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

a white blanket with blue spots covering Instructor Bondyke’s mind. She wove into it memories of the puppy he’d loved as a child, magnifying its puppy-dog eyes. Then she let the blanket settle over his thoughts, smothering ideas of punishment and leaving him in a more forgiving mood.

Instructor Bondyke snapped his gaze on her. The blood drained from his face.

“Anna? You dare to use your powers on an instructor?”

The furor was something to behold, and the tale of the instructor’s anger that morning would become a school legend. Of all the school’s rules, the chief among them was that Chosen Ones would never use their powers – whatever form they took – on an instructor. They were just doing their job, after all. They had to be safe.

And so, Anna was expelled from the school, with Utta along with her. Not even Ms. Bolton would forgive Anna this time.

Just like that, her life had been upended. She thought back to her conversation with Mage Haelen five years earlier. She remembered watching the distance and seeing nothing in it.

She wouldn’t get to go to the Caves of Prophesy. She wouldn’t get to smash her own tablet, to receive her own calling. The school had taken it away from her just because she wanted to help her friend. She understood their rules, yes, but expelling her? Changing her entire future just like that?

They weren’t going to get away with it. She wouldn’t be denied her destiny.

Two weeks later, Anna and Utta loitered near the Caves of Prophesy and waited for the right target.

“Are you sure about this, Anna?” said Utta.

“If they won’t let me go and claim my task as a Chosen One, then I’ll just have to take it for myself.”

“But this don’t seem right.”

“Neither does kicking us out just because I didn’t want to see you in pain. Now hush…someone’s coming!”

And there he was. A Chosen One leaving the Caves of Prophesy with a tablet in his hands.

“Now,” hissed Anna.

She cast a grey blanket in the boy’s mind. A deep, unsettling grey like the heart of a storm cloud. On it, she wove the faces of demons dredged from the boy’s worst nightmares, snarling ones with eyes that had no color.

He stopped walking. He began shaking. Completely unable to stop the fear growing in his mind, he wet himself.

Utta used his own power. He raised his hands and sucked just a little bit of the wind from the air, concentrated it, and threw it at the boy so hard that the slap of wind on his skin was deafening.

Anna hobbled forward, her ruined leg aching. Just before she could grab the tablet, her legs gave way, and she fell to the ground and tried desperately not to betray the inhuman pain ripping through her limb.

Utta put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her while she bore out the pain.

“It’s okay,” he soothed. “It’s okay.”

And like the tide retreating from the beach, the pain went. “Thanks, Utta.”

“Here,” he said, handing her the tablet.

She and read it, claiming the destiny for herself.

“What does it say?” asked Utta.

Anna shrugged. “Boooring. It says, ‘To prove thy worth, thou must destroy the core of a dungeon.’”

The violence they inflicted upon a Chosen One student meant that Anna and Utta weren’t popular in the lands surrounding the school. In fact, after unsuccessfully hunting them, the school made sure to spread the word of their deeds far and wide. Not many people would have cared, ordinarily, since the tribulations of a pair of Chosen Ones meant nothing to a farmer tilling his crops or a miner slaving underground. But the 500 gold for their capture opened a lot of eyes.

Eventually, Anna and Utta made their way west, where they came to a place named Blackheart Docks, named after the famed pirate Bob Blackheart, whose heart, a healer’s autopsy later revealed, was actually reddish pink. There, they found work with a ship crew who had no fixed destination and very few objectives. That suited Anna and Utta just fine.

“We jus’ sail coast to coast, so we do,” said the ship’s captain. “Raidin’ little seaports as we see fit. Boarding fishing vessels. Sinking frigates. Making a real nice nuisance of ourselves and earning gold to boot. Only, the sea’s getting hot. Not temperature-wise, y’see, but we done raided the same places too many times, and my ship could use a bit of love. A bit of repair work. So, lass, we’re going to moor up in a nice little grotto that I know and do some land piratin’ for a while.”

“I don’t know about this, Anna,” said Utta.

“Sounds fine and dandy to me, me old salty sea dog,” said Anna, sticking out her hand.

The captain scratched his beard. “We don’ really call each other salty sea dogs round ‘ere. Sort of a nasty thing to say. Might hurt a few feelings.”

“Got it.”

“Then welcome aboard, lass. I’m Captain Endliver Pickering, and you’re delighted to meet me.”

CHAPTER 2

“And so you see, my fine chiefs and my esteemed core, the weather can be yours to control. Think of that! Wielding the power of a god, becoming masters of a deital force. Summoning rain when you need water. Wind when you require a breeze. A power no mortal should hold…yet it can be yours for the low price of six thousand gold!”

As I watched the weathermage finish his presentation and wait for a response from us, it was hard to know what to tell him. Not just because the whole thing was absurd, but because he was our last petitioner of the day, and we were all tired.

Thus far, we had solved construction funding issues, intervened in two gnomes bickering over shop boundaries, and even had a man try to get us to