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

Now it was Tacca’s turn to be confused.  I don’t understand – how is what happened to me lucky?

He spoke slowly, as if he were still working it out in his mind.  “Well, if you hadn’t been attacked – and somehow survived – then we might not have known what was happening.  If you hadn’t figured out a way to kill them, then it might be suspected that they were entirely invulnerable.  If you hadn’t Bonded with those two Hill Dwarves, then the mortal races wouldn’t have the knowledge of what they are up against.  If—”

Ok, ok – I see what you’re saying, but that just reaffirms my original statement.  Just as luck seemed to be on the Raiders’ sides when they delved through my dungeon, it also hindered my development because of the lack of deaths after a while.  She thought about it for a second, before mentally shrugging.  It’s not like I’m not used to it by now; I guess I have to take the good with the bad.

Shale huffed in response.  “Tacca, that’s life.  Sometimes you take the good, other times you take the bad, but when you take them both, then you have—"

I know, I know – but it seems like my good and bad are one and the same for me.  It took Tacca a few minutes to really drag herself out of her sudden rut after her Bonded had left, so she busied herself with looking over her dungeon again.  Not that there was much she wanted to mess with, since her recent additions hadn’t been tested yet, but she could at least evaluate her choices since she had recovered from the invasion by the frighteningly powerful blue-skinned people….

*          *          *

“So, what’s the plan?”

Plan?  Well, I guess it’s time to rebuild.  Maybe make a few improvements on what I had already, but I think the basic structure I already had in place worked well enough.

“What are you going to do with all of those CIPs you acquired?”

I’ll probably save most of them until I can figure out what I’m going to do after the section I was working on is done.  Just using enough of it to fully stock and maintain everything without too much difficulty.

“Sounds good.  When do we start?”

I guess now is as good a time as any.

There was no reason to wait, of course, but she had to prioritize what she wanted to work on first.  Did you mention earlier that there are no Raiders around?  They think I was destroyed, right?

Shale nodded, relief still on his face that she hadn’t been destroyed – at least not permanently.  Tacca still didn’t know exactly what had happened or what might be different, but only time would tell, she supposed.

“Yes, and from my wanderings and investigations of the nearby area, I’ve learned that the village down below was evacuated and there aren’t any people for miles.  Though, from some distant observation, I believe those two Hill Dwarves of yours are staying in the closest town; it seems as though there is some sort of ban on anyone visiting.”

So I guess that means that it’ll be a while until someone comes back here.  It might even be a long time – months, perhaps.  Is that what you suspect as well?

Her Dungeon Assistant just shrugged.  “Eh…maybe?  Honestly, unless someone comes to clean up the corpses of the Raiders outside and happens to look in on your dungeon, it could be years before your dungeon is found again.  You can’t really blame anyone for not wanting to investigate, after what happened – can you?”

Sadly, she couldn’t.  Tacca hoped that it wasn’t years before someone came back to her dungeon, but she would wait if she had to.  Or try to use her Dungeon Assistant ability to Hibernate during that period of time, hoping that she could wake up if someone got close to detecting her presence again.

What it ultimately meant was that she could do something other than fully restore her dungeon first; something that took priority in her mind over everything else: Protection.  You’re right; it could be longer than I would like, but that gives me an opportunity to protect my Core as much as I can before that.

“How are you going to do that?  I have severe doubts that you’ll be able to withstand another explosion like the one that both saved you and destroyed your Core.”

Naturally, I wasn’t thinking about trying that again.  But I did have some success before the explosion in killing them with my traps.  So that will be my priority before I do anything else. 

The room she had been using as her primary defense, filled with concentrated Enchantment and Life traps as well as her creatures with powerful gear, was technically no longer there; the explosion not only killed everything in her dungeon, but it had also created a 200-foot-wide spherical hole from its origin point.  As a result, her “Core Room” was now huge, but she had lost her entire defensive room and the hallway connecting to it from her Boss room. With a straight shot down her entrance to her Core room, as all of her Rotating Stone Bridge traps that had been blocking off access to different connecting tunnels in her second section had disappeared along with everything else, Tacca was feeling more than a little vulnerable.

Dungeon Core Status

Dungeon Core Name:

Tacca GloomLily

Core Improvement (CI) Level:

12

Core Improvement Points (CIP):

1749/2300

Core Improvement Pending/Countdown:

26600 in 15 days

Special Characteristic Points (SCP):

50

Current Primary Assistant Bond:

Shale IronSchist

Dungeon Force (DF):

2000/2000

Dungeon Force Regeneration:

28 per minute

Reward Tier:

2

Control Limit:

0/400

Core Options:

Carve Earth

Targetable

5 DF per minute

Place Environmental Object

Targetable

Variable

Teleport

Instant

40 DF

Dissolve Assistant Bond

Instant

1 DF

Create Creature

Targetable

Variable

Create Trap

Targetable

Variable

Core