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

Tasgario, forgetting duty and pecking order, hugged her. Galatee found herself smiling. When they separated, she went to the alcove in the wall where her clothes were hanging on a rod. She selected her thickest coat.

“Where are you going, First-Leaf?” he asked.

“To see Core Beno.”

CHAPTER 28

By the time I detected First-Leaf Galatee in my dungeon, Dolos the mimic had already surrendered his Cynthia and Devry imitations and returned to his transparent leech form. He squirmed on the ground in front of me as notifications chimed in my inner core.

Dolos [Mimic-Leech boss monster] has leveled up to 3!

- Mimic ‘tell’ less obvious

- Imitation strength increased

“Good, Dolos,” I said. “You were amazing there. She didn’t suspect a thing!”

It hadn’t all been Dolos, of course. I had used my core vision to watch Dolos as he transformed into the likeness of Devry, Chief Reginal’s son. He had gained knowledge of Devry’s appearance and voice after using his leech ability on Maginhart, whose surface dalliances had let him cross paths with the young goblin.

After that, it was a simple matter of planting a few psychological seeds in Galatee’s mind and reinforcing them with a further mimicry of Cynthia, the tinker.

It was a much cleaner plan than anything I could concoct with the narkleer, and it meant I didn’t have to risk actually hurting Galatee to get my way.

And now she was on her way to see me, walking through my dungeon tunnels and dressed in a thick fur coat to ward away the chill.

“Is it really that cold in here?” I asked.

Dolos said nothing. When not imitating anyone, the poor thing had little personality of his own, no identity onto which he could hang his metaphorical hat.

“You better leave now,” I told him. “But well done; you served the dungeon with great aplomb today.”

It was only a few minutes later that I heard footsteps outside my core room. Galatee, holding a map I had been forced to furnish her with so that she and the other clan people could avoid traps when visiting my dungeon, appeared.

“Core Beno,” she said. “I hope I am not intruding.”

“I am rather busy.”

“You appear to be doing nothing.”

“I am doing work of the mind, Galatee. Concocting plans, imaging mischief for heroes, and that sort of thing.”

“I wanted to have a little chat.”

“Well come in, come in. I’d offer you a seat, but we don’t have any chairs. And I’d offer you tea, but we don’t have tea leaves or cups.”

“I will take your hospitality as metaphorical, then.”

“And I will take your gratitude as implied. What brings you here?”

Galatee pulled her fur coat tight around her. Though the mana springs down here kept her appearance looking much younger than her true age, it was impossible to miss the fact that leadership was taking its toll on her. Her eyes had more bags than a duke’s butler after a shopping trip.

“I have been doing a great deal of thinking lately,” she said.

“I hope it wasn’t too taxing.”

“Perhaps we’ll talk when you feel a little less like…your usual self.”

“Wait, wait,” I said, chiding myself for giving into temptation and picking the low-hanging fruit. “I’m sorry. What did you want to discuss?”

“As I said, I have been doing a great deal of thinking.”

Don’t say a word, I warned myself. Rein in your inner idiocy.

“And how can I help?”

Galatee sighed. “Let me ask you something. If you had the chance to leave this wasteland, where would you go?”

I only needed a second to consider it, because it was something I had thought about many times.

“I would stay here.”

“Really?”

“You sound surprised. Dungeon cores build dungeons, Galatee. It is woven into our nature in the same way that no matter where he is in the world, a wagon attendant can find an illegally parked wagon. Even here, in this great big nowhere, there will be a wagon sitting somewhere with a little slip of paper folded under the reins.”

“I don’t know which of you is eviler,” said Galatee.

“You do me a great dishonor, Galatee. It’s obviously them. But anyway, when most cores leave the academy, they’re given so little underground space for their lairs that a moles’ burrow would fill them with envy. Through chance or mischance, whatever you want to call it, I find myself building a dungeon underneath a vast spread of nothingness. A place so barren that not a single greedy duke or avaricious earl has tried to claim it. I share my underground lair with nobody, I compete for space with nothing. In short, I can grow my dungeon unchecked, expanding as much as I like. I would be crazy to give that up.”

She stroked her gnomish chin. “So you would stay, even given the chance to leave. Hmm. And in staying, I presume, you would continue to offer defense to the clans if we needed it?”

“These hypotheticals are nice, Galatee, but I feel like you’re dangling an illusory pie with a crust made of dreams in front of a starving man. As you know, the choice isn’t mine. I labor under your orders.”

“I have been thinking about that. Recent conversations have enlightened me, in some respects, leading me to an epiphany.”

“Epiphanies are good for the soul, so I hear. Except for the priest out west whose epiphany led him to believe that humans have wings inside them, ones that only appear in times of great need. I’m told it took his followers a week to clean up the mess he made after leaping off Mount Edna.”

“My epiphany is less dangerous and requires no cleaning up after it. So I hope, anyway. I have decided that ownerships and mana contracts might be too cruel a thing to be applied to intelligent