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

Gull, because I have distilled werewolf essence right here. I’m wondering what would happen if I fed it to someone.”

“Perhaps the wolf part will be absent, leaving just the were. Whoever eats it may change into something else entirely. A weresnail. A weresheep, perhaps, baaing at the moon.”

“I’ll need to experiment.”

“Experiment by feeding this dust to your creatures, you mean?”

“Well, I can’t eat it myself.”

“This borders on the pale, Beno. In fact, it’s crossed the borders of Pale and is camped out firmly in the kingdom of Bloody Unethical. Far be it from me to tell a core how to run his dungeon, but I have spent time with you and your creatures. I have to say, I like you all. Well, most of you. I would not want to see this go wrong and irrevocably altering poor Wylie or Karius or Tarson.”

“It’s Tarius and Karson,” I said. “And no, I get your point. The world isn’t ready for a were-kobold with a topknot. Let’s shelve that for a moment because there is something else that I need to look at. Can you grab those necklaces from over there?”

“Sure thing,” said Gulliver, crossing the chamber. Then he stopped. “Wait. These necklaces…did they belong to the heroes?”

“No, I had them specially made as a gift to you. Of course, they did!”

“Then find someone else to mess around with a dead man’s stuff. Looting is specifically forbidden in scribalistic neutrality. Sorry, chum.”

I sighed. “Fine; just take a look at them for now. Those are the blaudy stone pendants. The heroes, knowing they could only change into werewolves at a certain part of the lunar cycle, must have left the pendants out during a full moon, allowing the blaudy stone to absorb full moonlight.”

“Fascinating.”

“Now, blaudy stones absorb the essence of anything and store it as a spell that the wearer can cast. That means even a non-mage can walk around with magic swinging on his neck, as long as his coin purse is full enough. One blaudy stone is worth enough gold to keep even chubby King Redruck in pies for a full decade. And I have five of the things! Think about what I could do with them.”

Gulliver tapped his chin. “They absorb essence, eh? Is luck an essence? One could absorb luck and use it to gamble your way to a fortune.”

“Luck…no, it isn’t. But emotions are a form of essence. I could store fear, anger…”

“Lust?” asked Gulliver.

“I suppose.”

“Mind if I borrow a pendant?”

“We aren’t teenage girls, Gull. I’m not lending you my jewelry. No, I’ll have to think of a use for them, but believe me, this could power me up tremendously. Things are falling into place for my narkleer capture. Yes. And I know what’s needed next. Follow me.”

CHAPTER 19

I transferred from the alchemy chamber and into the monster-melding room. There, I waited alone for a minute before my error occurred to me.

“I’m in the melding room,” I said, projecting my core voice. “Sorry; I tend to forget that you two-legged fools can’t pedestal hop.”

Gulliver arrived soon after, and waiting for him had given me a chance to plan things.

“I leveled up enough to have two boss monsters in my dungeon a while ago,” I said. “But I only have the hivemind shrooms as a boss monster currently. I have been saving my second boss slot until I could make something truly gruesome. You know, a real horror of a creature.”

Gulliver began scribbling madly, as he always did when learning about new dungeon stuff. “What’s so special about a boss monster?”

“Allocating boss status to a creature not only gives them boosts to their attack, defense, and relevant spells or abilities, but it’s a tonic for the creatures around them. When they’re close enough to a boss monster, all dungeon creatures get a boost to their abilities. The more powerful the boss monster, the more powerful the boost. Therefore, I need to make sure I don’t waste my boss monster slots. I could assign, say, Wylie as a boss and he’d get a boost, but the creatures around him would barely benefit.”

“Ah. So, boss monsters are like dukes. The more powerful a duke, the more power spreads to his friends. A weaker duke will still spread power to his buddies, but less of it.”

“Sort of, except boss monsters don’t tax the poor or take a new wife to bed every few months, having beheaded the old one.”

The monster melding room was similar to the alchemy chamber, in that it had runemarks on the floor. The walls were adorned with the carvings of monsters big and small, ones that existed or had yet to exist, as well as creatures that might never be born. Dragon-sized snails with shells as big as a house. Snail-sized dragons whose fire was probably no more powerful than a match. There was no telling what bizarre combination of creatures this room might produce. The element of surprise was the melding room in all its splendor. A place of possibilities.

Gulliver completed a lap around the room, running his finger over the walls and then licking his fingertip. He pressed his ear against a wall carving of an antelope with two heads and a bogbadug’s legs. He sniffed the depiction of a bison as big as a troll who walked on two legs.

“The senses,” he said when he caught me looking. “A scribe must engage them all. An occupational hazard when you’re a warscribe, let me tell you. And the smells that came from Duke Canbridshire’s kitchen…”

“What do your senses tell you about this room?”

“Dust. Dust and dirt. It stinks as much as the rest of your lair, in the nicest possible way. What are we doing here?”

“See the three runemarks on the ground?” I said.

“I completed a course in runescript in scribe college. Let’s see