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

Finding the stuff the alchemist needed to cure her.

Vedetta could never refuse her Mom, so she went to her room and helped her get comfortable and fetched her a jug of lukewarm nettle tea.

“You’re a good girl,” said her mother. “I raised you right.”

“It’s nothing. I’m going to head out now, Mom.”

“Nowhere dangerous, I hope?”

“Of course not.”

“Vedetta…”

“I promise. Nowhere dangerous.”

Ugh. A promise. You weren’t supposed to break those, were you?

What if you gave a promise to make someone you loved feel better, and you broke it to save their life? If there was someone in charge of tallying who kept their promises, he’d take that into account, wouldn’t he?

Vedetta knew she had to break it either way. She’d take whatever punishment she earned for it. Deciding that, she left the house.

The bag on her back was really heavy. Too heavy for an eleven-year-old. If she was outside of the town right now, she’d have been a target for brigands and horrible people like that.

Luckily, it was still dark, and Vedetta knew where she was going because she’d been sneaking there every morning for two weeks. She left town, took a route by Farmer Yorke’s field, and then headed south a little, to where the muddy ground started to turn really dark, and where it stank like a giant’s fart.

It was here that Vedetta found the hole she’d dug in the ground. She put the metal basin that she used as a mining helmet on her head, and she strapped her little mana lamp to it. She climbed into the hole using the ladder she’d stolen from Farmer Yorke’s outhouse.

She went down, down, down, and finally, her feet touched the ground. Even with her lamp glowing, it was darker than a demon’s bum down here. It was wet, and things scuttled around.

Vedetta wasn’t scared. That was something the rest of the town always said was strange; nothing scared Vedetta. When the other kids were playing in the forest and they heard wolves howling, they fled for their homes. Vedetta always wanted to stay and meet the wolves, and she only left when the others dragged her away.

She’d once heard the elders discussing it. “The girl’s fearlessness isn’t something to be commended,” they said. “She is fearless to the point of it being dangerous.”

Oh, well. At least she could use it to help now. She’d heard that there was a potion that could fix Mom, but it cost more gold than the entire town had put together. She couldn’t buy it.

But…it could be made. If a person found the right, rare ingredients, an alchemist could make it.

This was why Vedetta spent her early morning down here, in this dark, wet place way underground. Where she was alone. Where, if the hole she had made caved in, nobody would ever find her.

Vedetta wasn’t scared. She wasn’t like other children.

CHAPTER 9

While Tomlin mined the wall of room three as I ordered, I hopped back to my core room. Even far across the dungeon, I could hear Tomlin’s efforts. His pickaxe hitting the wall. Mud crumbling away. Tomlin whistling to himself.

It was nice to feel like I wasn’t alone here anymore. Another sentient being sharing the same dungeon as me. It was a bit of a novelty after a week of seeing nobody but Overseer Bolton.

As Tomlin toiled away, I had time to think. A person probably wouldn’t need many guesses to know what was occupying my thoughts.

It was the new knowledge that a young core’s monsters were bred in the academy. This knowledge put everything I knew into question. If they’d held back this secret, what else were they hiding?

It tallied with something I had come to suspect about essence.

It was both easy to understand, and incredibly complex. I knew that the overseers could directly manipulate essence. If not, how could they reward or condemn us after evaluations?

At the same time, I was taught that essence was a naturally occurring material. This was backed up by the essence vines and buds, and how much quicker my essence regenerated when they grew bigger.

What if it was all a sham? What if the academy controlled everything, like how essence points depleted when I did something, how fast they grew back, and that kind of thing? What if the loot chest that I had conjured in my loot room wasn’t made of essence converted by me, as a core, but instead had been sitting in some dusty room in the academy until I spent my points?

Hmm. I wasn’t sure what to think. I’d have to ask the next overseer who came to evaluate me, even though I knew what they’d say.

“We can’t answer technical questions. It isn’t fair to the other cores.”

It was fair enough, but still…screw the other cores.

While Tomlin mined the wall on the far side of the dungeon, there were other things for me to be getting on with.

Firstly, I spent a long time working on the essence vines in my core room. I couldn’t believe their progress! They had covered the first wall entirely and had spread halfway across the second wall that I had planted them on. It meant that my essence regenerated much, much faster.

There was bad news, though.

Earlier, I had kept one essence bud. Instead of eating it, I had split it into four new buds, even though it was incredibly unlikely that they would grow. They were split too many times, and I had pushed my luck with their vitality.

Yeah, they died. They shriveled on the vines, growing black and smelly. Luckily, I got to them before they spread to the vines themselves. If rot had set in on my essence flora, I would have been screwed.