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

*New* Drownjack [790]

*New* Balachko [3000]

It was quite a list. I remembered back to the days when I could only make leeches, beetles, and kobolds, and it was clear I had come a long way.

After leveling up to 7 following my recent hero party slaughter, I had unlocked two new monsters that I could create.

The drownjack was a simple being at first glance; they lived in dark pools of water and looked like giant tuna fish when viewed the water's edge. Yet, if a drownjack breached and you saw its true face, you would see a half-human visage staring back at you.

Drownjacks were made up of the body of a giant fish, combined with the soul of a person who committed a foul deed in life. If a person swum in the same waters as a drownjack, whether by accident or after being lured, it would be the last splash they would ever make.

What about the other new monster available for creation, the balachko?

Wow, would be an appropriate word.

I had read about balachkos in Creatures and Critters Volume 2, where the author described a three-headed giant who could shoot fire from one head and wind from the other. The third head? Well, that was used for talking, since you can’t be shooting magic from all of your heads, can you?

As fearsome as a balachko was, I had to forget it for now. It cost a whopping 3000 essence points to create, and I wasn’t powerful enough yet.

This was why the narkleer was such an opportunity for me; if narkleer was in my monsters list, it would cost between 6000-8000 essence points at least. A chance to capture one happened in the rarest of rare occasions. We’re talking a-spotted-unicorn-dancing-under-a-four-leafed-clover-tree-while-a-meteorite-shoots-overhead kind of rare.

I brought my core stats to mind next.

Core Beno

Level: 7

Core Purity: 95%

Essence: 615/615

Proficiencies

Kobold [Minor]

Great, my essence was completely full. I could use some now, and then it would replenish thanks to the essence vines that grew deeper in my dungeon, which were cultivated by Tomlin.

Time to create a monster.

Angry elemental jelly cube created!

Essence: 490/615

The creature floating before me was a giant splodge of slime. A blob of jelly flaunting a red hue, indicating fire damage, and its two eyes gazing at me with the fury of the Underworld behind them.

 “Oh, you’re the guy who summoned me, huh? Big guy? Big, tough, dungeon core?” said the jelly with undiluted venom in its tone, its angry voice like that of a dwarf blacksmith who’d just caught a gnome urinating in his forge.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but they don’t call them ‘angry elemental jelly cubes’ for nothing.

In the academy, I read the journal of an old core named Frostig who tried to calm his jelly cubes down, but to no avail. The buggers are just really, really annoyed most of the time. If you decide to have them in your dungeon, I’m afraid the only way is to suffer their anger.

The cube floated closer so that his wobbling mass was in my face.

It bumped into me, hitting my gem body with its jelly in an attempt to provoke me.

“Yeah, tough guy,” it said. “You jumped-up, crystallized gonk. How’s that feel? Huh? Getting slammed by some gelatinous girth? Going to cry to your dungeon mother? Tell her that a big, bad jelly is making you wobble?”

Luckily, as a student of the Dungeon Core Academy, I was all too aware of how to deal with rebellious gelatinous blobs.

“Jelly,” I said, raising my voice into the most booming sound I could, putting all my conviction behind it. “You will be quiet.”

“I will? Yeah? Who’s going to make-”

“Silence!” I thundered.

The cube shut up and floated in front of me. As inexplicably angry as it was, it had no choice but to listen to its creator.

“See the markings on the floor behind you? Float above them,” I said.

Shadow watched from the doorway, smirking, as the cube drifted to the center of the room, positioning itself above a set of red runemarks.

With a mental command, my alchemy chamber got to work. Light flashed from the runemarks, wrapping around the angry jelly and sucking the red hue from it. Soon, the cube of goo was completely transparent.

Next to the red runemarks was a set of blue markings, and on those were two piles of dust. One was colored fire-red, which I guessed was the distilled fire elemental damage my alchemy chamber had taken from the cube.

But what was the other pile of dust?

The jelly looked at me strangely now, and it spoke in a soft voice.

“I have to say, my good core,” said the Jelly. “I feel so at peace here in this dungeon. So at one with the land, with nature, with the aura of cosmic lifeforce.”

Ah. The other pile of dust must have been the jelly’s anger, and my alchemy chamber had stripped that away, too.

Shadow laughed. “Impressive. And you can use the chamber to strip the essence from anything?”

“Simplistic lifeforms,” I answered. “No offence, jelly. Put a live human in the runemarks and there’s no telling what they’ll be stripped down to, since people are a mess of conflicting desires. But put a human corpse on there, and they’ll be stripped to the essence of their class; ranger, rogue, and so on. Much simpler. You know where you are with a corpse.”

“I learn something new every day down here,” she said.

“That brings me onto another thing, Shadow. I’d like you to learn something new up there, up on the surface. I’d like you to do some scouting for me up there.”

“Scouting for what?”

“Anything interesting. You know; raw materials, creatures I might want to capture. Even stuff you think will amuse me. You know, like a