The Dungeon Fairy: Three Lives: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 3) Jonathan Brooks (read me like a book .txt) 📖

At least I’m upright and can sort of look around.  It was a small consolation, though, because he didn’t like what he saw.  All around him, secured just as he was, were dozens of Fairies, arranged in a grid-like pattern along one wall of a strange-looking room.  Some of them were unconscious, some were conscious but so out of it they barely moved, while others were fully conscious – and appearing as if they wished they weren’t.  None of them were able to talk, though, just like he wasn’t able; the clamp over his neck somehow prevented him from producing speech.

But the eyes he locked onto could send volumes of communication, and facial expressions were more than enough to know that despair, fear, and the desire to die was paramount in those he was able to see.  Especially in the Council members and those that worked in the DPRC that he saw.  He finally found where they had disappeared to, and he didn’t have to wonder anymore about why they hadn’t come back.

As far as Malachite could tell, in his light-headed state, he and the other Fairies weren’t there to be tortured, or held as prisoners for fun.  No, it was plainly because they were being sucked dry of the Fairy Mana that automatically regenerated into their bodies…somehow.  He didn’t think that was even possible, but it obviously was because nearly every point of Fairy Mana that flowed into him left just as quickly.  He estimated that he always had somewhere between half and three-quarters of a Mana in his body, which was why he didn’t pass out completely, but it was close; everything else, though, was gone before he could make use of it.

He quickly realized this was not the same thing that had happened in the dungeon where he and his helpers had been captured.  There, he couldn’t even access his Fairy Mana, and it had stopped regenerating altogether.  Here, though, he realized that if he just had enough Mana stay in his body, he could use it – but there was never enough.  Just the right amount to keep him and the others alive indefinitely, as they could technically live, well, forever if they had at least a tiny bit of Fairy Mana flowing through their bodies.

The prospect of being held there for eternity made the “please kill me or let me die” expressions on the faces of the Fairies around him make a whole lot more sense once he figured out what was going on.  He had to admit that the same thought had gone through his own mind, but he refused to give up.  Maybe if I knew what they were doing with our Fairy Mana, I could figure out how to stop it.

Unfortunately, whatever they were doing with it was a mystery.  As was the rest of the room past the grid-like setup holding all of the Fairies.

It was an all-metal room as far as Malachite could tell, though he couldn’t quite figure out what kind of metal it was – though it looked most like steel.  It was rather small, all things considered, especially when there were a half-dozen of the monstrous people that had captured so many Fairies inside, standing around what appeared to be some sort of long desk with multi-colored lights and images seemingly projected into the air.  As much as he hated the six-armed invaders, he had to admit that it was impressive watching them use all six hands to manipulate the projections, accomplishing…again, he didn’t know what.

Suddenly, a much larger projection appeared in front and above the heads of the invaders, and Malachite recognized it immediately.  It was their world, Gairth, though it was seen at a further distance than the map in their Council chambers.  That didn’t last long, however, as the viewpoint of the projection suddenly shot towards the northern part of the continent of Abenlure.  Various red marks were quite visible in scattered areas around the northern part of the floating map, and it only took a little jab at his memory to know they indicated the dungeons that had been destroyed.  Halfway between the “girdle” of the continent and the bottom edge of the invaders’ progress southward, there was a larger symbol that appeared to be a pair of crossed swords.

There wasn’t a dungeon there; I wonder what that means.  Some sort of battle, maybe?

With no way of knowing or deciphering the other glowing symbols that Malachite could only guess was some sort of writing, it was impossible for him to fully grasp what he was seeing.  Over the next hour or so – it was hard to tell, as time seemed to drag in his current state – there were some more symbols added to the map in the north, along with some more sections turning colors; from what he could understand, from his knowledge of the Council’s map, the blue markers represented Cores that were still in existence, while the red were ones that were already destroyed.  Over and over, the spread of the red color to the south was repeated in different ways, but always it was taking over and converting the blue.

Even in his exhaustion-addled mind, he was able to piece together that he was looking at some likely scenarios for the future, not that it was happening right now.  They were scenarios for something that meshed well with the name Tacca had applied to them, which Malachite unconsciously used as well: Invaders.  They were planning their invasion of his world, with much of their concentration on the “girdle” of the continent, where dozens or hundreds of different scenarios were obviously considered.

One thing quickly became abundantly clear, as he watched the six-armed group watching the map: They weren’t there to kill everybody.  At least, not everyone; the scenarios