Ivy wasn’t quite back to her usual vibrancy but to Evelyn’s relief was recovering, though it was still shameful how bad things had gotten without her noticing. She resolved to do better from now on and while Ivy was still determined to take a more advisory role on the fourth floor, they hadn’t left each other’s side since the emotional outpouring.

“So, I get that the whole idea is to make an abandoned city style maze, but what creatures will you use? Going to try for anymore evolutions or specialised equipment?”

“Perhaps a little on both counts, however there is a strength of the undead I feel we have not yet fully leveraged; Numbers.” Evelyn felt the corners of her mouth pull in a feral grin; it was time to really show off what she could do. “These raids of yours involve a large number of delvers which means we will need a truly impressive number of undead to challenge them. Equipment, evolutions, skills and levels all take mana that would slow down the build-up of those numbers, so I plan to keep the majority at the base level for this floor. We may investigate some evolutions to add some variety and perhaps encourage the delvers to develop a wider range of skills. I’ll be counting on your help to see what we can do with minimal equipment and skills to vary up the challenge.”

Ivy’s eyes widened and hands raised, “Woah, I know Pamyel hinted we should do a raid floor, but are you sure that is what you want to do? Even with all the delvers, it’ll take weeks and weeks to build.”

“Yes. There’s no reason we can’t keep the standard ten-person restriction on the floor until we have built it up sufficiently. However, once we have, consider the benefits. Using a numbers approach already gives us benefits from the [untiring legions] perk and increasing the scale only increases this benefit.” Evelyn’s expression turned serious, “More importantly we are getting delvers from other places, some of whom likely would rather see the dungeon destroyed than Timberhollow benefit, and if a sufficiently strong group appeared it would be difficult to stop them. Consider now if our fourth floor was designed to be a challenge for forty or fifty people…”

Ivy’s laugh was like clouds parting, “The group would be in for a nasty surprise!”

“Indeed. Even if they somehow found out beforehand, they’d have to send ten person groups through each floor until they could all convene at the saferoom at the beginning of the fourth. This would give Timberhollow time to act, meanwhile [untiring legions] may whittle down their forces, or if they are unaware of Timberhollow’s new trick, your ingenious mechanism at the beginning of the second floor -”

“They’d have to wait for the dungeon to reset for each group! Fighting Twrch, doing the trials…”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Indeed.” Evelyn responded bemused.

“Wait.” Ivy got a calculating look on her face, “All this talk of [untiring legions] and the entrance mechanism to Twrch; are you just trying to make me feel better?”

Evelyn felt a little chagrined and from Ivy’s expression it must have shown in her face or the brief pause.

“I’ll admit I may have focused on the perk’s effect in my description, but the concept of the plan came from Lady Pamyel as you know. That it helps vindicate the effectiveness of your ideas and contributions is simply a pleasant bonus.”

Ivy raised an eyebrow but the upturned corners of her mouth hinted she was more amused than sceptical, “Hmmm I suppose so, but don’t think you need to sugarcoat things for me.”

“Sugar coat? Oh, I see make more palatable.” It was getting easier to reason out Ivy’s expressions, though the tongue thieving felines of her world sounded most unpleasant. “It would seem nobility have expensive tastes even in your world.”

“Well, um, how should I put this…”

“Regardless, I have another idea for the floor I’d value your insight on.” Seeing Ivy’s brows come together as she focused once more, Evelyn continued, “Thus far, we’ve limited sight by eliminating light. For this floor I think we could use a different method.”

“What did you have in mind? We don’t have many options for light sources, even with the lightstones. I don’t know how we could blind everyone with too much light.”

“You’re thinking along the right lines, I propose we have strategic large fires that will ruin invaders night vision. We can conceal ambushes in shadowed areas and I was hoping you might be able to do something interesting with oil traps.”

“A burning city?” Ivy grinned, “I certainly like the aesthetic, but if you’re thinking of using zombies won’t fire be bad for them?”

“Even most zombies won’t blindly jump into flame, and skeletons would be less affected than a person,” Evelyn shrugged. Ivy was rubbing off on her, her mother would have thought such unseemly. “Besides the darkness trial gave me the idea that the smoke will likely be much more unpleasant for beastfolk and others with enhanced senses than the average denizen of Timberhollow.”

“Oh, that’s nasty. Might be preferable to the scent of zombies though. This is going to be a rough floor for them.” Ivy’s brow furrowed in the way Evelyn had learned meant some idea had captured her imagination. Sure enough, she started mumbling, “It would have been a bit much for the darkness trial, and we wouldn’t have to do it for all the fires…”

“Care to share Ivy?” Evelyn prompted gently.

“Well, we’d probably be burning wood for the fires, right? Smoke is pretty unhealthy in general, but some woods burn with a toxic smoke. Smoke from poison ivy can leave rashes. I’m sure we’ve got something that will be a bit nastier than normal. Might let Timberhollow get something like that [toxin resistance] skill the rat guy had. Best of all, it’s not like it will affect the undead!” Ivy had grown gradually more animated as she spoke finishing with a sudden blush and slapping a hand over her mouth.

Evelyn felt some of the weight in her chest lift as she saw Ivy’s enthusiasm. It would seem she couldn’t quite stick to her commitment of staying more hands off on this floor and Evelyn was all the happier for it.

“An excellent suggestion, my wise [guide].”