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

hurt us right now, or you would have felt it. If it is in the room beyond, then it is still far enough away that it can’t cause us injury.”

“How fighters kill narkleer in necromancer prison?” asked Wylie.

“They didn’t.”

“Then how we kill this one?”

“How do we kill the narkleer, you ask?” I said, then paused for dramatic effect. “…we don’t.”

Wylie nodded and clapped his hands together. “Seal hole, boys. Dark Lord being sensible for once.”

The miners looked relieved.

“I’m not finished. We won’t kill it,” I said. “We’ll capture it.”

Wylie hung his head. “Dark Lord being stupid.”

I could forgive him for thinking that. I forgave him slightly less for actually saying it, but his sentiment was an understandable one. Looked at one way, we were incredibly unfortunate to have a narkleer on the other side of the wall. It meant we wouldn’t be able to dig that way. It’d cut off a whole area of expansion for my dungeon.

But that was a coward’s way of thinking.

I thought about the narkleer, and two things sprang to mind.

Firstly, for a narkleer to be on the other side of the wall, it had to have been placed there. Which meant that at some point, someone had stored something here that they felt was valuable enough to have a narkleer guarding it. I needed to get my mitts on whatever that was.

Secondly, when I thought of the narkleer itself, I saw an opportunity. See, there are four ways to bring creatures into a dungeon. The first is to make them from essence. This is the standard way for us dungeon cores, since we can absorb essence from essence plants, and our core bodies convert it into physical material that we reform into other things, both biological and otherwise.

The second, and most boring way, is to simply buy creatures.

Pah. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the sense of achievement in slapping gold in the hand of someone else, depriving yourself of the skills you’d earn if you simply learned how to make monsters yourself?

Thirdly, you can breed creatures. You know, the traditional way.

No thanks.

I do not need the sound of horny kobolds filling up my dungeon.

But the fourth way a dungeon core could bring a creature into their employ was by capturing it. Wild monsters and critters could be caught in such a way that they would agree to bond with a dungeon, and become a clanmate.

Just think of how incredibly dangerous my dungeon would be if I had a bony, skin-backed narkleer patrolling the tunnels? The first set of heroes to encounter one would run for their lives, with urine trailing out of the bottom of their silly hero trousers.

Of course, I’d have to dig a separate part of my dungeon for the narkleer to patrol, so that it didn’t come into contact with my other creatures and harm them with its invisible death rays. But that was easily done.

Demons below, I had never felt so excited!

I had to have the narkleer. I doubted there were more than 1 or 2 other dungeons in the whole of Xynnar that could boast of owning one.

“Thisss kobold hopesss you do not think of him asss insssolent,” said Maginhart. “But how would we capture the narkleer, much lesss kill it?”

An excellent question, and a tough proposition to be sure. But, I had been turning the problem over in my head for the last 3 seconds, and I had an answer.

Also, it took me 3 seconds to come up with the idea?

I was getting slow.

The way I saw it, there were a few problems to deal with when capturing a narkleer. We’d need to be able to get close to it but to do that, we’d have to deal with the life-sapping energy it emitted.

We’d need something that stopped its vision from corrupting our minds, as well as a tactic to stop it using its telekinetic disembowelment.

After that, I just needed a way to persuade this incredibly ancient, hostile, and deadly creature to serve me.

Simple.

“Where do you suppose the narkleer makes toilet?” asked Gulliver. “Perhaps he just holds it in. Imagine the relief when he is finally allowed a potty break. I tell you, if there’s ever a fellow who should join a union, it’s the poor chump next door.”

The kobolds, growing used to Gulliver’s habit of thinking aloud, ignored him and instead waited on an order from me.

“Boys,” I said, addressing the mining crew. “I’ll need an angry elemental jelly cube, a grain sack, and five giant mirrors.”

CHAPTER 4

“You seem excited,” said Gulliver. “It’s rather touching. I didn’t even know cores could get excited.”

“This could be it, Gull. The narkleer could be the missing piece in my bid for freedom, in becoming a core beholden only to myself and not owned by a clan. Finally, I might have an edge. Something the Wrotun and Eternals clans wouldn’t expect. Something I can use to leverage my liberty.”

It was as I prepared to pedestal-hop out of the room that I heard a sound.

“Warrane!” yelled Wylie, and dashed across the room.

“Ah, it’s Warrane,” said Gulliver, clasping his hands together. “A clansman of few words, few of which ever make sense.”

“Gull…” I said, using my warning voice. “You aren’t here to mock people. A dungeon is no place for insults.”

“I only kid, Warrane. Well met.”

There, standing under a tunnel arch, was Warrane. The glow of the mana lamps illuminated his green skin and his three eyes, and highlighted his body that was growing more toned by the day. Though he wore a stained shirt and trousers, it was impossible not to notice that Warrane had gotten more muscly lately.

After being promoted from a Fifth-Leaf to Fourth-Leaf in the Wrotun clan, Warrane had taken on more duties. Lately,