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

While she might not be killing dangerous monsters inside dungeons anymore, sometimes it felt like the Outpost’s budget was trying to kill her; anything to save a few coppers or silvers here and there was important.

Take the finder’s fee, for example.  Trevelyan didn’t actually lie or cheat the two Hill Dwarves, but she didn’t tell them everything, either.  While they couldn’t get the maximum amount of the reward because they weren’t Raider Level 20 yet, they certainly could’ve registered as a search participant and spent a day drawing some maps and making sketches.  That would’ve entitled them to up to 500 gold pieces if they had asked to do that…and yet they hadn’t thought to ask.  She would’ve paid them using the Outpost’s funds first and then her own – sizable – reserve when that was used up, and then be reimbursed…at some point in time.

That was the hitch there; reimbursement tended to take a long time, years sometimes; she had just gotten the Outpost’s budget stable over the last few months and she didn’t want anything to mess it up.  That’s why she paid the two inexperienced Raiders out of her own reserve, rather than mess it up; it was worth the expense for peace of mind, if nothing else.

Then again, the absolute craziness that was about to descend on her corner of the world – if the two Raiders were telling the truth, which was likely after looking at the tracker – was about to mess everything up anyway.  True, it would probably inject more income into the budget, which was always a good thing, but she was not looking forward to policing the hordes of snot-nosed, stuck-up, worthless excuses of trash that were likely to come with the normal, everyday Raiders that just wanted somewhere to go and develop their skills without having to hope that they’d survive in one of the more dangerous dungeons.

Wealthy merchant trash, granted, but still trash.

Thousands of years ago, they still had nobility ruling the different lands, but now everything was run by the Raider Delving Clan; no one could compete with the raw power and strength that millions of Raiders could present, though the Merchant Guilds had been pushing against that authority for hundreds of years.  No one was denied access to the Clan, of course, which led wealthy merchants to register their sons and daughters as Clan members, so that they could become powerful in their own right.  Of course, they never really saw much danger while they improved their Raider Level, because deep pockets could afford to pay for “bodyguards” that would protect them as they delved through difficult dungeons.

But if there was anything she knew about merchants – they were always looking for a better deal and a way to save some coin.  A new dungeon like the one near Heftington would certainly qualify for that, as they wouldn’t need to shell out hundreds of golds to those bodyguards each time they wanted their offspring to earn Power. That was why she was sure there would be hundreds or thousands of them flocking south like a locust swarm, consuming and destroying everything in their path.

There was nothing to be done for it, however.  Trevelyan did feel a little bad for the residents of her little town here, and even more for the nameless village farther south – they had no idea what was coming their way.

As she sat down to start writing the various correspondence that would soon be communicated to those in charge of the Raider Clan Headquarters back north, and from there to all of the known world, Trevelyan couldn’t help but think of the two Hill Dwarves that had upset the gentle and peaceful life she had there – not that it was their fault, necessarily.  What she really thought about, though, was what she saw when she Analyzed them both; more specifically, it was what she couldn’t see that bothered her the most.

The two new Raider recruits appeared as inexperienced as could be, even if they were Level 2; everything looked as normal as she had expected, and she had to admit that she was a bit surprised that they had already achieved so much so quickly – and survived their first taste of a dungeon without anyone dying.  That wasn’t always a given with these new dungeons, especially when the inside was unknown; what was even more impressive was that they made it out alive with only two people in their group.

Toward the bottom of the list – she had omitted to the two that she could see more than just their Raider Level and Class – were their Abilities, which also seemed normal.  However, besides the normal Abilities she would expect to see in a Melee and Caster Class, they each had two more…that hurt her head when she tried to investigate what they were.  She’d never encountered something like that before in all of her 216 years of life, though there were many times when an Ability or other information was deliberately hidden from her Analyze skill.  When that happened, there was nothing to indicate that it was even there; this, though, was like something wanted her to see that there were Abilities there but didn’t want to actually show her what they were.

The failure to see them was perplexing, but she had enough practice training her face and emotions that she was pretty sure she didn’t let the two know she had seen the obscured Abilities.  What they actually meant was a mystery, but she wasn’t one to pry into someone’s business like that – unless it somehow threatened her or those under her charge.  If that was the case, then she would use all of the Power at her command to rip that information out of their heads whether they wanted to tell her or not.  For now, she’d let them keep their secret; she didn’t want