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

replacement” would do all the work itself in replacing the creature when the dungeon was empty of invaders.  There was a priority that she could assign to each defending creature, and Dungeon Force would automatically be taken from her available pool to replace it – though she could also designate a threshold that it wouldn’t take any more from.  For instance, if she wanted to always have at least 100 DF at all times, then the replacement would stop as soon as that threshold was reached, only resuming when more was regenerated; on top of that, she could place the entire process on hold with just a mental flip of a switch, in case she needed to change something in the dungeon or needed to use Dungeon Force for some other reason.

Really, the entire ability was to streamline the whole process of replacing dungeon creatures exactly where they were before – which could eventually number in the hundreds or thousands when she grew stronger.  For now, however, she didn’t need to automate the replacement of this Root Fox because it was mainly just for a test…so she chose No.

The deep brown Root Fox just sat there on the edge of her Core Room with a blank expression on its face, but Tacca was happy – because it worked!  She instinctively knew that any of the other creatures she chose to create would also succeed, but she didn’t want to take the time to create any of them…or to use any of her Dungeon Force unnecessarily.  She had other plans for it, after all.

Leaving her new creature alone except to give it instructions to guard her – not that she expected anything to attack – Tacca got to work creating her new dungeon.  She could vaguely feel the direction that the surface was in relation to her Core, though how far away it was remained a mystery.  Her first Core, Jeremy, had mentioned that he could sense that he was close to breaking free, but from what she learned at DAPS was that a Core had to be fairly near the surface – as in, within 10 feet or so – to tell for sure.  Since she didn’t feel like she was anywhere close, Tacca figured she could be anywhere between 11 feet and a mile or more away from where she wanted to end up.

The surface was above her at a steep angle (almost straight up), though, which gave her a little more information; most Cores started anywhere between 400 to 700 feet below the surface, which allowed them to build rooms and sloping tunnels to eventually rise far enough to break free.  If her Core was typically placed – and she had no reason to think that it wasn’t – then she had quite a bit of ground to cover before she had to worry about opening herself up for attack by Raiders.  Even if Tacca were to find that the surface was nearer than she expected, she would go another direction to prolong her arrival in the world – because she was in no way ready to face the rest of the world.

After activating her Carve Earth option, she felt and saw a small stream of her Dungeon Force flow out of her Core and impact against the far wall.  The dirt and stone almost seemed to distort and melt at a slow pace, disappearing into nothing after a few moments.  Tacca watched in amazement – even though she had seen it being done hundreds of times before this – because she was doing it now.  Her amazement was short-lived, though, because the process was just…so…slow.

Carving through the dirt and stone took 5 DF per minute to maintain, which wouldn’t be a problem for a normal Dungeon Core with their DF Regeneration – they canceled themselves out.  Even a brand-new Core could work on carving out tunnels and rooms every minute of the day for weeks or months and not run out, as long as they didn’t spend any DF on anything else; for Tacca, though, she only regenerated a little over half of that amount, which meant that she could maintain the tunneling process for just over four hours before she ran out completely.  Not that she would keep it going for that long, because draining your Core completely and keeping it at that level could cause damage.

Just like her own Core, which was already cracked in a couple of places from the whole sucked-in-a-Fairy-soul-and-forced-out-the-previous-soul incident that had happened.  At three and a half hours of constant tunneling through the dirt using Carve Earth – which got her about 3 feet down in a 4-foot-wide, 7-foot-tall hole – she immediately shut the process down when it felt like someone had shoved a knife in her non-existent stomach.  A tiny crack appeared in her Core where there wasn’t one before, though at least the others hadn’t widened any more than they already were.

This is…bad.  If Tacca couldn’t consistently keep her tunneling going, then she was going to have some issues making her dungeon the way she wanted it.  Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t do it eventually, but it was going to take a while.  As for her damaged Core, she was almost certain that when she raised her Core Improvement Level – which would take at least a month – some or all of those cracks would be repaired.  Damage to Cores wasn’t exactly common, but it wasn’t unheard of either; those in the past that had been cracked had that damage repaired upon the next Improvement Level, so she had to hope that it worked the same way with her.  She just had to make sure she didn’t make it any worse, which meant that she had to take special care to prevent any more cracks from happening – essentially by going even slower than she had planned.

This just keeps getting better and better.

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