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 Dungeon Core could tell that her Assistant was reviewing all that she had said, looking for flaws most likely.  She hoped that he couldn’t think of anything, because she had considered just about everything – or so she thought; if he did, though, she’d rather know about it now before she started.

“Sounds very complicated…but I think that it will work.  I’m assuming that the rooms that you have closed off from one group will be used on the next group passing through, and then close off some additional rooms during that delve which will be used for the next, and so on?”

Correct.

“Then I can’t wait to see it; yet another thing I’ve never heard of being done before.”

Tacca got started immediately, hollowing out sections of each tunnel to install what was basically the reverse of her exit tunnel traps up above.  They lay flat against the ceiling of the tunnel, and when they were activated – via a small rock that she created above it that dropped down on the activation trigger – the Bridge trap would swing down and shut off the pathway.  A thin strip of stone attached to the floor in front of the trap when it was activated prevented it from resetting, and it was all set.  She just had to make sure that there weren’t any Raiders in either adjacent room, however, as she wouldn’t be able to create either the small rock to activate the trap or to seal it closed.

Once those were done, and since she was already working with those Rotating Stone Bridge traps, Tacca started to add additional exit tunnels to the exterior rooms, including the Boss Room, which ran up both the left and right sides of the entire section, where it would connect to the exit staircase already in place up above.  It took a little bit more work constructing them, but it was worth it to ensure that the Raiders could leave at any time they chose – because it would help to rotate another group inside even faster.

Then came the fun part – decorating.  Not decorating, per se, but filling up her 20 rooms with Environmental Objects.  Only the very first room of the new section and the Boss Room were going to be unique; the symmetrical “wings” of rooms were going to mirror each other for the most part.  There would be some differences, certainly, but for the most part they would contain the same Environmental Objects, traps, and creatures – but rearranged differently, similar to how her easy dungeon operated currently.

The first room was the easiest to complete, as she was planning on it being the introduction of what they would be facing, and not a danger to them.  First, she used her Mountain Environment to create a miniature mountain range along the backside of the room, complete with 5 sharp peaks made from basic stone.  They were only really there for show and were impassable – not that there was anything but bare wall behind them.  Leading down from the peaks, she created some smaller juts of stone that stuck out in multiple directions straight up into the air, making it look like a pile of jagged rocks had fallen off of the top of the mountain and cracked apart.  Further down the “mountain range”, she added a little more stone in tiny rolling hills, before transitioning to dirt that led all the way to the entrance.

“Either it’s a tiny mountain range, or I suddenly grew 1,000 times larger and somehow got outside.  Nice job.”  Tacca wasn’t the most artistic, but she was happy to hear that it didn’t just look like she shoved a bunch of rocks in there willy-nilly.

Behind the jagged rocks and at the base of the peaks, Tacca had “caves” hollowed out that led into one of 5 different rooms.  Each of them would technically be open if inspected, but only 2 of them would go further than the next room – because she was planning on closing off the tunnels leading elsewhere.  Of the 2 that led further on, one of them wouldn’t go further than 2 or 3 rooms before hitting a dead end, causing the group to have to turn back and pick another route.  She didn’t want to make it easy or obvious where the right pathway lay, and when they eliminated one direction from the first room as being a dead end, she could easily close it off after they left it and start restocking whatever they managed to kill or traps they activated.  Her tunnels were also angled in a way that it would be impossible to tell from the tunnel leading into the dead-end rooms that they wouldn’t be able to go any further, so they would be forced to risk going inside each room to check.

Starting with the left and right rooms, which were going to be symmetrical in design, if not exact placement of the components inside, she used her ability to shape a rocky cliff face that directly bisected the room from corner to corner, cutting off the view of the two tunnels leading further into her dungeon.  It had a simple, narrow pathway crisscrossing back and forth over the front and back of this cliff face, so that it was more like a wall they had to walk up and then down than an actual cliff.  It reached nearly 100 feet up to the ceiling before it went back down, which meant that if someone was knocked off from up near the top…well, they certainly wouldn’t have a good day after that.

To assist with that, she created four Level 5 Cliff Lynxes, which were able to hide along the cliff face and easily camouflage themselves with their striped fur against the rock.  Looking at them from even 15 feet away, and from below, it was nearly impossible to see them.  Perfect.

To further assist in