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

slipped open and revealed his wrinkled, hairy chest underneath. Mercifully for us, he was wearing a pair of shorts to cover his modesty, but it seemed that apart from that and the robe, Mage Hardere didn’t much care for clothes.

“Sorry about the shaving business,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how many people try to kill a mage. They stand outside my tower at all times of the night. They shout the most ridiculous things.” He shook his fist in the air. “‘You bring the dead back to life! You create gargoyles!’ They ought to grow up. That’s the way of the world. Magic exists, gold exists. When the two are swapped, someone wins, someone loses.”

“The hair was for a spell of some sort, I take it?” I said.

“And the gem shaving, though the hair will suffice. Security for me, you see. If you tried anything when you were in here, you’d quickly regret it. Of course, I won’t keep Mr. Gulliver’s hair. I will destroy it before your eyes once our business is concluded. Now, Scribe Gulliver and Core Beno. What exactly is our business?”

“I need a portal.”

“That’s almost so simple that I’d be ashamed to take your gold. But as I have debts…where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the problem.”

“Ah. It’s not a where, but a who, then. You wish to follow someone, and you need me to open a portal to their whereabouts. A mistress, perhaps? Do cores have mistresses?”

“Scribes do,” said Gulliver. “Plenty of them.”

“Scribes also like to brag,” said Hardere. “Almost as much as mages.”

“Gull, give him the blood,” I said.

Gulliver opened his satchel and took out a glass jar with scrapings of dried blood in the bottom.

Hardere leaned forward, his man-breasts swinging like fleshy pendulums. “You know, such portals are against the Magic Dictorium. A mage may not produce such a portal unless he has a writ signed by an official of magistrate level or above. You can appreciate the complications when one has the ability to open portals like that.”

“How important is the Magic Dictorium to you, Hardere?”

“Oh, I treasure it. I have every law and edict scored into my mind, and I follow them as if they were the words of the gods themselves. You would never find a more Dictorium-abiding mage in the whole of Xynnar.”

“Might there be a way to erase a certain edict from your mind, just for a little while?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps. You tell me.”

Hardere held out both of his hands, palms up. One palm was raised much higher in the air than the other.

“Go on, Gull,” I said.

Gulliver sighed. Reaching into the satchel again, he said, “You really ought to find a way to get arms, Beno. Or bring one of your kobolds along with you next time. I’m not your servant.”

He took out a coin purse, inside which was half of the gold I owned. I had earned this from selling the surplus ores from my miners’ labors to the merchants in Yondersun. It was one of the benefits of having so much underground space to mine through.

Gulliver placed a gold coin on Hardere’s higher palm. The mage lowered his palm an inch, adjusting it like a scale.

“Another,” I said.

Gulliver put a second coin next to the first, and Hardere moved his palm further down, yet still much higher than the other.

“Exactly how much will this take?” I said.

“Only the scales may answer that.”

I had already counted on having to spend all the gold I had brought with me, but it still rankled. What choice did I have, though?

“Keep going,” I said.

By the time that the purse was empty, Harder’s coin-filed palm was still an inch higher than the other one.

“That’s everything I have,” I said. “Take it or leave it.”

“I’m afraid you are still a little short.”

“As I said; that’s all.”

“Not necessarily,” said Hardere. “There might be another way.”

Now, he flipped his hand over, dropping the coins on the floor and sending them scattering.

Gulliver leaped to his feet. “You senile old-” he began, and then stopped himself, no doubt remembering that he wasn’t just talking to a mage, but a mage who was in possession of one of his hairs.

“Gold is one thing,” said Hardere. “But I desire something else.”

“Oh?”

“Chip-Chap!” said Hardere, and then clapped his hands.

The studded-eared goblin appeared. “Yes, master?”

“Fetch her.”

“Certainly.”

Gulliver had gathered all of the coins by the time Chip-Chap reappeared. He came bearing a red velvet cushion, on top of which was…

No way!

I floated upwards in surprise, hitting the roof and making a chandelier shake. “What are you doing with a core in your possession, Hardere?”

“This is Namantep,” he said.

Gulliver shook his head. “The core who destroyed half the town? It can’t be.

Sir Dullarse dealt with her.”

“You have heard of her, then?”

“Of course. She’s the reason nearly everyone in this place stared at Beno like they wanted to incinerate him with their eyes.”

“That she is. Though as you can see, her days of destruction are over.”

That much was obvious. Namantep was only slightly smaller than the cushion she rested on. She was colored a deep red, and she might once have been shaped like a tooth, with a broad, flat top that tapered into a spiked bottom. Now, though, a large chunk of her was missing. No doubt from Sir Dullbright’s heroism.

Seeing a fellow core like that, lifeless and half destroyed, didn’t feel right.

Something began to happen to me. My vision faded for a second, returned, and then faded again.

“Beno?” said Gulliver.

“I’m fine.”

There it was again. The room darkened for a second.

What’s happening to me?

I felt myself drop in the air.

Glass smashed, and the room went completely black for several seconds.

When