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

for his lapse, he adopted an especially stony expression. “Forget it. I hate all this, you know. Wordplay, games, hiding what you really want to say underneath a camouflage of witty retorts. It tires me.”

“That makes two of us.”

“I’ll just say it, then. Beno, I am threatening you. I want your support in the Silkers matter. If Chief Galatee sees that I have your backing on this issue, it might be enough weight to tip the balance.”

“Why would Galatee care what I think? She’s made it clear she isn’t all that concerned about me.”

“That’s a façade, Beno. It worries her, having a dungeon core under the town.”

“She need not worry. I’m a big softie.”

“We’re both just too tender-hearted for our own good, aren’t we? Galatee once told me about a type of frog. The dotted humming frog. They typically live with tarantulas five times their size who could kill them with ease. The frog guards the spider’s eggs against ants, while the tarantula in return protects the frog from predators. Galatee doesn’t enjoy being in a similar situation with your dungeon, despite the obvious benefits.”

“What am I, the tarantula, or the frog?”

“You’re a floating block of sentient minerals who is going to help me. You’re clever than the frog or the spider, and you realize that supporting me really is the only choice you have.”

“And if I don’t?” I said, equal parts annoyed and amused.

“That is where my threat is relevant. I can make your life very difficult.”

“You might say a life spent underground is difficult enough.”

“Come off it; you enjoy it down here, you strange, strange being. I can trouble your existence in other ways, ones that I’m sure you have the imagination to understand.”

“You’re a brave goblin, Reginal, traipsing into a dungeon core’s lair and making threats that you can’t possibly back up.”

“How many monsters do you have, Beno?” he said.

“How many freckles do you have on your arse?”

Another grin, barely hidden. “I would suppose that you have no more than five or ten battle-worthy monsters at the moment. Probably much fewer, given your recent defeats. Surprised that I know so much? Word gets around quicker than the plague, Beno. It moves especially fast when three hero brothers sell loot to merchants in town and then spend all night getting drunk and singing songs about what they did to you.”

I felt a flash of anger. Sharp, hot, but gone in less than a second. Even so, it was concerning. Dungeon cores aren’t meant to have much in the way of emotion, but lately, I had been having flashes of it here and there, along with other emotions. I had heard stories of it happening to other cores, that it was normal from time to time, but I had no use for emotions. They were a pain in my gem arse.

Damn you, Cael Pickering. This is your fault.

“Heroes love to exaggerate,” I said. “I wouldn’t put too much stock in drunken boasts.”

“Tell yourself that, by all means, but let’s not pretend that I am taken in by your lies. Your numbers are low, and I know what that means. I didn’t earn my chiefdom by begging for votes or having a perfect smile, Beno. I was fighting battles while you were still a corpse, before those academy forgers made you…what you are now. I know one thing above all others; the best time to stab a man in the back is when he’s already on his knees and gasping for breath.”

Did he have a point? It made no sense for Reginal to declare war on my dungeon, since even in my weakened state I posed too much of a threat to him. My dungeon was right below his town, after all.

But there was still some truth to his threat. I was weakened, for the moment. Reginal had plenty of goblin soldiers, and could no doubt call on more Yondersun townsfolk to pick up weapons if he ever needed them to.

Then again, casting my lot with Reginal was dangerous in itself, because it would upset Galatee.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

Reginal stood up and walked to the archway. His retinue shuffled along with him.

“Three days,” he said. “If you need the pretense of having a choice in this, I’ll give you three days.”

As Reginal the room, a thought hit me.

“Reginal?”

“Hmm?”

“How’s your son? Has his condition improved at all?”

“Devry’s the same as ever,” he said. “No change for better or worse. Why?”

“Just curious. He’s a good lad. See you in three days, Reginal.”

Reginal and his goblins stalked out of the tunnel then, the thuds of their boots getting quieter and quieter until they were gone, leaving me with a problem to solve.

“You’re floating, Beno. How wonderful! When did you learn to do that?”

“Thank you for noticing, Galatee,” I said. “You’re the first. It’s a fairly recent thing.”

“It suits you. Much better that a leader can move around on their own, rather than being carried everywhere, no? I always pitied you a little when you would come to Yondersun, carried to the surface by your little imp creatures.”

“Kobolds,” I said. “And thank you…I think.”

Chief Galatee leaned back in the chair. As a gnome who had spent her life underground, she was far more comfortable in my dungeon than Chief Reginal. And as someone who had never picked up a sword or seen battle, she was far more comfortable in a meeting chamber than him, too.

One thing she had in common with her co-chief was how the pressures of leadership weighed on her. Her face was looking more wrinkled by the week, and her eyes were more glaring than usual. Her temper was quick to fire and slow in cooling down, and it was said that lamp light burned in her quarters twenty-seven hours