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

his flesh.  Thoughts of that trauma caused him to run his hands quickly over his body, checking for the wounds he knew he had sustained; just like what happened in the room full of flowers earlier in the dungeon, though, his skin was whole and unblemished – if covered in sticky, drying blood.

As for his armor, all of it had been ripped off and was nowhere to be seen.  Technically, he was still wearing clothes, but they were ripped and torn so much that they barely covered his body anymore.  Nevertheless, he was alive…somehow.

Gwenda!  Did she run like I told her to? Turning around – and thankfully feeling no pain in the process – Sterge saw his best friend lying on the ground behind him and he was momentarily annoyed that she hadn’t listened to him.  However, that soon passed as he saw her struggling awake as well; rather than standing up, he crawled over to his side to see her “new” robe that she had received in the room before was now as ripped and shredded as his own clothes.  Fortunately, the skin he could see underneath the rags appeared to be uninjured, though like him it was bloodstained with wet or partially dried red splotches.

“Gwenda!  Wake up!  We’re alive…somehow,” he said, shaking her shoulder gently.  Just like he had, Gwenda woke up abruptly – though with a scream already at her lips.  This isn’t good for her to be waking up screaming in a dungeon so much; it’s already been twice today in the last few hours.  It was a random thought that really had no point to it and wasn’t funny in any way; nevertheless, it made him laugh a little.

“What are you laughing at?  We almost died…actually, why aren’t we dead?” she asked as she sat up when he started to giggle, which at least had the benefit of stopping her screaming.  He had no answer, though, other than to laugh harder.  Eventually his best friend started giggling, for no other reason than the fact that he was laughing so hard he had trouble breathing and his eyes were crying involuntarily.  All he knew was that it felt good to laugh like that; it had been entirely too long that he had gone without a little humor in his life – even if there was nothing humorous about their situation.

When they both calmed down from their laughing fit, he tried to look seriously at her, but he was interrupted by random rounds of giggling.  “I have no idea why we’re still alive…but we are.  Our clothes are basically scraps of fabric, though – but at least we have our health.”

At the mention of clothes, Gwenda looked down at her body for the first time and gasped in shock.  She attempted to cover herself up with the rags but gave up after a few moments with a big sigh.  “Whatever.  It’s a shame, because I kind of liked this new robe; I wonder if my original one is still in the previous room?”

“It might be, but I already looked around for my armor and it’s nowhere to be seen.  I think we’re lucky to have survived…that,” he shivered a little at the memory of the bites and his tearing flesh.  All the humor that had stemmed from the incident had wilted.  “I think we better leave before something else happens; I think our luck has been used up for the rest of our lives.”

It was certainly still a mystery of what had happened to save them both from death, but Sterge wasn’t going to question their good fortune.  There was no sign of any of the beasts, but there were a few piles of coins inside the large room that previously held them.  He vaguely remembered actually killing a few of his attackers before he was taken down, and it appeared as though Gwenda had stayed and killed a few with her spells instead of leaving.  The brief thought of collecting the money crossed through his mind but was immediately shut down. Uh…no.  Not worth it.

Gwenda apparently thought the same thing because she didn’t even mention trying to collect it as they readied to leave.  Sterge collected his weapons but was forced to carry them; his belt and sword sheath, along with all of his armor, had disappeared just as quickly from the attack.  Fortunately, the pack that Gwenda had brought with her was still intact – which held all of their rewards so far – so it wasn’t a total loss.

They didn’t say a word as they cautiously backtracked through the dungeon – after checking unsuccessfully for her old robe, of course – and found that it was completely empty.  No beasts, no traps (or at least none that they triggered), and no sign that they had ever traversed it in the first place.  Sterge thought it was strange that nothing they passed through showed evidence of their journey down into the dungeon, as even the wildflowers that they previously trampled through on their way through the fourth room appeared completely undisturbed.

It was when they were passing through the second room with all the ferns that Gwenda let out a gasp of surprise.  Sterge immediately turned to protect her from whatever the threat was, but she was just staring blankly ahead.  “I was curious if we had received more Power from that last fight, when I saw…this,” she said at his inquiry.

He brought up his Raider Status as well and saw that they had indeed received some Power – 18 total – from killing a few of the beasts. Knowing that wasn’t what made her stop in surprise, he kept looking…and found something strange on the bottom of his Status.

Abilities:

Forceful Smash (Blunt)

Slam (Shield)

Dungeon Sight (Enhancement)

Power Boost +50% (Permanent)

“Where did those come from?” he asked out loud.  Just like how they worked before, though, when he