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

Wow. I hadn’t visited a museum as a core, so that shudder of recollection must have been from my old life. This dungeon was so intoxicating that it was conjuring the last fragmental memories of my old life as a human.

 The core who had made this place must have been powerful, and there was no doubt that he’d possessed a mastery of dungeon building. The pretty parts of it, at least.

So, what had happened to the core here?

“Be careful,” I said, using my core voice. “There might be traps. Shadow, can you warn them if you detect any?”

“No sign of the narkleer,” said Tarius.

“Wylie will find him, and Wylie will smash him,” said the enraged kobold, his voice dripping with the fury of the dust.

Shadow went on ahead, focused on the first archway of the tunnel nearby. Wylie was the next to follow her, walking at a fully-blown strut.

 “The narkleer will be patrolling a set route,” I said. “He must have been here when you broke through the wall, and now he’s further into the dungeon. Dylan was unfortunate to enter just as the narkleer passed through.”

“Narkleer will be unfortunate one,” growled Wylie.

They pressed on, Tarius and Karson holding the mirrors, Brecht gripping his tambourine, with Wylie in charge of the grain sack.

They passed through another tunnel, following it as it curved right.

“Brecht, can you look around as you walk?” I asked. “I want to see the carvings.”

He glanced at the shapes and images chipped into the blue stone, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that these told a story. It was hard to know what, without having more time to study them, but it told me something.

The core who built this dungeon was a vain one, since I would have gambled my last kobold on the carvings telling the story of the dungeon’s creation. Some cores did this as their signature; deprived of individuality when resurrected into the core bodies, they expressed themselves through their lair.

But not only that. This was something only a dungeon scholar such as me would be aware of, but you could judge a dungeon’s age by its style. Nowadays, most cores leaned toward practical dungeons, ones designed to inflict maximum pain and carnage.

Around 150-200 years ago, however, dungeon cores went through what is known as the Corenaissance, where cores designed their lairs not just to kill heroes, but to also look pretty.

Well, maybe pretty isn’t the right word. Some of the carvings in this place would have looked perfect in the tomb of some king who snuffed it long ago, or a dead saint revered for being kind to frogs or something equally stupid and pious. There was something ancient and grim about them.

“Wylie sees it!”

Through Brecht’s eyes, I could see Wylie ahead of the others, but I couldn’t make out anything beyond him.

“Catch up to him,” I told Brecht.

The kobold hurried on, and soon I saw what Wylie was looking at.

“The narkleer,” whispered Tarius.

Yes, there it was. Eight feet tall, with the tip of its bleached skull not far from the domed ceiling. It was facing away from us, so all I could see was its great wedge of skin flapping from its back like a cannibal’s cape. The skin would have turned most people’s stomachs with its hodge-podge of flesh colors, taken from the various creatures it had eaten, and its pale veins bulging on the surface.

Seeing one up close, or through a kobold who was close to it, was much different from reading about it in books. I understood now how the skin flaps served as warnings to predators; they looked absolutely revolting. I really, really wanted a skin cape of my own.

Brecht backed away a step. Tarius and Karson stood shoulder to shoulder, and even Wylie’s transfusion of anger couldn’t overcome the effect the sight of this thing had on him.

The jelly hovered nearby, though it was already starting to change color. As I’d expected, when I used the alchemy chamber to take away the jelly’s inner elemental, I left it empty. Now, it soaked up the narkleer’s fatal invisible energy, protecting the kobolds.

The blob took on a black hue, like water stained by an octopus’s ink. It would guard the kobolds against damage, but not for long.

“No time to mess around, you yellow bellies,” I said. “Not to alarm you, but every second you spend in this creature’s presence is precious. And if the jelly fills up, or if the narkleer turns around before you…well, best not to think about it. Remember the plan, execute it with utter precision, and you’ll be fine. Brecht?”

Brecht took a second to gather himself. Being a bard, he was a little sturdier mentally than the others, and the jelly anger dust had taken the edge off his fear. Even so, I could tell he was worried.

He unslung his tambourine strap from his shoulder and quietly set the instrument on the ground.

“You’re a good friend,” Tarius whispered to Karson. “If this gets Beno’d up, if we don’t leave this place, I want you to know that.”

“You too,” said Karson. “And if I die, you can have my topknot. Just snip it off.”

“Shut mouths,” hissed Wylie.

Brecht’s hands hovered inches above his tambourine as he prepared himself.

The narkleer lurched down the tunnel, taking slow steps away from us, locked in an endless patrol that might have gone on for hundreds of years.

As I’d expected, it hadn’t sensed the kobolds behind it. With an insanity-inducing stare, telepathic disemboweling, and dark energy around it, it was too powerful a creature not to have a glaring weakness. Every creature had them, and physical senses were the narkleer’s.

This was still dangerous as hell, but it had to work. If Brecht failed, and if the narkleer turned around and locked