Evelyn had felt the power at her fingertips, dozens of skills of a range of affinities, yet when he spoke, it all stilled. Not like a stone dropped in the lake where ripples gradually faded but a sudden stillness like the stone never existed in the first place. And then Div was gone. Though not without sharing some interesting information.

“Thanks for backing me up.” Ivy said dusting herself off having found her feet once more. “That was really impressive by the way! Also really digging the elephant graveyard/deserted boneyard aesthetic. I take it we’re in the core room?”

As was often the case, Ivy’s positivity caught her off guard.

“Yes, this is the core room. The bones are mostly practical rather than aesthetic – but that’s not important right now. That went horribly; he completely brushed us off and we’re about to come under attack.”

“He didn’t brush us off, we forced a promise to tell us next time.”

“Because he doesn’t expect us to survive, Ivy.”

“Well then, we’ll just need to prove him wrong, won’t we?”

Ivy’s smug look made her chuckle despite the peril, “I suppose we shall. Any thoughts as to how? We are unlikely to have more delvers before the assault arrives, so our mana is limited to what remains and perhaps a few hours’ worth of regeneration.”

“We can only alter the fourth floor and core room. We need to take what we know about the invaders and tailor things to focus on their weaknesses. We can always change things back later and we were planning to make the fourth floor a suitable challenge for a full raid anyway so we don’t need to worry about the challenge being fair.” Evelyn nodded and Ivy began to pace as she continued, “We know the most dangerous member has fire and destruction affinities. Fire has some fairly obvious counters but any thoughts on destruction?”

“Sorry I haven’t heard of that affinity before. It’s likely fire is one of the primary elements that compose it, possibly even being fire/fire or perhaps fire/dark.”

“That’s fine, it’s pretty obvious it’ll be strong offensively. We probably want to focus on hitting first or dodging rather than surviving a hit.”

“If it’s as dangerous as it sounds it will still likely have a significant mana cost. Forcing them to use it repeatedly is an option.”

Ivy inclined her head, “Good point. That’s something at least. I’m assuming from the description we’re dealing with dwarves. Div’s disdain for them would fit with a theory I've been mulling over too…”

“Children of the warrior on a suicide mission to destroy a dungeon? Certainly. But how does that help us?”

“Well first let’s make sure my stereotypes about dwarves fit. Short, violent and fond of both making and using heavy arms and armour?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“All correct apart from the making. They traded a great deal of weapons and armour before Aurumcrest’s dungeon killed most of them off. If anything, because they made so little for so long, dwarven smiths are an oddity. Why learn to forge when your capital is flooded with high quality items from the dungeon? They are known to have a fondness for gold, though that may be mostly pejorative, but even dwarven goldsmiths are fairly rare.”

“Hmm maybe we can use their greed to lure them into a trap?”

“I suspect their love of gold is less than their hatred of dungeons unfortunately.”

“OK, shelve that for now. We still have other things we can leverage. If they are going to be running around in heavy armour, water sections could be tricky, but I don’t know where we could include more of that… Maybe if we stretch the definition of room…”

Ivy’s brow had furrowed and she’d begun to mumble but Evelyn saw the potential in her idea, “Perhaps the key is in fact, the running around. Not every obstacle has to kill and our fourth floor is designed to be a maze. The more we can tire our invaders out, the more dangerous the rest of our dungeon becomes. For example, many of the buildings in our maze have ladders built in to allow the slingers to reach the flat roofs. I would suggest these should now begin as high a skeleton can reach above the ground.”

“That’s… just mean. I love it.”

“We should assume they will still be able to reach the roofs, but if they have to work together or expend more energy to do so every time…”

“Then we are wearing them down every step of the way. We could even trap a few of the ladders to make them more wary. We’re going to need a way to get through the armour though.”

“Slings don’t need to pierce to do damage.”

“But I’m guessing they are also going to have shields?”

Evelyn grimaced, “That is a problem. Perhaps crossbows, or did we receive oil from the most recent raid?”

“We did but it’s costly. Same problem with crossbows to a lesser extent. I’d love to give all the skeletons arbalests but that’s just not practical. I’ve been hesitant about introducing guns, but even if I knew enough about how they worked, I don’t think we have gunpowder, and springs definitely won’t cut it given what you’ve told me about how toughness works.” She scratched her head, “We’ve actually gotten quite a bit from recent raids but we’ve been a bit… distracted.”

“We should take a look into that. I’d been intending to see if we could utilise some of the beastkin bodies for the skeletons or zombies. Orcs are good general-purpose units but perhaps we can create something more specialised. We certainly got a few new affinities from their deaths and powerful skills, albeit they are often costly. But I’m getting distracted, if boiling oil and crossbows are impractical at least en masse, then the spears and slings we have may be the best way to fight their heavy armour but short reach. I have heard tell of hot sand being used instead of oil, but I’m unsure if that was a tall tale.”

“Hmm, it seems plausible at least.” Ivy snapped her fingers, “Actually, when I was making the buildings, it’s a bit embarrassing, but I kind of made things more complicated for myself than it needed to be, but it could be useful now. I was trying to make Roman concrete, the Romans were… you know what? It doesn’t matter, but I might have something that will work, but we need something we can throw that will break, maybe really thin stone containers?” Ivy rambled.

“The rat who escaped drank a potion and dropped the vial. That should have given us glass.”

“That’s brilliant! I’ll get on it right away!”

As Ivy vibrated with enthusiasm, Evelyn saw a tremor of hesitation slip in and didn’t hesitate.

“Let’s head to the fourth floor. You can work on that and I’ll see what skeletons and zombies we can make. Didn’t we unlock some templates we haven’t used yet as well?”

As Ivy speculated about the effectiveness of wolves and rabbits, as well as perhaps another boar or two, other ideas clearly simmering in the back of her mind; Evelyn couldn’t help but feel, despite the incoming attack, that today was a good day.