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

But then she took a breath, and she realized how selfish she was being. Seabright, standing beside them both, was watching Sider’s face, no doubt waiting to see her reaction. It wouldn’t do her standing as a leader much good if she was ungracious.

She patted Pumphrey’s shoulder and faked a smile. “When we get out of here, we’ll go find a tavern and celebrate proper, okay Pumps?”

Pumphrey breathed out in relief. “Sure thing.”

“Clear,” announced Cheeks, ahead of them.

Gammon nudged Pumphrey. “Told ya she’d be happy for you.”

The words weren’t lost on Sider; her men had all known about this in advance, which meant they were capable of holding things from her. Not only that, but Pumphrey had been worried to tell her. Did they see her as a tyrant or something? She’d never hit them or anything. Not often, anyway. Maybe she’d shouted once or twice, but they could be like schoolboys when they’d had an ale or two.

She shook the thought away. They were in a dungeon, and she needed to focus.

The five heroes headed through the tunnel archway and into the room, which looked like the kind of grotto you mind find a forest hobo living in. Curved, almost circular, with stone walls and a gently sloping roof. The only way in or out was the tunnel they had just used.

Her body’s instinctual response was to make her stomach flutter and send adrenaline through her veins, but she kept a firm mental control. Anxiety was only natural, even for the most seasoned of dungeoneers. The trick was to accept it, not fight it. Soon, the feeling ebbed away.

So, what were they dealing with here?

This room was standard for a dungeon. Often, rooms would seem to be dead ends until you solved a puzzle. It was all part of labyrinthine fun and games. Honestly, a puzzle room was among the nicer things to find in a dungeon.

In this one, the puzzle was strange. There was nothing in there, save for eight mana lanterns lined up on one wall. Their flames were different colors; red, blue, green, purple, yellow, orange, white, gold, and black. There were barely a few inches of space between each lantern.

“Cheeks?” she said. “What are we dealing with? Something to do with the colors of the lanterns?”

Cheeks and his peeping duck stared at the room. “The trick to any dungeon puzzle is knowing two key things. One, every puzzle must offer either advancement deeper into the dungeon, or a reward for solving it. It’s one of those weird rules of honor that dungeon cores live by. Two, most puzzles spring a trap if you get them wrong.”

“What’s to stop a core from leaving an impossible puzzle?” asked Gammon, who was the greenest of their dungeoneering group.

“Like I said, their weird code. Same reason all riddle doors must have a riddle with a logical answer. Cores never leave a puzzle that can’t be solved. The question is, how crafty is this core?”

“It has to be the color of the mana lamps,” said Pumphrey. “I’d bet my left nut on it.”

“I already bet your left nut on the kobold,” said Sider.

“My right nut, then. What else could it be?”

Matilda the duck gave a quack of disapproval at Pumphrey’s suggestion.

He sighed. “Fine, Matilda. You know best. Tell us, oh wise duck who knows so much, what else is it?”

“Quack.”

“Just ignore him,” whispered Cheeks to his bird. “You know he’s just trying to get a rise out of you.” Then he spoke to the rest of the group. “It isn’t the colors, not exactly. That’s too obvious. There must be more to it.”

“What’s obvious about that? Even if it is the colors, we don’t know what to do with them,” said Pumphrey.

“The colors are all included in the adventurers’ guild crest, and they also correspond to the colors of stones on the precious stone chart.”

“You and your memory,” said Sider, feeling beyond proud of him. Cheeks might not be able to fight for crap, but he earned his loot share.

“They’re also mentioned in a song,” said Cheeks. “Wait a minute…”

“Gut sumething?” asked Seabright.

“Maybe. In the Soul Bard books, soul bard has dyscalculia, which is like dyslexia but for numbers. So, he learned to deal with numbers by assigning colors to them. It helps him think about them easier.”

“That still doesn’t give us a puzzle to solve,” said Sider. “Sounds like a stretch.”

“Nope. See, the Soul Bard defeats a bridge troll by singing it a riddle.”

“More riddles. Great,” said Pumphrey.

Sider stared at the lamps, wondering if maybe there really was something to it. “What’s the riddle?”

“In the books,” said Cheeks, “He lists a bunch of animals and asks the troll to count how many legs they have in total, knowing that trolls struggle with numbers.”

“Miscunceptiun,” said Seabright. “In Untryia, trulls work in banks, buukshups, credit lenders. They can understand numbers as well as anyone.”

Cheeks, who didn't like being corrected, took the correction with the grace of a baboon flinging its feces at a nobleman's wagon. “Thank you so much for the troll history lesson. I’ll make sure to write to the author of Soul Bard and let him know about his racial inaccuracies, and let him know my source is Seabright the Untryan genius."

“Not the time for squabbles, lads. How can you be so sure that this has anything to do with Soul Bard?” asked Sider.

Cheek pointed. “The colors. They’re the exact ones the bard uses for numbers, in the exact order. Red is one, blue is two, and so on. It’s too specific to be a coincidence.”

“Then what do we need to count?” asked Sider.

Seabright’s eyes lit up. “Ah. Every puzzle must be fair, yes? Then uur clue is here sumewhere.”

Seabright opened his shoulder satchel