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

by Alex Oakchest

  “You had your chance to escape. You should have left the wasteland and never come back.”

  “Before we got a chance to know each other?”

  I couldn’t hide the bitterness from my voice.

  I was doing everything I could to keep calm. But when I heard Riston’s voice, all I thought about was my dungeon. My essence vines. And poor Fight.

  I needed to get my head straight. Anger didn’t belong to a core. Cores had to think logically, and logic was incompatible with anger.

  “I am glad you are here,” said Riston, his voice booming. “The ancient one is glad too. You have brought us fresh bodies to become wraiths, I see. And you, Beno, will become-”

  “Ancient one? Who the bloody hell is that?” said Gull.

  “Never mind, scribe.”

  “You brought him up. Who’s this ancient one?”

  Riston gave a great sigh that sounded like a gust of wind. “Don’t focus on…Listen, forget about the ancient one! Focus instead…on your imminent deaths!”

  The insects dispersed. I couldn’t say I was sad to see the last of those giant, weird lips, but our situation hadn’t exactly improved.

  Fifty insects hovered in the air now, all in a line. Ready to attack.

  There were barely a dozen of us. Jahn and I had no essence, and Eric and the others couldn’t use their weapons without making things worse.

  It didn’t look good at all.

  But… I hadn’t paid for a portal to take us to a potential insect nest and then failed to plan for the presence of insects. That’d be moronic.

  “Cynthia?” I said.

  The tinker tugged the strap of her goggles, tightening them. “Alright, everyone! Remember what I said: aim at the walls. We all know what happens when we hurt these things, so let’s not have any accidents.”

  Everyone with hands, which excluded Jahn and me, produced little gooey balls from their pockets and satchels. They looked like snot-covered oysters and didn’t smell much better.

  Cynthia took out a flint stick and a strikestone. One after another, the guys approached her, held out their balls – their goo balls, that is – and let Cynthia strike a spark. Their balls caught on fire.

  Again, their goo balls.

  Eric was the first to throw his. It was a good one. The ball sailed thirty feet into the air and then splatted on the wall. Four insects turned to face it, curious.

  The ball popped, and a yellow gas seeped out.

  “Woo hoo!” I shouted.

  It wasn’t like me to show such enthusiasm. Very uncore-like, actually.

  But I loved it when something worked out. It was undeniably thrilling to see a plan go as I intended.

  Before we had left the tunnel, Cynthia had used powders and ingredients from her satchel supply to make more of the brew that put the insects to sleep. This time, she had also combined it with the potion she had made weeks ago. The one I had commissioned to stop anyone from being able to control my creature’s minds.

  I watched Shadow throw her goo ball. Then Tomlin, though his throw was pathetic. Then Wylie, who had strong biceps from all his mining work. Goo ball after goo ball exploded. Gas seeped out, filling the uppermost section of the cavern. It simultaneously put the insects to sleep, while infecting their minds and making them resistant to outside control. When these insects awoke, Riston would have no control over them.

  One by one, the balls discharged and covered the insects with chemical mist. They crashed to the ground, smashing against the stone. Since gravity was responsible for any damage they took, they didn’t multiply.

  That told me something, too. Their damage-copy effect was a spell. Or at least, something unnatural.

  Now, when these things woke up, Riston would be locked out of their minds. And hopefully, we’d be long gone by then.

  Soon, all goo balls had been thrown. All the insects were lying on the ground. Dozing away. There were so many of them. It looked like they’d had a giant party, and now they were all sleeping off their hangovers.

  “That was easier than I expected,” I said. “Let’s press on and-”

  I stopped talking.

  I heard a buzzing sound that quickly got louder and louder. An ominous racket, horrible to listen to. Fear spread through us all like chain lightning.

  Soon, more insects flew into the cavern. There must have been a hundred of them in all. So many that I couldn’t even see the roof anymore, all I saw was a writhing mass of monsters.

  We were out of goo balls.

  Out of essence.

  Out of plans.

  And then, I heard something else.

  The sound of a bell chiming. Once, and then again. As though someone was striking a giant, invisible gong.

  What in all hells?

  Shadow stumbled. She held her head, groaning in pain.

  Warrane ran over to her. “Steady!”

  He reached for her.

  Shadow pulled her dagger from her sheath and sliced it across his throat.

  “No!” shouted Wylie.

  Tomlin cried something. I didn’t know what. Words, but not ones that made sense.

  Gulliver stared on, mouth agape.

  Shadow’s hounds barked and yelped, some with raised tails, others backing away from their master, tails between their legs.

  I couldn’t even process what was happening.

  Shadow had just…she’d just taken her knife and…

  Stop it! I told myself. Get a grip! Think like a core!

  Logic rushed at me like an angry tide.

  Okay, first, take care of Warrane.

  “Cynthia! Can you stop the bleeding?”

  She was already sprinting over to Warrane. She unslung her satchel and threw it on the ground. She took off her shirt so she was just wearing a dirty vest, and she doused it in something and wrapped it around Warrane’s neck.

  I was worried about my friend, but Cynthia was the best person to take care of him. I had to focus on other problems.

  Eric and Gulliver warily approached Shadow. She slashed out with her dagger at every movement.

  “Look at me, Little Wolf,” said Eric. “That’s right, look at me.”

  With Shadow focused on Eric, Gulliver crept to her left.

  She suddenly spun around. Swung the dagger at him.

  My nonexistent heart leaped into my nonexistent throat.

  Gulliver screamed in pain.

  Tomlin recovered from his fear of seeing Shadow like that. It seemed to take a tremendous focus for him to snap out of it, but he did it. He tried to drag Gulliver way, but he was too weak. Wylie helped him. I floated over to him, full of concern for my friend.

  There was a great cut on his thigh. Sickening, already covered in blood. If she’d hit a vein, he was done.

  “Cynthia!” I said. “You need to help Gulliver!”

  She pointed at Warrane. “He’s bleeding out, Beno!”

  “So’s Gulliver!”

  “If I leave Warrane, he’ll die!”

  Damn it, it was true! But if she didn’t get to Gulliver right now, he was done, too.

  Maginhart rummaged through Cynthia’s bag. Grabbed a couple of things. I didn’t know what they were. Some kind of alchemy tools, I guessed.

  She grabbed his arm. “You don’t know how to use those, Whiskers. I never showed you.”

  “I have watched you. Ssstudied. I can usssse them.”

  “They’re dangerous…”

  “Just let him try!” I said.

  Warrane and Gulliver were both my friends. Gull was my best friend, in fact. I had to make sure they were okay. That was more important than anything.

  But we were being attacked by the insects. And Shadow had lost her mind again.

  Right then, it took everything I had not to let emotion overwhelm me. If it did, If I let myself worry and panic, I was no use to anyone. I couldn’t let it happen.

  I felt emotion wracking through me. I felt my mind breaking under the weight of it.

 
“Steady, Beno,” said a voice beneath me.

  It was Core Jahn. He was on the ground. Warrane had been carrying him, I remembered.

  “This is your problem,” said Jahn. “You’re fighting it. At the academy, they always taught us that cores don’t have feelings. That we’re emotionless. That feelings are for humans, and we aren’t human. But that’s a lie. It was why I was so bad at learning core stuff; I kept feeling remnants of my human emotions. It made me think I was a defective core. A freak. So I put everything into fighting my feelings away, and that left no energy for study.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That if you want to think logically, you shouldn’t fight your feelings. Let them happen. They’re like the insects; they duplicate when you fight them. So you need to stop. Just let them happen.”

  Jahn was right.

  It went against everything I’d learned in the academy, but he was right. I realized that Jahn wasn’t bad at learning dungeon core stuff because he was stupid, or because he didn’t have that indefinable quality that made a core successful. It was because he was struggling with a truth that I was way too late in catching up on. If anything, Jahn was ten times the core I was.

  So I stopped fighting.

  I let fear for Warrane and Gulliver flow through me.

  I let my anger tear through my mind. Anger at Riston for what he did to my dungeon. Fury at myself for letting it happen.

  Grief about Fight. About all the other monsters who died in service to the dungeon.

  The feelings washed through me like a tsunami, powerful and destructive.

  Or maybe not as destructive as I’d expected.

  Because when they finally began to ebb, I saw that they hadn’t destroyed anything. In fact, my mind had never been clearer.

  And now, I remembered what black essence was.

  I had learned about it in the academy, but not in class. It was in a book. An old, forgotten tome in a part of the Dungeon Core Academy library where few cores ever visited. The book had been collecting dust.

  Not literally, because Librarian Jestvegel was uptight about cleaning the place. But still.

  I focused on the wall of black essence now. I knew what it would do, but I had no choice.

  I drained from it.

  Essence regenerated!

  Essence remaining: 4738 / 4738

  Damn, it felt good to have my essence back!

  But no sooner did I enjoy the warm rush of essence, then the consequences hit me.

  Pain like I had never felt in my second life ravaged through me.

  Part of my core exploded. A chunk of my gem self-split away and fell on the ground and smashed.

  20% core purity lost!

  New core purity: 71%

  Damn it!

  We cores were immortal, but we weren’t invincible. Time would never touch us, but other things could. Weapons. Spells. If our core purity ever reached zero, it meant our core selves were destroyed.

  What a sacrifice. But what option did I have?

  With the now-filtered essence inside me, I transferred half of it to Jahn. I had already taken the hit from the black essence, so I knew Jahn wouldn’t lose purity. Good thing, too. The dope was as pure a soul as I ever met, and I wouldn’t want to have hurting him on my conscience.

  “Wha…Beno? What’s this?”

  “You give me your essence earlier. Don’t let it be said that I don’t pay my debts.”

  “But how?”

  “Never mind. Just start crafting.”

  “Crafting what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know…how about a giant steel plate above us? Give us a little protection from those things?”

  As the insects swooped down and tried to stab anything in sight, Jahn and I got to work.

  Jan began constructing a great sheet of steel 15 feet above us. His progress was painstaking, but inch by inch, the steel began to form.

  I used my essence to create stone dwarf trolls. One after another. They were barely bigger than a man’s waist, but boy, were they tough. I only had enough essence to create 13 of them.

  “Protect Gulliver and Warrane!” I ordered them.

  The trolls formed a wall around Gulliver and Warrane. They bent over, shielding them with their stone backs.

  Insects slammed into them, chipping away at their stone, but otherwise being repelled.

  It was enough for now, but the trolls wouldn’t hold forever.

  “Jahn, you need to hurry!”

  “Thank you for the tip, Beno. I’m constructing as fast as I can!”

  “It’s not quick enough, damn it.”

  “You need to give me time to work!”

  It was no good.

  Jahn had barely covered a quarter of the room with steel. My trolls were taking a beating.

  There was no way to escape this place, and we were out of time.

  The insects seemed to sense this now. They all lined up overhead. Their wings flapped together. They pointed their spikes at us.

  They were all going to strike as one. I saw their abdomens twitch. This was it…

  They began to rush down at us.

  And then they stopped.

  Just like that, they stopped and floated in midair. Not moving, not attacking. Almost docile.

  “What in all hells…”

  “Stay…stay…Good boys!” said a voice.

  A hidden door on the far side of the room had opened. Three figures stepped out.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Overseer Bolton?” said Jahn. “What are you doing here?”

  Jahn sounded overjoyed to see his old teacher, but I didn’t think Bolton’s surprise entrance was such a good thing. Ever since leaving the academy, I had been wary about trusting him.

  “Just keep working on the steel, buddy,” I told Jahn.

  Bolton had two teenagers with him. Two teenagers who I could have cheerfully murdered.

  There was Utta. A young kid. Tanned skin. Freckles all over his face. Not such a bad lad, really, but his downfall was the company he kept.

  His best friend, Anna. Curly hair. She loved to sing to herself, but her voice sounded like a cat giving birth. She had the evilest eyes you’d ever see. Well, I supposed they didn’t look inherently evil, they just looked like normal eyes. But I knew what kind of sinister mind lurked behind them. A mind of malice. Cruelty. There was something incredibly dark lurking in this girl’s soul.

  “Hey everyone!” she said cheerfully.

  Eric and Tomlin were tying a rope around Shadow’s hands. Cynthia was attending to Warrane, applying some kind of paste to his neck. Maginhart was doing the same to Gulliver’s thigh. I badly wanted to know how they were, but I had to focus. She might not look it, but Anna was more dangerous than anyone I had ever faced. I couldn’t let my guard down for a second.

  “Hello, Beno,” said Overseer Bolton.

  I felt a flash of wrath.

  Bolton used to be my favorite academy overseer and my mentor. I’d thought we would become friends once I graduated from the academy. When I had a dungeon of my own. He would visit me and tour my dungeon, remarking on how well I was doing. How good I was at killing people. They would be good times.

  But that had never come to pass. I failed the academy and was forced onto another path. A lot had happened since this guy was my teacher.

  “I take it this is your doing, our winged friends’ sudden pacifism?” I said.

  Anna nodded. “See how much better my powers are since we last met? Not to blow my own trumpet, of course. Why do people say that, anyways? If you own a trumpet, isn’t the whole point to blow it?”

  “Now, Anna,” said Bolton. “Remember what we said.”

  “Play nice. Right.”

  “Not that.”

  “Oh! Yes. Focus.”

  “If you lose control of the monsters, we’ll be more than a little stuck,” said Bolton, in a kind yet frustrated voice.

  Now, this was weird to see. Bolton was talking to Anna like she was h
is daughter or something. And she was listening to him! That was a miracle in itself, given she was the most obstinate wench I’d ever met.

  “Argh!” cried a voice.

  Eric stumbled away from Shadow. She’d bitten him, torn off part of his ear, and spat it out.

  Before Eric could pick up his lost piece of earlobe, one of Shadow’s hounds gobbled it up. He spun in circles while clutching his ear as if that would make the pain go away.

  The other three dogs stayed well away from their master. They’d seen Shadow like this before. Back when Anna had controlled Shadow’s mind and used her to murder Redjack. The hounds weren’t scared of much, but they were terrified of seeing their master like this.

  Now Anna was back, and Shadow had lost her mind again.

  “Reverse it,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Get your stupid arse out of Shadow’s mind, and stay out.”

  Anna looked at Bolton. “I see what you mean about the core now. He really is an idiot.”

  “I never said that,” said Bolton, glaring.

  I was furious. “Anna, you took control of Shadow’s mind again, and you did it at the worst possible time. See that three-eyed half-orc over there?”

  Anna looked around the room, pretending not to see Warrane, who was lying on the floor, his leathers covered in blood.

  “Three-eyed orc…hmm…you’d think I’d notice…”

  “If he dies, you trollop, I’ll smear you with fish oil and throw you into a bear pit.”

  “Now, Beno,” said Bolton, putting his hand on Anna’s shoulder. “Let’s not get nasty. You shouldn’t assume this was Anna. Don’t you think it’s unfair to leap to conclusions?”

  “She has a history of mind control, Bolton. Her Chosen One power is mind control. Or mind handkerchiefs, or whatever she calls it.”

  “They’re called mind blankets,” said Anna. “And don’t you forget it!”

  “Whatever. She has a history of it. Let’s not forget what she did to Shadow the last time she was in the area.”

  “Anna?” said Bolton, using a fatherly tone of voice. “Was this you? Be honest now.”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “She said no!” said Utta.