While the invaders slowly dug through the side of the second chasm, a process much slower than creating a simple ledge, Jacob was busy creating a wall out of reinforced dungeon stone. The wall was being made in the ceiling of the sealed tunnel they were approaching, but he planned to separate it, just in case.

  The most important thing was to separate his prey from their master. However, this wouldn’t be enough to kill one of them. There were two different scenarios that he was planning for: whether or not the magic beast he captured was the lightning magical weasel.

  If it wasn’t, then he could take advantage of an old tactic that he had recalled. Generally, when moving something using the dungeon fairy, the process of wrapping around the thing, moving it into and through the ground, and then emerging in another area was slow.

  In the original game, though, there was a strategy that used this to its advantage. What if the thing the dungeon fairy was carrying was exceptionally large? And what would happen if it was placed into a space that barely fit it? Neither the game nor the system allowed him to move things into spaces smaller than it, but neither the game nor the system cared about entities in that equation.

  So, hypothetically, if there was an enemy in a small room, and he moved a massive object that took up almost all space in the room ignoring the enemy, it would still be considered valid. This tactic was called crushing for obvious reasons and it wasn’t that good of a strategy generally.

  The biggest problem was that it left the dungeon fairy open to attack, resulting in an exchange of damage for damage. No matter the state of the dungeon, it was only in desperate or dire situations where this sort of tactic was worthwhile. His dungeon fairy had already sustained much more damage than it should, and it was only if there were one to two magic beasts that he would try it.

  The exception was lightning magic, which would cause too much damage too fast. If that one was the one caught, he had created an outline for a small opening underneath the ledge in the first pit. This aperture would house his back-up plan, just in case.

  The earth magic beast kept digging slowly, taking much more time than it needed as it kept turning its gaze towards the boss. All of them were uncertain and nervous, and even the boss couldn’t hide its anxiety.

  It had stopped using its domain spell to save on mana, and it even was using its blessing spell sparingly. Whenever he felt like it, he would send his fairy in front of them and would start to interrupt and interfere with the digging. This forced the earth magic beast to start hemorrhaging its mana and force the king to use its mana too.

  Stolen story; please report.

  He couldn’t take it too far though as it put his fairy in danger. So he would appear, torment them for a little bit and drain their mana, then disappear. Even the best mana recovery rates took significant time to replenish—at best a short rest to refill a small mana pool. The king’s spells were costly though, like its blessing and especially its domain.

  Slowly he was whittling them down to the point where the others try to attack the fairy, though nothing really happens. Ice can’t beat rock, neither can fire, water, or particularly lightning. So, not only was he draining the king and earth beast of mana, but also the rest of them. All of them were starting to show signs of mana fatigue as their spells became less powerful and consistent.

  They kept pressing on until they reached the closed-off tunnel. They started to dig their way though and the dungeon fairy managed to finish transporting in time to cause more mischief and interfere. This time the boss started to attack too, though, and Jacob was forced to pull the fairy back.

  They slowly forced their way through into the tunnel. Once they were all in, the king used some of its magic to create a small territory, but it wasn’t significant. Rather, it seemed to use it to sense the environment around it. He looked around and scanned everything, and didn’t seem to discover anything.

  They began a slow march forward into the unknown, and Jacob waited patiently for the right time to drop the reinforced stone wall that he had created. While the boss hadn’t sensed any obvious traps, they all felt like there was something within the blank and seemingly empty tunnel.

  He waited for the right moment before he gave the order to the dungeon fairy. Reinforced stone was very heavy, and it didn’t take much for the wall made of the stuff to break through the ceiling and fall right down the middle of the group. And best of all, the annoying fire beast had been caught off along with the water magic user.

  He immediately started his plan to crush them, but then something happened that he hadn’t realized. Silver branches and plants grew at the base of the heavy wall, and slowly lifted it up.

  Jacob almost felt his phantom jaw drop as his clever strategy was pulled apart in front of his eyes. The wall was lifted enough for the fire and water beast to crawl underneath and rejoin their master.

  Then it fell shut again. Their path had been cut off, and even with the power of a king-level monster struggled. He had no doubt that, with enough time, the earth magic beast could drill through. However, the amount of mana that would take might not be possible.

  So, he had cut off the path to the dungeon core, at least for now. There was a path around it, and there was nothing stopping them from drilling their own path except energy and time.

  He sighed again for what felt like the hundredth time that day. He needed to be patient, eventually they would make a mistake.

  However, he needed to modify his strategy again.