When it got to the corpse of the lead blue-skinned monster person, it leapt forward at a run, passing over the body, and landed in the middle of her creatures’ formation, which was already in a little bit of disarray because one of the Human Fighters was trying to extricate itself from underneath the body of another monstrous person.
There were a few traps nearby still, which were activated as the purplish-colored leader moved around and started hacking and slashing its way through Tacca’s creatures. The enchantments on their armor prevented a lot of Physical damage – but they weren’t invulnerable; the sheer force of being pounded into the ground by each strike of a mace or a hammer, or being sent across the room by a slice of a sword, started to take a toll on them. Within a minute of getting back up after suffering through attacks that would’ve sent almost anything else to the grave, their armor started to break apart from the abuse, shattering the enchantments upon them at the same time.
A single smack against its leg with a mace from her Gnome Healer – which did absolutely no damage, glowing aura or not – and an arrow that bounced off of the purplish-colored leader’s eyeball were all the attacks that her creatures got off before their armor failed and broke apart, which left them without any defense. Within seconds of that happening, all of her remaining defenders in the room were destroyed, their armor – for the most part – now just piles of useless junk.
Consequently, there was nothing preventing Tacca’s doom from walking right into her Core Room.
Chapter 28
I still need a little more than a minute!
The leader of the six-armed invaders walked with a purpose into her Core Room, visibly bracing for an attack that didn’t come. There wasn’t anything to hurt it, after all, because her Core Room, just like more than half of her new dungeon section, was completely empty. There weren’t any hidden traps, no creatures waiting to pounce from ambush, and no clever ploys to keep the monstrous purplish person contained until it ran out of air or starved to death. No, the only thing visible other than her Core near the upper edge of the room were two small, brown pouches sitting in the middle of the floor.
Contrary to what every other Dungeon Core did with bottomless bags – as in, absorb them – Tacca had kept them. She wasn’t exactly sure why she had done that, at the time; thinking back, she assumed that she was probably going to hold them to give as rewards to her 2 Bonded Hill Dwarves, Sterge and Gwenda, at some point. While she couldn’t re-key them for access to their contents, those two certainly could do it for themselves.
Almost as if she had summoned them, she felt those 2 Hill Dwarves walk through her entrance up above. She had trouble concentrating on them, however, because of the interference brought by the purplish invader staring at her Core. It paused as it stared unblinkingly at her—huh, it has no eyelids—for a moment before running forward, its arm with the warhammer raised and cocked back a little, ready to throw. Tacca panicked, sure that her end was coming soon, as she tried to figure out what to do. She still needed a minute for the rest of her plan to come together, and she had nothing to stop the charging monster from destroying her; if only she had some way to delay—wait! But will it even work?
Everything that Shale had tried to do with his Fairy Mana had been blocked somehow, as his Invisibility had faded, and he wasn’t able to Translocate. Tacca’s own Dungeon Force Regeneration had shut off, and she had thought that her own Fairy Mana had as well – but she hadn’t even tried to do anything with it. The only thing she used her FM for lately was to share informational screens with Shale, but she hadn’t needed to do that since this deadly and destructive invasion.
Hoping that whatever entity or force that had cursed her with bad luck was looking away for a moment, Tacca activated her Electrified Pacification Ability. A field of crackling energy emitted from her Core and spread out quite a distance, enveloping the murderous purple form. Yes! It worked! At first, though, nothing happened; after it took another half-step, the stupid glow appeared again around the invader and it kept running. She kept it going however, because she had no other option, despite it costing 250 FM per minute to maintain.
The glow started to fade, but not nearly fast enough. No, no, no! Hurry up! Without thinking about it too hard, she activated her Invisibility, desperate for anything that might work. She felt herself disappear, and saw the six-armed monster person stop and hesitate for no more than a second, before it cocked its arm holding the warhammer back even further and brought it forward—
—only to have it stop in mid-swing, just a fraction of an inch before it would’ve been released. The glow around its body was gone, and Tacca’s Electrical Pacification was taking hold. Even then, it wasn’t altogether perfect; she could see the straining of the invader’s purple muscles, and it was moving ever so slightly, fighting the Ability that was supposed to be quite potent – at least according to what information the Pacification Ability imparted to her. It was moving in slow-motion, trying to walk forward and was succeeding – she was just glad that it couldn’t move its arms fast enough to throw something.
Instead, it dropped its sword suddenly with a flexing of its fingers, and started to reach for its chest – right where the metal…thing…was strapped to it. She was more than convinced by that point that whatever was causing all of the problems with her Dungeon Force not regenerating – as well as the fuzziness in her view and muted senses of the rest of her dungeon – was being caused by that object. Inch by inch, its hand crept closer to grabbing the metal thing on its chest, and Tacca wasn’t sure what would happen once the invader reached it.
Come on, come on. Suddenly, a simple Root Fox appeared right next to one of the bottomless bags on the floor, followed quickly by a Forest Wolf next to the other. A few seconds later, a Kitsune Archer and a Barbaric Werewolf appeared next to the Fox and the Wolf. Immediately, a light connected the Fox and the 5-foot-tall figure of the Kitsune, which looked almost like a short Elf – but with large reddish ears on top of its head, long vibrant red hair hanging down its back to its waist, where a large bushy tail emerged from its Ragged Leather armor. The Flimsy Pine Bow it was holding didn’t look very powerful, but then again she wasn’t expecting the creature she placed there to actually attack the purplish invader.
Half a second after the bright light of a connection between those two, another bright light emerged from in between the Wolf and the Werewolf. The Werewolf was a frightening creature; it stood 7 feet tall, had a deep, deep black fur color all over its body, saliva dripped from its powerful and deadly-looking jaws, and had claws that looked capable of shredding leather armor like it was nothing. Again, though, it wasn’t there to attack the monstrous person – it was there for another purpose altogether.
The intensity of the light, the “synergy energy”, quickly began to brighten until it was hard to look at. It wasn’t quite at the point where she was expecting it to explode – in the same sort of shockwave she had previously experienced with the Gnoll and Hyena – when Tacca felt a lurch in her Core and her Electrical Pacification Ability was abruptly cut off. She hadn’t run out of Fairy Mana, however; the purple figure had finally reached the metal object on its chest and it was almost as if a solid wall slammed in between her and her Dungeon Assistant Abilities. What is that thing?!
The six-armed killer didn’t hesitate this time; it cocked back all 5 of the arms still holding a weapon and brought them forward, launching all 5 weapons at her Core. If even one of them hit her, she would shatter into hundreds of pieces, but there was nothing she could do – she was out of options.
Her perception of the world seemed to slow down as she watched the implements of death spinning towards her Core. She hadn’t noticed before, but there was still blood staining each one, likely from the Raiders outside that were slaughtered with brutal efficiency. It sure is strange what I notice when I’m just about to die…again.
Suddenly, the light from the synergy taking place behind the purplish invader reached a crescendo, and an explos
ive wave of force shot out from both pairings before impacting the bottomless bags and rupturing them. She had originally thought about using the bags to enhance the explosion of synergy force, because she wasn’t confident that force alone would be enough to kill these six-armed beings. Tacca was happy to see that her gamble had paid off; she hadn’t been confident that the wave of synergy force would be enough to tear into the bags and release the magics inside – and hopefully make the entire explosion stronger.
Unfortunately, everything seemed to happen all at once. The explosive wave was indeed amplified by the escaping magical energy of the bags; as a result, it was propelled so quickly that the weapons were still flying towards her Core when the wave slammed into the monstrous, six-armed, purplish person and disintegrated it from back to front, including the metal object on its chest.
In that fraction of a split second, she felt her connection with the rest of her dungeon come back – but it was so much information she couldn’t even begin to process it. Instead, Tacca used the dregs of her Dungeon Force – that she had been saving – to use her Teleport function, targeting her old Core Room; she was originally planning on going as far up to the entrance as possible, but at the last moment she saw that the Bonded Hill Dwarves (and a larger group of others she didn’t recognize) were in the room where the group of Raiders that had been slaughtered in her dungeon were located. She would’ve used the Teleport option before, but there just happened to be an invader blocking her from moving to another room behind it; now that it was dead, she could move.
Sadly, Tacca hadn’t factored in the boosted speed of the explosive wave when it was amplified by the ruptured bags, because she wasn’t even sure what would happen. She watched in horror as the thrown weapons started to disintegrate just inches away from impacting her Core, and her Teleport initiated as she felt her Dungeon Force sucked away to power the ability – but it was too late. She felt herself start to disappear from the room just as the wave of force hit her—
—and the world faded away.
* * *
“What was that?”
A blurry streak had shot over their heads and everyone ducked involuntarily, but whatever it was had already flown through the tunnel they had just emerged from.
“I think…that was a Dungeon Fairy,” Jesper said slowly, looking towards the way they came. “I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve heard that every dungeon has one. No one really knows what they do, and very few actually see them – because they’re supposedly able to turn invisible.”
“Well, what was it doing here? And why did it look like it was running from something?” Francha, the Merchant Raider, asked worriedly.
They all looked at each other, and the fear and anxiety Sterge had already been experiencing ramped up to a whole new level.
“I have no idea, but I’d say that it doesn’t bode well for us – or for this dungeon,” the red-clad Clan representative finally answered. “I think we’ll explore one more room, then I think we should leave.”
“What happened to determining whether or not there is any danger to The Village?” Gwenda asked.
“I’m beginning to think that there is a danger to your village, and it would probably be wise to evacuate immediately. I don’t know for sure, but I think that whatever killed our people outside is here to destroy this dungeon’s Core; if it is strong enough to do all this, what’s to stop it from continuing its rampage down the mountain.”
That sounds like a reasonable assumption – but I sincerely hope it isn’t true. Sterge didn’t have any argument against that, however, and the sight of what might have been the dungeon’s Fairy escaping in haste made him even more worried. No one had any reason to refute Jesper’s words, either, so they agreed with him to explore one more room. They had already gone through the first room and hadn’t seen anything except some blood droplets where their resident Blood Mage had pointed them out quietly to them all, and other than some trampled plants – which was strange in and of itself, because he’d personally seen that damaged plants inside of the dungeon seemed to regenerate themselves automatically – there hadn’t been anything of interest.
Now the second room was done being checked, and the third room was where they were going to stop if they didn’t find anything. Sterge was perfectly fine with that, though, because the further they went the more uncomfortable he felt. What made it worse was the discovery that his Dungeon Sight Ability didn’t work the way it did before; technically, he could activate it still, but nothing really showed up in his vision. It could’ve been because there weren’t any monsters or traps anywhere near, but he felt there was something else affecting it – though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was.
In the tunnel leading to the third room, he heard some exclamations as those ahead of him found something. It didn’t take him long to find out what exactly it was they found: A group of Raiders that had been in the middle of a delve. The scene didn’t affect him as much physically as it had outside, despite there being some gruesome wounds, but the fact that they were still there certainly worried him even further. Everyone knew that anything left behind in a delve, including the bodies of those that perished, was quickly absorbed by the dungeon…somehow. No one knew the exact way they did it, but that they did it wasn’t in question. For these bodies to still be there meant something else was going on.
“You can see from their orientation that they were facing towards the entrance tunnel of this room, so what ended up killing them came from that direction,” Jesper reported softly. “Though at this point, I really don’t think that is in doubt. What I still can’t understand or figure out is what exactly is doing this – and why?”
Anders, the other Raider working for the Minister, spoke up. “Can you confirm that it wasn’t the dungeon itself that did this?”
Jesper thought about it for a moment, before he shook his head slowly. “Unfortunately, I still can’t rule it out – though this still seems like something way beyond what it should be capable of. And to do this in the first place doesn’t make sense, especially killing everyone outside; it’s a known fact in the higher Raider circles that dungeons don’t benefit from the deaths of anyone outside of their entrance. The massacre up there was therefore done for absolutely no reason, as far as a dungeon is concerned.”
Anders hmphed. It was a strange sound coming from the Hill Dwarf, which he followed up with a statement. “Not good enough. I have express orders from the Minister to determine the guilt of this dungeon, and to destroy its Core, if we discover that the dungeon was behind this senseless slaughter.”
The others just looked at him like he was crazy – including Francha. “What? Why wasn’t I told about this?”
“You didn’t need to know, that’s why. Now, I’d rather not go alone to find out, but I will if I have to.”
“You have no authority here, Anders; you can’t just go around destroying Dungeon Cores—” Jesper started to say, but something suddenly felt off to Sterge, who raised his hand.
“Hold on, I think—”
A wave of something just barely visible shot through the room, slamming into everyone gathered inside. The next thing Sterge knew, he found himself flying through the air before smashing into the far wall with a painful *crunch*. He landed on the floor next to Gwenda, who had apparently slammed into the same wall as he had; as he lifted up his head to check up on her, he felt a piercing pain in the left side of his chest. I think I snapped some ribs. And my left arm as well, he noticed as he gingerly tried to move and pick himself up. All concern was forgotten as he looked over at his best friend groaning in pain and holding her own left arm.
“Gwenda! Are you alright?” he called out, trying to mask the pain in his voice.
“I…I think so, but I’m pretty sure my arm is wrecked. You?”
“Same here, though I think a few ribs were broken as well.” Sterge moved to sit up and fell back with a cry, as it was getting hard to breathe. He closed his eyes to concentrat
e on something else, trying to ignore the sharp stabbing agony coming from his ribs.
A hand on his chest surprised him so much that he jumped, causing even more pain to radiate through his body. “Hold on there, you’ve got internal bleeding.” Sterge opened his eyes and saw Jesper squatting down in front of him, staring at the Hill Dwarf’s chest with intense concentration. A few moments later, the pain in his chest started to dissipate a little, though it didn’t leave completely.
Jesper let out a deep sigh and pulled his hand away. “I’ve stabilized you for the moment, but my Abilities can only do so much. You’re going to need to see a Healer of some kind when we get back, because while I can repair your vital organs and stop the bleeding, I can’t mend broken bones. For some reason, we forgot to bring a proper healer with us.”
“Gwenda! Is Gwenda going to be okay?”
“She’ll be fine – I already checked on her before I got to you. Everyone else is okay as well, with minor injuries; I think you’re the only two who got seriously hurt, because of your lower Raider Level.” That’s a relief.
“Well, it looks like you got your wish,” Jesper said suddenly. Sterge was confused for a moment, but when he looked at the slightly disheveled Clan representative, he wasn’t talking to him. The red-garbed Blood Mage was speaking to Anders, but it still didn’t make sense – until he noticed that the ambient light in the room was rapidly beginning to fade. Not only that, but the trees and other plants in the room started to wither away and disappear; suddenly, the rich soil underneath his palms disintegrated at his touch, and he found himself sinking down. In less than a minute, it was completely dark in the room and he was sitting on a cold, dark stone floor.
The Dungeon Fairy: Two Choices: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 2) Page 32