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

dedication and sacrifice for his family. Tegump works so that one day, his children may not have to toil so hard. A good, honest orc with a big heart.”

“Every person deserves their stories to be marked for all time,” said Gulliver. “Not just kings and dukes. It is my scribalistic code; not every word written in legend must be about those born into riches. You shouldn’t have to be born as a lord’s son or own a dozen castles to be worthy of being remembered. My own father worked as a miller, and my mother scraped coppers together by catching fish in the stream. Every man, woman, orc deserves to be remembered. Good to meet you, Tegump. Now, could you show me to the dungeon core, please?”

That was how I, Beno the dungeon core, met Gulliver – Gull to his friends – the master scribe.

Tegump the orc, who was one of the few Wrotuns clansman who didn’t fear my dungeon, led him into my lair. They entered my core room, the scribe walking ahead with pronounced strides, running his fingers over the walls. Tegump shuffled in behind him.

“You have a visitor, Core Beno,” Tegump said. “His name’s Gullyon or Gollyog or something stupid. He’s a tricky bugger, make no mistake. A nice fella, though.”

The scribe spun on his heels, index finger raised. “It’s Gulliver,” he said, but Tegump was already gone.

I studied the scribe. He looked like the wayward son of a lord or duke. You know, the third-child kind who will never be duke themselves, and so have all the money of their family to play with but with no responsibilities holding them back.

He stared at me for ten seconds. This doesn’t sound like long, but when two strangers look into each other’ eyes in complete silence, time stretches on.

I saw something in his gaze then. His eyes were completely black like most nacturn people, but all the same I sensed something in them. A kind of piercing depth, the kind that is only earned though seeing many things, both those you enjoy, and those you wish you had never laid eyes on.

“Core Beno,” he said. “I am Gulliver, master scribe, and a decent fella according to esteemed orc laborers. I am one who wields words like a soldier swings a sword. A man who constructs sentences like an architect raising a cathedral. A gentleman who…”

“You’re a scribe, I get it. What do you want, Gulliver?”

“The question is what do you want, core?”

“A beer would be nice. One of the things about being a core; you don’t get to drink yourself legless. I don’t have a mouth, a liver, nor legs to render useless.”

“You would like to get drunk, hmm? Perhaps I can help.”

The scribe wrote something in a book, and passed it to me.

I read it. His handwriting was infuriatingly fancy; lots of curves and big, sweeping lines. Why do people write like this? It just makes things harder to read.

Nevertheless, I deciphered it.

Core Beno suddenly felt as drunk as a skunk who had fallen into a barrel of whiskey and had to drink his way out.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Is this a short story, or something?”

Gulliver stared at me with growing concern. “You don’t feel drunk?”

“Why would I?”

He tapped his chin. “So cores aren’t susceptible to essence state changes. Hmm,” he muttered.

“Ah,” I said. “Now I understand. You’re not just a scribe, are you? You’re one of those tricky scribe buggers who can wield essence with their words. It won’t work on me, son, you can count on that. I’m a core; my whole existence is bound with imbibing essence and wielding it. Your words are useless against me.”

“Against you? I would never put them in your path. Instead, I propose that my words will work for you.”

“How?”

“I am told that a dungeon thrives on the heroes that it hosts. Cores and heroes go hand in hand like rats and the pox, no?”

“A lovely metaphor. Go on…”

“Allow me to stay here and observe your work, my gentleman gem. Let my eyes witness your magnificent slaughter of do-gooders and loot hunters. I will record your legendary fights for posterity, and use these writings to spread word far and wide. Your reputation now is like a piece of torn tarpaulin billowing in the wind aboard a poor fisherman’s raft. But once my words reach the right eyes, it will be like a galleon’s sail, magnificent and grand and…still billowing in the wind, I grant you…but much improved.”

“You’re telling me that if I let you hang around and watch me work, you’ll spread word about my dungeon?”

“Spread word?” he said, laughing. “Certainly. In the same way you would describe a genius artist of just spreading paint on a canvas. My creative constructions are much more grand. And not just that, my glorious glowing gem. I know a fella, a lovely gnome called Inky Mick, who has a printing press. Whatever gold my tales of your dungeon bring me, I will give you a share of. I assume there are things even a core needs to buy?”

I thought about it. I wouldn’t be the first dungeon core to use the services of a scribe. After all, back in the academy library we had books filled with the accounts of long-destroyed cores, many of which served as lessons in what not to do when building a dungeon. If those cores had been destroyed, then how did we know their stories? Simple - scribes.

And yes, my dungeon reputation was important to me. To get more powerful I needed to level up, and the best way to do that was to kill heroes.

My problem was that this wasteland was so far away from civilization, that I was struggling to attract heroes to my dungeon. I simply couldn’t offer enough loot to