The Dungeon Fairy: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 1) by Jonathan Brooks (great novels to read txt) 📗

more likelihood of connecting with this Core than the others that had tried.  But even if I don’t succeed right away, I can keep trying until I feel like giving up.  I can maybe treat this as a…vacation of sorts.  Tacca felt like she needed a break after the incessant ups and downs of the last six months, and this sounded like the perfect thing.

“Sounds good – I’ll leave right away.”  She would, too; if the Core was reluctant to interact with her, she could take a nap in the dungeon just as well as she could in the Giant Lily she usually used after receiving her new assignment.  It wouldn’t be as comfortable, but she was too exhausted to care.

Tacca received the location of her newest Placement and sure enough, it appeared to be exactly as the Council Member had described.  It was a very small space with no discernable exits and looked exactly how initial dungeons were described to her during her schooling.  It was obvious that nothing had been done to it yet…but hopefully with enough patience she’d be able to change that.

She walked out of the Lead Placement Council Member’s office with a small smile on her lips.

*         *         *

Lily MageDaisy watched as the black-haired, pale-faced Fairy walked out of her office.  As she closed the door behind her, the Lead Placement Council Member couldn’t help but smile at how effective the Council’s strategy had been so far.

While some might consider omens and portentous births to be superstitious, everyone on the Council knew exactly how real it was.  Not being one to waste an opportunity when it came along, they took advantage of the horrendous “bad luck” that Tacca GloomLily brought with her as she graduated from DAPS.  It wasn’t until word had come to them of the disastrous Mentoring program that they discovered exactly what form the “bad luck” would come in; from the first few experiments in subsequent Placements, they had deduced that it somehow related to the destruction of Dungeon Cores.

Obviously, that would normally be a bad thing.  If just by having a specific Dungeon Assistant nearby would hasten a Core’s destruction, that of course that would run counter to what the DPRC stood for: Assisting and developing Dungeon Cores to become more powerful, while keeping them from being destroyed by following the rules.  Dungeon Assistant Fairies had been occupying those positions for longer than Lily had been alive – and she was quite old at that point – as well as everyone else on the Council, and deliberately destroying a Core ran counter to their purpose.

Except…there were some Dungeon Cores that needed to be removed.

It was unknown outside of the Council’s inner circle that their whole profession had another purpose – to maintain the stability of their and others’ worlds.  Dungeon Cores and Raiders, when operating in harmony, helped to regulate the vast primordial forces that each world constantly created; as both Cores and Raiders got stronger, the more in balance everything became.

Of course, the opposite was true; if a Dungeon Core flaunted the rules and regulations set upon them, it would disrupt that harmony, sending ripples through the entire system.  Rogue Cores that killed every Raider that entered, sent their creatures outside of their dungeon, didn’t provide rewards, or any number of other violations would negatively impact local Raider economy and population. The steady attrition of Raiders through their “fair and normal” deaths was the main way that the intelligent races that invaded the dungeons were kept in balance.

Dungeons that specifically flaunted the rules weren’t very common and were usually sorted out “naturally” over time with their eventual destruction because of those actions.  However, these actions still caused ripples throughout the populace, which made Assisting Cores increasingly harder.  More than one world had been destroyed when the balance had gotten out of control and couldn’t be reined in.  Overpowered Cores that had been around for thousands of years could also upset the delicate balance by becoming too strong, though that issue already took care of itself over time.

Luckily, with the introduction of Tacca and her portentous “bad luck”, the Council had found a way to eliminate the rogue problem Cores without having to wait years or risking one of their veteran Assistants in a Bond that was sure to be broken eventually.  It was a win-win situation as far as Lily was concerned, though it was obviously taking a toll on the poor girl.

What made it worse was that many of the other Assistants had taken to calling her “The Deliverer”, because she delivered only death and destruction wherever she went.  It wouldn’t be good to have her knowing her real purpose as sort of an assassin Assistant, which was why Lily thought it was good she was being sent to a Core that was likely to be around for a while.  It hadn’t done anything, despite some of their best trying to Bond and get a response from it; the Lead Placement Council Member was confident that it could be months or years before any “bad luck” from outside sources could reach it.

Besides, Tacca had managed to clear their backlog of misbehaving Dungeon Cores, so it could be a while before they needed her “assistance” again.  Being stuck underground in a small space with an unresponsive Core was probably the best place to leave her until she was needed.

With that done and pushed to the back of her mind, Lily could finally concentrate on more important matters – like the disturbingly prevalent destruction of Cores that had nothing to do with the Fairy that had just left her office.  Though I guess her Mentor may have been the start of it.  Tacca’s Mentor and his Core really shouldn’t have been destroyed; from all reports, the Dungeon Core was operating exactly as it should’ve been, and there was no reason to believe that its accompanying