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

At least, that’s what it looked like to Sterge, even if the sizable plots of rich soil were empty of any type of growing food.  He knelt down in the dirt and scooped up a handful, sniffing it and letting it run through his fingers.  “This is spectacular soil; I noticed it the first time we entered the dungeon, and it’s still the best dirt I’ve seen for growing.  But why isn’t there anything already growing?  The dungeon had plenty of plants and trees, didn’t it?”

“I’m assuming that it may not be able to create food-worthy plants; I can’t imagine eating anything I’ve seen so far throughout all of the dungeon rooms,” Evy reasoned.

“Well, if the ambient light in here works as well as the sun, the only thing we’re missing is—”

“—water,” Gwenda said from behind him, and he swirled around to see her stepping on another blue square on the stone walkway.  Sterge braced himself for a blast of water like they’d seen in the bathing room, but was pleasantly surprised when a gentle rain poured out of the ceiling, sinking into the soil and watering it calmly instead of with a torrential downpour.  In moments he was starting to get rather wet, however, and he ran outside of the room to get dry along with the others.

“Rain on command; who’d have thought something like that was possible,” Sterge whispered to himself.  They all watched for a few minutes until the gentle rain stopped abruptly.  Amazingly, while the soil stayed a bit damp, the water along the pathway quickly dried up and disappeared; unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for the water on all of their clothes.

The next half hour was exploring the other tunnels, only to find 5 more “farms” like the first, but the last room was a surprise.  It wasn’t like anything he’d seen before, but he instinctively knew it was some sort of large storeroom or warehouse, so they could store the food they grew and harvested.  That would be important if they were to house thousands of people inside of the mountain, especially if they were able to fill it with enough food to last them until after the snows melted in the spring.

“Was that everything?  Did we miss anything?” William asked.

Sterge thought about what they had just seen throughout all of the different rooms, trying to remember if there was anything that they had overlooked in their exploration.  With a nod, he said, “I think that was everything.  Why?  Wasn’t this enough?”

“Oh, more than enough – and I’m sure it’s more than we expected.  I was just wondering when we can start moving things in, because there is a lot that still needs to be done to get this place habitable.  Plus, I’m no expert on farming, but I’m sure you need to plant something in order for it to grow.”

“We’ve got plenty of seeds,” Gwenda mentioned.  “The problem had been space for our crops, as well as the time it takes to grow and harvest each crop.  I’m not sure how well they’ll grow in here, but we can only try it out and see what happens.  The construction crews and those we’ve contracted for handling our farms are super busy right now, getting the last of the harvests in, so we’ll need some other hands to get this place in shape before it gets too late in the season.”

Sterge knew exactly who they were going to use.  Looking around at the others, the Hill Dwarf saw that they were thinking the same thing.

“Let’s get moving then,” he said.  “We don’t have a lot of time, and we need to get some seeds in the ground if we’re going to have enough to eat in a month’s time.”

As they made their way out of the magnificent cave, Sterge stopped and turned to the great Hall.  “Thank you,” he whispered, only to be echoed by the rest of his group.

Now the only obstacle I can foresee is convincing thousands of Raiders to volunteer to stay inside of a dungeon’s creation for a month, without being able to leave.  Should be quite easy, right?

Chapter 21

Tacca was pleased at how her project had turned out, and the reception from her two Bonded Hill Dwarves (along with their Raider group) had been overwhelmingly positive.  She briefly thought about adding some additional rooms with some Saltwater and Seaweed, so that they might have another source of food, but she wanted to wait to see if they managed to produce what they needed on their own.  Thinking about it, she had done a lot to help them survive already, and if they couldn’t figure it out by that point, then they had more problems than she alone could solve.

The countdown to winter had begun, as she estimated that it was now less than a month away.  While her dungeon with its two sections continued to operate, she watched as her Bonded organized a massive campaign to make the Hall and its rooms habitable, as well as starting to grow crops in the farms.

Hundreds of Raiders were in and out of her creation, after some more than obvious hesitation by the majority of them, carrying supplies that were either brought down to the storeroom Tacca had created or delivering them to the various living spaces.  Simple cots were placed rather than large beds, which she quickly learned was because they didn’t actually have that many beds; the same went with many other fundamentals that most people used to live, as they had a scarcity of quite a few products.  That didn’t seem to be too much of a bother, though, because most of them knew they would