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

possible that some may not choose to start all over.  I won’t force them, though, and something tells me that I couldn’t do it, anyway; I need to stay Bonded to them for it to work, and if they severed the Bond in the middle of the process, I can’t even imagine what the backlash would be from the forces in play.”

So…what?  You want me to make little rooms for up to 132 Dungeon Cores, as a place to keep them safe until they can be installed somewhere else.  Like…a nursery?

“I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I suppose that’s an apt description for it.  Once I fill all of the vacant dungeons first, I’ll send the others to wherever you create for them.”

Tacca could certainly do that.  All it would take would be carving out a very small tunnel deep into the stone of the mountain, hollow out a 5-foot-wide room to hold the Core, and then seal up the tunnel.  Since the tunnel and room weren’t integral to the operation of her dungeon, it would be quite easy to close it off – though she wasn’t sure what would actually happen if she and another Core interacted with each other.  Even with some of the largest dungeons in the past that spanned for miles underground, no 2 Dungeon Cores had ever been close enough to interact before.

Fine, I’ll start making them now.  The first of them should be ready within the next few hours, with more after that every 2 hours.

“That’s perfectly fine.  It won’t be much faster than that, anyway, since using the ability knocks me out for over an hour.  I’ll be in touch.”

That was news to her; Tacca didn’t think there was anything that could affect the powerful Council Leader, but if it sent him into unconsciousness, then the Fairy Mana he must be able to wield and expend so suddenly must have been incredible.

With another triple *pop*, the three visiting Fairies disappeared.  Tacca turned her attention to Shale, who had been silent through the entire exchange.

What do you think about all of this?

He just shrugged.  “I think it’s good of the Council Leader to want to save as many Cores as he can, rather than let them be destroyed.  However, I have a feeling that after they know the consequences, he’s not going to have very many takers.”

You’re probably right; I have to admit that if I had been doing this for decades or centuries, starting over from the bottom would be the last thing I’d care to do.  It’s possible that some of the “younger” Cores will end up wanting to move, but I’ll bet that only a handful of those that have been around for more than 200 years will want to uproot and go.

“I’m not taking that bet, because I’m pretty sure you’re right.  Regardless, you should make all of those little rooms for them, just in case.”

Will do.

Tacca got moving on making the first tunnel leading out of her defensive room – because she didn’t want anything external linking up with her Core Room, even if it were collapsed – and it was much quicker going than she thought.  Because she wasn’t making a “regulation” tunnel, and didn’t actually need to transport anything down it, it only had to be 3 inches wide; she tried to make it even smaller, but for some reason she couldn’t send her viewpoint down a tunnel any smaller, which kind of defeated the purpose of it in the first place.

In far less than an hour, she had amazingly shot over a mile away through the new micro tunnel, heading downwards and in an easterly direction.  Tacca didn’t want over 100 little rooms beneath her own dungeon, even if it was a mile below, because she wanted them away from her little sphere of influence—just in case.  Once she was 2 miles out, which ended up being nearly 2,000 feet beneath the surface at the same time, she took about 20 minutes to create the small 5-foot-wide spherical room that would house another Dungeon Core.  They probably wouldn’t appreciate being so far from the surface, but it was for their own good, she supposed.

Before she spent the next hour filling in the micro-tunnel with stone, effectively cutting it off completely from her awareness, she carved a “1” into one wall of the room, so that she could differentiate it from the others she would make.  When the entire process was done, about 2 and a half hours had passed, which wasn’t too bad if she did say so herself.  Then she started on the next one, angling the tunnel off into a direction just to the south of where the first room was located, eventually carving a “2” into the wall of that one before sealing it off.

From there, it became kind of monotonous, but at least it was something she could do while still maintaining the rest of her dungeon, as it didn’t really take a lot of concentration.  By the time she had finished 40 of the 132 rooms Malachite had requested, the Council Leader finally popped back into her Core Room, looking more exhausted than he’d been before.  Seconds after he arrived, the two Fairies arrived as well, looking a bit exasperated.

“I’ve finally got one for you, is it ready,” he asked immediately, his voice a bit weak.

They are; I have 40 of them ready to go.  This is the first one, marked with a “1”…are you okay?  And what did you do to annoy your helpers?

She sent the image of the first room to Malachite, and he nodded in confirmation even as he answered.  “I’m okay.  I managed to convince 10 of the Cores to vacate the north, and moved them into the remaining vacancies; what I didn’t take into account was how detrimental the whole process is on my