“Exactly, that’s my entire point. I couldn’t kill myself before, but with this connection I can thin out my…soul…enough that it’ll cease to be. If it’s destroyed, so be it; if not, then I’m hoping I’ll see my family soon…”
“No! I refuse to let another Core die when I can do something about it!” She dug into the connection she could feel and tried to yank her portion of the Bond back, but it was like trying to lift the entire dungeon up by herself. All of the power of the link was in the Core’s possession, and the best she could do was spread herself wider to lessen the amount that was slowly squishing the Core’s soul apart.
“Thank you. This’ll probably hurt, but I can’t exist here anymore; this is the only way…” The pressure and resistance coming from the Bond quickly changed, until she felt her own soul split in half; one was occupying her normal Fairy body, while the other was now firmly planted inside the Core. She panicked as her understanding blossomed to encompass the entire room, and it felt like she could see every inch of the dirt and stone around her…all the while, she was staring intently at the Core through her Dungeon Assistant eyes.
As Tacca’s awareness of the Core’s former inhabitant faded quickly, she started to comprehend what exactly he had done. He had taken a portion of her soul and used it to replace his; with nowhere else to go, it disappeared – off to wherever souls went when their mortal bodies were no longer able to contain them. He wasn’t destroyed…just set free.
The last of his consciousness piddled away as if it hadn’t ever been there, and Tacca was alone with her soul split between two forms. She fluttered her wings and stared at herself through the “eyes” of the Core she now inhabited as well, trying to come to terms with what had just happened.
Then a pain more intense than every single broken Bond she had suffered thus far – combined together – caused a seemingly unending scream of agony to escape from her lips. After what felt like fourteen eternities, she lost consciousness.
Chapter 9
When Tacca became aware of the world around her, all of the pain she had experienced was but a distant memory; in fact, she couldn’t feel a single thing…which was strange enough that it alerted her to something being wrong.
Welcome …….. and congratulations!
First of all, you died – but that tragic death is only a gateway to another opportunity! To give you a second chance at life, you have been reincarnated as a Dungeon Core; you will be in charge of designing, creating, and maintaining a dungeon that foreign Raiders will invade to challenge themselves.
It is your duty to comply with all the rules and regulations set out by your Dungeon Assistant, who should be arriving shortly; failure to consistently abide by these rules and regulations could result in your destruction. When they arrive, please follow their instructions so that you can be set up for success.
For now, though, do not panic, for this is the first day of the start of your new life!
Special Note: Your previous primary Bond has been dissolved and a new Sub-bond put in its place. Soul transfer has been completed, as partial soul essences cannot operate Dungeon Core systems.
Oh, no…
She knew exactly what that notification was that was shoved to the forefront of her mind, because it was something that all new Dungeon Cores received when they were first created. It was important for Dungeon Assistants to know what kind of information their charges obtained when first coming into the world, so that they could take it from there. However, the part that made her freak out a little was that Fairy Assistants couldn’t actually see these notifications – the contents of them as well as any of the Dungeon’s particular systems were all obtained over centuries of talking with different Cores and their experiences.
Tacca tried to flutter her wings and fly around in nervous circles as she considered what that meant, but she didn’t move even a little bit. What’s going on? She looked around the small space she was still in as she tried to discover what had ultimately happened…and saw a familiar-looking shape lying on the curved floor. No, no, no – it can’t be!
Looking back at the notification – she had dismissed it a moment ago, but she instinctively called it back up – she saw the “Special Note” at the bottom, referencing how the soul transfer was complete. That bastard ultimately pulled me inside and killed my body! Damaged or partial souls couldn’t inhabit a Dungeon Core, so whatever governed the entire process killed her Fairy form to acquire the rest of her soul.
She understood his motivations – even if she didn’t agree with them – but she was also sure that the Core’s former resident didn’t really know what the results of his actions would be; she wasn’t sure if he would’ve changed anything if he had known, because he seemed very set on his soul leaving the world one way or another. If he hadn’t done that, of course, it was quite possible that he would’ve done something later to flaunt the rules enough that he was destroyed. Same result for him, but an entirely different outcome for Tacca.
She stared at her frail, unmoving body for what felt like days, but what was probably more like hours. Eventually, she had the thought that if it was still somehow alive, she might be able to transfer her soul back inside of it, though that would likely destroy the Core she was currently inhabiting. Now, how do I…? This is a lot harder than I thought it would be when looking at everything from this point of view.
Eventually, Tacca figured out how to feel something inside the room; it wasn’t like reaching out with her non-existent hands, but more of her awareness passing over something specific. She found that she was entirely aware of the entire ovoid-shaped room and for almost a foot into the wall – which was exactly as she thought, just rocks and dirt – though everything beyond that was a mystery. As her dungeon expanded, she knew the distance she could see through the surrounding land would marginally increase—
No, I’m not a Dungeon Core, I’m a Fairy!
She tried to get her thoughts back on track as she investigated her body, hoping that there were any signs of life. While she couldn’t feel temperature, she could sense that her body was stiff and likely cold, and there was no indication that it was still alive in any way. Her hopes were immediately dashed regarding trying to transfer her soul back to her original body – because she instinctively knew it wouldn’t work on a corpse.
That was it…she was stuck as a Dungeon Core for the rest of her life.
Using her unique perspective from her new existence, she was able to look at what she was forced to inhabit for the next…undetermined amount of time. Tacca’s Core was approximately five inches across and still glowing very faintly, which told her that she still had the opportunity to make the choices that every dungeon had the opportunity to make when they were first brought into the world. What was different from when she first saw it, however, were the strange streaks of black and white she could faintly see in the center of her floating spherical crystal; not only that, but she could see tiny cracks all over that weren’t there before. It was almost like something too large was shoved inside the Core and almost broke it, and the cracks were stress fractures in its form.
Wait a minute…didn’t that notification also say something about a “Sub-bond”? She’d never heard of one of those before, though it was possible that Sub-bonds were so rare that there was no reason to teach it during her schooling. Or maybe not rare…forbidden, perhaps? Regardless, she had no idea what it meant…until she was able to pull up her Dungeon Assistant Information screen.
Dungeon Assistant Information
Assistant Name:
Tacca GloomLily
Assistant Rank:
Novice
Assistant Stage:
1/5
Experience:
0/100
Experience Pending/Countdown:
0 in 1 Month
Fairy Mana (FM):
50/50
Fairy Mana Regeneration:
3 per minute
Abilities:
Bond
50+ FM
Translocation
Instant
1000 FM
Hibernate
Sustainable
1 FM per minute
Invisibility
Sustainable
3 FM per minute
Repellant Shield
Sustainable
2 FM per minute
I’m still an Assistant? And a Dungeon Core? How is this possible? There were some obvious changes that she could see to her Assistant Information; the most obvious was that she only had 50 Fairy Mana to spend instead of her original 100, as well as her regeneration being cut down from 5 to 3 per minute. When she looked further, she also saw that instead of her Experience taking an entire year to be added – which was why she hadn’t gained any experience from all of those Cores she Assisted before, since most of them lasted anywhere from a couple of hours to a few days – it was only going to take a month for that to happen. She pulled up the Experience Awards and Countdown screen that she hadn’t even bothered to look at before – because nothing had really lasted long enough to matter.
Rank Experience Awards
Type
Variable Conditions
Experience Awarded
Rooms Constructed
Size
1 – 50
Traps Installed
Complexity
1 – 20
Monsters Created
Levels
1 – 20
Rewards Placed
Valuation
1 – 50
Raider Presence
Time
1 – 5
Raider Deaths
Quality
100 – 10000
Rank Experience Countdown
Novice
1 Year
Adept
5 Years
Expert
50 Years
Master
500 Years
Supreme
N/A
It was a breakdown of how she obtained Rank Experience through the actions of a Dungeon Core she was bonded with, as well as the length of time it took for that Experience to take effect. As she increased in Rank, the time would increase dramatically, because it took longer for the connection established by the Bonds to strengthen enough to handle the Rank Experience transferred over.
What was strange, though, was that the original time was still on there for her Novice Rank – 1 Year. However, even as she looked at it, the time values started to fade out and then return with shorter lengths.
Rank Experience Countdown
Novice
1 Month
Adept
1 Year
Expert
5 Years
Master
25 Years
Supreme
N/A
It was quite a reduction from the original; the only reason she could think of was because her “Assistant” form was somehow integrated into her new Core, which therefore made the transfer of Rank Experience that much easier and faster. But why does that even matter now?, she couldn’t help but think despondently
It mattered because looking down at her Assistant Abilities, she also saw that she still had access to them – though Translocation was horribly expensive at 1000 Fairy Mana, compared to the 70 it used to be. In addition, her Core Bond was now called just Bond…and that was the only thing she could determine from it. When she first obtained all of the Abilities as part of her initiation into the world of Dungeon Assistants, the methods of their use and their purpose were given along with them; she had a feeling that what had happened to her was relatively unexplored territory, and there was no knowledge of what it did.
As an experiment, Tacca activated her Invisibility – and she disappeared from her Core vision. Oh, she could certainly still perceive that she was there because of the other senses that came from being part of a Dungeon Core, but if she visually looked towards where she knew she was from the wall of her small space she couldn’t see anything. Even the very dim glow coming from her Core was camouflaged with the Ability, which was…intriguing, to say the least.
This could work out after all. She still wasn’t that enthusiastic about essentially dying, but she guessed that the alternative would be worse – Tacca’s soul could’ve been destroyed just as easily as all of the Cores she had been placed with lately. Nevertheless, she wasn’t sure if her survival was a result of her horrendous “bad luck” or if her luck was starting to change.
Now that she had seen what the result of her transition from Fairy to Core was – at least as far as still having most of the same Abilities – Tacca focused on her new form. She tried to bring up the Dungeon Core Status screen (which she knew about but had never actually seen before), and though it felt natural…nothing happened. That’s right! It won’t show until I decide on a couple of things first.
Tacca decided to count the fact that the previous owner of the Core hadn’t chosen anything as good luck, because otherwise she would’ve been stuck with something not of her choosing. Normally, a Dungeon Assistant would try to assess the personality of a Dungeon Core after first meeting them and then determine which options would work best for them. For example:
Do they seem like they would favor attack over defense?
Would they prefer creatures that would complement their traps, or traps that would work better in conjunction with their creatures?
Are they likely to follow the relatively strict rules and regulations set up on Dungeon Cores?
How prone are they to want something flashy and impressive versus hardy and ugly?
These questions – and quite a few more – were determined through the initial interactions with the new Dungeon Core; more than half of her schooling revolved around personality types and the best creatures, traps, and attributes that worked most effectively with certain personalities. It wasn’t always foolproof, but the methods used by Dungeon Assistants had been around for countless years and had proven to be highly effective…to most Dungeon Cores, at least. The Cores that Tacca had dealt with over the last few months were outliers from the norm, so of course their choices were quite a bit different and unclassifiable.
One of the exercises that Dungeon Assistant students had to do was assess themselves as a Dungeon Core and determine what would work best for them. It had been extremely easy to do it back at DAPS, because she knew exactly who she was; a plan was made at that time that detailed her initial choices, as well as the future improvements to ensure a highly successful dungeon that would probably last for centuries, if not millennia.
Now, though, as an actual, real-life Dungeon Core and not an exercise, Tacca found that her previous assessment was…off. It could’ve been because of her recent experiences with the destruction of other Cores, or the fact that she was one now herself, but when she thought of the safe, straightforward plan that she had developed it didn’t really fit her anymore. It was the same one that she had devised over weeks of research and strategizing, which could be adapted depending upon the Core’s personality to maximize effectiveness; now, though, it didn’t feel like something she wanted to do.
She couldn’t put her figurative finger on it, but despite all of her schooling telling her it was the perfect plan for steady – and safe, I can’t forget that – growth, now that she was able to take advantage of that plan…she instinctively knew it wouldn’t work as effectively as she had thought. How could I have been so wrong? Was the information I was given at DAPS just incorrect…or has my status as a hybrid Assistant-Core changed things?
Tacca didn’t know, precisely, what the reason was for the difference, only that quite a bit of what she had been taught didn’t quite match up to the reality of being an actual Dungeon Core. Nor could she pinpoint even how she knew or what the differences were, only that having her Fairy mind full of supposed facts conflicted with what she could sense in her new form. It wasn’t all wrong, certainly, but she was beginning to
think that her unique situation had changed the rules.
Well, there’s no way to know exactly how different it is until I get through all of my choosing. With that in mind, she pulled up her first choice: her initial creature….
Chapter 10
Dungeon Creature Selection:
(Species Master List)
Amphibians
Animated
Beasts
Bipedal
Birds
Dragonoid
Elementals
Fish
Fungi
Hybrids
Insects
Plants
Reptiles
Slimes/Oozes
Undead
There were literally tens of thousands of choices for an initial creature, which made the selection process a bit daunting for new Dungeon Cores. Each category of creatures, such as Birds or Plants, had potentially hundreds of different creatures to choose from. Plants, for example, had anything from mobile Treants to crawling Twirling Vines to the immobile Giant Flytraps. From there, even when the initial selection was made, there were Variants that could be chosen – such as the Earthen Sludge Ooze from Jeremy’s dungeon – that mixed up the variation even more.
The Dungeon Fairy: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 1) Page 9
