Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series)

by Alex Oakchest

  Ah!

  The memory came back to me.

  I forgot to take care of the corpses in my dungeon tunnel.

  Now, getting rid of corpses was a menial task for a dungeon core. You stripped the heroes of their loot, then you fed their bodies to any meat-eating creatures who lived in your lair. If you didn’t have any, then you would have to get a creature to take the corpses to the surface. But really, what kind of dungeon core doesn’t have any flesh-eating monsters?

  Some cores preferred to leave corpses where they were so that their stink would drift through the dungeon. After all, even the most hardened hero would be scared if he entered a dungeon that stunk of death. The drawback was that this could spur some of them on. Make them mad, make them want to destroy the foul core who had created this place. Also, if you were taking this approach, it was advisable to mute your core senses.

  I was considering feeding the goblins and humans to Gary when an idea hit me.

  “Tomlin, Warrane, Wylie?” I said, using my core voice to reach them wherever they were in the dungeon.

  A few minutes later, Tomlin and Wylie came. Warrane didn’t, but I remembered why; I hadn’t created him, so he couldn’t hear my core voice when I used it that way. There was no connection between our minds except a mutual love for the Soul Bard adventure books, as I had recently learned. We were even thinking of starting a book club.

  “Warrane?” I shouted.

  He heard me now, and the four of us were in my core room.

  “I need you to collect the corpses from the tunnel between the riddle doors and take them to the alchemy chamber.”

  “Wylie drag corpses!”

  Tomlin shook his head. “Tomlin is a cultivator. He does not move corpses.”

  “Tomlin does what his core asks,” I said. “Unless you can give me one good reason why you can’t help the others?”

  “Tomlin believes that having death on his hands may infect the essence vines. Despite flourishing, they are still fragile. The Dark Lord does not want to take a chance with his essence.”

  That didn’t sound right to me, but we’d never gone that deep into essence cultivation in the academy. It was one of those things that sounded like it could be true, but also could be total horse crap. I just didn’t know.

  “You have me there, you crafty swine,” I said. “Tomlin, you’re excused. Warrane, how do you feel about dragging a few corpses through the dungeon?”

  “This leaf already performed the task dozens of times. He would help Tavia after her traps repelled the invaders. He has no fear of touching the dead.”

  “Then two of you leave this core room with honor and my good graces. One of you leaves here as a coward. I’ll let you work out which is which.”

  We met in the alchemy chamber two hours later, where Wylie and two of his crew were waiting for me. They had arranged the goblin and human corpses in quite a neat row, actually. It was very efficient.

  I eyed the red and blue spheres marked on the alchemy chamber floor. I started to get an excited feeling inside me; a phantom dancing of my nerves.

  “What Dark Lord do?” asked Wylie. I noticed that his language skills seemed to be improving the longer he spent with Warrane.

  “I’m going to perform some alchemy,” I told him. “Or you will, under my direction.”

  “Wylie alchemist?”

  I was about to tell him that he would just be doing manual labor and the chamber would perform the actual alchemy, but I thought, what the hells? It doesn’t hurt to keep him happy.

  “Yes, my little friend.”

  “Wylie alchemist miner!” he said, jumping and punching the air.

  “We’ll start with the goblin bard,” I said. “Could you drag him to the middle of the red sphere?”

  My kobolds followed my orders, and it all worked as well as I had hoped. Using the deconstructor sphere, I deconstructed the Seekers’ corpses until I was left with just their life essence.

  The end result was a pile of dust with certain properties relating to the corpse it had come from. Much like the leech from which I had created vampiric dust, but the goblin dust was more concentrated since it had come from tougher, more complex lifeforms.

  The goblin bard deconstructed to leave a pile of bard dust. The ranger left ranger dust, the warrior who had used a warhammer left barbarian dust, and the final goblin left a pile of standard warrior dust.

  Unfortunately, the human corpses left nothing but their ashen remains. It seemed that none of them had earned a specialized class, and it was rather pathetic. It made me feel sad that they had spent their lives as slaves, never earning a class, never pursuing a destiny, only to die in a pit deep underground.

  Still, you can't always get what you want, can you?

  With the specialized dust I had gained from the goblins, there were unlimited possibilities. I had an idea for how I wanted to use them. The theory was sketchy, but I vaguely remembered reading something about it in the academy library.

  “You can all leave,” I told Wylie and his crew. “I need a few trap and puzzle rooms carving out.”

  “Wylie dig,” he said, giving a salute.

  Alone in the alchemy chamber, I felt my excitement begin to bubble again and I had to force myself to be calm.

  I focused on the empty space ahead of me.

  Create kobold.

  My essence left me, becoming a spiral of light until it took the shape of a kobold. This one was the tallest kobold I had made by far, and it had a shock of red hair on its head and a red mustache above its wolf-like snout.

  “Your name is Brecht,” I told him.

  “The core chooses wisely, if I might say.”

  “Good, you already seem reasonably clever. That’ll help with what I want to try.”

  “Can I ask where my name comes from? A kobold must know his past.”

  “Brecht is the middle name of the Soul Bard.”

  “Soul Bard?”

  “Right, you won't know who he is. It’s a fiction series about a bard, that’s all. You should read it. In fact, I might be able to get one of the books, and maybe you could join our book club? But anyway, one of his middle names is Brecht. He actually has 12 names in total. Gets tiresome when he says them all at once.”

  “Delighted to meet you. And what may I call you?”

  I could have just said Core Beno. Or Beno. Or even had him call me Dark Lord, like Tomlin did. But it’s good to freshen things up once in a while. Besides, Dark Lord was so vain a title. We can all use a little modesty from time to time.

  “You can call me…His Dark Magnificence.”

  Brecht suppressed a grin by covering his mouth. At least he knew the pecking order around here, if he was aware enough to hide his laugh. “A quite…fitting…name, my Dark Magnificence.”

  “Now that’s settled, I have a job for you, Brecht. See that pile of orange dust on the ground?”

  “Ah, I am to sweep the floors?”

  “No, I want you to eat it.”

  Brecht, to give him all credit, picked up a handful of the goblin dust and ate it. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t make a weird face. In fairness though, the wolf side of kobolds means that they’ll pretty much eat anything.

  When he was done swallowing, I waited. And waited.

  Did I get this wrong?

  But then a message appeared, and a flood of excitement rushed through me.

  Brecht is now a [Bard]

  He begins as level 15.

  Woah.

  Level 15?

  Just as I had expected, deconstructing the goblin bard had left his bardy essence behind. By ingesting it, Brecht had earned the bard class. This was amazing, because it opened up all sorts of choices for me. The more Seekers I slaughtered, the more chance to get different kinds of class dust.

  But level 15? That was way, way beyond what I expected. It couldn’t have been my kobold proficiency, because that was only [minor]. Besides, more proficiency had only boosted Shadow to a level 5 scout.
<
br />   It must have been the dust itself. I guessed that the goblin bard had been a high level, and remnants of his strength were in the dust.

  “Brecht, in a moment you can head to the inventory room. There should be a magic tambourine in there.”

  The inventory room was a space I had asked Wylie to excavate. The problem with killing loads and loads of people was that your dungeon became cluttered. I liked my dungeon to be somewhat tidy. Any items I looted, like armor and weapons and stuff, would go in the inventory room from now on.

  “I will go now.”

  “Hold on a second, my lovely bard. We still have work to do.”

  The next thirty minutes were bloody brilliant, I don’t mind saying.

  I spent them creating kobolds, one after another until I had eight including Brecht. I asked these beautiful creatures to eat different kinds of goblin dust, eventually ending up with a crack team of kobolds.

  They had different ranges of classes and levels, and were far, far beyond any kind of offensive team I had hoped to make just an hour earlier.

  Staring at them, I gave another command. This was something cores could do, but I hadn’t really created any creature worth doing it for yet.

  Create unit.

  Name: Anti-Seekers.

  Leader: Brecht [Bard]

  And there I had it! My first dedicated offense team. Now, rather than having random creatures roaming my dungeon, I had a team of bards, warriors, barbarian, and ranger kobolds who could seek out a fight when any hapless Seekers tried to invade.

  “Go to the inventory room and get tooled up,” I told them. “There are some looted weapons from the last Seekers to die here, and I created a few basic swords and stuff. I’ll get you better equipment when I have the chance.”

  The Anti-Seeker unit left, and I felt like my dungeon was five times stronger. No, I’m being too modest. It was at least five and a half times stronger.

  But I wasn’t done there. It was time for a trip to the melding room.

  CHAPTER 18

  There are lots of beautiful things a core can build in his dungeon. Some cores like a rot room, where corpse are piled so high they look like little hills of death. Others like a Hall of Screams, where heroes’ heads are placed in alcoves on the walls, and then reanimated using mana. Splendid. That’s the thing with art; you’re only limited by your imagination.

  One of my favorite places was the melding room. I floated there now, up high on my pedestal. It didn’t look like much, really. Just a bare room with three markings on the ground. Over by the north wall was a rectangular pit that looked like a coal forge, except it would fill with essence, not coals.

  I heard footsteps behind me.

  “Ah, Shadow,” I said, making sure to sound mystical.

  Here’s a tip; if you want people to think you’re psychic, just guess stuff. Half the time you’ll be right.

  “This leaf hopes he isn’t intruding,” said a voice.

  Damn, it was Warrane. I should have just used my core vision, but I enjoyed the guessing game.

  “What can this core do for this leaf?” I asked.

  “He wonders what Core Beno is doing. If he is to supervise kobolds, this leaf must learn more about the dungeon.”

  “Are you enjoying being a leader?”

  A smile crossed his face now. It was nice to see. “He feels he has a lot to learn, but the thousandth step cannot happen without the first.”

  “You’re a good leader, Warrane. It’s a shame about the leaf system and about your parents.”

  “This leaf would like to turn the conversation to a different topic.”

  “Fair enough. This is the melding room, Warrane. A dungeon core needs to have a boss monster waiting for heroes who make it to the end of his dungeon. It’s a final test; it makes sure the heroes don’t get loot without having to earn it, and gives the core one last chance to defeat them.”

  “Gary is your boss monster, no?”

  “Touchy subject. He used to be. Wait, I haven’t told anyone else about that yet! Has Gary been gossiping?”

  “Well…this leaf would like to bring a complaint to Core Beno’s attention.”

  This was a problem the overseers had warned us about; the larger your dungeon population, the more chance of discontent. This was why many cores ruled by tyranny.

  “Let’s hear it. Never let it be said I don’t listen to my clanmates.”

  “This leaf has told his workers to avoid passing through the room near the surface door. Gary waits there, and he is a distraction to anyone who goes by. He is a gossiper, if Core Beno doesn’t mind me saying.”

  “He’s just smarting over a talk we had, but he’ll get over it. To answer your question, I felt I needed a boss monster better suited to the Seeker threat.”

  “How does Core Beno get a boss monster?”

  “A few ways,” I said. “The laziest, and most expensive, is to buy one from a monster breeder on the surface. But that means hiring a surface liaison, then having them trade loot for gold, and procuring a monster. Breeders always charge way more than their monsters are worth. Besides, I don’t agree with it.”

  “You do not agree with breeders?”

  “With certain breeders,” I said. “Some of them mistreat their monsters. They are so concerned with profit they cut corners. Call me soft-hearted, but I would only trade with a breeder committed to monster welfare. That means paying way, way too much.”

  “But Core Beno has a different way?”

  “The melding room. See the three marks on the floor? I need to have three different creatures stand there, and the melding room will turn them into a boss monster.”

  “Ah. The monsters are ingredients.”

  “And the melding room makes the stew. Let me tell you, the melding room is a horrible, horrible cook. You’ve seen Gary, yes? Delightful personality, but his looks would make even the Great Tree of Ugliness rot away.”

  “Core Beno is mean to Gary.”

  “Mean? I didn’t mean it to sound that way. Ugly is great, Warrane! Ugly is special, especially to me. I don’t know if you have ever seen a hero party, but they all look the same. Perfect hair that they combed back and conditioned with oils and Aloe Vera. Fancy leather cuirasses, braids in their beard, makeup around their eyes. Sometimes, the only way to tell them alike is by looking to see if they have a sword or a staff. No, Warrane. Ugly is great. Flaws are perfect. Give me a kobold with a cleft palate any day.”

  “What boss monster will you make?”

  “That’s the question. Something suited to the Seekers. Let me think.”

  The first step was to see which monsters I could choose from. I brought up my list now to check.

  Monsters

  Spider [Cost 15]

  Leech [Cost 15]

  Fire beetle [Cost 20]

  Kobold [Cost 35]

  Angry Elemental Jelly Cube [Cost 75]

  Sinister Owl [Cost 120]

  Stone Dwarf Troll [Cost 180]

  Bogbadug [Cost 200]

  *New* Bone Guy [Cost 250]

  *New* Hivemind Shrooms [Cost 375]

  *New* Mimic [Cost 500]

  With 450 essence points, I could create anything except the mimic, which was a shame. I absolutely love mimics.

  Even so, I still had a lot of fun creatures to play with. See, some creatures on the list were unimpressive on their own. A leech, for instance. A minor annoyance, right? Nobody ever died from getting a leech stuck to their arse.

  But when I had combined a leech with a spider and a troll, I had gotten Gary, the hideously ugly spider with giant leeches for legs.

  I needed to experiment, but there was a problem. Once I created a boss monster, I couldn’t just get rid of him if I didn’t like the melding room’s results. I’d have to either wait until a hero killed my creature, or demote them to just a regular monster like I had with Gary. But not only did that seem to make monsters unhappy, but the demotion weakened their powers.

  Besides moral issues
, I had my dungeon capacity to think about. I had been so busy lately that with my mining team and my new anti-seeker force, I had 16 monsters in my dungeon. I could only have 18 monsters at any one time.

  As a level 6 core, I needed to get this right. At the same time, there was always an element of chance when it came to a melding room. That was its biggest drawback; at least when you bought from a breeder, you knew what you were getting.

  The truth was, I already knew what I was going to gamble on. I’d been thinking about it off and on for days, trying to figure all the different combinations of monsters.

  The trio I settled on was a strange mix, and I wondered if I was being stupid. But the first guy to ever milk a cow must have thought that, surely? Look how good an idea that turned out to be.

  So, for the next two days, I created my monsters, waiting for my essence to regenerate between each one. Finally, late on the second day, I was ready.

  There, in the melding room, my three creatures stood before me, dead-center on the markings on the floor.

  An angry elemental jelly cube.

  A small growth of hivemind shrooms.

  Finally, A Bone guy.

  You wouldn’t believe how nervous I felt when I commanded the melding room to mix them together and then left. It was like a baker making a cake and then putting it in an oven, unsure how it will turn out.

  I was going to go check on Tomlin in the essence growing room while I waited for the meld to complete when I detected a presence in my dungeon.

  Not just one presence, though. At least seven people had entered.

  My first thought was that the Seekers were back, but no. The intruders had come from the west, the direction of the caverns. I hopped to the pedestal in my core room and then I listened. As the intruders had now walked into one of my excavated dungeon rooms, my core hearing let me pick out their words perfectly.

  “Just this way,” said a voice. “I must warn you; his arrogance is astounding. He believes that his dungeon is a work of genius, and will hear no criticism about it. You would think he had designed the Kings Palace.”

  The voice belonged to First-Leaf Godwin. Now that I knew it was him, I became more aware of the rat-tap-tap of his staff as he walked.