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

The end of book 4

Dungeon Core Academy: Book 5

CHAPTER 1

Anna Stapes hobbled through the woods with her cane in one hand and her little brother, Jost, holding her other. The woods were dark, the day was cold and drawing short, and their foraging basket was worryingly empty.

“Woah!”

She stumbled, lost grip of her brother’s hand, and fell to the ground.

“You okay, Anna? Should I fetch someone?” said Jost.

“Don’t be silly, I’ve never been better! Just help me off my arse.”

He tugged on her to help her up, but his scrawny arms meant he didn’t have much success. Wincing, Anna forced herself to her feet.

“We should go home,” said Jost.

“Nonsense. We don’ have any berries, any shrooms, nothing.”

“Is your leg bad today?”

“It’s colder than a witch’s teats today, Jost. My leg always plays up when there’s a chill.”

“Ma will be able to make somethin’ for tea. Even if we don’ have nothin’ to give. She always thinks of somethin’.”

“I’m not going home with an empty basket,” said Anna. “What do I always tell you?”

“A fall is just a prelude to succe-”

Jost stopped talking.

He held his breath.

With his eyes widening to pure white discs, he pointed to a patch of ahead of them.

Just across the forest, sniffing at the bracken, was a bear cub. A little bundle of rust-brown fur, already big enough to crush them both yet looking at them with button-black, almost cute eyes.

But it wasn’t the cub that was the problem.

“Don’t move a single step,” said Anna, her breath catching in her chest, so cold it seemed to scold her like white ice. It only got worse the harder she tried to hide her panic so Jost didn’t get scared.

The mama bear would be around here somewhere, because they never let their cubs stray too far. Anna and Jost had already gotten too close to it, and it was too late to run; their scent would linger in the air. Even if there was no cub around to force the mama bear into protectiveness, the sight of a bear at the start of winter would be trouble. The bear should be hibernating now. Its presence in the woods meant it hadn’t gathered enough food yet, and it would be desperate.

“Anna,” whispered Jost. “I’m scared.”

“I’d never let anything happen to you,” is what she knew she should say. But that was a lie.

“I’ll try not to let anything happen to you,” she said.

The thought crossed her mind that she should hit Jost over the head and leave him here for the bear. Maybe it would get her enough time to hobble out of the woods.

She had these thoughts from time to time. Thoughts about kicking a dog when it begged for scraps, or throwing stones at a bird’s nest when the chicks chirped too loudly. Now, she did what she always did, and imagined that the dark thought was a disgusting rat and she had a broom and she was chasing it out of her mind. With a tremendous mental fight, it was gone. She knew that she could do what was expected as the big sister.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll stay here and…uh…talk to the bear, Jost. You run home.”

“Talk to it?” he said.

“Why, yes. I’ll stay and chat.”

“And it won’t eat you?”

“Go, Jost! I’ll see you at home.”

And then she saw it. A hulking mass of fur and muscle, its snout bigger than a fist, paws wide enough to swipe a girl’s head clean off her shoulders. As Jost scarpered off through the woods with his boots kicking up mud and twigs, Anna did a little trick. It was something she’d learned, though she didn’t know where.

She imagined a big, golden blanket covering her mind. Every inch of space in her brain that the blanket smothered, was suddenly calm.

Her fear floated away with the fairies.

Her nerves disappeared from this mortal plane.

The big bear jerked its head, focusing on Jost who was still fleeing the forest. It kicked up mud with its back legs. Steam rose from its nose as it snorted.

Waving her arms, Anna shouted “Hey! Bear! Grizzly!”

With a roar that sounded like a demon giving birth, the bear bounded over to her. Anna prepared to meet her fate with utter calm. Thoughts of terror pushed against the blanket in her mind, but it stayed in place, and she felt nothing, absolutely nothing, as the bear bounded toward her.

As it neared, she heard it snarl at her. She smelled the mud and dung coated on its fur. She read an unmistakable lust for blood and flesh in its eyes.

She blinked.

She cast her own thoughts out. She didn’t know how she did it, she never knew how, but she did it all the same.

She imagined a blanket in the bear’s mind. Yellow, sickly looking, colored like pee in a chamber pot. She imagined the blanket smothering the bear’s thoughts.

The bear suddenly stopped. Its jaw trembled. It whined, turned around, and fled. It didn’t even stop to make sure its cub was following it, as though overwhelming cowardice had come upon it.

The cub, either incredulous or terrified, looked at its fleeing mother and then at Anna.

Anna growled at it. “Go on, cub. Before I eat you! Grr!”

Soon, both mother bear and cub were just blurry shapes in the distance, and Anna was alone in the forest.

She took her time, filled her basket with shrooms and berries and herbs, and then set off home.

Later, in a house not far from the forest, Gretlin Stapes sat on a wobbly chair, having surrendered the best chair in the house to her mage visitor. The mage wore the white and red robes of a healer, which