only be Level 1; I doubt they would be of much use against these Raiders.  Probably much less than my Canines, in fact.

“That’s entirely true, but that wasn’t what I was thinking.  If you can, start creating a group of 5 of them, of different Variants, down where you’re now located, and I’ll explain my idea,” Shale said hurriedly, as one of the Wolves was shot by an arrow sent out by the Scout.

The Raider had very little obvious skill in the use of his weapon, but the bow was apparently enchanted with some crazy Accuracy boosts; the flight path of the arrow after it was released literally curved slightly through the air to strike one of Tacca’s creatures in the eye, killing it instantly.  There was a limit to how effective it was, however, and that depended on how inept the user of the bow was; a second and third shot were so far off-target that not even an expensive enchantment could save them from missing their target by at least 5 feet.

For the first time, Tacca