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

Three weeks passed with boring regularity, as Tacca continued to use her Carve Earth to create a tunnel 20 feet long, and from there to start on a room that she was planning on being at least 50 feet on each side.  She would’ve guessed that it was even longer despite the regular schedule she was keeping for her work: one hour of constant digging, then waiting an hour for things in her Core to stabilize and for her DF to regenerate, then another hour of digging – and so on.  It might be a bit too cautious, but she didn’t want to risk shattering her entire Core just so that she could go faster.

Regardless, she was making progress.  Again, not as much progress as she wanted – but until she repaired her Core, it was the best she could do.  Of course, she wasn’t getting much in the way of Core Improvement Points that would be tallied up to increase her Level, so she was going to have to do something about that before the month was up.

Core Improvement Point Awards (95% Reduction)

Type

Variable Conditions

Potential CIP

Current

Rooms Constructed

Size

1 – 2

0

Traps Installed

Complexity

1 – 2

0

Monsters Created

Levels

1 – 2

1

Rewards Placed

Valuation

1 – 2

0

Raider Presence

Time

1 – 1

0

Raider Deaths

Quality

5 – 500

0

Core Improvement Point Countdown

Core Improvement Levels 1 – 20

1 Month

Core Improvement Levels 21 – 40

1 Year

Core Improvement Levels 41 – 60

5 Years

Core Improvement Levels 61 – 80

25 Years

Core Improvement Levels 80+

N/A

Current Core Improvement Status

Current Core Improvement Level

1

Current Core Improvement Points

0/100

Current Core Improvement Countdown

1 in 8 days

So far, Tacca’s progress towards gaining a Core Improvement Level was a whole…one point.  That one Core Improvement Point came from the Root Fox still in her tiny Core Room, and she hadn’t received any more from anything else – because all of her Dungeon Force was going towards the creation of the dungeon itself.  Fortunately, being a Dungeon Assistant as well as a Core had some perks – because she knew how to game the system, at least initially.  Normally, this strategy wasn’t needed; the typical year when the CIPs would accumulate and then take effect was normally enough for every Core to raise their Core Improvement Level by at least one or two – but usually ended up being a lot more.  When they didn’t have a 95% reduction in their accumulation of points (like she did), they were able to gain hundreds or thousands of CIPs by that time.

In the case where they couldn’t accumulate enough, though, there were some options that could be temporarily applied to boost them enough to get at least a single Level.  With the first Level threshold at 100 Points, there were two easy ways to get almost any Core to that number.  The first method was the easiest and required time, lots of unused space, and a lot of Dungeon Force, but those were things that were usually in great supply by the time a year was up.  It usually took a week or more, but a Core could cover every single inch of their constructed rooms with traps temporarily – unlike the paranoid Jeff from her past – to acquire enough Points to Level up.

When the countdown time period was over and the Points “banked”, they could eliminate whatever traps they didn’t want and go on from there.  This could also be done in the future when a Core was shy of gaining another Level at the end of another countdown period, but the required Points made the extreme method of covering every inch of a dungeon with traps not quite viable – plus by that time they were probably open to the world, and (as Jeff had proven) having hundreds of traps in a few rooms wasn’t a good way to ensure you stayed alive.

The second method was similar to the first, though it was harder and less common – because it required special conditions.  First, you needed to have a dungeon creature that didn’t contribute much to the Control Limit: 1 or 2 at the most.  Then, if it was something that only contributed 1 to the Limit, you could make 100 of them and it was as easy as that.  With 2 (or technically even more, though it didn’t help as much), you could create 50 of them, which would get a Core halfway there to the first Level, and the rest would have to be made up with traps and/or constructing more rooms.  Afterwards, the creatures could be reabsorbed if they weren’t needed, and progress would go on.

Luckily, Tacca had access to many creatures and their Variants that contributed only 1 to the Control Limit, so this was the method she would use just before the countdown ended.  It wouldn’t do much good to do it right then, so she waited another 7 days before she did anything; over that next week, she amazingly got her first room complete, which was faster than she expected.  It was rough around the edges at first, so she spent some time smoothing out the floor, walls, and ceiling using her Carve Earth option – but then she remembered that she could use the same method to manipulate what was already there.

The last few hours before she had to start making more creatures was spent hardening the dirt and rock perimeter of the new room, which was surprisingly simple; all she had to do was focus on it using Carve Earth, and instead of the walls being eaten away it would solidify until it was harder than stone and nearly unbreakable by all but the strongest Raiders.  It was also watertight, which was how dungeons that utilized a lot of water ensured that it didn’t just sink