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

by Alex Oakchest

  “Relax!”

  She grabbed the first one.

  Then changed her mind and grabbed the second.

  “Anna!”

  She pulled it, and she tried not to let the effects of her hammering heart show on her face.

  Something rumbled. The walls shook. She felt her stomach soften just a little.

  And then a door slid open on the side of the chamber.

  Pete Leaf was such a skinny shrimp that his blood barely covered the base of the scale, let alone filled it. All the same, the experiment had been useful. It told Endliver that another eight or nine of his men would have to make heroic sacrifices to fill it completely.

  He looked at them now. Saw some of them bickering. Others arguing. A few of them searching the place, trying desperately to find another solution.

  Some of the lads had been with him since they were teenagers. Others had only joined him recently. Some of them came from good families and wanted to taste the pirate life, others were criminals who felt that the deck of Endliver’s boat offered more protection from their pasts than any other place in Xynnar.

  They were pirates, murderers, robbers. Kind-hearted scum, black-hearted animals. And yet, most of them had their good sides. Yes, they mainly dressed in black and white, but their characters were far from it. A sea of greys, the lot of them. Neither one thing, nor the other. Not good, not bad.

  How was he going to choose who got to live?

  “I don’t suppose any of yer fancy volunteering?” he said.

  Not many of them met his stare. Whether it was because they didn’t want to answer or because they were scared of him after seeing what happened to Pete Leaf, he didn’t know. They shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d reacted that way, though. He was a Pickering, and Pickerings had hot blood. Even his nephews, the goody-goody heroes, were prone to fits of temper if their reputations were to be believed.

  He wondered where those lads were nowadays. He could really have used them in a place like this. They’d know what to do in a dungeon like this one. Course, he hadn’t seen ‘em since they were nippers. That was the problem with pirate life; it didn’t leave much time to be a good uncle. All he’d heard was that they’d joined the heroes’ guild.

  “I’ll take that as a no, then,” he said. “We’ll just have to use our superior intellects to get out of here, I suppose. Or…we have a lottery.”

  “Lottery?”

  “Perhaps we let Lady Chance decide who lives.”

  “And does that include you, Endliver?”

  “That’s Captain, to you! Don’t forget your manners just because we’re about to die!”

  Two of his men stood up. One of them reached for their blade.

  Mutiny. It happened to every captain, at one time or another.

  Endliver was about to draw his cutlass when something happened. Words fell into place in his old, rum-addled noggin.

  “Sacrifice,” he said. “We’ve been thinking about this all wrong, lads!”

  “Huh?”

  “Pete Leaf’s blood didn’t move the scale at all. See? And that’s not because he was a skinny little git. It’s because I killed him. He didn’t sacrifice anything.”

  “I still don’t see many of us wanting to give our lives to that thing, Captain.”

  “We don’t need to, you seagull brained chump. Watch this, and if your hand goes nearer to your blade, my boy, then as the gods witness me, I’ll cut off your head, scoop out the crap you call brains, and use your skull as a receptacle for my ale. Now, heed this.”

  Please work, thought Endliver, as he approached the scale.

  Drawing his blade, he cut his thumb and then reached up and strained, letting a drop fall onto the scale. It landed with a plop.

  The scale answered by making a groaning sound and moving down by four inches. One drop of blood had made it drop four inches! They didn’t need to balance the scales with an equivalent amount of blood; they just needed blood that was truly sacrificed.

  “See, you salty mollusks? It’s always up to old Captain Endliver to sort things out, isn’t it? What if you’d reached all the way for your blade, Trunks? What if you’d slit that cool blade across my jowls? Still wouldn’t have been a sacrifice and wouldn’t have moved the scales. You’d be nowhere near closer to leaving this place, and you’d be about ninety percent of our total brain power lighter. Now, you chumps, cut your bloody thumbs and let’s get out of here before the poison chokes us.”

  Shadow wound through the tunnels and passageways of her former home. It was strange but though she had lived here for a while, the place seemed removed from her now. Distant. Like somewhere she had once been in a dream but had never really known.

  When she thought about the people in it, she felt nothing. She had the logical knowledge that some of them had been her friends, but she felt no accompanying emotion inside her. When she thought of Anna, she felt an overwhelming heat in her chest. She felt love like she’d never experienced before.

  Now, she remembered her lovely friend’s kind orders.

  “When we get to the dungeon, Shadow, I’d like you to find those essence vines that you told me about and burn them all. Okay? Good.”

  It seemed a strange order. Shadow couldn’t see the sense in it, because if she burned the essence vines then her old master, Core Beno, wouldn’t be able to use his powers. Why would she do that to Beno, when he had tried so hard lately to foster their relationship? After he’d trusted her with the most important of tasks in Hogsfeate?

  But that seemed so long ago. Anna was her master now. Whenever Shadow thought of Beno, she could only hold his image in her mind for a second, because an image of Anna, bathed in yellow light, forcefully replaced it.

  Anna. A pure soul. A kind master with really nice hair and a lovely singing voice.

  Shadow rounded a tunnel and emerged into a chamber filled with vines. Thousands upon thousands of leaves spread over walls and glistening with vitality. At the far end of the chamber was a kobold who was kneeling down and squirting a liquid onto some of the vines.

  Tomlin.

  She had dim recollections of liking him once.

  But was that a dream?

  Now, whenever she thought she remembered a friendship with this kobold and began to explore that, an image of Anna slammed in place in her mind.

  Anna. A pure soul. A kind master with really nice hair and a lovely singing voice.

  Shadow kept her blade in her hand and crossed the room.

  Demons below, what the hell was happening?

  The girl must have been insane, because she had pulled one of the levers. I was offering her a way out, and yet she’d preferred to take a fifty-fifty chance on surviving or plunging to a horrible death and taking her friend with her.

  And what the hells did she mean about her and Shadow having a chat?

  If that wasn’t enough for me to deal with, the genius pirates had figured the solution to my sacrifice scale chamber and right now were streaming out of it and into the tunnel that would eventually bring them to the loot room.

  If those were the sum of my problems then my day would have been dark enough, but there was also a rogue sneaking around and stabbing my kobolds!

  I had to prioritize my attention, and I had to do it quickly.

  Razensen and his new unit were on hand to deal with the pirates. The exit to the witch’s current chamber led directly into the nest of tunnels in the heart of my dungeon, and it would take the witch and her freckled friend a while to navigate through them.

  That meant my time was better spent finding the rogue kobold killer. To do that, I would have to use my core vision.

  I checked my tile puzzle chamber. My alchemy chamber. My monster melding room.

  Nothing.

  Where the hell were they?

  I checked tunnel after tunnel, chamber after chamber. I even looked around my core chamber in case they’d somehow dodged all my safeguards and penetrated the most secure place in the dungeon. Had I
missed anywhere?

  The essence cultivation rooms!

  But Tomlin was in there. He’d have told me if…

  I switched my core vision, focusing on my essence cultivation room. I saw walls of vines, lots of lovely leaves glistening with orange liquid. Hundreds and thousands of vines threaded together, pulsating with essence.

  And then I saw a kobold lying on the ground.

  “Gary! Brecht! Get to the cultivation chamber.”

  I arrived there at the same time as my bard and my spider-troll-leech monster. We rushed into the chamber, where we found Tomlin pointing a bow and arrow at Shadow. She was lying on the ground with an arrow sticking through her leg.

  She spoke through gritted teeth. “You’ve been practicing, Tomlin,” she grunted. “A nice shot.”

  “Tomlin was aiming for your heart.”

  “Tomlin? Shadow?” I said, floating in. “What in all hells is going on? Shadow, what are you doing back?”

  “Shadow sneaked up on Tomlin. Had a dagger in her hand. Covered in kobold blood. See? Shadow has been missing for weeks. Tomlin realized that she has betrayed the dungeon.”

  “Is this true?”

  “Betrayed the…” said Shadow, her face a perfect picture of shock. “Betrayed the dungeon? How could I betray it? I have no loyalty to it! Anna is my master. Sweet Anna, a kind master with really nice hair and a lovely singing voice.”

  “Who, in the name of all that is wicked, is Anna? Oh…you mean the witch.”

  “Anna is right here!” shouted a peppy voice. “In the flesh and at your service! Well, not at your service, because I don’t plan on helpin’ ya. But here in the flesh all the same!”

  “Anna!” said Shadow, with what sounded like genuine affection.

  That confirmed it to me. I knew Shadow. I had created her. I knew that the kobold was capable of a slight liking, at the very most, but certainly not true affection. Except when it came to her hounds.

  The witch had used her abilities on Shadow. While she had beguiled Razensen’s monsters into turning on us, she had obviously altered Shadow’ loyalties, such as they were, so that the rogue served her.

  “Right,” I said. “It seems we have a bit of an issue here, don’t we?”

  Anna laughed and walked on as if she owned the bloody place. I noted that she seemed to heavily favor one of her legs.

  “I’ll say you do!” she said. “Although, I’m annoyed that you hurt my kobold. Look at that arrow! It’s gone all the way through her leg! Urgh!”

  “My kobold, I think you mean.”

  “My kobold.”

  “My kobold.”

  “Anna,” said the boy from the doorway. “Don’t get too close to them. Especially the ugly spider thing!”

  “Rude and unnecessary,” said Gary. “You are a very ill-mannered young man.”

  “Shut up, you hideous daddy longlegs!”

  Anna shrugged. “Don’t worry about the monsters, Utta. I have you to protect me.”

  “How? I don’t see any fire or wind or…”

  “These aren’t ordinary leaves, Utta. Look closely.”

  Utta’s eyes lit up. “Ah! Essence!”

  He held his hand out. A row of essence vines nearest to him started to shake, and purple mist left them, gathering around his fingertips.

  So, this lad had powers too. Who the hell were these kids?

  “Don’t touch my essence, you little git!” I said.

  I switched to my core voice now. “Razensen, I’m going to need you in the essence cultivation room.

  There was no answer.

  “Razensen?”

  Razensen heard the pirates rushing down the tunnels, bellowing and shouting, their boots stomping on the stone like a herd of bison. He waited in the loot chamber, once again sheltered by the dungeon core’s tactical mounds of dirt.

  Eric the barbarian patted his arm. “Don’t worry about the fear, Razensen, lad. Fear is fuel.”

  “I fear nothing.”

  “Don’t act tough with me. It won’t wash, and it’s stupid to boot. Most men who say they feel no fear are just kidding themselves, and a man who lies to himself wastes a precious part of his mind in keeping up the lie. I only met two people who truly didn’t feel fear, and it was the lack thereof that led to them being buried in a shallow grave in a forest, no doubt rotted away by now. I’ll feel better if I know you’re a wise enough lad to admit your fear.”

  “A bogan feels no fear, barbarian.”

  “Well, I’m scared. I feel like my stomach’s cramped into a knot.”

  Razensen wasn’t just showing a brave face. He truly had never felt fear before a battle. The only time he’d felt fear was after Nazenfyord had almost killed him. Even when he was told that his brother’s plot had failed and that he had been chased out of their lands, he was still scared. When he lay in his sickbed, his lungs burning, feeling like every breath would be his last, dread took hold of him. And it wasn’t fear of death, as such. It was fear of dying before getting the chance to look into his brother’s eyes as he tore his head off his treacherous shoulders.

  The enemy sounded closer now. Razensen began to feel excited.

  “Take your marks,” he said.

  His new unit of monsters spread out behind the mounds of mud, poised to run over and around them.

  Razensen watched the pirates rush in one after another, some of them holding curved swords and others holding thin, pointy ones that looked no more use in battle than an axe made of snow.

  They bellowed as they ran, weapons raised in a declaration of battle readiness that was just plain ice-brained. When charging into a fight, who would raise their weapon above them, instead of holding it ready to strike?

  “Now!” he shouted.

  The barbarian held his axe upright and by his waist, his muscles half-tensed so he could swing the weapon into the face of the first man he met. Bone guys clomped forward, iron swords ready. Frog-like bogbadugs leaped over the mounds, leg muscles bulging, their mouths opened to reveal rotted teeth, their horrible ribbit noises sounding like the death squeals of stuck pigs.

  The first wave of pirates was surprised by the monsters, quickly falling amidst a sea of swords waved by skeletal arms and stumbling under the weight of giant frogs leaping upon them and tearing into their flesh.

  Men screamed. Begged for help. Grunted as they tried to swing their swords and hit a target, cried as teeth sank into their flesh.

  Their captain urged caution in the others. “Back, lads. Back away, use the slings.”

  They fought to earn themselves some distance, and they produced slingshots filled with little black balls. Each of them flicked flint and sparked the balls alight, and then fired them.

  Flashes of light met with loud cracks. A burning smell filled the air. Balls tore holes in bogbadugs’ arms, in bone guys’ chest cavities. Razensen’s monsters prowled forward, only to get hit with a second volley of exploding bearings.

  “By the axe!” bellowed the barbarian, charging with his axe while the pirates filled their slingshots. He reached them and took down two with one downward swing, carving through one man’s belly and another’s kneecaps.

  Razensen charged forward now. A volley of balls hit him and exploded on his chest, burning his fur and spreading a deep, searing pain through him.

  He felt his head horns grow hot and felt his eyeballs itch, a sure sign they were changing color.

  As the pain spread, the color changed from yellow to orange to red, to a deeper red, and finally to the deepest red of all. That was when Razensen, son of Goralsen, was in charge of himself no more.

  A great weight crashed into Eric’s back and knocked him to the ground. He felt the weight on top of him, but the impact had sucked the breath out of his lungs, and his chest and back ached so much that he couldn’t suck in more air.

  He wheezed and shrugged the weight off him so he could turn around, and only then did he see it was the corpse of a pirate, his body crushed, and his bones broken, th
at had been thrown into him.

  “Holy hell…”

  The ice monster’s eyes glowed the color of demon blood. His muscles rippled and were visible even beneath his blood-drenched, scorched fur. He grabbed hold of a pirate and squeezed, and the resulting cracking of bones made Eric feel sick.

  He watched man after man get crushed, get slammed into the wall, get thrown all the way across the chamber like a stone.

  He watched the pirates’ leader flee down a tunnel, and Eric didn’t blame him one bit. That man’s fear wasn’t cowardice, it was sense. His fear would save him.

  With the pirates dead, the monster’s fury didn’t abate. Eric realized that Razensen was focused on him now.

  He scooted away on his arse, but his back still felt like someone had slammed a warhammer into him.

  “Razensen, lad, try and see my face. It’s me. Good old Eric. Come on now…”

  The chamber shook with the monster’s every step. His blood-red eyes were the brightest thing around. The blood on his fur was two coats thick.

  Eric got to his feet just as the monster lifted his leg and stomped.

  He was quick, but not quick enough.

  His leg was caught under the monster’s foot. He heard his bones break, felt his adrenaline instantly spike, but it wasn’t enough to even begin to dull the pain. He found himself crying, spittle spurting from his lips, tears streaming down his sweat-soaked face.

  He reached for his axe but couldn’t find it. He grasped for something, anything, finally grabbing hold of a weapon.

  A stupid, thin rapier. The most pointless sword ever invented.

  The monster stomped forward.

  Eric pictured his mother’s face. His sister’s. His wife’s, the gods take her soul.

  And then, as the barbarian made peace with his end, the monster’s eyes lost their red tint and began to turn orange.

  It was only then that pain in Eric’s busted leg reached its peak. He didn’t even try to hide the scream.

  The sounds of battle reached the cultivation chamber, ended only by the loudest, most pain-filled scream that I had ever heard. I only hoped it had come from one of the pirates and not any of my dungeon mates.