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

you to send Edgar and the others out. Fly a lap over the Collector and get a better sense of the cores with him, and I’ll watch. I need to know their shapes, their colors, everything.”

*

The raven soared across the sun-kissed sky, swooping through the windless air and covering three miles with barely any effort, finally hovering close enough above the invaders that I could now see them in detail.

I watched through Edgar’s eyes, and below us, I saw a motley gang steadily advancing across the wasteland. There was a great big troll, not much shorter than an oak tree and just as wide, adorned in steel armor that must have taken a dozen dwarves several months to fashion. He carried a giant axe that could have felled a castle, which he gripped in his right hand. Beads of sweat fell from his brow and down his face, disappearing where his armor joined his neck. His steps were lumbering, and his expression made it clear not just how much he hated the sun, but how much he hated wearing a metal chassis as he walked under it.

Next to him was that old core’s fable, the Collector himself. I had heard the stories and I had seen the illustrations in the academy library. I had seen him mentioned both in books that presented as empirical truth, and ones that made clear they were tall tales. Unfortunately, both truth and fable agreed on one thing; the Collector was a disgusting creature. If I had created him myself, I would have been proud enough to crow about his loathsomeness from the rooftops.

The Collector was like an abomination created by the lord of abominations, and then cast out for being too abominable. He wasn’t just a collector of cores, it seemed, but a collector of limbs and body parts, with various arms, legs, fingers, and toes taken from humans, orcs, gnomes, and other such species, and then somehow grafted to his body and made to function.

I could sense the fear inside Edgar now, and this transmitted to the other ravens, who flew much closer together than they normally would.

“Stay calm,” I said using my most relaxing voice, which wasn’t all too calming given that I am a dungeon core.

Traveling with the Collector were six dungeon cores, with three on either side of him. They moved on wooden platforms with wheels at the bottom, which seemed to roll forward of their own accord. It must have been some sort of artificery.

I wanted one. Badly. But that was for another time.

“Get a little closer,” I told Edgar.

The raven flew as low as he dared, which still left plenty of distance between him and the invaders.

I saw the cores in more detail now. Their construction was gem-based, like Jahn and me, but it was clear they weren’t from the academy. In the same way humans from different regions can sometimes tell one another apart, I knew that I shared no forgeship with these cores.

So…where had the Collector collected them from?

“Get a little lower, plea-” I began.

With a snap of light, four beings emerged around a golden, nugget-shaped core.

The figures took form as the core worked with the essence inside him, and soon, a flock of creatures took to the skies. These were monstrous things. If mother nature had made them, you’d have said she had taken a blow to the head that day. It would have been a great injustice to all birds to label them such; these things were like lizards given wings, but nothing at all like dragons.

The ravens packed closer together now, flying with at barely a wingspan apart. The flying lizards rushed through the air, their wings – lined with spikes, obviously – flapping like a giant clapping his hands together.

“Retreat,” I told Edgar. “Get back to the dungeon. I’ve seen enough.”

As the ravens swopped in an arc to face the dungeon way behind them, a ball of green fire shot from one lizard, smashing into a raven and sending him to the ground amidst a chorus of cries and mad flutters of his wings.

His raven mates squawked but they didn’t stop, and I felt a core’s version of anger; that being a steely determination to smash this Collector and his demented cores into the dirt.

“Shadow,” I said, projecting my core voice across the wasteland at to the dungeon, where the kobold waited at the surface door. “If the fight is on the surface, it will be a slaughter. Jahn can’t cope, and the clans certainly can’t. Not when these cores start sprouting kobolds from their orifices. Tell them to get to their cavern underground and seal themselves in.”

“Chief Reginal won’t like that. The invaders will destroy the town.”

“No, the Collector is here for me. That’s his whole thing, you see - he collects cores. Warn Reginal, then get yourself back into the dungeon. I’ll lead our new friend to my lair. My hallowed halls and gloomy passageways will be the last thing he sees. The only thing he’ll collect from me is a cart ride to the underworld, where he can sip tea with Mother Death. I heard she makes a lovely cake.”

CHAPTER 31

A bard, a shaman, a scout, two boss monsters, three fire beetles, three kobold miners, a troll-spider-leech hybrid, a drownjack, two jellies, four ravens and a duck, five puppies, a cowardly essence cultivator, and, of course, a narkleer.

It didn’t sound like much of an army, really. Then again, only a fool needs an army to win a war. That’s where all those lords and dukes and kings and queens go wrong. They assume that whoever has the most shivering soldiers lined up on their side of the battle, will win.

Tell that to the great city of Talzin, brought to its knees by a rat infected with the blackboil disease. And