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

All

All creatures are reduced in Level (cannot be less than 1)

10

Core Improvement Points are reduced when earned

95%

That’s…different.  As she had suspected, her maximum Dungeon Force and regeneration had been cut in half – similar to her Fairy Mana; fortunately, she had a bit of warning so she wasn’t completely taken off guard, but she knew that it would be a hardship.  Luckily, what surprised her to see was something under the Core Access heading: Permanent Assistant Sub-bond.  Her name was there, but also under the Dungeon Core Name category – which made sense only when she considered what had happened.  Tacca already knew that she still had access to some of the same Abilities she had when she was a Fairy, so now she was technically a Core and an Assistant at the same time.

That didn’t prevent her from being able to Bond with another, living Assistant, though – at least according to her Status.  Instead of listing it as a “Current Assistant Bond” – which was what it was supposed to say – it was showing as a “Current Primary Assistant Bond”; she figured it was a result of her “Sub-bond”, though she didn’t know if that meant she could acquire another Sub-bond if she wanted one.  Not that she desired for this to happen to someone else, but it was nice to know her options.

What it also meant was that she was open to being Bonded by another Fairy Dungeon Assistant – which worried her extensively.  What happens if they find out I was originally the corpse on the floor?  Will they try to have me destroyed as some sort of abomination?  Will they try to remove my soul and insert another in my place?  Can I hide who I am and all of my knowledge from another Assistant?  The only saving grace she had was that Assistants couldn’t actually see or access any of her Core information…or can they?

She knew that the Bond between Fairies and Cores was similar for them all…but what about a Bond between Fairy and former-Fairy?  There were a lot of unknowns there, and that was what worried her the most.  She needed to protect the secret of her existence and act as close to a “normal” Dungeon Core when that time came, though she vowed not to let it affect the ideas for her dungeon.  Tacca had plans already in motion with her initial selections that she couldn’t afford to change, and she would be darned if some Fairy came and messed things up.

There’s not much I can do about that now, I guess; I’ll worry about it when the time comes.  She put those concerns away for the moment, because it was time to see if her risky plan with the Variants worked; success was promising, mainly due to the fact that she could see “Canine Family” as her creature, with something that said “(select for options)” next to it…so, obviously, she selected it.

Creature List (Select for Variants)

Fox

Jackal

Dog

Coyote

Wolf

They’re…all here!  She wasn’t one hundred percent sure it would work but seeing every type of Canine available was amazing.  The real test was if she could actually create one, but first she needed to select a Variant.  Since her dungeon was fairly small at the moment, she chose something that was relatively small compared to something like a Wolf: Foxes.

Fox Variants

Fire Fox

Shade Fox

Sand Fox

Arctic Fox

Cape Fox

Root Fox

Bush Fox

Crag Fox

Gliding Fox

Camouflage Fox

Tacca selected the Root Fox, since if she remembered correctly it would work the best for her Forest Environment – and because it was relatively small.

Root Fox

This Root Fox Variant specializes in hiding amongst the exposed roots of trees and attacking unwary passersby.  Because of its close ties to the forest, this Fox has tough bark-like skin and fur, granting it a higher defense than normal.

Cost (Level 1): 5 DF

Control Requirement (Level 1): 1

Creation Time (Level 1): 3 Minutes

Physical Attack: 1

Ranged Attack: 0

Physical Defense: 2

Ranged Defense: 1

Elemental Resistance: +25% Nature

Specials: Bonus physical defense due to hard, bark-like skin and fur

Pack Hunter: Bonus to physical attack if in conjunction with others in the Canine family

As soon as she selected it, she felt an internal prompt to choose where she wanted it placed; all of her Status screens disappeared, and she was looking at her small space around her Core.  Looking towards the edge of her ovoid-shaped Core Room, she picked a spot where she wanted her new Root Fox and figuratively crossed her fingers as she confirmed the placement.

Tacca experienced her first use of Dungeon Force as 5 units of it left her Core in a transparent glow and flowed towards what now appeared as a silhouette of a small animal with a slightly bushy tail.  It was a surprise to the former Fairy, because she had never seen either before; the silhouette and the sort-of-visible Dungeon Force was only apparent to Dungeon Cores.  As a Dungeon Assistant, she had been taught that what she was looking at was normal – but she never thought she’d actually see it herself.

It took three minutes for the new creature to fully form – which wasn’t that long of a time – with it quickly becoming more and more substantial as time went on.  From her former viewpoint as a Fairy, it looked like the dungeon creatures just “popped” into existence, but obviously they were formed invisibly and didn’t actually exist until they were complete.

Root Fox (Level 1) complete!

Would you like to automate the replacement of this creature? Yes/No

Tacca was startled by the sudden notification but was also expecting the question, as it was a normal part of operating a dungeon for a Core.  When a creature was killed in the normal process of a Raider invasion, “automatic