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

a feeling of deep sadness that emanated from the floating orb, conveying regret and…relief, for some reason.  Shale wasn’t exactly sure what that was supposed to mean, but he knew he had to get back to the DPRC and report what he found.

His Fairy Mana was still regenerating, so he had to wait a few moments while he stared at the corpse lying on the floor of the Core Room.  Confused thoughts ran through his head as he tried to make sense of what he was looking at, before he looked around in a panic.  Did the Dungeon Core do this to her?  Will it try to kill me as well?  Shale didn’t see any visible wounds on Tacca’s body, so it was doubtful she died from a creature attacking her or from some sort of trap – which he didn’t see any of in the Core Room – so the only explanation he could come up was a direct attack from the Core.

How that worked, he had no idea; then again, he was still new and didn’t have a lot of experience, so he thought that it was entirely possible that Dungeon Cores could kill with a thought.  The idea of that made him shiver in fright, because he was supposed to Bond with one at some point – this one in particular, even – and now he was extremely reluctant to do that.  A few minutes passed as nothing happened, however, and he chastised himself for being paranoid; if Cores could do that, then he was completely sure that he – as well as the other students at DAPS – would’ve been warned of that.  Not only that, but his parents (who were Dungeon Assistants themselves) likely would’ve mentioned something as important as that.

Either way, he didn’t want to spend any more time in the dungeon than needed, so as soon as he had enough Fairy Mana he started to activate his Translocation ability…and stopped as he looked at the corpse again.  Why…didn’t the Core just absorb her body?  Why did it keep her here and basically bury her in its Core Room?  If he hadn’t seen it and didn’t find it anywhere in the dungeon, then he would’ve likely assumed she left for some reason…and she would’ve been branded a deserter.  Is that why her body is still here?  To prove that she died? Or is it here for some perverse reason I don’t even want to contemplate?

Regardless of the real reason, Shale knew he couldn’t leave her there.  As disturbing as it was, he flew down and landed next to her body.  With just a moment’s hesitation, he picked up her surprisingly light form and immediately activated his Translocation – only to appear above the DPRC moments later.  The fact that he was holding a corpse somehow negated any disorientation caused by the Ability (or he was too distracted to notice any), and he immediately flew down to the waiting room.

“Lead Placement Council—” he started to shout, but it was unneeded.  Lily opened the hidden door he had left from only minutes before and stared in shock at what he was holding.

“What did you do!?  I just told you to send her back – not kill her!” Lily said as she advanced on him in a fury.

“What?  No; I found her this way—”

He was saved from trying to defend himself when she got a close look at Tacca’s partly desiccated corpse, marking it as obvious that she had been dead a while.  “What happened?”

Shale recounted his own actions, the actions of the Dungeon Core uncovering the body of its Dungeon Assistant, and even what he remembered of the emotions coming from the Core.  Lily looked around as if seeing for the first time that they were standing around and talking about all of this in the open, and she had him follow her inside her office, still carrying Tacca’s corpse in his arms.  Fortunately, she didn’t smell – he’d heard that dead bodies had an odor – so it was no hassle to bring her into the small space he was led to.

“Put her down…over there.”  He complied as he set her down gently in the corner, thankful to have the corpse away from him.  As he sat down on the nearby bench at her gesture, he realized his hands were shaking uncontrollably; grasping them together helped, but he was still a little shaken up.  It was extremely rare for Fairies – especially Dungeon Assistant Fairies – to die outside of their dungeons, so seeing the deceased body of one in person was more than a shock…and it was starting to become more real to him as time went on.

“Now, I’m extremely confused.  I don’t blame you for being a bit unsettled, but there is something strange going on here.  There’s no marks on her that would indicate how she died…unless you saw something you didn’t mention before?”  When he shook his head, she continued.  “Then I’m not sure how she ended up dead.  There’s no way that a Dungeon Core could directly do this to her—” the Lead Placement Council Member said, which made Shale thoroughly relieved— “and with no external evidence of anything, her death is a mystery.”

Shale thought the same thing, because the death of a Dungeon Assistant due to anything but a Raider invasion and attack was not only unlikely, but almost impossible – unless the Fairy was an idiot and forgot to employ their Abilities while going through a dungeon.  Like he kind of was when he first arrived at the dungeon where Tacca had perished, which made him duck his head in shame. Lily fortunately didn’t notice or ignored it, because she kept going in a bit of a mumble.

“The only explanation I can think of…is that her bad luck finally caught up to her…” She immediately looked at him as if she had