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

I will issue so many whippings that Whipmaster Poppleton’s whip will wear down to a little nub.”

“An explosion,” said Gulliver. “A bloody great explosion like the wrath of an angered god. Dirt flying in the air like so many fairies, waltzing amidst a spread of pulped carrot, potatoes, cauliflowers. A boom like a volcano born in a time long passed…”

“Someone explain it in simple speak, please,” said Reginal.

“Simple speech,” corrected Gulliver.

Reginal glared at the scribe. “You better be true to your word, scribe. Because when I look at you, I get the strange urge to club something into pieces so tiny that an ant couldn’t see them.”

Gulliver shrugged. “As I said, esteemed chief Reginal, ruler of this vast plain of nothing, my words will reach the right eyes. News of your settlement will spread, and with the right embellishment, I can attract traders here, have no fear.”

“I want to see a copy of everything you write,” said Galatee.

“I’d like a king-sized bed and a king’s daughter waiting for me in it,” said Gulliver, “But fate isn’t always looking in our direction.”

“Gull…” I warned.

A goblin stepped out of the crowd behind the two leaders. This goblin looked as goblins should; short, green, with a hunched back and pointed ears. Like the product of an unholy union between an ape and a frog.

“Remember your heart, chief,” the goblin whispered to Reginal. Nobody would have heard that clearly but me; as a core, I have enhanced hearing and sight, especially underground. Even above ground, my senses were magnified compared to most people.

“I’m hardly likely to forget my heart, am I?” answered Reginal.

The older goblin, whose name was Dandie or Handie or Tandie, I didn’t care enough to remember which, looked at Chief Reginal with the patience of a goblin who had the same conversation several times a day.

“You are getting displeased, and anger follows displeasure like a lamb following an ewe. Remember when our cavers dug the wrong tunnel last week? I would hate to see the veins on your temple pop out so much again. It would not look great for you to become sick, not in front of everyone.”

“Nonsense,” whispered Reginal. “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. Fetch me a sword and something that needs stabbing and you’ll see.”

“You have fought too much, for too long. Now that you don’t need to fight anymore, it seems your old battles are catching up to you. The further you run from them, the more exhausted you will get. Relax, Chief. Let them catch up to you gently, and greet them as friends and then stroll beside them. Let your body rest.”

“What in all hells are you two whispering about?” said Galatee. “Reginal, it appears your tunnelers have put us knee-deep in shit.”

She couldn’t take her eyes off the great hole in the ground, and the carts and foodstuffs buried in the debris way below.

“My tunnelers?” said Reginal, his temple veins twitching. “How do you know that my workers caused this, you…you…”

As Chief Reginal searched for a suitable insult for First-Leaf Galatee, Handie-Tanie-Dandie the goblin raised him an eyebrow at him.

I decided I would ease the Chief’s stress. “Shriveled-up old raisin husk?” I offered.

“You shriveled up old husk of raisin,” said Reginal.

Galatee glared at the goblin chief for a second, before the ghost of a smile haunted her lips, and then disappeared.

“See that smile? That look? The chiefs are getting on very well behind closed doors, so I hear,” whispered Gulliver, while nudging me with his elbow and giving me a saucy grin.

“Core Beno,” said Galatee, though there was no smile on her lips for me. “What happened here?”

“I was too far away when I heard the blast,” I said. “But from what I can see, the ground imploded rather than exploded. See the rubble? It’s all underground. If the ground had exploded outwards, the rubble would be spread all over the wastes.”

“Imploded, exploded, I don’t give a troll’s arse,” said Reginal. “We sent our traders with the last of the clans’ possessions to buy the vegetables and grain that were in those wagons.”

“Then that wasn’t very prudent of you,” I said.

Reginal glanced at Galatee. “Does this Core ever think before he speaks?”

Galatee look at me, then nodded. “That is the problem; Core Beno thinks about everything he says, and he means every word.”

“Beno, you know more about this than you are letting on,” said Reginal.

He was right.

I hadn’t known, not until a few seconds ago. But now I did.

I had been staring at the sinkhole in the ground, gazing at the great view of Core Jahn’s dungeon it had unearthed, and I had started to understand what had happened.

This wasn’t good. No, this was the opposite of good. This was…it was…well, this was bad.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but a disaster like this was nothing unusual for Jahn. Core Jahn had always been the worst student in the Dungeon Core Academy. The academy overseers kept their selection process secret, but it was understood that when deciding which dead person they would forge into a dungeon core, they selected people who had displayed in their first life, the skills that would make them worthy of resurrection as a dungeon core.

For Core Jahn, I could only assume it was a case of mistaken identity.

Because now, peering down into his dungeon and seeing the rubble and the broken wagons and the smashed vegetables, I saw something interesting.

Charred vines of essence. Broken floor tiles.

Yup. Core Jahn had messed up. Or, as we used to describe catastrophic errors in the academy, he had well and truly Jahned things up.

His dungeon was a state, and he’d destroyed the clans’ new food rations. That was a problem in itself since we hadn’t managed to cultivate the barren wasteland