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

that five ravens made quite a din as they swooped through the arena, gliding under the stone ceiling and sweeping past the battle murals carved into the walls.

“A grating sound,” said Gulliver, joining me. “Sounds like the reception I received when I published ‘A Grave Matter; 1000 Jokes to Use at a Loved-One’s Funeral.’”

“Gulliver, meet my raven strike squad. Five corvid combatants led by Edgar, who I deemed to be the cleverest.”

Gulliver watched the birds looping in the air, attacking the straw dummies at the end of the arena by hovering overhead then swooping down to peck them with their beaks. The dummies, straw versions of men, women, and children, suffered the attacks silently, but it gave me an idea of how effective my newly created creatures could be.

Not very.

“You know, life in a dungeon core isn’t as I expected,” said Gulliver. “Killing heroes, messing around with their corpses, sure. Distasteful, perhaps, but understandable given your rather twisted mind. But bird watching?”

“They aren’t great fighters, I’ll admit that. I created them as a scouting unit. Shadow will be in charge of them. They can cover much more distance than poor saps who have to walk around on their legs, and they are black enough to blend into the shadows.”

“So that’s how you’ve spent the last few days. Teaching birds how to spy.”

“I created the ravens and had them train in the arena for a while. It’s helped their offensive abilities some, but they’ll never be great weapons for me. Better to use them for reconnaissance. Don’t ask a one-armed man to climb a ladder.”

“Excuse me?”

“We all have our limitations, Gull. The phrase anything is possible was created by dreamers trying to kid themselves that one day, they’ll stop spending their nights in the tavern and go kill a dragon and become rich and famous. No, better to welcome your limitations like an old friend, and then together, find a purpose that truly suits you. Some of us may never climb mountains, so better to concentrate on conquering our own, personal hills. There’s a reason the clan decided that Jahn will build on the surface, while I stay here in my dungeon.”

“You can’t do what Jahn does, can you?”

“I’m not perfect.”

“Yet the world makes us think we should strive to be, and in the striving, we doom ourselves to failure. I understand, Beno.”

A raven whizzed by Gulliver’s head now, making the scribe flinch.

“Bugger off!” he shouted, swatting the air with his hat.

Another flew at him from his right, and before he could react it had ripped a silver button from his coat.

The raven, with the button in its beak, flew overhead now.

“Shiny thing! Got shiny thing!” it bragged.

The other ravens looked on with jealousy, and soon they were lined up in the air near Gulliver, waiting to get their own shiny things from his coat.

“Cut it out,” I told them.

“That’s coming out of your share of the book profits,” said Gulliver.

“There will have to be some profits first.”

He fingered the broken thread that had once fastened his coat button. He looked genuinely saddened by the state of it.

“Doesn’t Shadow have her hands full, even without a band of thieving birds sky rats to worry about?” he said.

“You mean the puppies?”

“Aye. Cute little buggers.”

A few days earlier, after I had started my monster melding room on its task, Shadow had come back from a surface scouting trip with five little mongrels in tow. Small things with big paws and wide eyes, who proceeding to cock their legs on my core room walls.

“Found them up top,” she told me. “Caged and alone.”

I tried to think of an instance where a dungeon had become a puppy sanctuary, but nothing came to mind.

“Get rid of them,” I said.

“Beno, you are thinking with just your evil side as usual. Consider practicalities. Puppies can be trained. They have noses and teeth. What better than a pack of whelps, brought up in the dungeon? They will come to think of it as their territory and will defend it.”

I considered it, and she had a point. I had to admit, watching the pups play wrestle with one another, that they had a certain cuteness. I would never have said this though, because such a word is banned from a core’s vocabulary.

“Fine. But I want them raised as killers. Big, hulking beasts of fur and teeth who will rip and bite and tear.”

Just then, one pup approached me and licked me, leaving a trail of dog spit on my gem body.

Shadow smiled for the first time since the escapade with the werewolves, and then left me. Her puppies, seemingly bonded to the kobold already, followed.

That was how, not long after slaughtering the last band of heroes, my dungeon became the home to a wandering duck, who was fascinated with my traps, and five pooches.

Now, standing in the arena with Gulliver and watching the ravens play a game where they passed their new shiny thing from one bird to another using their beaks, I began to feel a core’s version of anxiety, where a flood of information and problems and possibilities flooded my mind.

Gulliver was standing in the center of the arena, trying to catch the ravens as they flew overhead and made jeering squawks, keeping his button out of reach.

The scribe jumped and tried to catch one bird, but missed and lost balance, landing on his rump.

“Just leave them,” I said. “They stole a silver coin from Wylie’s pocket, and he spent five hours trying to get it back. They’re like children; if you ignore them, they’ll get bored with their shiny thing.”

The scribe reluctantly left them and joined me. “You seem tense, Beno.”

“Tense? No, Gull. A core does not get tense. I am a little edgy, perhaps.”

“They are