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

to the kingdom of Russyanov, lost to history when a baker left his oven unattended. What about Great Silus, renowned through Xynnar as a warrior with no equal, who died when he scratched his palm on a rusty nail and thought himself too strong to succumb to tetanus?

I was the rat. I was the blackened bread in the baker’s oven that grew into a blaze. I was the nail, covered in deadly bacteria just aching to spread into someone’s bloodstream.

Yes, the Collector could bring an army, and I still wouldn’t have cared.

“You seem worried, my friend,” said Gulliver. He sat on the core room floor and leaned against a wall, with one arm behind his back as though he was relaxing against an oak tree in a flowering meadow.

“I never look worried.”

“You do, you swine. I’ve spent enough time with you to tell. You get all short with your words and you bluster around giving orders to your minions.”

“Do you have the slightest idea what’s going on, Gull?”

He shrugged. “Another hero here for the slaughter, no?”

“This is no hero. In less than an hour, the Collector and a bunch of subservient cores will be invading my dungeon.”

The scribe held an ink-stained finger up and had a ‘got you!’ look on his face. “You have told me time and time again that a hero is merely…let’s see if I get this right…‘One who is not a core or monster, and finds their way into the core’s dungeon by their own means, for their own motives.’”

“Your point?”

“That the Collector, by classification, is a hero. And the cores coming with him will be heroes, too.”

“Ah, I see what you mean. Pull me up on semantics, today of all days. Fine, Gull, this will be a rare case where a core is a hero. Well done, very clever.”

“I don’t say this to display my enormous wit, my friend. I say it to remind you of something; whatever walks through the surface doors and down the slope to your dungeon, is nothing but a hero. And slaughtering heroes is what you do.”

“I told you; I’m not worried. I don’t need a pep talk.”

“I know. I know.”

“Thank you, Gull.” 

“Any time.”

“You’d do well to stay out of the way when things get frantic,” I said.

“My dear gem, scribalistic neutrality protects me better than the strongest shield.”

“This guy won’t give a rat’s arse about that.”

Gulliver rolled his eyes. “You know as well as I do how I can blend into the shadows.”

“Stay safe, Gull.”

*

Safe in my core room, with a top-down map of my dungeon projected to my right, I used my core vision to watch the chamber near the surface doors.

It wasn’t long before the figures appeared. First, a metal-armored troll who had to stoop to enter, and was too tall to stand up straight even when properly inside the room. Then came the clack-clack-clack of wheels turning, and three cores rolled into the room on their artificed platforms. The Collector was next, followed by his other cores. There was no sign of his flying lizards. I supposed he’d kept them outside to alert him of any potential attacks from the surface dwellers.

They were in my dungeon now, and Gulliver was right; if the Collector wanted me, he’d have to do what any hero would, and battle his way through.

So…were they up to the challenge? It was time to find that out.

Faced with a tile puzzle, perhaps the armored troll would have been stumped. They aren’t all that bright, as a rule. Maybe the puzzle would have given the Collector some pause, too. But six cores? There was no chance it would give them much difficulty.

“Well, get on with it,” said the Collector, its voice like wind whistling through the eye sockets of a skull. “I want to be home and asleep before midnight.”

One core, the color of a stormy sky and shaped like a cannonball, spoke.

“Tile puzzle, Lord Collector.”

“Dispense with the lord business. I have never told you to call me that, and I don’t understand why you started. Figure the puzzle out.”

In barely a second, the core answered. “Third from the right. Second from the left. Fifth-right, second-left, third right.”

“Milark, you heard the core.”

The troll, stooping, crossed the tile puzzle as instructed by the core. Although the troll seemed unnaturally tense, I knew nothing would happen, because the core had solved the puzzle perfectly.

Even when across the tiles, the troll seemed nervous. He scratched his chin with the base of his great hammer, and he looked around as if he expected danger to slither from every shadow. Not an altogether unrealistic expectation, in a dungeon.

“Funny, a great big troll like him,” I said. Tomlin was the only creature in my core room now that Gulliver had sauntered off somewhere. Tomlin wasn’t being nice, though; he was only accompanying me through his affliction of utter cowardice. “A big, hulking lump of muscle adorned in metal armor, and he’s scared already?”

“It’s the fear affliction, Dark Lord,” said Tomlin. “The one you were bragging about.”

Ah, yes. When my dungeon reached Hard I status, I had earned a fear affliction, and it was taking its toll on the troll. It did not affect the cores, since they were like me and knew nothing of fear. The Collector, too, seemed impervious. And what’s more, I knew the fear wouldn’t affect the troll for long. As they progressed, he would start to feel a little more at ease.

A nice dose of slaughter might fix that.

The Collector nodded to a core beside him, one the color of copper and halo shaped.

“Illusions,” he simply said.

With a burst of light, the core used its essence and created a little imp no larger than an apple. 

“Tricksies!” the imp cried, “Tricksies, tricksies, tricksies!”