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

Chaos. That’s what the maze of tunnels was; pure, lovely, chaos.

It was as I hopped into this new room, that I received a message in my core.

Gary [Troll-Leech-Spider Melded-Monster] has leveled up to 5

I had been receiving these messages since yesterday. As the day had wound on and they got had to work in the arena, notifications piled up.

Death leveled up quickly; as a fire beetle, he was the weakest creature in the arena and he had started at level 1. It wasn’t long before he reached level 9, but each successive upgrade made the next one slower. He’d yet to achieve level 10.

Peach, meanwhile, was a jelly cube, and as such was higher on the toughness scale. In the same amount of time, he’d only hit level 6.

Gary’s level-ups came the slowest of all. He was an ex-boss monster created in my melding room, and it took a lot to beef him up. In all this time in the arena, he’d only leveled up once, and it’d be a while before the next one.

Still, it was progress. With every creature level up, my dungeon was that little bit stronger.

“Dark Lord?” said a voice.

Wylie walked into the room, dragging his feet in a ridiculously exaggerated way.

I knew what this was about. Since the escapade with the narkleer, and then digging out new tunnels and excavating new rooms for me, Wylie and his crew hadn’t had a break.

This was where I needed to be a little nicer to my people. If I overworked the miners, their progress would slow to a halt and they would risk injury. Not only that, but I was sick of hearing about unions.

“Wylie,” I said. “You and your crew can take the day off. Go howl at the moon or whatever it is kobolds do in their free time.”

Tarius and Karson, watching from the tunnel archway, let out a whoop and then scampered away.

“What doing?” asked Wylie.

“Didn’t you hear? I gave you the day off.”

“Wylie and his crew dig this room for you. Want to know what used for. Help him understand dungeon better.”

I looked at my hardworking, loyal friend with a new level of respect. He was showing curiosity, and curiosity led to innovation and understanding. There was more to Wylie than I’d thought.

“Just the usual,” I told him. “This will be a room where heroes come to die.”

“Heroes die in all room in dungeon.”

“Ah, yes. But the question is…how will they die in this particular room?”

“Or,” said Wylie. “Could be break room for miners.”

“Still harping on about that?”

“Wylie look after interests of workers.”

He was strong-minded, I’d give him that. I had to accept that with his stubbornness, came problems for me. I didn’t want a bunch of sycophantic yesmen as my dungeon supervisors, so I had to accept when these non-yesmen didn’t say yes to me.

“This isn’t to be a break room or a spa or a sauna or a retreat filled with cushions and jasmine candles. This is a place of death, Wylie. I thought you said you wanted to learn?”

“Wylie does.”

“Then listen to me. This is a lesson close to my heart, okay? It means a lot to me. I’m trying to teach you how to slaughter people.”

With my restored essence, as well as what I had left from yesterday, I had 440 essence points to spend. Luckily, that was just enough for what I needed.

Focused on the room ahead, I committed the first chunk of essence points.

Trap created: Poison Gas

Now, there were holes dotted on each of the four walls. Not great big holes, but tiny ones, holes small enough for an ant to squeeze through.

“See those?” I told Wylie. “Holes for the gas to come out. But unless you know what you’re looking for, you’d never see them.”

Wylie walked up close to one wall, looking for the holes. That was when he saw something else.

“This?” he asked, pointing.

As part of the poison trap, part of one wall had been dug away, leaving a stone cylinder set inside the wall. Runes were drawn all over it. They were letters of an ancient language, though they translated into gibberish. The runes were purely decorative.

“This is the convertor,” I told him. “Poison traps in dungeons are self-sustaining. The stone converter will suck air from the dungeon and convert it into poison, which it will store until the trap is triggered.”

Wylie hopped up and down on the spot. “Clever!”

“That’s not all. See, Wylie, every dungeon trap is useless without a trigger. In the room near the surface doors, the trap is the vampiric darts ready to fire from the walls. The trigger is the tile puzzle I placed on the ground; one wrong step, and thwack! The heroes get shot.”

“Great, Dark Lord. Very clever. A nice trap. But what is trigger for gas?”

“Simple,” I said. “Watch.”

Wylie and I spent the next thirty minutes creating a trigger for my gas trap, after which I was almost out of essence points. During this time, just a single notification came through, telling me that Death the fire beetle had reached level 10, earning himself the hell husk ability. Way to go, Death!

After the trap and trigger were placed, however, a separate notification greeted me. This one was a heck of a lot more exciting.

“Attention, clanmates,” I said, casting my core voice through my lair. “I have an announcement to make. Thanks to your hard work, and my sterling planning, we have received some good news. Without further ado, I will let you see the message I have just received.”

I cast the message from my core and into the dungeon, where it would appear in every room and every tunnel simultaneously.

Your dungeon difficulty has increased from Average II to Average III

Bonus:

- Ability unlocked: Core