The Dungeon Fairy: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 1) Jonathan Brooks (the dot read aloud TXT) 📖

during my schooling, and it’s quite possible that the other Dungeon Assistant hadn’t retained as much knowledge as I possess.  It’s a fairly obscure ability and doesn’t really matter too much to Dungeon Cores, as you all likely don’t care that they can sense how many rewards are in your dungeon; it was an elective course where I learned about it and it wasn’t very popular—”

“Hold on, there’s someone walking into my dungeon entrance.  It’s just one guy dressed all in black leather – I would imagine that would chafe something awful – aaaand…it looks like he’s leaving.  False alarm—wait, now he’s back with a whole group of his friends all dressed like him.  I wish I could understand what they’re saying!”

Without thinking about it for more than half a second, Tacca was off and flying through the dungeon as fast as she could; while Dungeon Cores weren’t born into their current forms knowing any of the languages spoken – even Common Tradespeak – Dungeon Assistants had certainly been taught nearly every language in the world.  The only reason Darlene – and Jeremy, for that matter – could understand her even when she spoke out loud was because of the Bond they shared, otherwise it was nearly impossible to communicate effectively.  Over time she was told that Dungeon Cores could be taught how to speak Common Tradespeak or even any other language like anyone else, but for some reason it took much longer for them to learn than anyone from her world would.

Tacca didn’t bother to watch out for any traps or creatures, as she sadly believed that Darlene had taken everything dangerous out – and so it proved to be correct.  She was flying so fast that she managed to get all the way to the entrance with barely a glance of what she was passing through in less than a minute, which was fortunate because she caught the tail end of an important conversation.

“—know what they said, but even if this is a dead dungeon, I can still sense some loot here.  And not just a little that may have been missed when this place was cleaned out, but enough that we could live like kings for the rest of our days—”

“Yeah, sure, Marvus.  Something like that being missed is next to impossible, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt; you do have a better Valuation Sense than any of us, though who would’ve thought your years of improving the skill would actually come in handy?  We’re here already, so we might as well check it out…but if you’re wrong, you’re buying dinner for the next…month, is that a deal?”

Tacca fluttered nearby and saw the one that she had originally heard speak hesitate, and she was silently urging the Human to back out.  Unfortunately, instead of backing down, he stood up straighter and puffed his chest out.  “I’m not wrong, you’ll see; I’ll take that deal – but only if I get first choice in whatever we find.”

“Fair enough – lead the way.”

Not again…  Why can’t I catch a break?

Tacca quickly mentally relayed the conversation back to Darlene in her Core Room, and the Dungeon Assistant was glad that the Bond allowed for communication no matter the distance; she could theoretically be on the other side of the world and they’d still be able speak.

“What do I do?!  I’ve always had traps and my Panthers guarding my dungeon before this, but I don’t have anything now!  I have enough Dungeon Force to create a single Panther, but I’m not sure what that would do against all seven of them,” Darlene asked in a panic.

“Go ahead and create it and start absorbing your rewards to make some more—”

“B-but it’s my treasure—”

Tacca wasn’t having any of that nonsense.  “If you don’t do it, you’re not going to have any treasure left in about a half hour.”  She was being generous with that timeline, because as soon as the group that had just entered stopped being careful while checking for traps – which they were initially doing thoroughly and methodically, despite thinking that the dungeon was empty – they would begin to travel through the dungeon much faster.

There was grumbling involved, but the Dungeon Core took her advice and started to absorb large chunks of her rewards; just like what happened with Jeremy, however, Tacca had a feeling that it wouldn’t be in time.  It took entirely too much time to absorb anything in a dungeon for Force, which only made sense; it would make it unfair for the Raiders if everything changed while they were inside – and “fairness” was the most important factor that basically ruled everything concerning a dungeon.

If it was impossible to progress further into a dungeon, that was unfair; if traps were unable to be bypassed or deactivated, that was unfair; if you had creatures that had no weaknesses and couldn’t be killed, that was unfair; if there were no rewards for killing creatures or exploring the dungeon, that was unfair; if you killed every Raider that entered your dungeon and didn’t allow any to leave when they wanted to, that was unfair.  Any or all of those things could certainly be done, but the consequences of such an action were dire; again, punishment for those things didn’t come from the DPRC, but from the Raiders themselves.

There were extremely powerful Raiders out there that couldn’t be stopped from getting to nearly any Dungeon Core if they chose to do so.  If they decided that a dungeon was being blatantly unfair, they would be sent in to destroy the Core with very few questions asked.  There was a singular reason for that, too – additional dungeons in the area wouldn’t appear until there was a “vacancy”.  This prevented the land from being overrun with dungeons every couple of hundred feet from each other and destroying an “unproductive” Core would