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

again. “I suppose I should be happy you are all idiots because it makes things easier for me. I am Beno, the dungeon core. It’s only fair that you know my name before you die.”

And then came the sound of a dozen doors slamming shut, and locks slicking into place, and then…

…then came the snarls.

Snarls and footsteps seeming to come from all around them. The heroes bunched together, forming a circle in the center of the room.

The mage raised his staff and tapped it once, twice, three times on the ground. A cone of yellow light seemed to unravel from the top, before forming a tight coil all around the group, then drifting into their mouths when they inhaled.

The young hero felt his stomach tighten up, his chest puff out, his brain unfog. The dungeon didn’t scare him as much now. Was it a spell of courage?

Three separate schwing sounds echoed out as the rogue pulled twin daggers from his belt, and the knight drew a great sword.

This was it. This was what heroes were all about.

Fighting! Adventure! Just wait until the guys back home heard about this…

“Argh!”

That was the last sound the rogue made as an arrow pierced his throat. Just like that, he was gone. He hadn’t made a misstep, there was no mistiming of a strike that lead to his death. Just one bolt shot from the darkness.

A creature stepped out from the shadows. Wolf-like, with a lizard’s scales. It was holding a crossbow that looked way too big for it.

“Ssso nice of you to come and sssee us,” it hissed. “A pity your ssstay won’t be a long one.”

It leaned its weapon tip-first against the ground, put a claw on it to hold it steady, and tried to cock the bow. Its wolf face strained with effort, and try as it might, it wasn’t strong enough to properly pull the string back.

“Err, Gary,” said the monster. “Can you entertain our guessstsss while I reload?”

Now just four in number, the heroes packed closer together. The knight, burly and with the best chest armor of the group, faced forward. The ranger and mage guarded their sides, while the young hero was at the back, armorless and weaponless, clueless and courageless.

He could smell sweat and urine, and though he claimed the sweat as his own, he was unsure about the second smell. People lost control of themselves when they died, didn’t they?

Yes, it was the dead rogue’s bladder that had loosened, not his own. It had to be.

“Just a kobold,” whispered the knight. “Easily killed. Watch.”

As the creature struggled with the crossbow, the knight charged forward, holding his sword horizontally and at shoulder length to give himself a perfect chance to strike.

Nearing the monster, he yelled and tensed up, ready to land a killing blow.

That was when another beast emerged, its great form crashing out of the shadows and looming before him.

A giant spider made of stone, with leeches for legs.

Holy hells!

That’s right; leeches for legs. Big, squirming slug-like things with rows of jagged teeth. It was a monstrosity plucked straight from the bowels of hell, with its hideous spidery body and its cracked, darkened skin. The young hero felt a chill spread through him as he stared at this spawn of the Underworlds Below.

“Delighted to meet you,” said the monster. “Or should I say eat you?”

With terrifying speed and brutal strength, the spider-troll-leech beast tore the knight in two, beginning with his ribcage and peeling it apart like a pastry with a fruit filling.

Soon it turned its attention to the mage, who was busy uttering an incantation for a spell of some sort. He was interrupted by a giant leech leg slapping his face, latching on to him with its teeth.

The ranger was the next to react, but she took only a single step before there was a clicking sound.

She looked down.

Her face conveyed the emotions rampaging through her mind, and her words finished the picture.

“Oh, gods.”

She had stepped on a tile of some sort, and the click could only come from a trap.

As the knight bled out on the floor, as the mage screamed and batted at the leech leg covering his face, as the ranger lay flattened by a boulder that fell from a compartment in the ceiling above, the young hero began to regret coming here.

He wished he’d never stepped foot in the wagon.

Never gotten drunk.

Never gone to the Portly Pig, in fact. It was a crappy tavern anyway. Argyle never cleaned his pumps.

He’d give anything to be home. No more adventuring for him. Finish his work at the mill, go home, and settle down with a nice book. Find a nice girl, build or buy a simple house, have some well-behaved kids, and then die an old man, having never set foot in anything dungeon-like for the rest of his life.

Please, gods, if you’re listening, he thought, just let me go home…

The gods weren’t listening to him, it seemed, but somebody was.

“Okay, that’s enough,” said a voice.

It was him again. The dungeon.

The hideous leech monster pulled a leech leg away from the mage’s face, though the damage was done, and the man was dead.

“Boy,” said the voice from above.

“Y…yes?”

“Honest opinion; how tough was my dungeon?”

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Honest opinion? What?

“Come on, don’t be shy about giving constructive criticism.”

The young hero sensed a way out. A chance. If the dungeon wanted to kill him, surely he’d be dead by now, like the others?

A memory flickered in the recesses of his mind.

Dungeons were tricksters, weren’t they? Some of them, at least. He’d read about it in the diary of Vasilio Redscar, a hero with an ego as big as his body count, who’d paid for a vanity publisher