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

a Dungeon Core Academy overseer would be at the top. Overseers were the ones who trained cores like me in how to create monsters, traps, and puzzles for our dungeon. Overseers had innate magical powers that let them not just sneak into dungeons, but to detect traps and to spot trickery crafted by a dungeon core’s metaphorical hands.

The second that Overseer Bolton was in a room with Mimic Dullbright, he’d rumble the ruse. And Bolton wouldn’t be content to walk away. There wasn’t a chance he would let a dungeon core’s mimic impersonate the leader of a town. He would not allow me to keep control of Hogsfeate by using Morphant as a proxy.

“Send a guard to tell Bolton that you’re ill,” I told him. “Then have Gulliver meet him and find out what he wants.”

“I tell people I am ill when I need to leave Dullbright’s form and replenish my powers, Dark Lord. I am using the excuse too often, and it is beginning to wear out. I suspect not everyone believes it.”

“Right. We need to have a rethink once we’ve dealt with Bolton. Now, let’s see. Perhaps we can…”

Another voice intruded into my thoughts.

“Dark Lord! Dark Lord! Problem!”

This voice came through my core senses again. This time, the source wasn’t across the wasteland, but from directly underneath me. It was Wylie, my kobold dungeon enforcer.

“What is it, Wylie?”

“Heroes in dungeon, Dark Lord!”

“Demons’ arses! Heroes are raiding the dungeon? Now?”

I heard a door inside the lodge open.

“Beno?” said Chief Galatee, peering out from the doorway.

“Dark Lord? What am I to tell Overseer Bolton?” said Morphant.

“What should do? Need plan,” said Wylie.

CHAPTER 4

Everyone was placing demands on my time. Everyone wanted something from me. The trouble was, they were within their rights.

After all, I had an obligation to my dungeon mates to handle any heroes who entered our lair. I had also bargained for a seat in the Yondersun chief meetings, so I owed it to them that I actually took part. And killing Hogsfeate’s mayor and taking control of the town had been my idea, so I could hardly complain when Morphant needed my help with town issues.

All of this was my fault, and I was just going to have to work out a way to deal with everything at once.

“Razensen, I need you to handle the heroes,” I said, using my core voice to speak to the monster in my dungeon.

It was a few seconds before Razensen answered me, and he did so with a grumble. “Ice and snow, Beno, I don’t have time for this. I need to find my brother and slit his throat, damn it!”

“We had a deal. I’d give you a base for your whole revenge saga. A nice underground chamber with a pool, where you can escape the heat and plot your sibling’s painful demise. In return, you help me when my dungeon comes under attack.”

“But the ravens have spotted something. A place where Nazenfyord may be staying. I need to send him to the ice!”

“The ravens? I think you mean my ravens. I have been kind enough to let them scout the wasteland for you, but that wasn’t part of the deal. They are just an extra resource I provided out of the kindness of my core. I’m well known for changing my moods, though. I can be a spiteful git when I need to be.”

“Damn you, core. I hope you get lost in the wildest of blizzards. Nevertheless, you have been true to your word to me thus far.”

“You’ll help me out, then?”

“I will kill the heroes for you. I can command your creatures, yes?”

“Your unit is fully healed after our last hero fight. Take them for now, but call on Brecht, Rusty, and Gary if things get tough. Give Gore, Death, Fight, and Kill a rest. They still aren’t recovered from our last raid.”

“It will be done, Stone. I will send the heroes so far into the ice that their arse cheeks freeze together.”

I hated the idea of trusting anyone else to handle a hero raid. Something about surrendering dungeon control made my inner core itch, and I felt my attention being pulled back to the dungeon.

I told myself that Razensen was a capable leader. He had been in charge of warriors back in his homeland, and he knew how to fight. A few miserable heroes wouldn’t get the better of him, even though the standard of raiders visiting my dungeon had risen lately.

Trying to force that problem to the back of my mind, I used my core vision to speak to Mimic Morphant, all the way across the wastes.

“Where is Overseer Bolton right now?” I asked.

“He is in Sir Dullbright’s parlor, Dark Lord.”

“And where are you?”

“In Dullbright’s chambers.”

“How are your powers? Are you replenished? Can you mimic Dullbright if you need to?”

“I mimicked the mayor to conduct a meeting between the cotton and carpenter guilds this morning, Dark Lord. It was boring to the extreme. I have replenished some of my power, but not all of it.”

“Damn it,” I said. “You’d need to be at your best to have a chance of tricking an overseer, and even then, it’d likely be a doomed attempt. We need to do something else. We need a way to divert Bolton. The problem is, I know him all too well from my student days at the Dungeon Core Academy. They say mules are stubborn, well Bolton brays like the best of them. Let me think. A diversion…”

My mind flashed to the last time I’d needed to make a distraction in Hogsfeate. Then, I’d asked a barbarian named Eric to start a fire on the far side of town so that Shadow, my rogue who was currently missing, could sneak into Dullbright’s house and kill him.