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

- if I can be so modest - genius. They navigated a variety of puzzles; doors of truth, weighing scales of pain. Nothing special, just standard dungeon puzzles that any well-studied core knew how to make and thus, knew how to solve. Easy.

Finally, they reached the inner sanctum of the dungeon, emerging into what could only be a chamber dear to any core’s heart - the core room.

Dim lighting from scant mana lamps aside, this wouldn’t have looked out of place in a king’s palace. A cavernous chamber with walls boasting exquisite carvings of all kinds of diabolical demons and monsters. The ceiling was way overhead, tall enough to stack ten Garys on top of each other and still not reach the tip. Marble Stalactites hung from it, jagged clumps of mineral that could tear through a skull if they fell on a hero crossing underneath at the wrong time. It was a chamber to inspire awe and dread, two feelings coveted by even the most modest of cores.

And there, floating in the center atop a pedestal of polished steel, was the core. Triangular in shape, its gem surface glinting with the illumination that reached its angles and surfaces. The core itself was dull in color, rat fur grey. The color of a core in deep hibernation.

“Careful,” I said. “This place will be trapped to the gills. Gary, stay where you are. Shadow, use the dust.”

The murals and carvings weren’t the most fascinating thing here. Not even the core, ancient and sleeping, was the most special thing about this chamber.

No. I couldn’t believe it as I looked around.

“Blaudy stone,” I said.

The core chamber walls were made of blaudy stone. There was no denying it; the very walls themselves were pure, unrefined blaudy stone, enough of it to fund an entire kingdom.

The possibilities of owning such a bounty raced through my mind, but I fought hard to push them back. I had to focus. Just one mistake in here…

As Shadow carefully walked through the cavern and spread illusion dust, the core on the pedestal began to glow. A glimmer of light at first, taking form at its base, before spreading all over it as the core stirred back to consciousness.

“Brace yourselves,” I said.

Shadow completed a patrol, uncovering no traps, puzzles, or anything of the like.

“Who enters my chamber?” croaked a voice, the sound not unlike a man stirring from slumber after a night of revelry.

Luckily, I had already rehearsed what I would say to the core, using what I hoped would become something of a catchphrase.

“I am the Dark Lord, the Marvelous Malignity, the Devious Devil, the Saint of Sin. It’s only fair that you know my name before you die.”

“What? Death and thunder, a raven dares address me? I am Core Jerosalat. You will tremble before me. Kainhelm! I summon thee!”

“Destroy him now, my friends, before the narkleer gets here,” I said. “Gary? The pendants, if you please.”

Now, the pendants were the key to this. The weapons and spells that can destroy a core are but few. Artificed swords, mana-drenched axes. Magic wielded by master mages, that sort of thing.

But there is one form of spell that we are weakest to.

The pendants, wrapped around Gary’s leech leg, had once been filled with full moonlight.

Now, they were filled with holy light, this achieved by having Maginhart leave them in the missionaries’ church on the surface. After resting in the church for the last few days, the stone pendants had absorbed the aura of the church, the sermons of the pastor, the belief and worship of its patrons, storing it as holy light in the blaudy stone.

One blaudy stone of unholy light would hurt the core. Another would damage it almost irrevocably. Three of them would surely finish the job.

But unholy light isn’t just harmful to cores; it will damage any creature bred for dungeon life. It’s a reason that a cleric’s healing spells will replenish a hero, yet hurt a dungeon monster. Luckily, a cleric’s holy power is diluted by that weight that most people, especially heroes, carry with them; sin. Sin isn’t such a bad thing, if you ask me, especially given that it weakens holy power and lets people have fun.

So, pure holy light is difficult to come by, which is good for us cores. Even a blade artificed with holy power doesn’t have a raw supply of the stuff. But blaudy stones will absorb the holy light and filter the accompanying sin and disbelief, and that gave me a powerful weapon to use today.

“Shadow, Edgar, there will be no monsters to fight here. If there were, they would have appeared already. You need to go. Gary, activate the pendants, leave them on the ground, and get the hell out of there.”

The core tremored. The light had filled it fully now, coloring it a deep blood red.

“Blaudy stone pendants, hmm?” said the core, recovering its senses and with it, the smugness inherent in most cores. Really, we don’t mean to be so smug, but we can’t help it.

“Blaudy stones filled with unholy light,” I said.

The core looked at Edgar. “A core hiding betwixt the feathers of a crow. Pathetic.”

“Raven, actually.”

“Who are you, fellow core?”

“I…uh…I already mentioned that. You might try listening. And now, it is time to die.”

“You would kill a fellow core?” it asked.

“You would have done the same.”

“True, true. But I would not do it hastily. Not without learning something hidden from other cores. You see, fellow core, I sense youth in your voice, even filtered through the beak of a bird. I sense that you do not know the true meaning of our existence. The reason cores were created. It is not to slaughter sword swingers, you see. No. But if you kill me you will never learn…”

“Well, well, well,”