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

The sounds were horrifying, even for a core. Such screams of pain. Death rattles. Choking throats as swords pierced them.

And the blood! I used my core smell then, and the utter volume of iron-rich blood stench was enough to make me dizzy.

This was the thing about battle, you see. When you get down to it, when you really get to the heart of it, it isn’t beautiful. It is a picture of utter, utter chaos.

But still I watched it, and I saw goblins die. I heard the Wrotun scream. I saw piles of ooze on the floor.

I was just beginning to enjoy it when I realized something.

Where the hell was Godwin?

I focused on the warriors fighting in the loot room, and I tried to pick out the shriveled old gnome, but he and his staff were nowhere to be seen.

And that was when I heard a sound. A noise near my core room, down one of the tunnels. One that seemed to be getting closer and closer.

Rat-tap-tap.

“Hello, core,” said a voice.

I didn’t need to play the game now. You know, the game where I’d pretend to be psychic and guess who had joined me in a room.

“Godwin,” I said.

And there he was. An old gnome, one who seemed older than the dungeon itself. His robes were covered in blood. It was smeared over his wrinkled face, over his hands, all over his staff.

“Here he is,” said Godwin. “Our savior.”

His voice was etched with pain, but I couldn’t see any wounds on him. Sure, he was covered in blood, but it didn’t seem to be his own. He eyed me now with a gaze of pure fire, yet his stare kept darting between me and the mana spring set into the wall. I could see his saliva bubble on his lips as he looked at it.

“Do you know why you are here?” he said.

“Sure. The academy thought I could use a holiday.”

“Stupid, insolent gem. You were here to save our people.”

“And I thought I was doing a good job, having already stopped a party of Seekers. What the hell was all this about, Godwin? The Rushden boy. You know that Gary didn’t kill him.”

“Of course! It was me. Conjured from my staff, a spell of-”

“Yes, yes. You cast a spell to kill one of your own people, and then you blamed me. You took away one of my best monsters, and you convinced the Wrotuns to destroy me.”

“Well, yes. But you have quite robbed me of the speech I had planned.”

“You can still tell me why.”

“My people are addicted to the springs, core. But their gift of life comes with consequences. You can see it in me. Every year I live beyond my mortal allowance, my pain grows. Every step is a cascade of agony. This is no life. And we live here, underground. Here in the darkness, always scared that the Seekers will attack. We have never known happiness here. We should have left long ago, but the draw of the springs was too much, and I knew that my people would never leave willingly. Not unless there was no other choice.”

I tried to digest his words. I felt like understanding was coming to me, but it was slow. Godwin wanted to leave this place? What?

“I don’t understand my part in this.”

“I had to convince my people that they had no choice but to leave. That the Seekers would keep coming, and eventually they would destroy us. But to convince them there was no choice but to go, they had to believe there was no hope. I needed a tool to destroy their hopes, and you were the hammer I wielded. If we put everything we had into one last desperate way to beat the seekers, into one last form of defense, and the defense failed, they would know we could not stay. They would finally accept it.”

“Ah, so you thought you’d destroy me, leaving yourself defenseless. Your people would finally get it into their skulls that the Seekers wouldn’t stop coming. Quite clever, Godwin. Eight out of ten for the theory, two out of ten for execution.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I’m still here. And you led your people into a bloodbath in the loot room.”

“You mark my execution, core, yet I haven’t completed it yet.”

Godwin raised his staff, and the base of it glowed red with a fury I had never seen.

Memories flashed inside me now. Memories of death and reawakening. Flashes of fire and light.

It was a memory of my forging. Of the academy forgers placing my consciousness into my gem. I had seen a light like this before.

Then another memory came; one of Godwin striking Jahn and I, chipping parts of us away.

This old gnome could destroy me.

In my early days as a core, I had remembered my first death. Those memories faded as I got used to my gem body, and I forgot what it was like to face mortality.

Here I was now, facing death for the second time.

My instincts fired. I madly thought of anything I could do, anything I could use my scant essence on.

No, there was nothing. Nothing I could create to stop him.

Godwin approached me, his burning staff raised high. I wouldn’t shout. I wouldn’t scream. I’d face my second death like a true core.

And then a shape leaped into the core room, smashing into Godwin. There was a great slurping sound, accompanied by the gnashing of teeth.

It was Gary!

There he was, my beautiful spider-troll freak, with all his leech legs wrapped around the gnome, their dagger teeth tearing into him and sucking his blood, draining him dry amidst a chorus of sucks and slurps.

The old gnome went