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

Now you’re asking the right questions. Pity I don’t have the right answers. Yorgoot seeds grow in the wild. I could see a young lad mistaking the yorgoot fruit for a plum or a cherry and taking a bite. But let me tell you, those things are rare. There’s a reason yorgoot poison sells for a mountain of gold.”

“Not easy to acquire, then.”

“Outlawed, actually. It’s illegal to cultivate the yorgoot fruit, and being caught in possession of a seed will get you jailed until your whiskers begin to grey.”

“Assassination is illegal too, but that distinction doesn’t stop assassins plying their trade. Tell me, Cynthia. Does…”

Cynthia sighed. “Beno, I have a job of my own, you know. Your dungeon has given me some of my more interesting jobs lately. Much better than the tedium Yondersun dreams up. That’s why I’m givin’ you the time of day and answering stuff like I’m an encyclopedia of Yondersun, or something. But if you’ve come here just to gab, then I have things to do.”

“One last question. The orbs that stop Devry’s condition from spreading. I have noticed that after a while, they fill up with a black mist. Does that mean they have to be replaced every so often?”

“Correct.”

“Where does Reginal get them from?”

“I make them, as it happens.”

Now I was getting somewhere.

“I want to help him get more of them if I can. What do you need to make them?”

“There’s the problem,” she said. “I need raw oscil, and plenty of it. Shame that it’s rarer than a gold-shitting dragon, and you can only mine it in a few specific places in the south. I bought my last batch from Hogsfeate, but they don’t have much to sell. I’ve got enough left for one more orb. Maybe two. After that...”

“Reginal is going to be desperate to find some more, for Devry’s sake. Right, I’ll see if I can help with that. Thank you, Cynthia. Oh, one last thing.”

“No, sorry, Beno. No more questions. I have work to do.”

“Actually, I need to buy something. I need something that will put a fire out as quickly as possible, and I need a few alchemical pastes.”

“Some that will extinguish a fire? If something is on fire, it would have been a better idea to ask that question first, no, instead of asking me all about young Devry? Priorities, Beno.”

“There’s no fire, yet. It’s more a case of being prepared.”

Cynthia dragged a huge leather trunk from a corner of the room. She popped it open to reveal hundreds of jars filled with various powders and materials.

“Let’s see…you could use…”

“I’ll send a kobold up to collect it all.”

“Don’t you want to hear what you’ll need?”

“No, Cynthia. I don’t have time. I have work to do.”

“Hmph. Fine. But send Maginhart.”

“Why?”

“I just like the little fella, as kobolds go.”

Leaving Cynthia’s tent with slightly more than a vague notion of what to do about Reginal, I floated in the Yondersun air for a minute. The sun bothered me just a little less now. I didn’t enjoy it, and I supposed I never would, but I could stomach it.

As I stared at Yondersun town way beyond me, at its hastily erected stone walls and at the residents coming in and out of the gates, I spotted a boy. A little goblin boy in a wheelchair, rolling himself along while a glass orb floated just behind him.

Devry, up and about. Smiling, chatting to people. As the chief’s son, people should have resented him. After all, it was hard for common folk to have affection for people born into power. But the Yondersun residents seemed to like Devry.

He was a good lad. It seemed a shame to use him as a pawn, but a pawn had to have value or there’d be no point using it in the first place. In this case, as long as Reginal played the game the way I wanted him to, there was no need for the pawn to get hurt.

Leverage would take time to get, but there were other things I could do in the meantime. First, there was a door to my dungeon that only Chief Reginal, Galatee, and I could unlock. This allowed them to visit me by taking a tunnel from the west, thus avoiding the parts of the dungeon strewn with traps and other means of causing death.

I didn’t want Reginal and Galatee to continue enjoying the same access through this tunnel, but nor could I lay traps all over it. That would too blatant. Instead, I opted for something different; a good old lock. I crafted two great bolts on our side of the door so that Reginal and Galatee would need to knock on it and ask for access. It would put their noses out of joint and might strain the good relations I’d been trying to foster, but I was hardly the one who’d started it.

Later in the day, Maginhart returned from the surface with a jar full of white powder, rather like flour. He presented it to me, his forked tongue hanging lazily from his mouth.

“Cynthia saysss a pinch of thisss ssshould extinguisssh mossst firesss, Dark Lord,” he said.

“Thank you, Maginhart. Can you take it to Tomlin in the essence cultivation room and explain what it’s for?”

“Certainly, Dark Lord.”

Maginhart began to walk away, shoulders slumped.

“Maginhart,” I said.

“Yesss?”

“Cynthia is looking for an apprentice. How would you like to study under her for a while?”

“Become a tinker, Dark Lord?”

“Tinker, alchemist, artificer. She’ll teach you a little of everything. It won’t be forever; you’ll still be a part of the dungeon, and I’ll expect you to come back and use your skills here.”

“But I would not be a miner?”

“Correct.”

He smiled, straightening his shoulders. His beady lizard eyes glowed. “Thank you