Yes, I see them; are those maps of my dungeon already?
“As far as I can tell, they are. From what I remember of my Mentoring, Raider groups would be able to purchase these maps from their Clans, making their delve through the dungeon much safer for them. My guess is that the investigation team from yesterday has already made copies and is selling them; since the exit staircases weren’t there before, they weren’t recorded – so no one knows to look for them.”
Shale was right; since they weren’t there before, there was no reason for these groups of Raiders to look for them now. Regardless, Tacca was sure that eventually they would be discovered – perhaps by a team that didn’t have a map to her dungeon.
The next few days saw very similar results, with one or two groups of higher-Leveled Raiders coming to visit the dungeon, delve through without any issues, and then leave with their rewards. One thing that they all had in common was their pleasure of seeing multiple species of creatures being utilized, as crazy as that sounded to Tacca, as most of them were used to only 1 or 2 different types of “monsters” inside of a dungeon. The variety and uniqueness was obviously a welcome addition and challenge, which as she had learned at DAPS was one of the keys to understanding how Raiders tended to think.
Her month came and went without increasing her Core Improvement Level as she had predicted, though she did manage to bank 500 CIPs from what she had acquired from Raider visitations, her re-creation of her creatures, and an additional 382 temporary traps in her empty rooms below her Core Room. She found that she could easily create that many without her Core feeling too strained, though the closer she got to 400 she could sense a threshold she didn’t want to cross; with what she had already set up in her dungeon as far as traps went, that sort of made sense.
As she eliminated those additional traps afterwards, she felt the tension on her Core ease significantly. While she knew that as she grew stronger and increased her Core Improvement Level she would be able to handle more traps being in her dungeon – especially when she grew large enough to have hundreds of different rooms – right now her Core couldn’t physically handle that many for long. Nevertheless, it wasn’t something she had to worry about too much, since that kind of thing was a long way off.
Even better than the CIPs she banked – at least in her biased opinion as a former Dungeon Fairy – was that she earned more than enough Experience to increase her Dungeon Assistant Rank.
Congratulations, Tacca GloomLily!
You have reached Assistant Rank: Adept
You have reached Assistant Stage: 1
Current Experience Countdown: 471/1000 in 365 days
Maximum Fairy Mana: +100
Fairy Mana Regeneration: +4 per minute
Dungeon Assistant Information
Assistant Name:
Tacca GloomLily
Assistant Rank:
Adept
Assistant Stage:
1/5
Experience:
471/1000
Experience Pending/Countdown:
0 in 365 days
Fairy Mana (FM):
350/350
Fairy Mana Regeneration:
15 per minute
Abilities:
Bond
Instant – Multiple
50+ FM
Translocation
Instant
1000 FM
Assistant Information Meld
Sustainable
1 FM per minute
Electrified Pacification
Sustainable
250 FM per minute
Healing Aura
Sustainable
20 FM per minute
Hibernate
Sustainable
1 FM per minute
Invisibility
Sustainable
3 FM per minute
Repellant Shield
Sustainable
2 FM per minute
Yes! Finally, an ability that can help defend myself. Not only had she increased to an Adept Rank, Stage 1 Dungeon Assistant, but she also received 2 new Abilities! The first one that she concentrated on was the Electrified Pacification Ability, which allowed her to keep a sustained field of what closely resembled lightning around her form and would render almost anyone immobile while they were hit by it. It also did some damage to them while they were caught in the field, but only if they were a low-Level Raider; anything more powerful – unless they had some very hefty Resistances – would still be caught and immobilized, at least. It was the first Ability she had that could actually deal damage, even if it cost a bit of Fairy Mana to sustain the field.
The second Ability was something she had never heard of before, and when she concentrated on it she found out why.
Hey, Shale – I want to try something with you.
“Ok, what are you planning on—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish, as Tacca had already activated the Assistant Information Meld. At first, nothing happened; it wasn’t until she pulled up her Dungeon Core Status that Shale reared back in surprise.
“Whoa! How did you do that?” he asked vacantly, his eyes staring at the Status she just shared with him. She proceeded to tell about the increase in her Dungeon Assistant Rank and her two new Abilities, one of which allowed her to share any informational screens with him that she could pull up – including her own Dungeon Assistant Information. Not only that, but he could share his own Information with her; she was able to see his Dungeon Assistant status, which looked very promising. While he still had over 8 months to go until his countdown ended, his current Experience Pending was at 948 – meaning that he would increase quite a few Stages and potentially a full Rank when the time came. He didn’t suffer from the same debilitating 95% reduction in CIPs/Experience as she did, luckily; since her Assistant form was tied to her Core so fundamentally, the Experience that she earned was exactly the same.
Dungeon Assistant Information
Assistant Name:
Shale IronSchist
Assistant Rank:
Novice
Assistant Stage:
1/5
Experience:
0/100
Experience Pending/Countdown:
948 in 253 days
Fairy Mana (FM):
100/100
Fairy Mana Regeneration:
5 per minute
Abilities:
Core Bond
Instant
50 FM
Translocation
Instant
70 FM
Hibernate
Sustainable
1 FM per minute
Invisibility
Sustainable
3 FM per minute
Repellant Shield
Sustainable
2 FM per minute
That also reminded her that now that she was Adept-Ranked, it was now going to take a full year to acquire more experience for her own Dungeon Assistant Ranking; fortunately, according to her information she still had until Core Improvement Level 19 before that countdown extended from only a month to a year.
Another week went by with very little change in the routine otherwise, though Tacca spent her available Dungeon Force on expanding her collection of rooms progressing past her current Core Room. By the end of the week, there were now 24 additional rooms that she had constructed in various sizes, connected by a meandering tunnel system that reached an additional 400 feet beneath her Core Room. Fortunately, she was in the middle of a mountain range and therefore had a lot of room to spread out and dig down, so she could easily imagine having those hundreds (or even thousands) of rooms she was thinking about earlier.
Tacca also ended up adding an additional staircase tunnel (and their Rotating Stone Bridge traps) to the outside of those rooms as well because she had the time and available DF, though she didn’t quite connect it to the previous exit tunnel quite yet. It was something that would be useful in the future to have, she knew, and figured she might as well c
onstruct it now rather than have to use precious Force later on.
A week into her new month, however, the “normal” visitations of Raider groups changed. She began to get worried when no one showed up one morning, nor did she see anyone for the rest of the day. What’s going on? Why hasn’t anyone come today?
The sun was starting to set outside of her dungeon, so she knew it was unlikely that anyone would be coming at that point. Raiders tended to like being able to see their way into and out of her dungeon, and while some few of them could see in the dark like a Dungeon Fairy, from what she had learned they preferred to stick to daytime hours.
“I don’t know. It seems as though the Raiders were enjoying your dungeon, so I can’t see a reason for their absence,” Shale said, scratching his head in confusion from her Core Room. “Do you want me to go take a look?”
If you don’t mind, that would be excellent. I’m starting to get worried that I’ve done something to raise their ire and that they are calling up some sort of execution group to destroy me. As he was leaving, she didn’t forget to mention, Stay safe, though – and be careful!
Instead of flying all the way out of her dungeon, Shale instead used his Translocation ability to disappear near her Core and appear…somewhere…outside. She could only see what was outside of her dungeon entrance – which was a nice view of the nearby mountainside, but not much else. She waited for a few minutes before she heard Shale’s voice in her mind.
“Ok, so I think I figured out what the hold-up is.”
What is it? she asked in a panic. She couldn’t tell from his tone if it were something bad or not. Should I be worried?
“Uh…no, not really. Unless being extremely popular is worrisome to you?” Now Tacca could hear some amusement in his mental voice.
She felt more relief at his words, glad that it wasn’t something to be concerned about. Not particularly. Tell me what you see.
“Well, you might not believe this, but…”
Tacca listened to him describe what he saw, and he was right – she barely believed him. If that’s true, then this is even better than I thought.
* * *
Sterge collapsed on his bed as the darkness of the night fell over The Village, his physical exhaustion almost more than he could handle. He could only imagine how the other villagers were coping with the extreme labor they were putting out each and every day; he at least got a small boost in his strength and general endurance from his status as a Level 2 Raider. He had to admit that it didn’t really feel like it made much difference, especially over the last week and a half of constant construction, hauling of materials, and with the incessant “dealing with people” who needed his input or acceptance of something.
Fortunately, he was able to pass off most of those social requirements to Gwenda, who was happy enough to get away from the physical work for a little bit to deftly handle those situations. Of course, that just meant that he wasn’t taking a break, but he preferred hard labor over talking with people – especially the entitled attitudes of some of the Raiders who had arrived.
The flow of large numbers of Raiders had begun a few days ago, which was approximately when they had expected it – being a week or so after the two Hill Dwarves had reported its location. It was one of the reasons Sterge and the other villagers had been working so hard for such long hours, so that they could finish accommodations for everyone. After getting the initial Inn set up, which was frequented by various Raider groups that arrived for a day or two to try out the dungeon he and Gwenda had found, they had begun creating a second, and then a third Inn right next door to each other. Some of the other villagers thought that was too many and would be wasted, but the Delver Clan’s representative, Jesper, seemed to think that even three Inns weren’t going to be quite enough.
“After hearing the initial investigation report, which I can nearly guarantee has been spread far and wide by this point, you’re not going to have a few dozen Raiders arriving, or even a few hundred – think thousands,” he had told Sterge and Gwenda one night. “At any time, there are tens of thousands of Clan members in the Level range that would benefit from this dungeon, with more enlisting all the time. Now, not all of them are going to journey this far south, but I can easily picture the lower half of Abenlure streaming down here for the chance to run through a dungeon that they don’t have to pay through the nose to delve through. Hiring Clan members to help you survive in more-dangerous dungeons is expensive, though it certainly does work – and it works quickly. However, other than the members of the Ministry of Merchants and some other well-off members of society, very few people can afford that kind of assistance.”
He’d heard of the Ministry before, but they were so far above his station that he never thought he’d see one of the merchant leaders. They were reportedly so powerful and rich that it would take thousands of lifetimes of farming without spending any money to equal what they had available to spend, so they were almost mythical in that respect. It was hard to imagine having that kind of wealth, so to Sterge it was almost like they were a made-up fantasy.
Speaking of merchants, a few days ago a traveling peddler named Atero wandered by. This, in and of itself, was a first for The Village. Surprisingly, he offered to run a Delving Supply Store after he heard about the dungeon being found nearby. Sterge knew nothing about running a store like that, though some of the others negotiated with the down-on-his luck merchant to run a place once they built it. The peddler jumped at the chance, even for a small percentage of the profits from it, because he seemed desperate enough to do just about anything other than wandering around and trying to sell whatever he could.
They started building the Store just as soon as the third Inn was completed, and since it didn’t take nearly as long as the larger hospitality structures, they were free to construct yet another Inn afterwards. After seeing the few groups of Raiders already visiting temporarily, most of the villagers could see the potential for it; those who still didn’t agree went along with it anyway, because they could always tear it down later if the need for supplies arose and they were forced to build something entirely different.
Everything was going well, until just that morning. Actually, that sounded ominous even to his own thoughts; something happened, but it wasn’t something necessarily bad – just unexpected. Jesper had significantly underestimated how many Raiders would be looking for a new place to increase their Raider Level and look for loot.
They arrived in waves of dozens at a time, starting just after dawn, and by mid-morning even the partially finished fifth Inn was full to capacity with Raiders looking to visit the dungeon. Those who came afterwards had to camp outside, some individuals or groups with tents, but most just sleeping on the packs they brought with them. The flood of people was overwhelming, and Sterge worked until the sun went down, finishing the Inn so that there would be more space for the incoming horde. There were still a few things that needed to be done in the morning to complete the job, but for now it was acceptable.
All he knew was that they were going to have to build even more places for them to stay, mainly because they couldn’t have all those people lying around and causing trouble. A few fences around the nearby farms were already damaged from the sheer number of Raiders tromping through, though luckily their crops were undamaged. They were going to need them, too, because they now had a lot of mouths to feed; not for free, of course, which meant that they were going to make some money from their visitors. He was leaving all of that to Gwenda and the more knowledgeable villagers, though. He had his own job to do, which was inexplicably a position in charge of their construction crew.
He’d rather have that than be in Jesper’s fancy boots, however, because the order the Clan representative gave out earlier in the day that there wouldn’t be any delving until the next morning certainly wasn’t met with any happy responses. To back that up, the original group of Raiders that had investigated the dungeon was there to back him up and restore order, which was a lite
ral lifesaver because the entire area nearly turned into a gigantic brawl. Unbeknownst to Sterge, Jesper had already recorded the order of arrival of everyone in or around The Village, and he was placing time slots for them to delve on a first-come, first-delved basis. He was glad to see that there wasn’t any favoritism going on, which helped to dispel most of the complaints – but not all.
Oh well, not my problem. I just need to build more structures for them and stay out of their way; from what I heard from Gwenda already, the money is already steadily pouring in from those staying or eating at the Inns. “Before too long, we’ll have broken even with what we put into everything, and then we can finally relax.”
Relax? Sterge snorted into his scratchy pillow as he drifted off to sleep. For some reason, I find that highly unlikely….
Chapter 5
The dawn arrived with a group of 5 disheveled and poorly equipped Human males, who walked up to the entrance of her dungeon appearing thoroughly weary from a sleepless night. Or they could possibly be intoxicated.
“Actually, I think they might be both.”
Regardless of whether or not Shale was correct, she was pretty sure it was a bad idea to try to delve through a dungeon in either of those states. Then again, it wouldn’t be her dying if they messed up going against her defenses, so she wasn’t too disappointed at their presence. They all appeared to be some sort of melee-Class of Raider, and all of them wore nearly identical ragged leather armor and held an iron sword in their hands quite inexpertly. In all, they looked like larger copies of the Hill Dwarf who had first come to her dungeon nearly 2 weeks ago – except much less prepared, if that were even possible.
The Dungeon Fairy: Two Choices: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 2) Page 5
