The Dungeon Fairy: Three Lives: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 3) Jonathan Brooks (read me like a book .txt) 📖

for her.  “I know that you used to have to rest after placing one of your traps that cost 1,300 Dungeon Force, so it could be that you are still recovering and it will return.”

That wasn’t too reassuring, considering that when she approached using half of her maximum DF at a single time – which was sitting at a total of 2,000 – she felt her Core start to shudder from the process.  Thankfully, no cracks had appeared, but that was probably only because of her caution as she began to feel the strain earlier than normal.

 At least, what had been her normal, which was still different from every other Dungeon Core out there.

Therefore, with that in mind, she was limited in what she could create.  Spending 500 DF at a time wasn’t that much of an exertion – none, really – so placing trap after trap in her new defensive room wasn’t that big of a deal.  It was a compromise that was necessary, but Tacca thought that the workaround with the altered traps would work well enough.  She also had plans to add even more traps of different types, but that would come in time; for the moment, nearly a week of doing nothing but creating defenses was making her itch to do something else.

When she was finally able to tackle her upper dungeon again, she was relieved.  Despite Shale being out and about, surveying the area in order to see if anyone was approaching – and finding no one, some Core-ish instinct screamed out to Tacca to get ready for the non-existent Raiders.  It took her no more than a day to fully replace and restock the original section of her dungeon, placing the dirt, ferns, wildflowers, trees, creatures, and traps that had served her so well.  She was accustomed to its layout and decided not to change anything, because it really had worked out well enough that she didn’t think it needed any major changes – other than one set of traps in particular: the pits.

The Soil-covered Pit Traps cost 1,200 Dungeon Force to initially set up, which was currently past her threshold at the moment.  Instead of replacing them with something else, she decided to hold off on them altogether – at least until she had a chance to increase her maximum Dungeon Force.  While she wasn’t positive that it would make a difference, she certainly hoped it would.

Everything else, though, was easy enough to put back the way it had been before she had suffered from her unfortunate destruction.  Once that was done, she turned her attention to the newer section, from which she had been rudely interrupted before she could finish.

That was where the fun began.

Chapter 4

The rooms that she had initially decorated and filled were still valid enough that she didn’t really change them too much, other than to increase the creatures’ Levels a little to make them a bit more difficult.  Tacca filled the first room with another mountain range, copying what she had before, which had 5 tunnels leading off in different directions. The next room took advantage of her Mountain Environment with a cliff face that required Raiders to wind back and forth up the 100-foot-tall mountain, all the while having to avoid the Enchantment traps that induced severe dizziness, as well as the 5 Level 6 Cliff Lynxes hiding among the rocky outcrops of the cliff.

The second room consisted of two hills made entirely of a multi-shaded brown rock that flanked the left and right walls; the valley in between them had close-set trees, stretching off to the exit.  On the hills, 4 Level 6 Mountain Cougars (2 on each side) waited to pounce down on unsuspecting Raiders as they worked their way through the room; hidden inside the mini-forest, 3 Level 6 Forest Wolves were waiting in ambush for their prey.

Even just those two rooms being filled with creatures started to eat into her Control Limit.  While she had a total of 400 for her Control Limit, the original section required 170 to fully stock it, leaving her only 230 to play with for the next section; she already knew that she was going to have to wait until she could purchase another increase in the Limit to fully fill at least one route through the section, but she could at least do what she could right now – but it wasn’t going to be too much more.

5 Cliff Lynx (Level 6) @ 7CL each = 35CL

4 Mountain Cougar (Level 6) @ 8CL each = 32CL

3 Forest Wolf (Level 6) @ 20CL each = 60CL

With the rewards assigned to them, she had already spent 143 of her available 230 Control Limit – and that was only with 2 rooms!  That was okay, though, because she knew she would be able to supply enough Control Limit when she went through another Core Improvement increase.  Plus, using the Forest Wolves was a bit expensive when it came to the Control Limit, and it would be one of the last times she would use the Wolves…by themselves, at least.

The next room was her maze, with high, completely smooth walls that wound through the space, with a 5-foot-wide pathway leading through it.  There were 2 dead-ends, two exits (one of which would be closed, depending on the route through the section at that time), and a dimly lit interior.  This was where she placed 2 powerful fear-inducing Enchantment-based traps, as well as a Level 7 Echoing Hyena and a Level 7 Gnoll Assassin.  As their performance during the invasion by the blue-skinned people had been a success, if ineffective, Tacca wanted to see how they could perform against less-powerful Raiders.  She was planning on adding another pair, but at 12CL and 22CL for the Hyena and Gnoll, respectively, it was going to have to wait.

The fourth room was the first of those during her