The combined attack of the magic beast blew through the thin stone protecting the cavity, almost hitting the dungeon fairy. The fairy had been hiding within a more solid part within the stone wall when the attacks started and quickly went intangible.

  That was unexpected. Jacob didn’t think that the invaders would attack the area in front of them. Now, their path to one of the tunnels had become challenging as there was a large hole that the earth magic user would struggle to go around or fix.

  He had successfully slowed the king and its minions at the cost of almost losing his dungeon fairy. While they had given him more time, there weren’t any new openings for him to take advantage of. The monster had only become more alert and cautious.

  That plan hadn’t worked how he wanted. While he could set up an ambush at the tunnel that the invading monsters are slowly approaching, he doubted that he would be able to defeat them even if he used all of his minions. Even if he did, it would come at the cost of the magic beasts and monsters that he needed for the future of his dungeon.

  He went back to his thoughts. When would the king reveal a possible weakness or miscalculation? When will it become distracted?

  Probably when it reached the tunnel. It will go from a massive pit that it understands well enough to a new and dangerous environment. When it reached the tunnel entrance, its eyes wouldn’t be watching its back, especially if it decided to have the majority of its magic beasts flank him.

  However, he needed to set up everything ahead of time to give the boss enough time to forget about it. If it sensed the dungeon fairy behind it, it would immediately suspect something was wrong. The dungeon fairy wasn’t fast enough to have the element of surprise.

  He started to move his dungeon denizens around to avoid any of them getting into a fight they had no chance to win. He then started to create several alcoves at the bottoms of the pits to take advantage of any of the invaders that fell. He hadn’t created them before as he thought that the boss would try to reach the bottom and could take advantage of them.

  The distance was also enough to not totally spook the king and its soldiers, though it was clear that all of them were more hesitant and nervous. Jacob wished that he could read through their thoughts through the status screen, but it didn’t matter. They couldn’t do anything to stop him when he kept his distance.

  He did have the idea to psych the invaders out—use their paranoia against them. However, he wasn’t sure how to do that. He had never been a mastermind, and the thought process of these magic beasts were much harder for him to intuit than people. The game hadn’t been good at simulating this either, meaning that he truly had no idea.

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  He supposed that he could just ‘accidentally’ reveal the dungeon fairy doing whatever within the tunnel, increasing their fears despite the fairy doing nothing. It would be interesting to see their reactions.

  The dungeon fairy finished creating a few alcoves in the other chasms that he had prepared, just in case. He then created a few more cavities near the invaders, though this time they were created close to the point where the thin ledge they created met the wall. That way, if they decided to attack, their attacks would damage the very thing holding them from falling.

  He didn’t push it though, and left enough stone to prevent the ledge from falling over. He wanted for the beasts to forget about this as much as possible. After he created the cavity, he then started a distraction.

  He followed his plan to show that the dungeon fairy was doing something in front of them, in both of the two tunnels on the other side of the pit, and the reaction was interesting. Whenever the fairy appeared, the magic beasts including the boss started casting ranged attack spells at it, though the dungeon fairy quickly took cover to avoid getting damaged. He kept revealing it and using it to slightly modify some stone since it seemed that the king-level monster had the power to sense it.

  This did seem to cause anxiety, especially for the king as its enemy seemed to be crafting traps and schemes all around it. He chuckled a bit at the hypothetical thought of the boss monster realizing that it was being tormented by a rather inept dungeon master. Maybe he was seeing things that weren’t there, but this was the fun of being a dungeon lord.

  The earth magic beast had started to extend the ledge again, slowly reconstructing and reinforcing the wall that it was attached to. It hadn’t been commanded to go back to fill in the new cavities that he had made, another mistake. It seemed that the boss monster was rushing to get away from the pit and the potential danger it housed.

  He waited and hoped that another opening would be made when they finally reached the leftmost tunnel. However, he was disappointed.

  The boss spread its domain first into the tunnel before any of them dared to step on it. All of them, especially the earth magic beast, and the king were looking everywhere, like they were waiting for the dungeon fairy to show up.

  That wasn’t ideal. He had hoped that they would be distracted, but it seemed like he had underestimated the king-level monster’s intelligence.

  They managed to secure the tunnel and were able to get away from the chasm. For Jacob, there was good news and bad news. The bad news was that the leftmost tunnel which they had clawed their way to was the right path towards the dungeon core. The good news, though, was that the second and last large pit he had made was in the way.

  He took a certain, devilish glee as the beasts slowly went through the tunnel only to discover that they now had to fight their way across another chasm.

  And this time, he had a better idea about how they worked.