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

The dungeon was silent then, save for the sound of a duck quacking.

CHAPTER 17

I activated my carefully-designed poison chamber venting system. In practice, this meant that I mentally commanded a mouse-sized hatch leading to the surface to open, allowing the gas to escape.

“Rusty, go get the duck out of the poison chamber. No sense having poultry murder on my conscience.”

“Are ducks poultry? I always thought that was chickens,” said Gulliver. “Ducks are fowl.”

As Rusty went to retrieve the fortunate fowl, my dungeon filled with more cheering and whooping than at a jousting contest where a knight falls off his horse and lands face-first in dung.

The tunnels filled with the victory cries of kobolds who were lost for words at the fact that they’d come through this barely scathed. It echoed with the squelch of Gary’s leech legs slapping Wylie on the back. It resonated with the noise of fire beetles scampering down the passageways chanting “Fight!” “Death!” “Kill!”

What a day. What an intense, frightening, but absolutely amazing day. I could hardly believe what we’d done. A hero fight had turned into an impossible contest, yet we’d pulled ourselves through it.

As with any battle, the first thing I saw when my enemies were finally dead was a wave of information. I liked to think of this as less a boring notification, and more a confirmation of my brilliance.

[5] heroes defeated!

- 2x humans

- 3x werewolves

You have leveled up to from 7 to 10!

- Total essence increased to 909

- Existing crafting categories expanded

- Dungeon capacity increased: 21 rooms, 25 traps, 14 puzzles, 26 monsters, 2 boss monsters

- Core Control duration increased 

Well, oil my backside and call me the emperor of dungeon cores…I had just leveled up three times from a single fight! I knew Gulliver had been joking when he mentioned a celebratory cake, but now I really felt like baking one.

After defeating a party of five heroes I knew I would level up once, but I hadn’t expected a triple-level up. I supposed that was the benefit of taking on three werewolves, even if I hadn’t initially known I was dragging myself into such a fight. 

This improvement meant that I had a bigger essence capacity to deal with, and as well as expanding my crafting categories. And to top it all off…I could now afford to create a drownjack! 

Of course, I’d have to make a pool of water for it to live in, but that wasn’t a bad thing. With pools of water came added difficulties for would-be heroes. Swimming through a pond of fetid dungeon water is hard enough when you’re weighed down by weapons and armor, but it becomes a real pain with a drownjack swimming beneath the surface. This could be an excellent addition to my lair.

Unfortunately, I needed to turn my attention to the narkleer and defeating its master so that I could have the creature on my side. I had to do that before the clan up top got wind of it and I lost my advantage. I still had scheming to win my freedom to worry about, after all, so I couldn’t spend all my essence yet. Sadly, the drownjack would have to wait.  

As well as my own level-ups, I received a notification of my clanmates’ improvements, too. It made for interesting reading.

“So how does a dungeon core celebrate victory?” asked Gulliver. “A song from your bard, perhaps? Is there a party room hidden away down here, filled with decorations like rotting corpses and…I don’t know…big, stinking piles of hero flesh?”

“A lovely thought, but we don’t have parties. I do need to address my people, however.” I cast my core voice throughout the whole dungeon now. “Brave kobolds, bugs, shamans, bards. I’d like you all to meet me in the loot room.”

And with that, I traveled to a pedestal north of the core room, where I found myself in the biggest chamber in the whole dungeon. This was the loot room, which would normally host the bulk of a core’s battles against heroes.

Today, it was free from blood, guts, and all the delightful things that fall out of people’s bodies. Instead, there was just a loot chest sitting in the center of it. The only other thing of note was a tiny crack in the ceiling, through which daylight from the surface filtered. It was the result of a mining mishap, and it was so low on my list of priorities that we hadn’t fixed it yet.

One by one my creatures joined me. Karson and Tarius were first, joined by Wylie who was bragging to them about his part in the fight.

“And then Wylie pass sword to Gary and say ‘Gary, kill!’ Wylie was like war general!” he said.

Next were the bugs, scampering in on their cute little legs, chirping about death and killing. You’d think they would get bored of the same conversation over and over again.

Rusty entered with a ‘Yip yip!’, while Gary and Brecht strolled in together, locked in what looked to be a thoughtful chat.

“Music is food for the soul,” said Gary. “A sandwich for the self, an egg for the ego. I would so love to hear you play when we get a break, dear chap.”

Brecht, idly tapping his tambourine, smiled. “I do have a new ballad I’m working on, as it happens.”

“Oh? My beetles and I would love to play you one of our musical creations, too. We call it ‘Fight, Death, Kill.’ I am useless with lyrics, I’m afraid, so I let the beetles compose them.”

“Sounds interesting.”

Gary put a leech leg across Brecht’s shoulder. “Thank you, my bard friend.”

The next to enter were my jellies, Peach and…the other one. I hadn’t named him yet. I thought about calling him Cream, but Peaches and Cream was something a