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

“This is Yondersun!” said Gulliver, stepping through the portal.

“And there’s Cael Pickering. He was already on his way to the dungeon!” I said.

There he was. Cael demon-damned Pickering. Strutting over the wasteland with his two blades sheathed on his waist and his stupid chest puffed out. With him were more than a dozen fighters sporting combat leathers and tarnished metal armor, and brandishing a range of swords, fell axes, warhammers, halberds. I was sure I had seen some of them at the men-at-arms board in Yondersun.

The sudden appearance of an army of monsters made Cael pause. He lifted his hand in the air, and his fighters stopped marching. One mercenary stood beside Cael, the rest stayed behind him.

“Holy hells,” said one warrior, eyeing us.

“Look at that big yeti monster!”

“And the freak standing beside it! Look at the skin flap on its back!”

“Cael, this ain’t what we signed up for.”

Cael didn’t take his eyes off me. “Shut up!” he shouted.

I floated over to him, keeping a healthy fifteen feet of distance between us.

Cael unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a tattoo on his chest, just below his right nipple. The edges were red and sore-looking.

“A new wartificer symbol,” he said. “A special one, this. Know what it does, core?”

“Gives you a reason to show us your nipples?”

“Gives me the means for revenge. Took me a while to find a wartificer who had a symbol that would destroy a core. Had to suffer quite a few cart rides, walk many, many miles. But I found one, and I paid almost every coin I had for him to graft one onto me, too. Hours it took. Hours of agony like you wouldn’t believe. To get through it, all I had to do was think about destroying you, and I ended up enjoying every second. Money well-spent. Time well-used. And the rest of my gold? Well, you can see I hired a few pals to make sure there are no mistakes.”

“Didn’t tell us we were fighting a gods-damned army, did you? Told us it was just a dungeon!” shouted one mercenary.

“He’s created a few new monsters, that’s all! Stop being such a coward. I am a wartificer. I have beaten this pebble’s dungeon more times than I can count.”

“You can’t count to five?” I said.

“Make your jokes, core. You might as well enjoy your last few seconds. Your time is over. I am a wartificer. The marks wrought upon my skin give me abilities few can imagine. I have borne pain that would have made the strongest of men tremble, and I did it gladly, knowing it would give me the strength to beat ones such as you. This is our last meeting, Core. This is for my brothers. This is for-”

“Oh, shut up, stupid bag of flesh!” said Razensen.

He stomped across the wasteland, covering the distance between him and Cael in just a few strides of his giant legs.

When he reached the hero he lifted his great fist.

“To the ice with you!”

Cael stepped out of reach, forcing Razensen to change his target at the last second.

He smashed his fist down, flattening the man who had been standing beside Cael with such force that his spine snapped like a twig.

The mercenaries stared at their dead compatriot, mouths open wide in shock. Some drew their weapons, others whispered to each other.

Cael drew his longer blade and his feather. Within a second he had etched his shape onto the blade. The scar symbol on his chest glowed yellow, and light burned across his sword.

“The core is mine!” he bellowed. “Have your fun with the rest!”

As I floated out of range, mercenaries charged into my army of rock trolls and beetles. Bogbadugs leaped from the flanks, while bow-wielding kobolds peppered the enemy with arrows. Swords swept through skeletal rib cages of bone guys. Axes hewed through shrubs and swiped through kobold flesh.

A man collapsed to his knees, gasping through for air while holding the arrow that had pierced his throat. A kobold staggered, his belly punctured by a sword, before taking his last step. Shrub bandits surrounded a mercenary, lone and separated from his pack, and peppered him with hundreds of thorns until soon it was impossible to see the man behind all the thorns that stuck out of him.

All the while, Cael threaded through the chaos, his blade drawn, his eyes focused on me. He ducked under a leaping bogbadug. He pivoted around a bone guy and hewed it with his sword, making it clatter on the ground as a pile of bones.

“Razensen,” I said. “You see him?”

“I see, stone.”

Cael approached me from the north.

Razensen left me and cut a wide arc, before stomping toward the hero from the east.

As wary as I was of his wartificer-enhanced sword, I knew I had to stop moving. To be the bait and give Razensen a chance to catch Cael.

Cael closed the distance, a smug smile on his lips.

“To the ice!” boomed a voice.

Razensen was on him then, giant fists raised, ready to flatten my nemesis.

Cael twisted, stabbing out with his sword, gutting Razensen and burying his weapon to the hilt.

The great monster stumbled and then fell backward, crashing onto the ground and flattening two mercenaries beneath him.

Now I was in trouble. Razensen was supposed to make this so easy. To negate Cael’s wartificery with pure, unrelenting force.

Cael tried to pull his blade loose but it refused to leave Razensen’s gut. He kept tugging on it, his face straining.

Wait.

I noticed something.

Cael had a smaller blade, but he wasn’t drawing it. I remembered why; he could only use his wartificer once, and then he had to let his power replenish. He knew he could only destroy a core using the blade