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

Core – like having half as much Dungeon Force and more expensive Special Characteristics – the Core Improvements menu didn’t seem any different.  Tacca was thankful for that, mainly because it was extremely hard to accumulate CIPs, so if the Improvements themselves were also more expensive, then she would’ve cried.  Though she didn’t really have the ability to make tears anymore…she would’ve attempted to anyway.

She barely had to look at her options, mainly because she knew exactly what she needed to continue growing faster: Dungeon Force.  Doubling her current maximum Dungeon Force was a bit of a no-brainer, as it would allow her to work longer; adding an additional 5 DF per minute to her regeneration would also allow her to keep ahead of the expense used with Carve Earth, as well as allowing her to do other things as well.  Tacca knew that she still had to be cautious about rapid expenditures of large amounts of Dungeon Force or lengthy sustained use, since her Core wasn’t completely fixed up yet; nevertheless, having both of those things would help to alleviate her worries.

After selecting those, she was back to having no Improvement Points to spend, though she did receive 25 Special Characteristic Points.  Rather than waste time looking for somewhere to spend them, though, Tacca closed the menu without hesitation; she was already planning on saving them up until she could get rid of her negative Characteristics.

With renewed vigor, she went back to expanding her Core Room another few feet all around her Core and flattening the floor so that she could tell right away what was up and what was down; she never really thought about it before, but telling direction when looking at her Core from the outside was a bit difficult when the room was shaped the way it was before, so having a level flooring helped immensely.  By the time she was done, the room was still ovoid in appearance, but now had a flat side and stretched out 12 feet in diameter at its widest.  Tacca felt much better about it for the simple reason that it didn’t feel like such tight quarters anymore.

 After that, the Fairy-turned-Core spent three hours at a time – and then 30 minutes of rest – creating another tunnel from her first room, sloping it slightly upwards and to the left in a gradual curve 50 feet in length.  She kept it to the same 4-foot-wide and 7-foot-tall proportions as her original tunnel so that it would be consistent, before opening it into a smaller room than the first – only 30 feet long and wide, instead of 50.  The new room was finished much faster than the previous one had been, mainly because her construction speed was boosted significantly now that she could do three hours and only 30 minutes off; she thought she might be able to do even more, but she still didn’t want to push it.

With the second room complete, Tacca continued her tunnel-digging and room-making for another four weeks; she varied the tunnel distances between 30 and 50 feet, and made an assortment of rooms, though none nearly as big as the first room she had built.  That one she was planning to be her “boss” room – otherwise known as the “final” room – of her dungeon, where she would have the toughest creatures and challenges…and the highest reward for the Raiders, of course.

In all, she now had a total of four rooms (including her boss room), twisting back and forth through the ground, steadily heading towards the surface.  While she couldn’t accurately sense that she was getting close to breaking out, she had a distinct feeling that another few rooms – if she kept up the same pace – would open her up to the world.  It was completely opposite of what she should be feeling as a Dungeon Core, and she could only attribute it to some extra sense imparted to her because of her former existence.

Speaking of her former self, she found that – with a little bit of effort and Dungeon Force – she could create a dome of hardened stone over her corpse, sealing it up inside and hiding it away at the same time; with it out of sight, she found that she felt much better about her current circumstances, as if seeing her dead body was a reminder of what she used to have, instead of celebrating and taking advantage of what she had now.  She still mourned her previous “freedom” of flight and being able to go where she wanted, though the longer she had time to actually think about it she realized that her life wasn’t as “free” as she had thought.

Because being a Dungeon Assistant was for life – or at least for so long that there were very few that actually retired from the profession.  The way it was going, as well as the constant destruction of her assigned Cores, Tacca thought she was destined to spend the rest of that life suffering from one torturous Bond-breaking after another.  Before she had come to this dungeon, she was starting to feel the effects of so much pain in such a short period of time that she thought she might lose her mind.  Luckily – or unluckily – her “bad luck” had broken that cycle, and it seemed as if that part of her life was behind her.

Inevitably, as soon as she thought that, her ominous birth decided to catch up with her.

Chapter 14

“You want me to go…where?  Oh, please no – I don’t want to go anywhere near The Deliverer!”

The Lead Placement Council Member gave him a look and he shrunk back, scared for the first time since being unexpectedly called into an office in the DPRC that he didn’t even know existed before he heard the door open.  He’d never seen or heard of Council Member Lily before, but