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

chickens (no offense to any poultry out there), where Maginhart and his newly-leveled miners had made quick work of carving new tunnels.

I started to get a weird feeling. A kind of glow inside me. Happiness, maybe? It was strange. Cores aren’t supposed to be all that happy. I guessed it was just the endearing idea that dozens of people would meet their end in my lair.

But as I watched the room nearer the surface door using my core senses, that feeling began to evaporate.

One of the goblins, the tallest and oldest of them who seemed to be the leader, began to speak to the door. He spoke to it using a scattering of kobold words. His pronunciation was a butchering of the language, as far as I could make out, but that didn’t matter.

The damn door swung open!

Hells, how was I unlucky enough to make an enemy of the only gods-damned goblin in all of Xynnar who could speak kobold?

He and his men streamed through the doors and into the tunnel beyond it now, fleeing from the tile and kobold trap.

One of the goblins fell right into the pitfall I had placed behind the door, and his screaming and subsequent thud soothed me a little. Then, the rest of the invaders leaped over it.

It’s okay, I told myself. Many of Tavia’s traps are still in the tunnels. That should slow them down.

I should have learned not to be so optimistic by now, shouldn’t I?

Because that was when I spotted another person accompanying the goblins. A girl. A decidedly non-goblin girl.

One who made them all wait as she walked on ahead, spotting each and every trap, and disarming them in a frightful speed.

It was only minutes before the goblins reached the end of the tunnel, many of them unharmed, and that damned kobold-speaking leader spoke with the final riddle door, opening it.

I followed them using my core vision, watching them emerge into the loot room.

CHAPTER 28

“A treasure chest!” shouted a boy. He was a Fifth-Leaf of the Orcak tree. A sturdy orc. Not much use with a blade but strong, and one of the first to volunteer to accompany Godwin.

The First-Leaf held out his staff, and the boy ran into it and stopped.

“Wait, foolish boy.”

“But there’s treasure here. Nobody ever said there was treasure in the tunnels. It might help us, First-Leaf. And look! Levers. Who knows what great things will happen if we pull them?”

“You are an idiot, Fifth-Leaf Orcak. Nobody move. Let me think about this. Every instinct I have tells me we have to leave this place.”

“That would have been wise,” said a voice.

Figures emerged from a tunnel to the north. Goblins. Ten of them, led by one Godwin knew well; a goblin chief he had once dreamed about.

“Chief Reginal.”

“After all this time. All these years. Finally, we meet again, Godwin. You haven’t changed much since you slaughtered my people and stole my lands.”

“And you look so much older, Reginal.”

“We know why that is, don’t we? Why would the marks of time show on one of us, and not the other?”

This had all gone wrong. The Eternals were here? Now of all times?

This could not have gone any worse.

The Wrotun gathered closer together now. Godwin could feel the fear coming from them. His people weren’t fighters, and Godwin had not planned to lead them into one. This should have been so easy; kill the core, and then leave this place for good.

Couldn’t a plan go as he wanted it to, just once?

Still, surely it couldn’t get worse?

It was then Godwin heard footsteps from the north tunnel, and a group of kobolds ran in. One of them, a kobold with only one hand, dragged a tambourine. Another had mice scurrying all over him.

Slurping sounds came from the east, from yet another tunnel.

How many tunnels had this stupid core created??

Soon, Godwin saw the source of the slurping sounds. Eighteen figures made from slime shuffled into the room. Their eyes, beneath their film of viscous fluid, were dead, their stares cold. Each figure seemed smaller than the last, until the final one to enter was only as tall as Goodwin’s knee.

Chief Reginal stepped forward now.

“Fitting that we meet today,” he said. “On the anniversary of the day you took this place from us.”

CHAPTER 29

It was all quite delightful, really. Like watching a theatre troupe perform. I was safe in my core room, watching them all through my core vision. I saw Godwin and his people enter the loot room, followed shortly after by the chief Seeker and his goblins.

At that point, I felt it was a good time to ask my fungi-creature to go say hello. The hivemind spawned their oozes, and the army of oozes, in their ever-decreasing sizes, dutifully oozed over to join the main party.

Then, just to cap it off, my one-handed bard and his anti-seeker team caught up, and the bard placed his tambourine on the ground and began to pound a gentle beat. It didn’t sound all that musical, given he had lost a hand, but it was still nice.

It was a little like someone had arranged a dungeon ball, so many guests were in the loot room. Only, instead of drinks and dancing, there would be death and destruction. Beautiful.

Reginal raised his sword and commanded his people to attack. My ooze and my kobolds answered, and so did the Wrotuns.

The battle became chaotic. If this had really been a play, I would have set the stage a little better. As it was, the scene before me became one of utter mayhem.

Goblins stabbing kobolds. Kobolds slashing the Wrotun. Young orcs screaming and thrusting at anything that moved. Drumbeats casting waves of mana spells, ooze monsters leaping onto their victims