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

True.  That was my thinking, at least, and I’m glad you agree with me.

“I may agree, but I’ll still caution you to take it slow.”

I will; don’t worry.

So began a gradual changing of her dungeon rooms currently in use.  In the beginning, it was a simple change of one of her Frond Coyotes in the second room, moving it from one side of the room to the other.  Her first repeat group of Raiders came in and noticed the change as soon as they were attacked and had to abruptly adjust their strategy, but overall it didn’t really make much difference in the outcome.  That wasn’t really the point, though; she wasn’t making the changes to create a more difficult delve for the Raiders, but to offer some variety.  Despite remarking on the change, and after thinking that they may have been just partially mistaken about the Coyote’s prior placement, they didn’t seem annoyed by the change.  Granted, they didn’t seem particularly happy about it – more indifferent.

Which was exactly what she wanted.  Small enough changes that were noticeable but not detrimental to their delve or enjoyment seemed to be the way to go; they would have to stay on their toes to adapt to those changes, but it was achieved without too much difficulty.

With that first success, Tacca started to rearrange one creature after every group of Raiders went through her dungeon.  Sometimes it was only a shift from one tree to another nearby (in the case of Root Foxes or Branch Jackals); other times, she moved her creatures from one part of the room to the other, sometimes grouping them up when they had been relatively solo before.  The main thing she kept in mind through the whole process was to keep the changes small – so no removing or adding creatures to the room – but significant enough to give the Raiders pause.

She might try totally revamping a room later, but for now this was all the change the Raiders could handle – at least according to the conversations she overheard by random groups delving through.

“Why does this seem different from the last time we were here?  This seems strange; I was told that these dungeons aren’t supposed to change like this.”

“Did you hear about the way Therald almost got savaged by a wolf the other day?  Apparently, he was prepared to defend a certain pathway leading to the exit, but the wolf came up from behind him!  He said that the stain on his leathers was blood, but I think it was just him wetting himself in surprise!”

“This doesn’t match the map at all; weren’t those fox monsters supposed to come from the right side?”

“I don’t care about that too much; I think it’s good that it isn’t completely the same, because otherwise this would be too easy.  And I’d probably have nothing to do since Hrawlen has this place memorized, so some surprises let me see some action.”

“Ouch!  That stupid monster is not supposed to be there!”

And so on and so forth.  No one mentioned that they were explicitly unhappy with the changes, only that they were frustrated that their maps weren’t entirely accurate anymore.  Some liked it, some didn’t – but most seemed to take it in stride, as just another quirk to her dungeon that was unlike most they had either visited or heard of before.

The weeks blew by quickly, or so it seemed to Tacca.  With all of the changes the Dungeon Core was making to her dungeon, as well as watching reactions from the Raiders to those changes, Tacca barely noticed the days passing.  It was a little tedious and monotonous sometimes, but she was so enjoying making subtle enough changes that the time practically flew past.  Before she knew it, her month-long countdown was almost upon her.

She wasn’t caught spacing out this time, however, and she had plenty of time to prepare for it.  Luckily, there wasn’t much she had to do to boost up her CIPs she had earned, because a lot of that had been done over the last few weeks.  Each time she moved one of her creatures, she had to absorb it; when she absorbed it, the rewards assigned to the creature – and its automatic replacement – was eliminated.  What that essentially meant was that she was creating additional creatures, as well as assigning rewards, that counted towards her CIP total.  It cost more than just straight restocking of each creature, of course.  If she was only doing one at a time, the expense in DF was negligible.  It also only counted once per creature, however, because the total was tallied at the end of her countdown for how many she had placed at that time.

By the end of the month, she had replaced every single one of her 76 creatures at least once, which gave her 2 CIPs per creature – 1 for the creature itself, and 1 for the reward assigned to it.  She also managed to keep her dungeon filled with Raiders on a fairly consistent basis, netting her at the minimum 23 CIPs per day for 23 hours of their presence.  There weren’t nearly as many deaths as the previous month, mainly because there were quite a few repeat groups.  All but 1 of the 9 deaths that did occur were of people brand-new to her dungeon, and apart from the 45 CIPs she received for their deaths, she also unlocked an Orc Fighter Variant for use in her dungeon.  She now had access to all of the races, if not all of their Variants yet, but she was sure that it was only a matter of time before she got them all – and those were just the beginner Raider Classes. She could only imagine what she might unlock when she started seeing some of the more specialized Classes dying in her