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

 Shadow, pressed against a wall and holding a silver sword in her hand, glanced at the hatch. It was too far away. She’d never make it.

I brought up my map and saw Peach, the jelly, still making his way through the tunnels. He was going to be too late!

“Shadow, run for the hatch,” I said.

She took a deep breath, glanced at the hatch, and then sprinted.

A wolf leaped with its claws outstretched. It missed her as she ducked, swiping the air just inches above her head.

Another wolf read the path of Shadow’s sprint, and instead of attacking her directly, it leaped toward the hatch and blocked it.

Shadow, trapped between one wolf and its brethren, gripped her silver sword tight. She mouthed something, but I don’t know what. The words weren’t for me or anyone else, I guessed. Facing her end, Shadow said something to herself only.

In the next split of a second, I took in a flood of information.

Gary, my spider-leech-troll hybrid, was standing beside Wylie in a tunnel near the chamber. Peach was too far away to assist. Brecht had no hope of taking on three werewolves.

Damn it all to the underworlds, there was nobody close enough to Shadow to help her. Nobody to…

Wait a second!

As I watched, part of the boulder blocking the tunnel archway exploded, sending fragments of stone into the chamber. As weak as it already was after the wolves had worked on it, the rest of the stone broke away, revealing the tunnel that led out of the room.

There in the archway, with a pickaxe in one hand and a totem in the other, was Rusty the shaman.

“Yip yip,” he declared, showing no fear of the werewolves. “Didn’t expect me, did you? Well, it’s a real shaman… that you’re going to have to die.”

As much as I enjoyed a play on words, especially one said in a heated moment when most people wouldn’t have had the gall to make one, I wasn’t happy.

For one, it was a crude play on the word shaman. If my dungeon creatures were going to start quipping to heroes, I expected better than that.

Secondly, Rusty had just served himself up as werewolf chow, while leaving them free to enter the rest of my dungeon once they killed him. If he survived this, we were going to have to talk about his foolhardiness even despite how much I liked his enthusiasm.

Before the werewolves could react, the kobold shaman planted his totem on the ground and spoke a shamanic word, something like takandra or librandra.

The totem, adorned with a griffin’s feather on top and a femur bone tied to it with dried intestine, glowed red. A circle of blood-red light appeared at its base.

“Takatana!” shouted Rusty.

The werewolf at the head of the triangle jumped, landing at the totem in one move. He raised a clawed paw to strike Rusty, when a sound came from the totem, like the rush of wind in a storm.

Fire shot from it, smashing into the werewolf’s chest and spreading across its fur as a zigzag of light, singing its torso and probably filling my lovely poison chamber with the stench of burning hair.

Stumbling to the side and beating its chest to put out the flames, the werewolf turned just enough that Shadow, hugging the wall nearby, had a clear chance of a backstab.

The other wolves, witnessing the power of the totem, backed away a step, but that didn’t help. The totem’s range was too large, and pulses of fire shot at them at a rate of one per three seconds.

The problem was that I knew that the totem’s spell duration depended on the shaman’s mana, so that didn’t leave long.

“Shadow,” I said, projecting my core voice directly to her so that nobody else could hear it. “Gut the wolf while you can. Stick it before it has a chance to recover!”

Her eyes were wide with fear. I had never seen her like this. “But the others…”

“Fire doesn’t hurt them as much as silver, but they’re just as scared of it. Part of their instincts. Kill it while the totem holds them back, then you and Rusty can retreat.”

She didn’t move, except to fall into a coughing fit. Damn it all to the far reaches of the underworld – the silver-laced poison was going to kill her.

“Shadow, now!” I told her.

She didn’t move.

The totem continued pumping fireballs at the werewolves, who leaped this way and that to avoid each one.

She was going to lose her chance, and what’s more, if she didn’t move soon, the poison would overwhelm her. If she fell unconscious in the poison chamber, she was done.

Should I tell Rusty to drag her out, putting himself in more danger?

Should I send in Gary and Wylie and the others?

No, I had one choice left, just one ability I could use. But had it recharged enough after my last use? It didn’t matter, I just had to try.

I gave a mental command.

Core control activated.

My consciousness leaped from my core and into Shadow, and just a blink of time later and I found myself in the poison chamber in her body. I looked upon aa scene where great big werewolves were jumping all around the room to avoid getting their bums roasted, while a shaman watched from the archway and danced an excited jig.

Possessing Shadow meant having to deal with her senses, since most mortals can’t shut them off. The smell was terrible; an intoxicating mix of poison silver and burning wolf fur that made me want to gag. This was a time where I didn’t envy mortals and their real eyes, ears, and noses.

I focused. I didn’t have long, and I might be yanked out of Shadow’s body at any time.

Gripping the silver sword and feeling its heft in my hand,