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

I joined him in the room, Bolton was pacing around it. “Not much to inspect,” he said. “Very little dungeon progress since my last visit. A new tunnel and room, yes. A loot chest, as I have seen. More essence vines. Oh, and the kobold. Not much advancement to speak of.”

I was going to point out that it had been only days since his last evaluation, but I was feeling especially level-headed that day. I sensed it would be a bad idea to offer a contradiction to an overseer who I had already annoyed.

“By the way,” continued Bolton, “Your kobold is extraordinarily bad-mannered. Sitting on the loot chest? Not doing any work? Refusing to move out of the way? If I was still a core and this was my dungeon, I would have whipped him for two days straight and then I’d make him wash his own blood off the whip.”

Hmm, this was a side of Bolton I had never seen before. He hardly ever talked about his days as a core. When he did, it was in class and he spoke on a purely educational basis.

“You used to whip your minions?” I asked.

“You’re a core, Beno. You aren’t their friend. A dungeon needs discipline, and you set an example for the others by punishing the unruly. Well, what do I know, standing next to Beno the Almighty? I only created the greatest dungeon ever made, after all. Hmm. Hopefully, Core Beno, your minions will accept your softer brand discipline and will not take advantage of it.”

That sealed it. He was fixing to issue me a condemnation. I don’t know how he had rigged it so that he could evaluate me again so soon. I mean, cores were picked randomly for evaluation until each one had a turn. Then the random process would begin again. There was no way that every other core had been evaluated already.

I guess I was right about the appeal. I hadn’t meant to, but I had made an enemy of my favorite overseer. Great.

My only job now was to get through this evaluation without giving him another reason to condemn me.

“You know,” said Bolton. “Two cores have already opened their dungeons.”

“What?”

“I won’t give names, but you can use them as a measuring stick. In your dungeon I see one requirement satisfied, one partly satisfied, and two completely ignored. Your quick start has slowed down of late, Core Beno. Don’t rest on your laurels.”

“Sometimes haste can lead to mistakes. I would hate to open my dungeon early just to get ahead, only for the heroes to sweep through and maybe even find their way into my core room. Some cores open their dungeons without any traps, relying on their monsters to defeat the heroes. That seems risky to me.”

“And you are risk-averse, aren’t you? You don’t have a history of trying out dangerous techniques or anything like that?”

“Sometimes a risk is worth it, sometimes it isn’t. I would like to be prepared for my first heroes, to ensure my success.”

“Hardly any core ever defeats their first party of heroes,” said Bolton. “The best you can hope for is to kill one of them, and prevent the others from removing his corpse from your dungeon after they have taken your loot.”

“That’s the dream,” I said.

“Is that sarcasm?”

“How about I show you my core room now, overseer?”

He shook his head. “I have seen it. Actually, I believe I have seen enough. You’ll receive my reports shortly.”

With that, Bolton was gone.

Well.

That had gone smoothly.

CHAPTER 15

I had to be honest with myself. I was going to get a condemnation. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too harsh. Maybe an increase in essence costs or something like that. It wouldn’t be ideal, but I could handle it.

It was just…before I came to my dungeon, I was excited. I had all these ideas. I wanted to get my dungeon running as soon as possible, and for the overseers to evaluate it and be impressed. I had blown that.

Even if I was optimistic and could convince myself that Bolton would reward me, there was always the chance the overseers were watching me remotely, and that they knew I was struggling to deal with a bogbadug, and that I had let an eleven-year-old girl waltz around my dungeon.

I was playing with fire, and I might already have a bunch of overseers looking unfavorably on my work.

Still, it wasn’t over. Hopefully, I wouldn’t get Bolton in my next evaluation. Now, I just had to make some real progress.

Yeah, that was it. Get busy, keep my worries at bay. Victory against a party of heroes would mean instant success; if a core completely obliterated a gang of dungeon divers, then it didn’t matter how many evaluations he failed. The overseers would be forced to give him a pass mark.

Time to get to work! This wasn’t over!

I entered my loot room, where Tomlin was still sitting on the loot chest.

“First things first,” I said, “We better think about how to deal with the bogbadug.”

“Tomlin sat on the chest for you, Dark Lord.”

“You did. Actually, my first step should have been to thank you, so I’ll do that now.”

“An order is an order.”

“It is, and I’d like you to carry on sitting there for a minute. Back in a sec.”

Hopping to room three, I listened and couldn’t hear a thing. Either Vedetta was being quiet like I asked, which was unlikely. Or she had left, and I had lost my surface liaison.

Still, it was lucky that I had blocked up the hole in the wall. What if I had left it open and a little girl had walked into the dungeon while Bolton was here? That wouldn’t have been good at all.

Phew.

Anyway, even if Vedetta had left in a huff,