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

Reginal basked in the resulting whoops of the crowd, but I wished he hadn’t used so much hyperbole.

It was true that, following my discussion with Jahn before the Collector arrived, I started thinking about how essence vines flourish underground, and in fact grow in places that normal plants can’t.

Working with Cynthia, we believed we’d successfully combined essence vines with a carrot plant, and early signs looked good. But it was too soon to start crowing about flourishing and hope and that sort of thing.

For the next two hours, Reginal and Galatee showed great leadership in praising their clanspeople and having them climb one by one to the podium to collect gifts and receive an honor for their labor.

By the end, almost every clansperson had been up there, though the people who received their gifts last had been granted considerably more drinking time, and as such they more staggered on the platform than walked over it. One of them, an orc with rippling muscles, launched into a slurred diatribe about how he loved his mom, and how the honor belonged to her.

Finally, as the drink took its toll and the sun had set completely and the town was lit up by mana lanterns fixed to poles and by small fires hemmed in by rock circles, Reginal addressed the crowd again.

“Be proud of your work, my good people of both clans. Nay, of one clan, for we are one people now. Be proud of yourselves, proud of each other, and take heart in the work still to come. And it is now, with honor that swells my heart, that I name our town for all eternity. I name it Yondersun, after the legendary city of old that stood for thousands of years in the desert its people tamed, under a sun they didn’t bow to.”

The celebrations wound on well into the late hours of the night until the mana lamps burned low and supplies of Cave Rot began to run out, and the stamina of the clanspeople was gone. Most headed to a lodge or the caves underground. Others, who had celebrated so much they had fallen asleep on the ground, were carried away so that they didn’t wake up under a scorching sun and have to add sunburns to their hangover.

“Core Beno?”

I was about to head back to my dungeon when Chief Reginal approached me. He had shed his ceremonial robes as well as his sobriety, walking with slightly more of a sway than was dignified.

When he reached me, though, his eyes seemed focused.

“Core Beno, I forgot to mention something,” he told me. “We will have visitors in a few days. The expected kind. The welcomed kind. No need to coax them into your lair and do whatever it is that cores do.”

“Visitors already?”

“Geologists, believe it or not. You see, while I had some of my workers dig for signs of those damned thermal pockets, one of them discovered a bone gem buried in the ground. He dug further, and what do you know? Tons of the things.”

“Those are quite expensive, aren’t they?”

Reginal laughed. “Bone gems? They’re worth less than a rubber-bladed sword, Beno. To a trader, anyway. But to a geologist, I am told they are quite the find and can tell us much about the makeup of not just this wasteland, but Xynnar itself. I had one of my assistants go to town and put the feelers out, and a local geologist group made me an offer.”

“They’re paying to come and study here?”

“Paying out of their arse, Beno. And not just to study. They will have to pay for lodgings, tools, perhaps even Cave Rot. As much as thermal pockets can be a nuisance, they can bring fortune, too. I suppose all things can, really. In the right context, you can find a good side to everything. Except for tax collectors.”

“That sounds incredibly naïve of you, Reginal, as much as it’d be a nice sentiment to believe. At least I know something, though; you’re a nice drunk.”

The goblin chief laughed for what seemed the first time in months, and at that moment didn’t look like a goblin struggling under the strain of leadership, but a goblin who was proud of what he’d accomplished.

“I should go and sleep, I suppose,” he said. “We’re heading to the Tasgario oasis in the morning to see if the area around it is a good spot for your essence crops. Take care, Beno.”

“You too, Reginal.”

“And by the way; excuse my threat of the whip. I was under a lot of strain then.”

*

That evening, I held a ceremony of my own. It was in a newly-finished chamber just south of my core room, a place no hero would ever get to. This was a ceremony just for me and my dungeon creatures. And Gulliver, of course.

Gathered there were the usual critters; my kobold miners, angry jellies, Shadow and the pups who followed her everywhere, Gary with his injured tentacle, Wylie with an even bigger chest injury that he loved showing off, and of course Dolos, the hero of the loot room.

I hadn’t gotten around to creating any new monsters yet, even though I had new ones available to me. My battle with the Collector had taken me from level 10 to 13, a tremendous jump in power that brought my total available essence to 1199. There was so much for me to do with it, yet I couldn’t right now. We couldn’t start thinking of the future without settling the past.

This new chamber was small, with little decoration save for mana lamps that we hadn’t ignited yet. I felt it was in keeping with the room’s purpose, and anything more might lack taste.

Every member of the dungeon