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

“Now,” I told him.

Brecht brought his right hand up.

Tarius sucked in a breath and held it in. Karson gripped the hem of his friend’s shirt.

The narkleer took another step.

And then Brecht brought his hand down, and his fingertips made their first delicate sounds on the tambourine.

He followed with his other hand, coaxing a rhythm from the instrument.

 Bad-dum-tap-thwack. Bad-dum-tap-thwack.

The narkleer started to turn.

Bad-dum-tap-thwack. Bad-dum-tap-thwack.

The narkleer turned further, and the seconds drew out, and Karson gripped Tarius shirt tighter, and even I felt like I was holding my breath, despite having no lungs.

Come on, Brecht….

Bad-dum-tap-thwack-knock-ba-dum-tap-rap.

Looking through Brecht’s eyes, I saw something nobody else could. As he played his tune and poured his bard mana into it, musical notes made from light drifted outwards, floating through the air, fairly-like and seeming to dance up and down with each tap of his hands.

The magical notes seeped into the narkleer’s open mouth, into the black cavern on its face, waltzing through its body.

The narkleer stopped turning as the song took hold, and it did so just in time. Though I could see the edges of its mouth, we could only see part of one of its eyes, saving my kobolds from its gaze.

Phew.

It was stuck now, paralyzed by Brecht’s spell. Though I doubted it would hold it for long.

“No time to waste,” I said. “Approach it from behind. Tarius, you’re the tallest so you’ll need to place the sack. Maginhart, position the mirrors.”

Despite the narkleer lulled into a freeze Tarius still crept as he approached it, taking each step slower than the last as if he expected its trance to break at any moment.

Meanwhile, Brecht carried on his rhythm, his fingers dancing over the pigskin stretched taught over his tambourine, every strike producing a new note. On and on his song went, the sound making it seem like the room had a heartbeat.

Tarius was within five feet from the narkleer now. He looked tiny when standing against it.

He looked back our way, the fear clear on his face.

A shape approached from Brecht’s left. The bard didn’t break concentration, but as the shape got closer I saw that it was Shadow. She took one look at the narkleer, shrugged, and settled down, scanning the room.

“There’s something I don’t like here,” she said.

“Narkleer,” answered Wylie.

“Not that, little one. Something else.”

“Traps?” I asked, projecting my core voice.

She shook her head. “Nothing physical. An aura, but it feels far away.”

I didn’t know what to make of that, and I didn’t have time to think it through.

Just then, Brecht missed a note, hitting the side of the tambourine with his finger.

“Brecht is losing mana,” I said. “Tarius?”

The kobold was behind the narkleer now, holding the grain sack in his hand. He cocked his arm back and launched the sack, hitting the narkleer on the back of the head.

“Aim better,” I said.

“Oh, aim better. Excellent advice. Why not tell someone who’s drowning to just swim harder?”

He grabbed the grain sack, held the edge, and tried again, this time landing it on top of the narkleer’s head, but not covering it.

“Again,” I said.

As Tarius jumped up and down, trying to recover the sack from the creature’s head, Brecht missed another note.

And then another.

“His mana’s fading. One more try, Tarius. If you miss, I need you all to leave before the narkleer recovers.”

Shadow sighed. “Talk about delegation and square pegs and triangular holes. Let me try.”

She took the grain sack from Tarius, closed one eye and then, squinting, launched the grain sack. It looked in the air, before arcing down and falling perfectly over the narkleer’s head, completely covering its face.

“Maginhart,” I said. “You’re up. Karson, help him.”

He and Karson carried the mirrors over to the Narkleer. At nine feet tall, the mirrors were just the right height. They positioned these in a triangular shape around the narkleer, so that no matter which way it turned, it would see a mirror.

The jelly was charcoal black now, with only a few small translucent spots left.

“We better make this even quicker,” I said. “Not to worry you, but the narkleer’s invisible rays of death are going to start affecting you soon. Brecht, take a break. It’s time for the narkleer to wake up.”

The bard, entranced in his music, drummed his tune for another cycle before my order finally penetrated his brain, and then he stopped.

Without the music, the dungeon was eerily quiet. It wasn’t lost on me what a ridiculous sight this was; we had three kobolds filled with anger dust, a jelly crammed to bursting with dark energy, and a narkleer surrounded by mirrors and with an empty grain sack on its head.

I hadn’t expected to be spending my day this way, that’s for sure.

“Now what?” asked Shadow.

“All of you but Brecht can leave. No sense taking more of a risk.”

The others looked at Brecht. “But we can’t leave him here.”

“That’s an order,” I said, putting the full weight of my authority into my core voice.

The kobolds, Shadow aside, were loyal to each other and didn’t want to leave their bard, but none could rebel when I used my commanding voice. Not because my voice was scary, or anything; because I was their creator, and our bond forbade them refusing my orders.

They filed out one by one, leaving Brecht alone with the narkleer.

“The monster is breaking from my spell,” he said.

“Just stay quiet. That’s how we want it.”

“I’m scared, Beno.”

Wow. That really got to me.

Just for a slither of a second, the words ‘I’m scared, Beno’ found a weakness in my gem core and attacked my psyche, and I felt a wrenching feeling inside.

It