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

 When you looked at the 2,000-year-old dungeon that was destroyed – while following all of the rules and regulations put forth by the DPRC – from that perspective, then it sadly made sense.  For the powerful Raiders that wanted to challenge themselves with some of the newer, deadlier rooms near the end of the Core’s dungeon, they had to fight their way through hours’ worth of boring previous rooms that they’d probably fought through dozens of times before – and probably not receive any RPs for it.  Sure, they got rewards, but it was just a side benefit for improving themselves; if it took too long or was too difficult to improve themselves, then all the gold or enchantment scrolls would be relatively useless trinkets.

That right there was the crux of the matter: Dungeon Cores were dependent upon Raiders to improve themselves just as much as Raiders were dependent upon Dungeon Cores.  The problem, however, was that – despite having enormous power at their control to dictate what their dungeons looked like – Cores were taught to conform to the rules and regulations of the DPRC.  For the short-term and even average-term, it worked amazingly well to ensure that the Cores weren’t destroyed, and that growth was steady and constant.  In the really long-term, however, there was a distinct lack of instruction there; it was almost as if they wanted the older dungeons to be destroyed for some reason.

The oldest Core that she had heard about had been just under 3,000 years old, but many didn’t even make it over a millennium before they were destroyed.  She didn’t know for sure, but she was fairly confident that most of them had probably been destroyed because they were considered stagnant, boring, and unchanging.  Tacca wanted to be an exception to all of that.

She wanted to live for much longer than 3,000 years; if she had her way, she would live until she was around for 30,000 years or more.

To do that, she needed to keep her dungeon fresh and exciting and rewarding – and not just in material rewards, but Reserve Points as well.  She wasn’t really concerned about what the DPRC had to say, because she knew all of the “rules” by heart; as much as it seemed unfair, she needed to give the Raiders what they wanted, instead of just what was acceptable.  She knew that those that invaded dungeons expanded their own natural lifespan when they got stronger, so in order to keep those same people happy for centuries – and so that they wouldn’t go anywhere else – she had to prove that she was worth keeping around.  She had watched and felt so many Cores being destroyed that she didn’t want to be just another casualty.

Tacca took some time to go over what she knew about the potential choices she had ahead of her and tried to strategize using her newfound outlook.  To say it was hard was an understatement; taking the safest and initially most productive route was so ingrained into her that it was hard to get past that.  She eventually had to toss that all out and start from scratch, keeping her eventual goal in mind.

It initially meant that her growth would be slow to come at first, but once she got up to speed with everything, she had a feeling that her development would explode.  As long as her ideas caught on, of course; fortunately, she had an advantage that she wasn’t afraid to benefit from: she was from this world, and probably knew it better than any other Dungeon Core in history.  Not only that, but she was an expert in the Dungeon Core systems despite never having accessed them before; it was that knowledge that she was going to lean on and do some things that had never been done before.

She couldn’t help but think that even if some of what she had been taught had been somewhat deceitful regarding the long-term survival of a Dungeon Core, everything else was likely correct – otherwise there would be many, many more destroyed Cores in the world than just the ones that she had Bonded with.

With that in mind, she started making choices from her available options…

Chapter 11

There were a number of choices that a brand-new Dungeon Core had to make before it can actually do anything; each selection dictated the direction that the dungeon would take for the immediate future – if not far beyond that.  It was one of the reasons Dungeon Assistants were Placed first thing when the Cores become aware of the world around them, so as to prevent uninformed choices and so that the Cores won’t be stuck with something made in poor judgement for the rest of their existence.  While they would be able to make additional choices when they improved their Cores, bad initial decisions could haunt a Core for centuries…which made what Tacca planned to do a bit insane if there was another Dungeon Assistant nearby to see her doing it.

Five major choices stood between great success and abject failure, though on the surface they didn’t seem too difficult.

Initial Starting Creature Species:

Initial Starting Creature Variant:

Trap Specialization:

Environmental Access:

Special Characteristics (Choose up to 3):

With only the slightest hesitation based on her own knowledge and assumptions, Tacca dove right into the Dungeon Creation Selection Menu again and chose Beasts; from there, she found the Canines category…and then stayed there, concentrating on it.  She wasn’t sure if it would work like she thought it might, but eventually some information about the Canine family came up.

Canines

The Canine family ranges from domesticated dog species, foxes, jackals, coyotes, and wolves.

Cost Range (Level 1): 2 - 250 DF

Control Requirement (Level 1): 1 - 20

Creation Time (Level 1): 3 - 90 Minutes

Equipment: N/A

Physical Attack: 0 - 6

Ranged