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

were no clicks. No noises of traps activating. Instead, there was just the sound of Cael whistling to himself as he began helping his brothers.

Damn it! I knew how he’d escaped my pressure plate, and I hated it. If I was powerful enough to spawn a dragon to scorch the heroes to cinders, I would have. Even though dragons are notoriously poor dungeon occupants.

It was obvious what he had done. If the trap had been working, then him stepping off it should have triggered a hidden compartment in the ceiling. A gallon of acid should have rained down, boiling him alive and filling the dungeon with the stench of charred hero skin.

But there was no rumbling of a secret hatch, no lovely acid.

The bag he’d placed on the pressure tile must have been filled with stones that weighed as much as he did, but paradoxically were light enough for him to carry. Putting these on the tile had rendered the trap useless.

Damn it. I was so, so close.

Then again, Cael and his brothers were still outnumbered. I could still defeat them. This wasn’t the time to give up.

“Gary? Tear out his spine and strangle him with it, if you would be so kind.”

My giant spider-troll rushed toward Cael with his teeth bared, his face a picture of bestial hunger.

“Fight, Death, Kill,” I said. “Pincer him into pieces.”

From the other side of the loot room, three beetles perked up, pointing their antennae in the air. Fight, Death, and Kill were the size of dogs, with oil-black skin and pincers sharp enough to shave iron.

They charged into battle, screaming their own names at the top of their voices.

“Fight!”

“Death!

“Kill!”

Cael unsheathed his sword and held it upright until its blade caught the glow from the mana lamps scattered around the room. Taking a phoenix feather from his satchel, he used the feather tip to draw on the blade, just above the hilt. Red light spread over his etchings, forming a glowing lightning bolt on the metal.

I had seen him do something similar on one of his previous trips to my dungeon, where he used the feather to draw a shield shape on his chest piece. Back then, it had given him a shimmering field of energy that protected him and his brothers.

What was this new effect? Drawing something on his sword meant it would be an offensive ability. That was the problem with wartificers like Cael; their powers went either way.

It was too late for me to change tactics now. Gary bore down on Cael with a roar, his leech legs raised in the air to display all their razor teeth.

Cael pointed his sword at Gary’s abdomen. Gary’s roars were met with a crackling sound.

Light flashed once, twice, three times as a bolt of lightning left the sword’s tip, smashing into Gary and sending him flying across the room.

Cael’s brothers, still incapacitated yet watching the scene, coughed as they breathed in the stench of burning troll-spider.

Three cries drowned out the crackle of flames and Gary’s whimpers.

“Fight!”

“Death!”

“Kill!”

My beetles surrounded Cael. Waves of flame lapped over their husks as they activated their hell husk abilities.

“Fight!”

“Death!”

“K-”

There were three more flashes, followed by three crashing sounds like the roar of an angry god.

When the light faded, my beetles were scattered across the room, unmoving. Steam rose from their husks and made spirals on its way to the ceiling.

Cael’s had just incapacitated four creatures with that wartificer ability of his. Damn this miserable hero to the deepest hell in the underworld!

Knowing I couldn’t win, it was time for damage limitation.

“Gary, can you move?” I said.

“Just about, my good chap,” he groaned.

“Then get out of there. Brecht, you too. We’re done. Retreat.”

Brecht tugged a leather cord strapped around his shoulder, making his tambourine swing around so that it rested against his back.

“What about Fight, Death, and Kill?” he said.

I eyed my beetles, battered and smoldering yet showing signs of life with little twitches of their feelers.

“The heroes won’t care about them now,” I said. “Not when they’ve won the loot. Get out of there. No point risking your life on another defeat.”

Brecht lumbered out of the loot room, followed by Gary. This left the heroes alone in the cavern, with no creatures to stop them from taking the loot in the center.

Cael drew his dagger. Using his phoenix feather, he etched a set of rune letters on it. He approached his brothers and made cutting motions in the air around them, as though snapping invisible string. With a crackle of mana, his dagger broke his brothers free of their paralysis.

The shortest and youngest hero stretched his arms out now, pacing around the room. “Ah, it feels good to walk again!” he said. “Well done, Cael.”

Cael shrugged. “Pah. It was nothing, really. You would have done the same.”

“I’m not a wartificer like you.”

“You’d have thought of something. You’re not as dumb as you pretend to be,” answered Cael, smiling at his brother.

While his brothers checked the various chamber alcoves for signs of monsters, Cael took a golden vase from the treasure chest and held it aloft.

“Behold!” he shouted, using his best hero voice. “The dungeon loot is ours again!”

This was something that heroes tended to do, the whole holding treasure aloft thing. Stupid, if you ask me. The sensible thing would be to cram their loot in their satchels and get out of the dungeon.

But I couldn’t capitalize on their arrogance today, because I just didn’t have the creature numbers to do so. Those damned brothers had raided my dungeon five times in the last four weeks. They had battered my beasts, trashed my traps, and made my puzzles look like they’d been designed by blind, pacifist monks.

With Gary, Fight, Death and Kill