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

of The Village for a change, and away from so many people.  Sterge was glad that everything seemed to be working out for him and Gwenda, but being in charge wasn’t as fun as he thought it might be.  Not only were the massive numbers of Raiders flowing into their little village wanting answers to questions he didn’t know the answer to, but there were dozens of families that had arrived, looking for a place to put down some roots.  Thankfully, they were always in need of helping hands, especially with all of the farms working right now, and they had even expanded into a few fields that hadn’t even been touched further out from The Village, but which remained in the land space they had leased.

Though, calling it The Village is a bit of a misnomer, now.  The tiny village that less than a year ago had been just a few buildings, including two warehouses for storing food, now comprised so much more than that.  Hiring construction crews, help for the farms, and all sorts of other positions throughout the Inns they had previously built and the ones that had gone up after they arrived was Gwenda’s responsibility.  Sterge continued to be the “Chief” of their new town-sized village, and helping out wherever he could by trying to answer questions, working on construction along the crews, and directing people where they could find accommodations and food and any number of other necessities was a full-time job.

They barely had a moment to themselves, which had been great up to a point, because they both felt like they were making a difference – as well as a sizable amount of money.  They didn’t necessarily need or want all of the proceeds from the Inns, the two Delving Supply stores that now existed, and any number of other income-producing projects in and around town.  Therefore, most of it went back into the town or into creating an ever-growing residential area a mile out from The Village center, off-set from most of the Raiders flowing through the area.

It was expensive in terms of the construction materials and contracting the crews to build the multi-family homes, but it was worth it.  They charged a pittance in rent to them, if only to pay for the upkeep of the buildings, though most of it went right back into buying food for so many people.  There were merchants traveling in large caravans nearly every day, selling much-needed goods to their stores, as well as food to supplement what they hadn’t been able to finish growing yet – though they hadn’t seen any actual representatives from the Ministry of Merchants.  Oh, there were multiple caravans from them, as they were taking advantage of the new market, but for the most part they were polite and unintrusive, preferring to do swift business rather than cause any trouble.

For which they all were extremely happy about.

The problem, if there was any to complain about, was that the surge of people into their locale wasn’t stopping.  Every day, another 100 to 200 people – a mixture of Raiders and non-Raiders – appeared, either after hearing about the dungeon opening up again or fleeing from the north.  Though there hadn’t been many from far to the north, as the distance would take a normal person months of travel time, most of those that came had heard about the mass evacuation and were running for safety before it was too late.  It was one of the reasons there were so many families showing up with few belongings, though the majority of them brought enough money to last them a while if they didn’t spend it outlandishly; they wanted to establish themselves somewhere safe, as well as beating the crowds.

Sterge couldn’t blame them, and since they were in a position to help, Sterge and Gwenda felt duty-bound to help them at least find someplace to live.  After that, there were some jobs they needed help with, but designing an economy from the ground up with so many new people was difficult at the best of times, or nearly impossible with everything going on right now.  Therefore, many of them were unemployed with no way to sustain their lives after their savings ran out.

The feelings of responsibility for so many people was wearing on The Village’s leadership: namely, Sterge and Gwenda.  Taking a brief “vacation” from so many responsibilities was one of the reasons they were heading up to the dungeon today.  Killing dungeon monsters and delving through the new section, which had been met with particularly pleasant reviews from those groups of Raiders that had gone through it, was something that they felt like they needed in order to loosen up a little bit.  But that was only one of the reasons they were heading into the dungeon again.

After talking with everyone that ran the Inns, traders that brought in goods, those that operated the Supply Stores, and Jesper – whom they were particularly grateful for because he ran the new Raider Delving Clan outpost with a firm-yet-fair attitude – they had determined that they were soon going to have a number of problems on their hands.  The first of them, which wasn’t that much of a surprise, was the shortage of food that would soon occur unless they did something about it.

While they had expanded their farming operation out to the boundaries of their leased land, it wasn’t nearly enough to feed everyone who was surging into their domain.  Importing food wasn’t something new, as they had done it before and were currently doing it, but eventually demand would outweigh supply.  The main reason for that was the abandonment of the farming operations up north, which was not an insignificant portion of the continent’s food sources.  Reserves were fine right now, but come the short winter month that was rapidly approaching, starvation was entirely possible.

As much as food being scarce during winter was