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

and it certainly suited her personality much better than farming.  What about me, though?  Is this what I was made for?  Construction and farming?  Being a figurehead of a village?

As if by its own volition, his head turned towards the Wentrylock Mountains, and the dungeon located within its peaks.  No time for that now – perhaps in the future.  Besides, do I really want to go back to the place where we almost died?  With a sigh, he picked up another board and started on the wall of the Inn he had been working on earlier.

As crazy as it sounds, I think the answer to that is…yes.

Chapter 11

The four-hour delay – directly after she had trapped the Core-destroying Raiders – in signaling the next group to come in luckily didn’t cause too much of a disturbance to those waiting for her dungeon to reopen.  It only took that long to restore all of the traps through her normal dungeon rooms and restock them with creatures because she had ended up spending a lot of her Dungeon Force to slow down and eventually stop those Raiders that had tried to destroy her.  She also got started reestablishing the deadlier traps in her Core Room; despite their ineffectiveness against such heavily armored and enchanted individuals as had just defeated them, they were less expensive to rearm rather than to replace with something deadlier.

Not that she could think of anything deadlier that she could currently set up based on her limited Dungeon Force and lack of Trap Specializations in those kinds of traps.  Regardless, they would stop 99% of the people that had normally been delving through her dungeon; for anyone stronger, or for those wearing enchanted armor, there really wasn’t much that she could create at this stage in her development.

The first group in after she sent her Root Fox out to indicate everything was ready complained a bit about the wait, but that only lasted for the first few minutes.  Tacca watched them intently and scrutinized every word they said as they delved through her dungeon, looking and listening for any indication that they were going to try and finish her Core off since the others had failed.  When they left and the next group came inside, without any indication that they were there for any other purpose other than to kill creatures and gather rewards, her Dungeon Fairy spoke up.

 “I really don’t think they were working with any of the other Raiders,” Shale said slowly, choosing his words carefully.  “Based on what we’ve heard, I doubt that anyone but this ‘Minister’ they were talking about knew that they were coming here.  Not that there isn’t a possibility of it happening again, but I can’t see a reason for them to want to do it; normally, dungeons are supposed to help them get stronger, and the only reason to get rid of them is because they aren’t helping.  As I’m sure you remember, given what you were doing before…you know…this happened.”  He looked embarrassed as he waved towards her Core.

While she wasn’t completely over being unknowingly used to destroy those other Cores, a good portion of the pain and anguish involved in the process of her Bond breaking with them had numbed over time.  Recently faced with her own destruction and the reasoning behind it – which didn’t really make sense, as it was based not on what she had been doing, but from some sort of conflict outside of her dungeon – she could better understand why it may have been necessary to destroy those other Cores.  As far as Tacca was concerned, she hadn’t done anything to deserve destruction; even Shale agreed, and he was the one who was a stickler for the rules.

The evidence that the group that tried to destroy her Core was working alone was further enhanced when she listened in and relayed the angry conversations of her sealed-in victims.

“We wouldn’t even be here if it hadn’t been for your need to prove yourself—”

“Oh, shut it!  There really was no other choice, you know.  They couldn’t send in one of the elite squads because, as you know, they Analyze everyone before they go in—”

“I’m well aware of why we were chosen, but I shouldn’t have let you volunteer me—”

“You all practically begged to come with me!  Besides, we were all the perfect choices, especially if we wanted to pin the blame for this on those filthy Raiders that are likely to be found on the side of the road by now—”

“I don’t want to hear it with your ‘perfect’ choices; this doesn’t seem so perfect now—"

“ENOUGH!  Instead of arguing, let’s get out of here before we starve to death—”

“Oh, I have enough food and drink inside my bottomless bag to last us for at least a week.  I don’t think that’ll be the problem, though, because I have a feeling we’ll suffocate before—

“If that’s the case, then help me with this wall here before it’s too late—”

“Here, let me take over; you’re floundering like a fool—”

“I’m just so tired—”

The entire conversation/argument lasted for quite a while, but Tacca basically tuned out the majority of it and didn’t even strive to identify who was speaking most of the time.  The basic idea she got from it supported Shale’s theory that they were working alone, however, because it seemed as if these Raiders were specifically chosen in order to frame another group of Raiders for the destruction of her Dungeon Core.

Needless to say, she wasn’t happy about any of it.  Even with that unhappiness, Tacca still felt a little bad about what she was doing to them.  As groups of Raiders continued to delve through her dungeon late into the evening, without showing any signs that they knew about or wanted to continue the objective of those that were trapped in the depths of her dungeon,