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

said, shortly after she stepped into Sterge’s cabin.  She was the first one he thought of that might have an idea of what to do, and he was happy enough to put her in charge.

She knelt down and started rummaging through his pockets and pack that was still strapped to his back.  “What are you doing?!” he asked, shocked at what she was doing.  “That’s not our stuff!”

“Don’t worry, I’m not stealing…much…from him.  At least, nothing of obvious value…like these,” she said, before pulling out a handful of gold and silver coins.  His eyes felt like they were going to practically jump out of his head when he saw them; they were lucky if they made a few silvers’ worth of profit over a year laboring in the fields, so what he was looking at was nearly a decade or more of work.  Gwenda put them back, though, and started pulling out other things from the dead Elf’s pack.

Most of it they left alone, but two things of interest were set aside.  One was a set of cream-colored paper, finer than any he had ever seen before; drawn in intricate detail was a map of a pathway through the nearby foothills and Wentrylock Mountains, leading towards a spot not too far away – if he was reading it right.  There were some words written in what he assumed was the Elvish language because he couldn’t understand them, though Gwenda recognized a few; Sterge had no problem admitting that she was much smarter than he was, because it was the truth and there was no point in denying it.

“I think this part says…‘not open’?  I can’t be sure; it’s been too long since I tried studying some Elven books back in…well, you know,” she said sadly.  He certainly did know, but he didn’t want to think about it right now.

“Do you think that means that he found the dungeon, but it isn’t open yet?” he hazarded, and was rewarded with a cautious nod from his best friend.

“Yes, that is what I would assume.  He probably found where it was located, but it hadn’t opened its entrance yet; while he was waiting for it to do that, the storm must’ve come and surprised him up there.  I’m actually surprised he made it this far before…this happened to him.”  Sterge was surprised as well, though he knew that Raiders were much stronger than a normal person.

The second thing was almost overlooked at first.  It was a flat piece of stone that had a few markings on it, but it didn’t seem like it was overly important; that was, until Gwenda held it in both of her hands as she was going to put it back in the Elf’s pack, and it started glowing with small little lights on it.  She almost dropped it in surprise, but she held on long enough to see that the lights moved when she shifted her hands.  After some experimentation, they discovered that a large, circular, and bright-green light halfway to the center of the stone pointed south towards the mountain range, while there were very faint, tiny green lights pointing to the north, past where Heftington was located and beyond.

“This must be the ‘tracker’ that you said the Raider was using to find the dungeon; I can only guess that the larger and closer the light is to the center of this thing, the nearer it is to our location.  If that’s right, then these small ones to the north must mean that there are some up there, but they’re quite a distance away; no wonder the Elf seemed excited – there’s no other dungeon even close to here, and unless they were in town they probably wouldn’t even see it on this ‘tracker’,” Gwenda mused.

Sterge could only agree, because it made the most sense.  Silence fell over the cabin, only broken up by the fire popping in the hearth.  He couldn’t help but ask what was on his mind after seeing the map and the tracker that the Raider had left behind.  “So, what are we going to do with this.”

“I’m not really sure,” Gwenda said after a minute of thinking.  “All I know is that – as the Elf told you before he ran off into the mountains – the discovery of this dungeon will change this place; whether that change is for good or ill, I don’t know yet.  What I do know is that I’m not sure we’re ready for it, either way; I think we need to keep this information to ourselves as long as possible.  The presence of it won’t be a secret for long, I’m sure, but maybe we can at least prepare before it does happen.”

“Sounds good to me; it’s just a shame that we can’t turn in this information ourselves…you know, because we’re not Raiders.”

“That’s true,” his best friend said, before she smiled strangely.  “Though…maybe we can do something about that.”

Uh, oh – I’m afraid to ask what that’s supposed to mean…

Chapter 19

The month on her countdown came and went while Tacca was working on her dungeon, and she didn’t bother to take the time – or use the Dungeon Force – to upgrade her Core Improvement Level at that point.  For one, she didn’t want to have to explain anything to Shale quite yet; two, she was too focused on trying to get her dungeon ready to open up and didn’t want to interrupt that.  She did manage to “bank” 82 CIPs from the creatures and traps she created and placed during the current countdown cycle – as well as the additional rooms she had constructed – so it wasn’t all a waste.  Her previous worry over whether her Dungeon Assistant would notice the reduction of his potential Experience when she removed all of her Confusion Enchantment traps was eliminated as he didn’t even notice…or if he did, he didn’t say