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

was the only kind of mage that Gretlin knew. When she had served with Duke Smit’s army in her teens, she had fallen deeply, utterly in love with a healer in her unit. Unfortunately, he was smitten with their sergeant. Such is life.

“You’re from the Chosen One School?” said Gretlin.

The mage nodded. “I am Haelen Bolton.”

“And you’re telling me that my daughter is the Chosen One?”

“She’s a Chosen One, not the Chosen One. The difference, as you can imagine, is quite important to recognize. Your child is special, yes, but not so special that there aren’t others like her.”

“She wants to become a ship’s mate and travel Xynnar by sea. She’s said so since she was old enough to speak. I’m not sending her to some school where her future is already decided.”

“Did I mention the annual stipend you would receive?”

“You did. Did I mention that my daughter’s feelings are more important to me?”

“How noble.”

“What, you think nobility is just for the fancy types whose chairs don’t wobble and who don’t have to send their children foraging in the forest?”

“You might be thankful you did send her foraging. If a hunter hadn’t witnessed the incident with the bear, if he hadn’t seen the magic streaming from Anna’s head, we would never have known about her.”

“I won’t send her to your school.”

Haelen stood up and walked to the window and looked out, where Anna and Jost were playing with Kole, her neighbor’s lad.

“You served with Duke Smit’s army when you were younger, didn’t you, Gretlin?”

“The old Duke Smit, the one who died a few years ago. It was before I met Anna’s father. I served for five years.”

“Hmm. And that would have been, what, twenty years ago now?”

“Something like that,” said Gretlin, starting to feel uncomfortable.

She couldn’t know. Nobody does.

So why do I feel like she’s got her hand in my head?

“There was a unit in Smit’s army. I’m sure you know of them, or perhaps you’ve heard of them. During the Blakemore campaign, they liberated Blaketown from their Tyndalese overlords. Nothing special, I know. It was a war, and territories were won and lost like marbles in a children’s game. But the curious thing was that this particular unit didn’t just liberate the town. They liberated the townsfolk of their lives. Blood lust, some say. Greed, say others. Whatever happened, this unit of Smit’s army killed most of the villagers and fled. Hunters paid for by the crown spent decades pursuing each and every member of the unit to the far corners of Xynnar. I wonder if they were all caught?”

Gretlin felt like she’d just been punched, stabbed, and then shot in the chest with a crossbow. She did her best to hold it in, but she felt sweat beading down her forehead.

I didn’t kill anyone. But I was there, and I could have stopped it and didn’t, because I was too scared.

“Cowardice is normal,” said Haelen, shocking Gretlin. “But it is no excuse. The king’s orders to bring each and every member of that unit to the gallows still stands, even decades after the fact. There is a reward, I am told. Some mercenaries spend their lives hunting lost members of Smit’s Golden Arrows. Of course, old Duke Smit himself renounced the unit completely, and he escaped punishment by executing those members who crawled back to his lands.”

“I’ll…I’ll tell Anna to pack her things.”

“A wise choice. Anna will be very happy at our school.”

Instructors at the Chosen One school did not always tell the truth, as it turned out. When Anna left home, she found that she did not miss Jost or her mother all that much. But when she learned that her Chosen One education would last five years, and that at the end she'd be expected to spend her life doing Chosen One things, she began to resent her change in fortune.

On her third night she ran away, only to be brought back to the school doors gripped by the jaws of one of the wrathlings that patrolled the grounds at night. It plonked her down, covered in spit, and then howled until an Instructor came.

Anna got two lashings in front of the entire school for that.

On her twelfth day, she ran away again, this time doing so in daylight after learning that the wrathlings couldn’t stand the sun. She made it away from the school and through the surrounding weeping forest, reaching a town that supplied the school with all its meat, mead, and vegetables. There, Anna sought passage on a trading wagon bound for the coast, where she would look for deck work on a ship and then make her way up from there, one day rising to the glorious rank of captain.

As it happened, the town had a deal with the school that they would report any runaways, and the sun was still shining when Anna found herself taken back to the school.

She got fifteen lashings in front of the entire school for that.

It was an oft-repeated saying that the third time was the charm, and so Anna broke away from the school on a cool autumn morning. This time she headed east, avoiding any towns and dwellings so that she couldn’t be betrayed.

A single Chosen One instructor caught up with her. It was Haelen Bolton, the lady who had brought her to the school in the first place.

Anna had prepared for such a moment. She knew that the instructors wouldn’t let her leave the Chosen One school willingly. Now that they knew lashings wouldn’t work, they would use mysterious magic to bind her, perhaps. Or they would cast an illusion to beguile her into abandoning escape. They would wield dark arts to force her back into educational captivity. And she had prepared for it carefully.

She held a very, very large rock in her hand, and