The Dungeon Fairy: Two Choices: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 2) Jonathan Brooks (online e reader TXT) 📖

Core Room, she was eager to see how the defenses she had placed in there were going to work.  She didn’t expect much from them, of course, based on all of the enchantments these Raiders had, but they were designed for relatively “normal” groups delving through her dungeon.  She knew that she was nowhere near powerful enough to create something that would protect her from everything that came after her, which was why she limited herself to traps that would be almost guaranteed to kill most low-Leveled Raiders.

Walking a single foot inside the room with only a little bit of the cautiousness that he was showing before, the angry Fighter cracked the very thin sheet of stone that appeared identical to the rest of the Core Room’s floor and plummeted 30 feet straight down into a pit.  He fell with a familiar scream reminiscent of a Fox being on his back as he slammed into the iron spikes jutting up from the bottom with a screech of metal against metal.

That fall, accompanied by the relatively poor armor worn by most Raiders that delved through her dungeon, would’ve killed most people. The angry Fighter, however, hit the spikes so hard with his durable, enchanted steel armor that he bent the iron protrusions out of his way.  Tacca could see some scratches and deep dents on the breastplate and greaves for the first time, as it was obvious the armor could only withstand so much physical abuse before being damaged itself.

Oh, and he was mad – livid, even.

“Get me out of here!  Hurry, fools!”

If Tacca were there, she would’ve just left him, but apparently he was either a good friend or someone important, because those still above the pit looked at each other and sighed dramatically.  The Elf miraculously pulled out a thick rope from her expensive bottomless bag at her hip, which was more than capable of reaching down into the pit.  It took another few minutes, and some serious straining from the entire group, but they were able to pull the Fighter back up to their level.  Upon closer examination, it appeared as though one of the spikes down below had busted up a few rings on his chainmail pieces and caused a minor scratch on his armpit area, but it had already stopped bleeding by that time.

After the pit incident, they were a bit more cautious – not that it necessarily helped them.  The two Fighters continued to lead, which meant that they took the brunt of the three other traps set up in the room.  One was next to the wall, where they needed to walk to next in order to avoid the opened Pit trap; three large, extremely sharp blades emerged from the wall shaped like semi-circles and sliced into the two Fighters at knee, waist, and neck height.  It would’ve killed anyone else, but all it did was cause the two to fly further into the room from the impact, where they triggered another trap.

The ceiling opened up above the two and released a cascade of heavy and sharp boulders, which slammed into the battered Raiders, partly burying them underneath the Earth-based trap.  They weren’t terribly injured by the trap, though it took a few minutes for them to dig themselves out – with no help from the others, who were watching from the relative safety of the entrance.  As soon as they extricated themselves, they unsteadily wobbled around the pile of boulders, complaining the entire time – just in time to trigger the final trap.

It wasn’t immediately visible, but a miasma of dark energy quickly coalesced around the two Fighters as the Death-based trap did its best to rapidly age and decompose their physical bodies.  Unfortunately, a bright-white light surrounded the two Raiders almost instantly, pushing away the deadly effects of the trap and leaving them completely unharmed.

The number of enchantments on that armor is…unbelievable.  I haven’t heard of even some of the more powerful dungeons facing Raiders that are seemingly as impervious to everything as they are.  The expense of gathering the necessary enchanting scrolls had to have been more than most long-lived Raiders would see in their lifetimes.

There was a reason the higher Improvement Level Cores were so popular, and it wasn’t only because they provided a challenge to the Raiders; no, the valuable rewards like enchanting scrolls were a rarity and highly sought-after, because they provided benefits like what she was seeing.  It was one of the reasons Tacca had been extremely alarmed to see Darlene (one of the first Dungeon Cores she had bonded to) hoarding so many rewards inside her Core Room, including dozens of enchanting scrolls.

“These people are impossible to fathom.  If they have this many enchanting scrolls and the funds to outfit these beginner-Level Raiders, why do they care so much about destroying you?”

I have no idea; a lot of this doesn’t make sense to me. 

Another few minutes went by while the two Fighters, slightly recovered from their ordeals with the brutal-yet-ineffective traps, walked around the room trying to trigger anything else.  They weren’t going to find anything, however, because just those four traps had used nearly all of her Dungeon Force each to set up, and she had needed to rest for more than a day between them so that she wouldn’t crack her core from the sheer amount of DF being utilized.  She dreaded setting them back up, because she would likely have to shut down her dungeon for a few days while she concentrated only on those until she felt a little safer.

“Where is it?  Where is this Core thingy?”  The angry Fighter was gone, replaced with a much more subdued but irritated Raider.  “I was told it was supposed to be right here.”

The Scout looked around and saw the exit that was in the corner, partly disguised because it blended perfectly with the rest of the stone