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

receive from them would only matter if there were a dozen or more in their group.  Then again, with my 95% reduction of CIPs, I doubt even that would make a difference.

The reason she needed to tone down the deadliness of her dungeon was for one particular reason: it was made for a full group of at least five Raiders.  While it would still be dangerous and extremely challenging for even that full group if they were just starting out – like these two Hill Dwarves obviously were – she thought that it was still fair enough to be considered a good place to invade.

Fortunately, there were only the two deliberately deadly traps she had in her dungeon – the Spiked Pit Traps – so she immediately started to absorb them; the traps were in the fifth room but judging on how slow the Hill Dwarf Raiders were progressing, the deadly obstacles would disappear before they arrived – if they even ventured that far.  Tacca doubted either of the two would survive the fall, let alone being impaled on spikes, so they had to go – but she left all of the others.

She also reduced the number of creatures in all but the final boss room; if they pushed on all the way to there and refused to turn back, then she wasn’t going to stop them – but she made sure her creatures were visible in that room, so they’d know what they were going up against.

With those changes, she thought that the two Raiders would probably survive, unless they were extraordinarily stupid or inept.  Sure, they appeared very new and obviously inexperienced, but they didn’t seem reckless or suicidal; normally Tacca would be all for that, because the chance they would die would be increased significantly.  Again, though, that wasn’t something she wanted right now.

There was nothing else she wanted to do to ensure their safety, though there was plenty that she could do; it was a dungeon after all, and it wasn’t meant to be too safe.  Satisfied that she’d done her part, Tacca watched everything happen from the safety of her Core Room…and she figuratively crossed her fingers in the hopes that she wasn’t making a mistake.

*         *         *

Sterge was feeling a little better about their chances of survival after a quick fight with two more of the brown foxes that emerged from the trees near the tunnel leading further inside.  Nothing else had attacked them throughout the entire first room until they had approached the two trees flanking the passageway sloping downwards, which helped to alleviate some of the worry the Hill Dwarf built up regarding the dungeon.  He had heard that Raiders frequently died because they were so dangerous, but so far this one wasn’t too tough.

It also helped that they were better prepared for an attack than they were at first, even if he still wasn’t very adept at using his weapon yet.  Sterge and Gwenda had both seen the beasts emerge from the roots of the flanking trees, and as he stepped forward he saw his best friend raise her stick up at the same time.  Instead of the bright-blue streak of light he was expecting, though, a transparent-like orange mist shot out and covered both creatures.

The foxes bounded forward from their hiding places at full speed, but as soon as they hit the mist they slowed down; what was previously a run towards the two Hill Dwarves turned into a slow walk, and it appeared as though they were trying to move through sap of some kind.

“Hurry! My Sapping Fog will only slow them for about 10 seconds!” Gwenda shouted as she leaned on her stick and seemed to wilt like a stalk of wheat that hadn’t been watered in weeks.

“We should probably talk about what you can do before we get attacked next time!” he shouted back to her as he stepped up to the “walking” foxes.  He wasn’t really mad at her, but he really would’ve appreciated some sort of indication of what she could do beforehand.

Using a two-handed grip on his shortsword, he chopped straight down with all of his power on the rightmost beast; even though it was slowed considerably, it still tried to dodge out of the way of his attack.  Instead of it hitting the fox in the head (where he was aiming), his sword smashed right in the middle of its back.  Because of its tough fur – and the fact that he used the flat of the blade again – he didn’t cut into the beast, but he did hear a muted *crack* as the power of his strike broke its back.  It fell to the ground immediately and kicked its front paws out, but the back half was immobile.

With it much less of a threat, he turned to the other, only to see that it had started to jump towards Gwenda; it looked funny because it was still moving slowly through the air, but he didn’t take time to watch because he needed to protect his friend.  Sterge shifted his grip on the sword in his hand so that the edge of the blade was on the top and the bottom this time and he chopped down on the slowly floating fox, aiming for its neck.

Just before he hit it, though, whatever spell Gwenda had used ended and the fox shot forward at normal speed.  Instead of hitting its neck, he ended up slicing into its back end just above its tail; he had hit the beast with so much force that his weapon bit deep – and then the momentum of the strike caused the fox to flip backwards through the air, over and over and over as it continued its normal flight path.  It flew through where his friend was just a moment ago – as she stumbled weakly out of its way – before