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

Galatee. “He plotted to destroy the memorial, blame it on our cores, and take Reginal and my seats, to boot. If that wasn’t enough, his thug almost killed us! The scum might have a head start, but you will at least try to run him down. In fact, I will hold the bloody reins myself. Come on!”

Galatee stormed off, trailed by the goblin. Shop doors opened and gaggles of Yondersun residents stepped out onto Jahn’s row, chatting excitedly. That excitement died when they saw the corpses of fallen guards strewn over a bloodstained street, and an eerie silence settled over the town. They just stood and watched in respectful quiet, gazing at the wounded and the dead.

Surrounded by the fallen, focused on Stramper’s body, was Chief Reginal. He stared at his dead foe, clutching his sword like a long-lost friend while wearing a smile on his face.

CHAPTER 14

Shadow struggled to keep up with the human and his stupid big legs and giant strides. It would have been easier to just tell him she needed a break, but she refused to do that and so had to struggle on over the wasteland, cursing her stupid kobold luck that she was the one with stealth skills and not Tomlin or Brecht or any of the others.

“Hurry up, little wolf! The sun is already yawning!”

“I have eyes, you big oaf.”

“Aren’t you the grumpy one? I swear, ever since we left your dungeon you’ve had a face like a slapped arse.”

“I suppose the effect is one you’re familiar with if you’ve ever glanced into a mirror.”

“Your words cut me like the sharpest axe,” said Eric, laughing.

That was another of the list of infuriating things about the lunk of muscle. Ever since leaving the dungeon, she’d tried her best to rile him up. She’d tried every insult she could think of.

Not only couldn’t she get under his skin, but his skin must have been made of steel or something. He answered even her worst insults with a good-natured laugh and a modest retort like “Well, my Ma always said there are people who can think, people who can fight, and only the best of us get both. I ain’t the best of us.”

They had barely stopped since leaving Yondersun, pausing only during the middle of the afternoon when the sun was at its peak. Shadow just didn’t know how long she could go on. The heat was never-ending. Spending most of her life in a dungeon, Shadow was used to dim light and cool breezes. Not this, not this endless, unrelenting, scorching hell. She understood now why Core Beno was constantly insulting the sun.

She hated the sun now. She loathed the heat. Worse than everything, she really missed her dogs. Arcas, Tentri, Mossgrove, Fenroy. As much as they drove her mad with their barking and constant need for attention, they were a comforting presence. Out here in the wasteland with only Eric the barbarian for company, she missed their noise.

Without warning Shadow stumbled, falling to her knees.

The barbarian touched her shoulder. “Easy,” he said.

She shrugged him off. “I’ve never felt better!”

Eric took a little fold of canvas from his bag. He shook it just once, and the canvas arranged itself into a tent.

“Get under there, little wolf,” he said. “Give yourself a break from the sun.”

“I don’t need a break.”

“I know you don’t,” he said, an infuriating friendly tone. “It’ll make me feel better. Seeing you with all that fur…by the axe, it makes me feel like I’m boiling up meself!”

“Well, if it helps you…”

Shadow got into the tent and sat in the mouth so she could still see out from it. It gave her a welcome break from the sun. Sitting there, she couldn’t believe it, but she was missing the dungeon. She was missing it a lot, with its darkness and its gloriously cool breeze that whistled through the chambers like the kiss of snow.

“Why did you bring a tent? Seems like a stupid thing to bring to a place like this,” she said, but the venom she tried to put into her words felt forced.

“I bought it before we set out. Visited one of the shops in Yondersun. When Beno told me I was taking you across the wasteland, I took one look at you and thought that little wolf is going to fry to a crisp. So, thought it best to pick somethin’ up for yer.”

The barbarian had spent his own gold on buying something for Shadow? That was such an unusual gesture that she didn’t know what to say. Was it…a gift? Only Tomlin had ever bought her gifts before.

“Thank you, Eric Barbarian,” she said.

“Just Eric, little wolf. Feel better?”

“It’s cooler in here.”

Eric took his shirt off and poured oil from a jar and spread it over himself.

“What in Xynnar are you doing?”

“Oh, this? It ain’t for me. It might look like vanity, like I’m trying to get a nice lookin’ suntan, but it’s just good sense. My name is blacker than a sheep’s snout in some of the colder parts of Xynnar, which means I’ve got to ply my trade out ‘ere in the heat. Towns in the hotter parts of the world don’t trust pasty pale barbarians. Pale skin marks you as other out here. I found that out after losing a dozen jobs to folks who couldn’t even pick up my axe, but looked like they’d spent their life in the sun. Gettin’ your sun rings, they call it. They say that a person-at-arms has got to have his sun rings, or he won’t get jobs. You know, like when you cut down a tree a see all the rings inside and you can count its age? By the axe, it’s a bloody stupid custom, but they don’t trust you around ‘ere if you haven’t burned your skin