The Dungeon Fairy: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 1) by Jonathan Brooks (read novel full .txt) 📕

would have enough CIPs by the time the month was up.  Anything made previously didn’t contribute to the new countdown period, so even if she hadn’t gotten rid of her Fox Variants, they didn’t really make much difference.  The same went for the first room she had made, though the other three recently constructed were already counting towards her goal of 200.  That was it, though: she had a grand total of 3 CIPs.

After a while, the creation of new rooms, traps, and creatures for each countdown period was eclipsed from Points gained by the presence of Raiders constantly invading the dungeon, but for now she had limited options.  She had more than enough time to create 100 more creatures, giving her another 100 Points, but then she’d have to find some way to get 97 more.  Normally, that would be easy by making at least 20 traps, which typically gave at least 5 CIPs for each one placed; with her reduction of 95%, though, the most she’d get would be 2 – and that would be for a fairly complex and powerful trap that cost more Dungeon Force than she could afford.  Therefore, she’d have to place 97 traps inside her small dungeon, which would be difficult – but not impossible.

While there was a listing of the types of traps that could be placed, it was up to the individual Dungeon Cores to customize them to suit their own purposes.  Most of the time this really just meant things like determining the size, the trigger mechanism, or how powerful/deadly they were; what could also be done was to combine two or more traps to create complex traps that would do more than one thing.  These types of traps were usually used by considerably more powerful Dungeon Cores, mainly because they cost a lot of Dungeon Force.  In school, Tacca had spent some free time combining traps together to see what would work well together and the lowest-cost complex trap she had designed was at a minimum of 4,000 DF – well out of range at the moment.

Size (known as the activation range) – along with strength and duration – was a major determining factor in how much Dungeon Force a single, non-complex trap cost; this was fortunate for her because of her Trap Specialization, which was another reason she had chosen Enchantment.

Confusion Enchantment Trap

The Confusion Enchantment Trap can be placed on any surface and triggered by proximity.  Any living being passing through the activation range will experience a level of confusion – determined by the strength of the trap – for a limited duration of time.  Victims inflicted with confusion cannot retrigger additional Confusion Enchantment Traps until the duration has expired. All traps can be disabled with high enough Disarm Trap skills.

 

Cost: 4 DF (-60% Enchantment Specialization)

Replacement Cost: 1 (-75% off current cost/Enchantment Specialization)

Creation Time: 2 Minutes

Disarm Trap Resistance: 0

Activation Range: 1.0ft X 1.0ft X 1.0ft

Trigger Proximity: 0.5 ft

Strength: 1.0

Duration: 1.0 second

Resistance Category: Mental

Special Effects: Causes the mind of a victim passing through the Activation Range to become confused and may attack allies

Her problem was easily solved by using the Confusion Enchantment Trap, at least.  Enchantments – unlike many of the other trap types, could be created extremely small, and since they were inherently non-lethal, their costs were in general less than the others.  To make a trap that would cause very minor confusion to whoever passed with a half foot of its 1ft X 1ft X 1ft Activation Range for an entire second would normally cost 10 Dungeon Force; with her Specialization, it only cost her 4 DF.

This, of course, was an extremely weak trap that had no chance to do anything to a Raider; if they had a Mental Resistance of at least 1.0, then they wouldn’t be affected by it at all.  Even if they didn’t – which was wildly improbable – a second’s worth of confusion would barely be registered to the victim’s mind before it was gone.  However, if the trap was scaled upwards to affect a larger area, had a greater strength to overcome average Mental Resistances, and lasted for a longer duration, it could be quite effective – and cost a whole lot more DF as well.

For Tacca’s purpose, though, it was perfect.  Her natural Dungeon Force Regeneration meant that she could place three of them every minute – if she stopped her Carve Earth – so she stopped her expansion long enough to get her latest room filled with small Confusion Enchantment Traps.  To her surprise, each of the traps appeared like transparent cubes a foot wide on each side to her vision, with a glow that extended another half foot – which she assumed indicated its trigger range.

It was the first thing since she had become a Dungeon Core that she hadn’t known about before; either Cores didn’t really think it was worth mentioning, or she had missed it during her schooling.  To a Dungeon Assistant, traps were essentially invisible; she’d heard, though – and even slightly experienced – that once a Fairy was accustomed to a particular dungeon for a long time, they could sense exactly where each one was.

When she was done, her latest room – which was 20 feet in length and width – had the entire floor covered in traps, as well as a good portion of three walls.  She found that she had to place them a foot away from each other because of their Trigger Proximity, which couldn’t overlap; because of that, less of them fit than she was expecting, but she still had plenty of space in the room to add another few dozen – especially if she went to the ceiling.

Looking at it with a critical eye, it was probably the least effective room full of traps in the history of dungeons, despite there being 97 distinct traps