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

was a positive.  In that state, anything could’ve happened to her Core, and she wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it.

What was even better – when she had a chance to check to see if she had inadvertently killed the two Hill Dwarves – was that each of them were starting to heal from their wounds.  It wasn’t quite as rapid as her Healing Paralysis Trap, but the bleeding quickly stopped, and the skin started to slowly knit itself back together.  The spellcaster had dropped into unconsciousness at some point, so now both of them were essentially asleep as their bodies repaired themselves.

Her mind kept improving after the abrupt halt it suffered from moments ago, until it abruptly snapped back to normal with alarming clarity…along with something unexpected.

Bond Results:

Bonded Targets: 2

Abilities(s) Obtained: Magistrike, Sapping Fog, Magibarrier, Forceful Smash, Slam

Abilities(s) Granted: Dungeon Sight, Power Boost +50%

Creature Type Unlocked: Hill Dwarf

Ummm…what?  That was thoroughly unexpected, and Tacca didn’t even know what she was looking at.  Not only had she never heard of something like this before, but what it was implying was so far out of the norm that she had trouble comprehending it.  I unlocked a new “creature type”?  How is that even possible?  She ignored the “Abilities Obtained” and “Abilities Granted” part of the notification for the moment because she didn’t have any idea what that meant.

Besides that, she could only feel a faint, tenuous Bond between her Core and the two Raiders; it wasn’t anything like the Bond she had with Shale, which was a bit more “intimate” than what she was feeling now.  In fact, if she had to classify it, the Bond with her Dungeon Assistant was more like a connection she might feel with a lover – as crazy as that sounded – and the ones with the two Hill Dwarves were more like distant friends.  They were acquainted with each other, but there was no sharing of emotions and she instinctively knew there would be no mental communication between them.

Thinking of her Assistant, he had been silent after his earlier questions; when she looked at him, she could see that he had dropped his invisibility and was staring at her and the Raiders with a weird combination of expressions on his face.  His Mood Clothes reflected that combination perfectly with a constantly shifting swirl of colors, ranging from red for anger, purple for confusion, and yellow for fear for some reason.

Tacca didn’t say anything, though, as she wasn’t prepared to explain herself quite yet.  Instead, she waited for her creatures to disappear a few minutes later and then turned off her Repellant Shield – and then turned on her Invisibility.  The two Hill Dwarves were starting to wake up from their injuries – which were healing nicely from her Aura – and she didn’t necessarily want to be visible to them.  It was bad enough that she was going to be floating so close above them; there was no point in giving them a target if she could help it.

Shale followed suit with his own Invisibility as soon as he saw the two Raiders starting to stir, before retreating to the middle of Tacca’s Boss Room, where he perched on one of the tree branches to watch.  Looking at the two figures struggling to wake up, she couldn’t help but be reminded that their armor and clothes had pretty much been destroyed in the attack that almost killed them; she couldn’t create anything new in either the seventh or sixth room because of the proximity of the Raiders – but she could definitely create something in another room.  She didn’t really want to reward them for almost getting killed, but she felt somehow responsible for these Raiders in particular; therefore, she created an extra robe and a full set of leather armor near her dungeon entrance for them, where they would have enough time to be fully created before they left.

She had no doubt now that they would choose to leave, especially after their near-death experience.  They had survived and would probably never know why; if it hadn’t been for their bad luck in causing all of her creatures to attack them, then they wouldn’t be in the situation they were in.

Actually, was it “bad” luck that brought them to the brink of death…or was it “good” luck that forced my intervention?  She was left with that question as the two finally woke up and looked around in shock at their continued existence.

Chapter 28

Sterge awoke slowly at first, nightmares of being eaten alive by dogs and wolves plaguing his sleep.  It was somewhat refreshing, actually, because his usual nightmares originated from when he was very young; the destruction of his home and the deaths of his family back in the Grumblestake Hills had a lasting effect.  He tried not to think about it when he was awake, but it frequently popped up in his dreams and he couldn’t put it behind him.

Why am I dreaming about being eaten by beasts, though?

The memory of an Elf Ranger’s corpse on the floor of his cabin flashed into his mind as he struggled to awake from his nightmare, which was quickly followed by everything that happened since then: becoming Raiders, exploring the mountains, finding the dungeon, fighting dangerous beasts with his best friend Gwenda – the only survivor other than himself from their home back in the Hills – and finally tripping over his strange—but effective—weapon in the last room they had seen in the dungeon.  As remembrances of his skin being torn off his living body slammed into him, he woke abruptly and sat up.

Sterge looked around and saw that he was still in the mouth of the tunnel leading to the final room where he had fallen back into – but there was no sign of any beasts ready to continue their meal of