Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) by Alex Oakchest (book suggestions txt) 📕

kobolds crossed the room and stood in the center of the tiles now, a line of them, eight in number.

“Would you like to dance?” asked the kobold bard.

He pounded his drum again, producing a different beat this time. There was a series of snapping sounds, and the stench of mana filled the cavern again.

Bolts of purple light shot from the bard’s drum, flying at Reginal and his people.

A goblin beside him fell, purple light burning a hole in his throat. Another dropped to his knees, holding his belly and screaming in agony.

“Ah,” said the bard. “You seem to know the steps to this song.”

This was no good. Reginal and his people couldn’t cross the tiles without risking more traps, and it seemed the kobolds couldn’t trigger their own mechanisms.

But if they just stood there, the bard had free rein to play his foul music and hurt them. It would be a pathetic way to die.

Reginal wished he had brought his human slaves. Damn it, why had he trusted the trap maker to get them through this? She was no match for a core.

He raised his sword. “Slaughter them all. Tear out their guts and hang them around your necks.”

With his words, and with his own bard playing a lute song of courage, that was all they needed. His warriors rushed forward, weapons raised, screaming war cries, and the goblins and kobolds met in the center of the tiled floor.

One goblin slashed a kobold ranger’s throat, sending a spray of blood over the tiles. Another thrust his sword deep into a kobold warrior’s belly, and the sharp wheeze of pain he gave stirred Reginal’s confidence and awoke it fully.

The kobold dropped his tambourine. Well, not dropped, exactly. A goblin had chopped off his hand, so he was quite unable to keep hold of it.

But then darts fired from the walls. Dozens of them at a time, whizzing through the air and puncturing his men, sticking in throats, wrists, stomachs.

Yellow light appeared in the center of the room, wrapping around the injured kobolds. One by one, they got to their feet, even the ones who had been on the edge of death.

“What?” said Reginal. “How?”

“It’s the darts,” said Tavia. “Nothing for it now. Cross the tiles. If we stay here, we’ll die. Don’t worry about the kobolds, just press on.”

So they ran across the tiles now, triggering even more of the traps, summoning endless volleys of those foul magic darts. Reginal pushed through, his head ducked low, focusing on only reaching the end of the room…

…where he came to an iron door blocking their exit, stopping them from getting further into the dungeon. It had a great knocker set in the middle.

And then the door spoke to him!

It spoke not in the common tongue, but in an altogether rarer language.

The kobold language.

“Huh?” said a goblin, appearing beside him. “What did it say?”

“It’s a riddle,” said Reginal. “It won’t open without us answering it.”

“Answering it? I can’t even understand it!”

“And now we’re trapped,” said another goblin.

Reginal saw that he was right; they had cleared the tiles, but now the healed kobolds were behind them.

“We’re trapped! Trapped by trickery!”

“Would you like another song?” asked the kobold bard. “A little music while you die?”

The bard seemed so, so confident. And why not? Reginal and his men were trapped between a kobold-speaking riddle door and an army of healed kobolds.

Luckily, Reginal and his clever son would pass their nights in their tent by studying together. Studying history, stories, and languages.

Kobold was one of them, luckily enough.

He focused on the door now.

“Speak your riddle, you useless lump of iron.”

“We’re lost,” said a voice behind Godwin.

He hated to admit it, but they were right. They seemed to have wandered through the same tunnel countless times now. But how? Godwin had walked these tunnels just the day before, taking a familiar route to the springs.

The damn core must have changed them.

Well, without his traps, perhaps this tunneling trickery was all he had left. All it would do was delay the inevitable, but they’d find their way through eventually.

Now, he just needed to calm his people. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Galatee disarmed his traps, as I said. We just need to keep calm. Take note of the tunnels. Every inch of them. There will be a way through if we’re careful enough.”

And so they wandered through tunnels that had once been familiar but now seemed so foreign. Godwin led the way, forcing his pain deep down inside him.

Then he realized something. His pain, his yearning for the mana, could help him now. He had spent so long trying to rid himself of his addiction that he seemed to spend all his waking hours trying to ignore the stench of mana, ignore how it made desire grow inside him.

Now, he surrendered himself to it. He smelled the air.

Ah, there it was. That sickeningly sweet fume of the mana springs.

“This way,” he said.

And he led them through the tunnel again, this time following the deep stink of mana, taking turns where it seemed to grow stronger.

“This is the way,” he told them.

Soon, he saw a large opening at the end of a passageway. Feeling more confident by the second, he followed it.

They emerged into a room he’d never visited before. A large, oval-shaped room with a treasure chest sitting in the center of it.

CHAPTER 27

It was all going rather well. You can forgive a core for taking a little delight in watching his dungeon do its job, can’t you?

I had a bunch of Seekers trapped between an incomprehensible riddle door, and my anti seeker unit.

Godwin and his scant legion of Wrotun fighters were walking around in circles like stupid