The Dungeon Fairy: Three Lives: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 3) by Jonathan Brooks (the false prince TXT) 📕

The Head Instructor thankfully had been listening, as opposed to lately when he seemed to be lost within his own thoughts and appeared to block out the world around him.  “No idea, unfortunately.” He shrugged.  “Without more information, it would be premature to promote any assumptions.”

Malachite just sighed, sensing that they were still lost in their cycle of mystery surrounding these six-armed people.  “Fair enough.  It’s a moot point, anyway, because it really doesn’t matter where they are coming from.  What matters to me more is why they are doing what they’re doing.  That’s what doesn’t make sense.”

From the Council Leader’s conversations with Shale while he was frantically looking for his Core that he believed was still alive – and which wondrously ended up being true – Malachite had gotten a better understanding of the current social and economic environment on the continent of Abenlure.  At least, he had gotten as much information as the rattled Dungeon Assistant had managed to gather without endangering himself unnecessarily.  It was something that Malachite realized he had been neglectful of over the last few millennia; he had rarely involved himself in anything other than the regulation and operation of Dungeon Cores that a bit of it came as a surprise to him.

Namely, that there were now 2 major factions inhabiting the continent, though on the surface they were both Raiders.  One faction was the same sort of organization he had been dealing with for thousands of years, ever since he had been appointed Council Leader: the Raider Delving Clan.  These were who he was used to hearing about or seeing, and was what the ruling Conclave of Sages had consisted of; they were the typical individuals who rose from the ranks of nothing to become the most powerful of all, delving through dungeons tens of thousands of times over the years.  They were a rough lot for the most part, but that was to be expected based on the experiences and hardships they had gone through to get to where they were.

The other faction, however, was a relatively new power in the world.  While their origins weren’t exactly new, the Ministry of Merchants had obviously risen quite a bit in power and influence over the last few centuries.  The description of the group of low-Level Merchant-Raiders that had come into Tacca’s dungeon, equipped with gear that was enchanted with resistances that should’ve been far out of their ability to acquire, was worrying.  The fact that Tacca had summarily trapped them in a room they couldn’t get out of was also disturbing, but he also couldn’t fault the former Dungeon Assistant for defending herself.  That was technically what Dungeon Cores were all about, after all.

If that had been all, he wouldn’t have been all that concerned.  Rises and falls in power were typical of the mortal races, and such occurrences usually didn’t matter in the long run; what the Raiders and those like them did outside of the dungeons that Malachite was responsible for was their own business.  It was only when they involved themselves in his business that it became an issue, and the last year and a half had shown that it was rapidly becoming a problem.

Based on information gathered by Head Instructor Lapis and Dungeon Assistant Shale, from interviews with Assistant survivors and through safe observation, it was proving likely that the Raiders and Ministry of Merchants were at war.  Not an open battle, as if they were on a large field and were charging at each other, but a war of attrition – and the Dungeon Cores and Fairies that were their targets were the victims.

What better way to weaken the enemy but to remove their support?  It’s a known aspect of delving through a dungeon, after all: A group was only as strong as their supporting members.  Whether it was in the form of a healer or any of the myriad of other supporting Raider Classes, those that did all of the creature killing wouldn’t be able to survive for long without their help.

In this case, the “support” that both the Raiders and the Ministry of Merchants was undermining with their clandestine efforts were the dungeons under the control of the other faction.  That was a bit of an abstract concept, of course, because no one actually controlled the dungeons other than the Cores themselves, but access to a dungeon from the outside could certainly be regulated.

The fools don’t understand what they’re doing!  And without the Conclave of Sages to stop them, they are going to keep eliminating the dungeons that are allowing them to stay powerful, as well as providing a means of wealth.  The Sages certainly could’ve stopped both factions if they had learned about it in time, but with them all dead…there was nothing stopping the slaughter.

Except, thankfully, the Core destruction from sources that could be identified as coming from either faction had essentially died off after the attack on Tacca’s dungeon.  Malachite wasn’t exactly sure why, but he suspected that word traveled fast about the attack that led to the deaths of both Raiders and Merchants, as well as the Core – as far as they knew – and a shaky ceasefire was called.  The Council Leader had hoped that the situation would stay that way, as there hadn’t been any other deaths since the occurrence; a few weeks ago, however, a week before Tacca in her Core reappeared, another dungeon was destroyed, along with its Dungeon Assistant.

Since the former Assistant-turned-Dungeon-Core had come back, the destruction was only increasing.

“Do you think it will continue like this?  Do we have any eyes up there?” Lapis asked him, and Malachite had to think for a moment.

In the end, all he could do was shrug.  “I have no idea, but if the pattern over the