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

you’re right; let’s chase this Cael fella, hunt him down, and you can do your whole slaughter thing. What’s stopping you?”

“For one, even on his own, Cael is no joke. He’s a wartificer. They get their powers by having scars gouged onto their bodies, and they draw the shape of their scars on their weapons and armor when they need to wield their powers. Getting even one wartificer scar is excruciating, I’m told. So far I’ve seen Cael use at least five different runemarks. He’s not averse to discomfort.”

“Pain threshold or not, he can still die.”

“Which leads me to my next problem. See, throughout my life as a dungeon core, through tons of fights with heroes, I’ve always ascribed to one rule; to kill someone, you need to know where they are.”

“Ah. Cael left via a portal.”

“Exactly. He used a portal stone, which means he could be anywhere in Xynnar. Although I can leave my dungeon now that I can float, the further away I am, the more vulnerable I become. My essence use outside the dungeon is weak at best, which means I can’t create more monsters when I leave it.”

“And you don’t want to be wandering around Xynnar asking every arse-scratching merchant or commoner excuse me, have you seen a hero named Cael?”

“That’s the size of it. I need to know where this cabbage brain is.”

“Well, Beno my friend, there exist in this fine world a thing called towns, though you might not realize it. In those towns are people called merchants, who offer goods and services in exchange for recompense. Some of those merchants…”

“Spare me the wit, Gull. I had enough of it reading your last book.”

Gulliver sighed. “Such disregard for language. You have no culture, Beno. If you want it said simply, then fine. Here it is. There’s a town fifty miles away, Hogsfeate, where a mage named Hardere lives. Among his many services, he can trace a person even if they hop through a dozen portals. Moneylenders utilize his services quite a lot. Unless you bribe him to refuse service to moneylenders first, of course. Not that I’m speaking from experience. But anyway, you just need some of your target’s blood, and Hardere will do the rest.”

“Blood? That’s good news! I have lots of it.”

“Not his brothers’ blood, Beno. Cael’s.”

“Yes? I have lots of that, too. He might have beaten me and taken my loot every time he came here, but I never made it easy. Let me check some of my bloodstains; I’m sure one belongs to him. Wylie has been keeping track of them, it’s something of a hobby for him.”

“There, you see? Good old Gulliver comes to visit, and all your problems are solved.”

“Not quite.”

“No? We’ll go to Hogsfeate, track Cael, and then you can murder him before he has a chance to recover, get stronger, and come back for you.”

“It won’t be that easy, Gull.”

“No? I thought I explained it well enough.”

“I told you; away from my dungeon, I can barely use my essence. I certainly can’t use it to create monsters. That means I’ll need to take an army of creatures with me once I know where he is. So far, Cael has been too strong for any of my monsters. I’ll need something new. A creature he can’t beat.”

“Why not conjure one while you’re in your dungeon, and then bring it to Hogsfeate with you?”

“Walk around town with a monster in tow? They’ll love that. No, Gull. Anyway, no monster I can make at my current core level is good enough to defeat Cael. But there’s a different way to get a better monster. I could persuade a wild one to join me.”

“We’re getting a little out of my area of expertise now, Beno. I’m not a monster tamer. Though I did once trap a wasp in a cup and release it outside a tavern.”

“Leave it to me. When we go to Hogsfeate, I’ll check the bounties board. Every town has a board where people post jobs for mercenaries to complete. Most of the jobs are mundane; ‘go kill the bandits who stole my coin purse.’ You know, that sort of thing. Every so often, a bounty will be posted asking for some man-at-arms to go take care of a monster plaguing the nearby area.”

“Ah. And if Hogsfeate has any monsters nearby, you’ll…what? Recruit them?”

“It is rarely that easy, but we’ll deal with that when we come to it. I take it you’re coming to Hogsfeate with me?”

“Then I can write the second book? Another tale of Core Beno and his treacherous army of darkness?”

“Hey! Less of the treacherous. But yes, you can write it. Pack your things, and we’ll go, and for demons’ sake, Gulliver…lose the winkle pickers.”

CHAPTER 4

“Move the trap nearest to your foot an inch to the right,” I said. “And the one just behind you isn’t set properly. See the spring? Please be more careful, Wylie. You’re not much use as a miner if you have no arms.”

A flicker of frustration crossed Wylie’s face before he hid it. I didn’t blame him. We had been playing around with trap configurations for hours now, and he was the one risking his limbs by moving all the devices around. I merely floated above him and barked orders, but hey, that was one of the perks of being the dungeon core.

“Dark Lord?” said a voice.

It was Maginhart, one of my kobolds. Kobolds were a mix of wolf and lizard, and while most of them had a heavier wolf weighting of appearance and instincts, Maginhart had much more of the lizard in him. Most of his skin was scaly, with few hairs growing in the cracks between them. Only his ears were hairy enough to be described as wolfish.

“What can I do for you, Maginhart?”

“I