The Dungeon Fairy: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 1) by Jonathan Brooks (read novel full .txt) 📕

hours.  For a dungeon that could potentially exist for thousands of years, 7 hours didn’t seem like a long time, of course; however, time was extremely important to a new dungeon just starting up.  Experience was awarded for the length of time Raiders spent in your dungeon and having your place up and running quickly after an invasion was key to getting that precious resource early and often.  If groups of Raiders had to wait days or weeks to fight through your dungeon – or worse, fight through when you only had a single creature defending it because they took so long to recreate – then you wouldn’t be getting much in the way of Core Improvement.

The third reason was a little harder to comprehend, but the Control Limit had to do with how many creatures a Dungeon Core could “control” in their dungeon.  Just like everything else, that Limit would increase as the Core improved, but at the start the Control Limit was 100; while more creatures could theoretically be created past that, those new ones would be “wild” – as in they could do anything.  If they weren’t controlled by the Core, they could attack the other creatures, attack the Core, or even wander out of the dungeon and into the world.

When you considered the Control Limit of each creature, each of the Gnolls only required 4 points from that Limit, meaning that she could safely create 25 of them; the Dragonlings, on the other hand, she could only create 5 of because they contributed 20 points to the Control Limit.  Even though they were distinctly less powerful and dangerous, she’d rather have 25 Gnolls instead of just 5 Dragonlings; the ways the greater quantity could be employed were numerous and they could be used in conjunction with each other, while she would be averse to having two of the winged lizards together, because if a single spell or effect took them both out at the same time she would be out 40% of her defensive force.

There were other personal reasons why she didn’t want a Dragonling, though – like them being able to snatch her out of the air if she wasn’t paying attention.  Or, at least, they could’ve done that when she was still a Fairy, but that would be unlikely in her current state.

Therefore, the Gnoll Scout seemed like a perfect choice…before everything that had happened to her.  After seeing the various ways that her Cores had failed in the creation or execution of their dungeons – or non-creation or execution, as it were – she had a better understanding of what might work.  She didn’t want to make it too dangerous, not dangerous enough, or have a lack of or too many rewards; in addition, it couldn’t be boring or disorienting, it shouldn’t be difficult to navigate (one of her Cores decided that having tunnels between rooms that were 50-foot drops with tiny handholds was a good idea), and – above all else – it had to be something that would make Raiders want to come back, time and time again.

In short, she needed to create something that was unique, exciting, slightly dangerous – at least for the first few rooms, then she could ramp up the difficulty level – and dynamic.  Almost all of the dungeons Tacca had learned about did the same thing; create some rooms leading to the surface, stock them with creatures and traps, and then when they improved they would dig down deeper and add more rooms, keeping the first ones basically intact the way they always were.

For example, she had heard about a dungeon that was over 2,000 years old that still had the original rooms it had built when it was newly created, still with the Goblin Fighters and few traps it had in the beginning – and nothing was ever changed after it was built.  It was successful for so many years because it was constructed with thought and quality, but the Core was eventually destroyed because – even though it was challenging to make it all the way through…it was boring.  With its static construction and deployment of various creatures and traps – and rewards – the Raiders got fed up with it because it became too easy to progress through.

Rationally, she thought that would be ideal, so that they would result in fewer deaths and easier rewards – but Raiders were obviously irrational.  From what she could determine, they thrived on change, on finding the newest thing, or even challenging themselves to the brink of what they could handle; they were obviously crazy, but she could – sort of – understand that.  She would probably get bored after centuries as an Assistant with a Core, which was one of the reasons they had the Hibernate Ability, so that they could pass the time in between major events; with it, a century might only seem like a few months – if she slept through the normal operations of the dungeon and was only awake when she was needed.

Their irrationality also had another objective, though; whereas Dungeon Cores – and by extension Dungeon Assistants – got Experience in specifically regular measurements based upon what they did, Raiders improved themselves by other methods.  A large room of a specific size that was built would return 5 Experience, no matter how many of them were constructed or how powerful the Core was; a Raider, though, received something similar to Experience called “Reserve Points” or “RPs” that was variable depending on the circumstances.

For instance, if they killed a Level 1 Gnoll Scout when they were just beginning to invade dungeons, they might receive 10 RPs; if they kept doing that for a while and got a lot stronger, then killed the same type of creature, they may only get 1 RP – or nothing at all.  Apparently, from what she was told, relative strength was a major factor in how