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

the Core watched them slowly succumb to the lack of breathable air inside their prison.  At about 8 hours into their imprisonment, the first of the Raiders collapsed on the ground, unable to get up and move around anymore from the inability to take a deep breath; one-by-one, the others collapsed as well, slumped against the ground or against the wall, barely breathing and holding on to life.

Against her personal feelings against them, she had to acknowledge their impressive perseverance; up until the end, they all worked together to try to break out of their stone cage with a single-minded persistence.  The two swords that the Fighters wielded were passed off to different people as they got tired, and although they were constructed and enchanted to withstand a lot of abuse, the weapons eventually became chipped, bent, and even broken towards the end.  The damage they did to her Rotating Stone Bridge was quite significant as well, with huge portions of it chipped and sliced away by the enchanted blades.

As much as she didn’t want to admit any type of admiration towards the leader who had seemed so intent on destroying her, she couldn’t help but watch with amazement as he lay slumped against the Stone Bridge trap, continuing to slam his bent and broken sword against it with the last of his strength while the others were all passed out unconscious and appearing ready to die at any time.  With a final strike, his sword managed to break enough of the Rotating Stone Trap to shatter the entire thing, which quickly disappeared like her creatures did when they were destroyed.

With the stone trap he was slumped against gone, the leader collapsed into the void it left when it disappeared and Tacca could see a hint of a smile on his face…which quickly disappeared when he saw the additional stone wall keeping him sealed inside.  That was apparently too much for him because the Fighter closed his eyes and died less than a minute later from the lack of air.  The other Raiders trapped with him followed soon after, and Tacca saw her CIPs rise by 5 Points after each death.

While she was glad that they had died and that the threat they represented was gone, the Dungeon Core couldn’t help but feel bad about the way they had died.  It was one thing to kill Raiders who delved through her dungeon with her traps and creatures; it was technically their choice to venture through dangerous obstacles looking to increase their strength and acquire rewards, so if they died…well…that was a direct result of that choice.  This, though…this felt different; these Raiders had died due to what Tacca deliberately did, singling them out for death and not as a result of the dungeon.

“You had no choice, Tacca,” Shale said softly to her after she reported that they had all died.  “If you hadn’t done that, there is every possibility that they would’ve survived anything else you could’ve thrown at them, or even come back later if you forced them to leave.  It’s…a horrible way to go, but they deserved it for what they were planning on doing to you; I doubt any at the DPRC would see it differently, either.”

I know that, Shale, I do.  I just wish there had been another way.

“Well, there might have been if you’d had more time to plan and with more resources at your disposal,” he said matter-of-factly.  “Sadly, that wasn’t the case, and it doesn’t appear – at least, so far – that anyone is missing these 5 yet.”  Shale paused for a moment before asking, “Speaking of resources, what are you going to do with everything?”

That confused her for a moment.  What do you mean?  I’ll just absorb all of them like I did with the others who died inside my dungeon—  Wait…I don’t have to do that, do I?

It was a rule that Dungeon Cores needed to “clean” up after themselves when a Raider died inside their dungeon.  For reasons she could completely understand, having a corpse stick around to be potentially seen by the next group of Raiders to delve through was bad practice – and could cause some difficulties if, say, the new Raider group knew the person before they had perished.  A need for vengeance was always a potential reaction by the Raiders from any death inside the dungeon, of course, so there was no need to exacerbate the feelings by leaving corpses scattered around.

The gear with them was usually also absorbed because it couldn’t really be used by the Core.  Most armor wouldn’t fit their creatures and was therefore unusable; weapons were sometimes useful depending on what a Core had as far as creatures that could use them, but they were generally absorbed because reusing a dead Raider’s identifiable weapon might engender that same need of vengeance that leaving a dead body around could ignite.  The bottomless bags they frequently carried with them – at least among more experienced, higher-Level Raiders – could potentially be a treasure trove of items, but they were also keyed specifically to a Raider so that they could mentally retrieve whatever they were looking for easily.

Without any way to re-key them, there was no way to access them; without being able to access the contents, they were basically just plain, unusable pouches.  From what she had been told and had learned herself at DAPS, trying to access them through applications of Dungeon Force usually ended badly: If they didn’t explode and cause major damage to the dungeon, then some of the magical spells that created the bags were released and somehow warped in unpredictable ways – at least temporarily.  The range of the explosions or warping was difficult to determine beforehand, so accidentally rupturing one could damage a corner of a room – or wipe out half of a dungeon, including a Core in the process.  The same didn’t happen when