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

“Not now, Kyren,” said Galatee. “Better that you go inside.”

They walked straight by us and stopped outside a house. Two guards went around to the back, while the other five stayed out front with Galatee. The chief called up to the window.

“Boothe Stramper!” she shouted. She waited a few seconds before shouting again. “Boothe Stramper!”

A half-naked man appeared at the window, his chest and face heavily scarred.

“You want some company, chief, you need only ask!”

The crowds on Jahn’s row quietened now. Every set of eyes focused on the chief and her guards surrounding Boothe’s house.

“Boothe Stramper, we have some questions to ask you.”

“It takes six of you to have a conversation? I know I’m intimidating, chief, but you do me too much honor.”

“Get dressed and come with us.”

“Certainly! Just give me a second, and I’d be happy to go anywhere you want, escorted under armed guard. Wait a second…it occurs to me to ask you why.”

“Boothe Stramper, you were seen sneaking outside the memorial site for the last two nights, by multiple witnesses. Today, we have come into possession of sensitive information, gathered by the diligence of my guards.”

“Stop saying my name before every damn sentence, gnome, and tell me what information is that?”

“Information that I will not discuss in the middle of the street, Stramper, but which you will have to answer for.”

“It’s true,” shouted an orcish merchant, standing beside his shop and waving a paper in the air. “You’ve got a lot to answer for, you and your No-Cores. Plotting to destroy the memorial and blame the cores for it. You make me sick!”

Galatee shot a look at the gnome. “Where did you get that?”

“We found them all over town, and those little goblin scamps have been giving them to everyone.”

“What…forget it! Stramper, we know you and your No-Cores were planning to damage the memorial and blame it on the cores. It would have been a somewhat passable plan, had you not written it down and then used a press to make copies.”

Stramper looked utterly confused. “Destroy the…woman, you have lost your mind! Not only is this a pile of cow shit, but you can’t do anything to me without the other chief to back you up. Everyone knows that you’re powerless without one another.”

“The chief has lost nothing, especially not her mind, though I am close to misplacing my temper,” said a voice. Chief Reginal arrived with his half dozen goblin guards. “Get down here now, Stramper. Don’t make this worse for yourself.”

“I want to talk to Gilleasberg.”

“So do we, if only the craven git hadn’t fled town like a goose with an arrow in its arse. Now get down here.”

“Fine,” Stramper spat. “Let me get ready.”

He disappeared from the window. Even more people had joined the spectacle now. It was the busiest I had seen Jahn’s Row since the mass celebration we’d had on Yondersun’s naming day.

“Well done, Gull,” I said. “This worked out perfectly. So perfectly that I’m beginning to wonder if there actually is a god, and if I have somehow blundered my way into his good graces.”

“Not that I doubt your ability to blunder but if you want to praise anyone, you might praise my skill in spreading lies. It isn’t easy to create something that people will believe, Beno. It takes a scribe’s skill, the years of training behind it, and a healthy dose of scribe mana. I could write that someone was a chicken, and by the time they finished reading the note, they’d be clucking and shitting eggs.”

“You might be overestimating your powers a tad.”

“You see this scene, and you doubt it?”

It was hard to deny that Gulliver’s propaganda had worked a spell on these people in much the same way as Brecht’s bard songs. I supposed that regular propaganda might work on the gullible, but only a master scribe could have an effect like this.

“Stramper?” shouted Galatee. “Enough messing around. Get out here, or we’ll drag you out by your feet. You must be ready now.”

“Oh, I’m ready.”

The front door burst open, and Boothe Stramper leaped out. He was dressed in full-body metal armor that must have weighed more than a horse and would surely boil him alive under the wasteland sun. Yet for all that, he moved with ridiculous agility, seemingly not encumbered in the lightest. He had his curved blade in one hand and a longer sword in the other, the tip coated in a sinister black ooze.

“You wanted to talk?” he bellowed, charging at Galatee and Reginal, “I have a few things to say, you sun-worshiping inbreds!”

While four guards placed themselves in front of both chiefs, two previously-loyal goblins wilted, stepping back in a way that was likely meant to be inconspicuous. They unclasped their armor, tossed their swords, and tried to blend in with the crowd of gawkers. I watched, disgusted with their cowardice.

Stramper laid into the guards blocking him from Galatee. He slashed one with his curved blade, cutting a crescent shape into his thigh and bringing the poor goblin to his knees. He buried his long sword in the stomach of another, yanking it once, twice, and three times before he could pull it all the way out again.

The remaining two guards, their courage just about holding, came at him, one on each side. Stramper took the brunt of one strike by lifting his sword and blocking the blow with a clang of metal.

He turned quickly, slashed the guard across the neck with his other knife, before completing his circle and facing the other again. With a headbutt and a knee to the groin, the final guard, a gnome barely into adulthood, was on the ground, sucking in air. Stramper allowed him one last breath before bringing his sword down again and finishing the