The Dungeon Fairy: Two Choices: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 2) by Jonathan Brooks (bill gates books to read TXT) 📕

I won’t make it.  If I do survive, I don’t want you to throw your life away for no reason.  There’s nothing else you can do right now – you’ve already done enough with delaying them.

“But—”

No, Shale.  If you’re nearby, I might not be able to do what I need to survive.  You have a decision to make: Leave now and live, giving me a chance to succeed; or be stubborn and stay, almost certainly dying and reducing my own chances to pull through.

He was silent as Tacca watched her doom descending on her, passing through the last few rooms without hindrance, entering her vast and empty Boss Room.  “Fine,” her Dungeon Assistant finally responded – and flew back at full speed through the rooms he had just spent nearly a half-hour delaying the deadly invaders.  “You had better survive, though, because I still want the chance to yell at you for this.”

I will do my best.  Try to get somewhere hidden soon, in case the worst happens; having our Bond broken if I get destroyed will hurt more than anything you’ve experienced before and will leave you quite helpless.  That was certainly an understatement, as Tacca could attest.  Are you sure you don’t want me to dissolve the Bond?

“No, because you aren’t going anywhere.  You’re going to pull through, you hear me?”

I hear you, Shale.  I’ll talk to you soon.

With that, Tacca shut off all contact with her Dungeon Assistant, putting him completely out of her mind.  It was hard to follow him visually as he passed through her dungeon, anyway, because the effect of whatever the six-armed monster people were doing was still making things a little fuzzy to her perception.  She could still feel where he was through their Bond, but actually seeing him flying through her rooms was difficult.

It only took the blue-skinned invaders 20 seconds to run to the tunnel leading down to her Core Room, which was concealed by an extrusion of stone that jutted out into the room just enough to hide it from casual observation.  If you looked at it at the right angle, which was basically the opposite side of where the exit staircase was located, you’d be able to see it easily – but for the most part it was invisible.  Obviously not undetectable, at least to the group who were aiming for her destruction; they found it without trouble, passing through the narrow protrusion that was just barely larger than the tunnel connected to it.

Only to emerge in her final defensive room, which she was hoping would delay them enough for her plan to work.  Tacca did some mental calculations and realized she still needed just over 3 minutes for it to be complete, so she hoped that she had enough time.  If she didn’t, then there really wasn’t anything else she could do – or had time for, which was really the limitation that hindered the most.  Even if she hadn’t just spent most of her Dungeon Force already, there wasn’t enough time for anything to be created that might be of use.

Unlike when she had been in danger before, she didn’t have a hope of trapping these blue-skinned invaders behind a wall; it was more than obvious that they were strong enough to demolish anything she attempted to put in front of them.  She was actually surprised that they hadn’t just destroyed her Bridge traps that blocked off the easiest access to her Core Room rather than traverse pretty much the entire new section; she figured that whatever they were using to determine her location was taking the open path of least resistance.  Of that, she was thankful; them being there in the first place, not so much.

Therefore, the only thing she could think of to stop them was highly unconventional, required time to set up, and was extremely dangerous.  She wasn’t even sure she would survive; there was a good chance that if she weren’t fast enough in her reactions, she would be destroyed along with her would-be killers.  That is, if it actually worked in the first place.

The first step that the lead six-armed invader took into her final defensive room set off one of her powerful Enchantment traps, and the familiar glowing aura surrounded the figure, negating any effect that it might have had.  The second step set off one of her Life-based traps…and her last hope that they wouldn’t be guarded against that was dashed.  The glowing aura still negated the effect – but it also dimmed quite a bit as a result.

A few more steps did absolutely nothing to the blue-skinned monster person as it focused on Tacca’s 5 creatures wearing enchanted armor at the far end of the room.  However, the sixth step finally did something: it extinguished the glow entirely, and the powerful Confusion-based Enchantment took hold of the invader’s mind.

She could see it stop even as the others came up behind it, walking safely through the path that was now clear of traps; each trap could only be activated once, so once the lead monster person triggered them they were basically inert.  However, stopping caused the others to spread out to either side of the lead invader, triggering their own traps as they rushed ahead and past.  The confused blue-skinned would-be killer seemed to shake off its confusion and raced after the others, a faint glow around it again.

It didn’t last long, however, nor did the glows of the others as they triggered trap after trap after trap.  There were some more Enchantment traps activating on each of the invaders, though for the most part they seemed to shrug them off as they continued, only a dozen feet from Tacca’s creatures, who were settled in a defensive formation that seemed natural to them – for the Dungeon Core hadn’t instructed them to do that.

Finally, one of the monster people touched one of the