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

I heard a series of muttering.

“What want, Dark Lord?” asked Wylie.

“How much silver do we have in the storeroom?”

Wylie took only a few seconds to think. Say what you will about his intelligence, but he knew his job inside out, including the full inventory of our storeroom at any given time.

“Three silver swords. Got from dead heroes. Eight silver ores found by Wylie.”

“And Karson and Tarius and poor Dylan too,” said a voice.

“And Wylie’s crew,” said Wylie, correcting himself.

“Good. Give a sword to Shadow, and I’m going to need a volunteer to equip themselves with another one.”

“A volunteer to hold sword?”

“Yes.”

“Hold it why?”

“To fight a werewolf,” I said.

“Wylie finds motivation of team by giving praise. Not sending to fight werewolves. That not motivate.”

“Ah, since you became the mining supervisor you know all there is to know about leading people, eh? Okay, General Wylie. Put this in your pipe and see how you like it; whoever volunteers to pick up a silver sword becomes Wylie’s boss.”

Wylie stared up at the ceiling with a worried look on his face. I have no idea why he always does that when I talk to him using my core voice; I suppose he thinks that I’m projecting it from above.

“Wylie will do it,” he said, finally.

“And that’s how you motivate someone,” I replied, not bothering to hide a trace of smugness in my tone. “You just got played, my lad. Bring the third sword to the core room, please. Shadow, meet us here in precisely four minutes. Karson, Tarius, take the silver ore to the alchemy chamber. I want it there in three shakes of a mermaid’s rump.”

“Got it,” came the reply.

I turned my attention back to the core room now. “Gulliver,” I said. “I want you to watch this carefully. Note down everything you see. You’re about to watch me destroy three werewolves. I’m hoping this will boost my reputation.”

“You don’t have a reputation.”

“And this is where I get one.”

CHAPTER 16

Sider and the Four versus Core Beno

Ah, alchemy. Considered a branch of philosophy by some, a science by others, and an excuse to spend hours in their garden shed away from their wives by a select few husbands.

There was something about playing with chemicals, dangerous materials, and the very essence of life that really thrilled me. I liked to think that I was an alchemist in my past life. After all, there was a reason I had been selected for resurrection as a core. It’s not as if corpses are rare; if being dead was the only core prerequisite, the academy could find a hundred candidates in the various battlefields and hospitals scattered around Xynnar. No, there was a reason I was chosen, and alchemy may well have been it.

It was in the alchemy chamber that I waited for Karson to join me, and while I was alone, I checked my core vision to see how the poison chamber situation was progressing.

Damn it.

The werewolves were ripping the walls to pieces, and it wouldn’t be long until they broke through into the tunnels. If that happened, things would be way too unpredictable. At least if I had them trapped then I could enact a plan.

“Dark Magnificence,” wheezed Karson, who entered the alchemy room and was struggling under the strain of the silver ores in his arms. “Here…I am, having just…carried all our…silver across the…dungeon. Just a normal, safe workplace thing to do. My back’s going to be a mess after this.”

“Put four ores within the red runemarks,” I said, nodding at the marking on the alchemy chamber floor. “Leave the rest on the ground.”

With the silver ores set within the runemarks, the alchemy chamber whirred to life. A second later, after a flash of light and a smell like burning magnesium, the silver appeared in the blue runemarks adjacent to the red ones.

Now, the silver was stripped back to its essence, presenting as a pile of powder.

Karson has performed [Minor] alchemy – 1% toward alchemy class specialization.

I made a mental note to return to the notification later, perhaps when there weren’t any bloodthirsty beasts tearing my poison chamber apart.

“Good, Karson,” I said. “Bring the silver to my core room, please.”

“Go here, go there,” muttered Karson, his topknot bobbing along with his head movements. “I bet Core Jahn’s miners don’t get this treatment…”

Having no time to listen to the whining of a kobold, I pedestal-hopped back into my core room, where Gulliver was waiting alongside the newly arrived Shadow and Wylie.

Both kobolds held silver swords that we had looted from heroes. Nothing special; just silver blades full of nicks, with wooden handles once held by heroes who’d barely posed a threat to me. We would put the swords to better use now.

“They’re almost through the stone blockade,” said Gulliver, nodding at the core-vision image I had left displayed on the wall of the core room. It showed the werewolves – did they never bloody tire? – still working away at the stone.

“Take note, Wylie,” I said. “This is how your miners should be laboring. See them? They don’t take tea breaks or complain that it’s too cold. Now, Shadow my chief scout, I need you to do something.”

“My whole existence hinges on fulfilling your every whim,” she said, pressing the sword tip into the ground and leaning on the hilt.

I quickly brought up Shadow’s skill list, absorbing its contents within a millisecond. With the werewolves almost free to rampage through my lair, I felt my core reactions kick in. I suppose this would be my version of anxiety; my brain narrowed down a precise line of focus, and masses of information, options, and potential problems swirled through my head, crisscrossing like flies above an unattended pork