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

greater story than that of the downtrodden rising up, and treading on those who once stomped them underfoot. It would make for a fascinating tale. Shove a red hot poker up the backside of your oppressor.”

“If by oppressor you mean me, you’re overstepping your mark, Gull,” I said. Then I addressed the kobolds. “A union? Are you mad? Conditions in my dungeon couldn’t be safer. I swear, I treat you lot like kings.”

“You work us to the bone, Dark Lord.”

“You gasbags don’t know how easy you have it. Some cores don’t care about their kobolds at all; they work them until their bones literally break. Me? I’m the nicest core you’ll ever meet. This place might as well be called the Fungeon!”

Just then, I heard a cracking sound from the ceiling. A rock dislodged, landing on Karson’s foot.  He screamed, though not in the same way as poor Dylan.

“That must have hurt,” said Gull. “Not to worry, Karson; conditions in this dungeon couldn’t be better!”

Karson hopped around, grunting in pain while his top knot flopped this way and that.

“Ahem. A union is a great idea,” I said, nodding in what I hoped was a sagely manner. “You would get a union representative to sit in our disciplinary meetings, listening carefully but ultimately being useless. Of course, you’d have to find a way to settle union fees, which will be tough given that I don’t pay you. I’m sure you geniuses would find a way around that. And the worst thing of all, is that I can’t do anything about you joining a union, can I? I would be helpless. Lost. A dungeon master enslaved to his creatures.”

“Hear that? Sounds great!” said Tarius, a miner kobold who was best friends with Karson. Lacking the required hair to emulate his buddy’s top knot, Tarius had grown a mustache and goatee that made him look less like a figure of fashion, and more like a kobold who enjoyed hiding in bushes near and spying through people’s windows.

Maginhart said nothing. He gave me a shrewd look, which I wasn’t surprised by. There was always a hint of shrewdness about him.

Wylie said nothing too, but there was nothing crafty about his look. He probably didn’t know what a union was, bless him.

Karson and Tarius, meanwhile, looked rather smug, believing their talk of unions would scare me.

 “Oh, hang on,” I said. “Actually, I just remembered something. I’m the core of this dungeon.”

Karson’s smiled faded.

I continued. “If you join a union, I won’t be helpless, after all. I would simply command Gary or my mushroom boss monster to tear you apart, and then I’d conjure new kobolds to take your place.”

“Gary wouldn’t eat us,” said Tarius.

“Agreed,” said Karson, nodding. “Gary is delightful, even for a spider-troll-leech hybrid.”

“Want to make a bet on that?” I asked.

“What with? You don’t pay us.”

“I have to say,” said Gull. “I spent time with Gary yesterday. I was interviewing him for a chapter I call, Working Under Beno. I feel it will highlight sides of you nobody has ever seen, my friend. Show the world that yes, dungeon cores are evil, but they have softer sides to them. Having talked with Gary I would have to agree with Karson, here. Gary is a perfectly pleasant chap.”

“You guys have taken my last nerve and stomped on it like elephants,” I said.

I’d had enough of this now. I rarely ever got heavy with my creatures. I worked on a system of trust and respect, but I simply couldn’t abide talk of unions when Dylan had just had his belly ripped out by whatever lay beyond the hole in the dungeon wall. I had better things to think about.

Whatever was in the next, unexplored part of the underground landmass was stopping my progress, and I couldn’t afford that. Right now, my dungeon was a means to an end. I needed it to buy me my freedom, and I couldn’t afford my expansion to be stopped.

“Maginhart, did you get a look at what creature did this?”

He nodded.

“And what was it?”

“I do not know itsss name, Dark Lord.”

“Hmm. What did it look like?”

“It walksss on two legsss,” said Maginhart. “Itsss face and body are made of bonesss.”

Made of bones. Hmm. There were plenty of things made of bone that could live underground, so this wasn’t a surprise. It wasn’t even a surprise that there was some kind of room on the other side of the hole.

Dungeons have been around for a long time. Longer than any of us realize, I suspect. In the academy, we were taught that the first dungeon was made thirty thousand years ago, and was intended to be a tomb for the Antygian people, an extinct race of bullbipeds, to lay their dead to rest.

That’s just one example, but there are miles and miles of tunnels, lairs, labyrinths, and crypts hidden under the soil of our world. A good reason that archaeology is one of the most taught university subjects, second to Darmenior Poetry, which I suspect is a course taken solely by students who want to disappoint their parents.

So, it’s no surprise when a dungeon core orders his creatures to start tunneling, and they dig into preexisting labyrinths. The lands under Xynnar are filled with old and forgotten tombs.

It’s also not surprising that creatures roam these places. Sometimes they are creatures left behind when a dungeon is abandoned, other times they are monsters who simply seek underground habitats, find a lonely dungeon, and take it as a home.

There’s an entire ecosystem right under your feet in some places. People just don’t realize it, and that’s hilarious to me. I tell you, if people in Wrexex, the biggest city in the whole of Xynnar, knew what the rats and gadkins were doing just twenty feet below their feet, they’d