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

“A step closer and I’ll smash a hole in your head, scoop out your brain, and use your skull as a bowl for my oats. When I get money to buy oats, that is.”

“I quite believe you would.”

“Then you just watch it.”

“Here I am, watching it. Not moving. See?” said Haelen.

“You aren’t going to cast a spell on me?”

“Anna, we are quite tired of your crap, to be quite honest. Do you think we have nothing better to do than to suffer your repeated escape attempts and then go through the tiresome process of lashing you? Let me tell you, the pay we receive from the school isn’t worth the trouble, and job satisfaction is nil.”

“Then what’s all this? What do you want from me?”

“I’m not going to stop you, Anna, but think on this. Take a look at the horizon and tell me what you see.”

“Nothin’.”

“Nothin?’ Dear, we aren’t in the mud village now. Try to talk like the rest of the civilized world.”

“I see nothi…nothing.”

“Exactly. There’s nothing in the distance but more miles to walk, an endless slog until your body gives up. You are looking at your future if you walk away from the school.”

“I’m a Chosen One. Destiny will find me no matter what.”

“Destiny doesn’t give a rat’s arse about you, child. Xynnar is littered with Chosen Ones washing pots in taverns, or collapsing drunk outside of said taverns, their face pressed against the dirty street cobbles while gutter rain drips on their cheeks. And yet, there are thousands of successful heroes, merchants, and mages who were not marked as chosen, and yet made more of a success of their lives through sheer force of will. Chosen One or not, my dear, you can quite easily make nothing of your life.”

“And least the nothin’…nothing… will be my choice.”

“It will. But the opposite would be your choice, too. Why choose nothing, when you could just as easily choose to be something?”

Anna thought about that for a while. Still unconvinced, she said, “Hmm. I don’t really think I’m a Chosen One, Ms. Bolton. Not everyone who has powers is a Chosen One.”

“No? You think we just gather every magic-using child and bring them here?”

Anna frowned. “Then where’s my marker? In our ‘History of the Ones’ class, we learned that every Chosen One has a mark on their body that shows they’re special.”

“And what would you call the great, purple splodge on your back?”

“Hmm. Well, all Chosen Ones are supposed to have a prophesy. Where’s mine, huh?”

“That will come when you’re ready,” said Haelen.

Anna folded her arms defiantly. “Chosen Ones must always accept their burden reluctantly, at first.”

“Tell me, would you describe someone who runs away from school three times as being reluctant?”

“You’ve got an answer for everything… everything except this! Chosen Ones are supposed to have a mentor. One who they pretend that they dislike, but secretly have affection for.”

“Hello?” said Haelen, smiling and waving her hand.

And so, her sailing dreams not forgotten but at least buried for a while, Anna went back to school. To ease her into it, Mage Haelen even cast an illusion spell on the window in Anna’s dorm, so that when she looked out of it, she could see the sea.

She replaced her dreams of seafaring with her lessons. The school made her exercise her body to almost peak physical prowess. Almost being the key word for Anna, whose leg would always be just as injured, just as painful no matter what she did. Even the school’s healer couldn’t do anything.

Her instructors made her perfect her speech so that she no longer said things like nothin’ and somethin’. Alas, it was impossible to remove the village from her heart entirely, and Anna found in moments of great anger or delight, that she would lapse into her rustic talk.

She learned languages. Customs. She studied beasts, monsters, weapons, and she was taught in which order to use all the different knives, forks, and spoons on the table when attending fancy dinner parties.

Most importantly of all, as the years went by and Anna grew taller and older, she honed her powers. She learned to use them purposefully first. She learned their triggers. She learned how to strengthen them, how to use one power in a situation, a different power in another. The stronger her powers got the greedier she became for more, and soon Anna was known as the hardest working student in the school.

In the blink of time’s eye Anna was in her final year, with her tablet-smashing day fast approaching. Tablet-smashing was a day all Chosen One students looked forward to and feared in equal measures. They each would have to descend into the nearby Caves of Prophecy, and battle through monsters and perils to retrieve a stone tablet waiting for them.

On the tablet would be a prophecy just for them, a destined task that would shape their working lives as Chosen Ones. Then, having received their fated task and committed it to memory, they would smash the tablet on the ground, collect their belongings, and leave the school forever.

Anna was looking forward to putting her knowledge, her physique, and her powers to a real test, and to leaving the school and living her life. She studied with renewed drive, she trained with a focus that amazed everyone, even her own instructors.

But it was on a drizzly morning just eight weeks before her tablet-smashing day that Anna’s best school friend, Utta, was caught stealing mead from an instructor’s private stash. He was to be given twenty-two lashings in front of the school as punishment, one lashing for every jar of mead he stole.

Knowing how much the lashings hurt, and unable to watch her only friend get the same punishment, Anna used her powers. She imagined