The Dungeon Fairy: Two Choices: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 2) Jonathan Brooks (online e reader TXT) 📖

of the hands” of the other faction.  That was not something that she relished; being so popular felt good, she had to admit, but it also came with the danger of being too popular – something she hadn’t thought was possible until now.

The group left not long afterward, promising to each other that they would keep the “communication” by the dungeon a secret.  Not necessarily to protect the dungeon, but to protect themselves in case word got out about the nature of Tacca’s message – namely, that the “Merchants” were up to some shady things.  Regardless, she was happy to hear that her rule-breaking communication wouldn’t be bandied about for all the world to hear.

It didn’t take long for the dungeon to be ready for the next group, since Tacca only had to replace one trap – in addition to the creatures the 2 Hill Dwarves and their group had slain, of course.  As soon as they left the vicinity of her dungeon, the Dungeon Core felt like a light, a small warmth left the area, and she couldn’t feel them anymore.

Back to the grind, I guess.

Chapter 17

While at DAPS, Tacca had learned that the creatures and Variants to which Dungeon Cores had access were originally created through experimentation over thousands of years.  No one alive, even the most wizened of Dungeon Fairies, knew exactly how this was accomplished; it was mentioned only as something interesting to know and as part of the curriculum that all Dungeon Assistants were required to learn.  Personally, Tacca thought that it was a lesson in the origins of Dungeon Cores and Assistants, because it was also mentioned that the two had not always coexisted peacefully together.  Again, there was no real record or accounting of how the relationship between them used to be, only that it was…difficult for them both.

It was during that “difficult” time that the majority of the creatures and Variants came into existence, shared among the Cores at the time.  The only thing that was known (and which continued until today) was that all of the Cores in the world were connected together by the systems from which they operated. Her Dungeon Core Status, the initial selections when she first became a Core, the way she used her different Points to “purchase” things – these were the same amongst all Cores, because they all shared the same information.  It was only her unique situation that had caused some deviation from that, with the permanent sub-Bond with her former Fairy form and differences in her initial available DF, DF Regeneration, and other abnormalities – such as the Bond she could form with the Raiders delving through her dungeon.

The point being, that there must be some way that the original Cores that existed in a time so long ago had created all of the different creatures.  From what she knew, more than 80% of the creatures available to her and every other Core weren’t even present in the outer world – as in outside of a dungeon.  Therefore, logically, the older Cores had created them somehow; although it was a mystery of how they had done it, that didn’t remove the fact that they did.  Tacca now wanted to discover the secret; she had the time and a few resources to throw at the experimentation, as well as an overwhelming need to keep herself busy while groups of Raiders continued to delve through her dungeon.

As a result, she sunk most of her attention down into her deeper rooms; one in particular, 5 rooms up from where she was hiding in the bottommost room, she designated as her experimentation room.  She planned to use it to create all manner of different creatures, starting with some unique combinations of her Canines that had never been seen before.  Tacca went into her experiment with dreams of discovering the trick to crafting unique creatures…and was quickly frustrated by a lack of progress in any direction.

She first absorbed one of her enchanted-gear-wearing creatures down below to give her some available Control Limit to use.  Then, thinking to combine one of her Root Foxes with one of her Branch Jackals – thereby designing something that would combine the strengths of both creatures – she thought about placing them next to each other, pumped some Dungeon Force into them, and then mentally imagined them combining together.

Wonder of wonders…that didn’t work.  In fact, nothing seemed to happen, and the silhouettes of each creature slowly filled in and became more substantial as they fully developed.  One thing she did learn was that she could halt the materialization of a creature by absorbing it before it was finished, and it would happen immediately; that new knowledge certainly helped when her experiments failed.  Which happened over…and over…and over.  Nothing Tacca seemed to try worked.

Multiple attempts produced no results.  She tried just imagining their forms without inserting any DF into them…which did nothing; she tried to forcibly combine them once they were nearly or fully created…and ended up with a bit of a gory mess; she tried focusing on exactly what she wanted to form for her, even down to the smallest details…and nothing happened; she attempted to use other Canines in different combinations, even adding three or four together to see if that would make a difference…which, inevitably it seemed, it didn’t.

Against her better judgement (because Tacca wasn’t sure what it would do), she even used her new creatures – the Human, Elf, Gnome, Hill Dwarves, and even the new Orc she had finally obtained as an option via a Bond with a dying Raider – in different combinations, both with Canines and intermixed between them…and the results were the same as every other experiment.

Which is where Shale found her concentration when he finally woke up from his Hibernation, a confused look on his face when he felt the frustration pouring out of her Core.  “Uh…what are you working