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

Morphant was silent. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t.

A spell.

Kargot leaped away from the windowsill. “Now just what the feck-”

Pvat buried his dagger in her belly before she could finish her sentence. He let her collapse to the ground, limp.

Morphant felt a stabbing pain. Not through a knife in his own gut, but when he looked at poor Kargot.

The mage walked right up to him until his face was just inches away from Morphant’s. Morphant couldn’t move. He could barely think. He needed to speak to Core Beno, but the core shavings were in the meeting chamber downstairs. He couldn’t talk to him without them.

Mage Hardere looked at Morphant from all angles. He prodded his skin. Poked his cheeks. Lifted his eyelids and inspected his eyeballs up close.

“Yes, I see what you mean,” he said. “Fascinating. A perfect copy, by all means, were it not for the smell of his skin. Somewhat masked by powder, but one wrought deep into him. They all have a tell, you see. They each have a way to spot them.”

“Then it’s true?” asked Pvat.

“I’m afraid so. Our Mayor has been replaced by a mimic.”

“Who would do a thing like that?”

The mage smiled. “You would be surprised at just how many of these creatures rule lands in Xynnar, Pvat.”

Watching through this now-useless body, Morphant strangely felt no fear. Instead, there was something he respected about Mage Hardere. Here, at last, was a man who didn’t filter his thoughts.

“But if it’s here then it has a master, yes? Someone who is controlling it?” said Pvat.

“Yes. One master, or perhaps several. Perhaps it is the tool of a council who is seeking to gain control of towns like ours. I have heard such rumors.”

“Can you do anything about it?”

“Bring old fool Dullbright back? No, unless you’d rather have a rotting corpse in charge of things. Even if I could restore Dullbright to his former self, why should we do that? There are much, much better things to do with our discovery. Mimics can be given a new master, you know. It is but a case of knowing the right spell. The real trick is identifying a mimic in the first place. Your hero instincts served you well, Pvat.”

“Then I want you to do it, Hardere. I will be its master.”

Mage Hardere turned to the hero and held out his hands palms upwards. He held one hand much higher than the other.

Pvat sighed. “Must we do the ridiculous scale game again? We have already paid you enough.”

“That was to confirm your suspicions, which I have done. If you require extra services, then you must balance things.”

“Can’t you do it out of a sense of patriotism, man? This thing killed our mayor and took his place!”

“I don’t give a rat’s arse if he killed the gods and sat in the upperworld farting rainbows down on us all. Think about this, Pvat. Though a mimic has been ruling this town for only the gods know how long, I noticed no change. Replacing our old mayor with a mimic made not a bit of difference to my life. If that isn’t a glowing evaluation of our old mayor, I don’t know what is. I care not a damn for whose noble posterior sweats in these fancy bed sheets. You, however, do care about things like that. If you want me to care as much as you, you will have to restore the balance.”

His face a picture of annoyance, Pvat took his coin purse from his pocket and began placing gold pieces in Hardere’s palm.

CHAPTER 6

Razensen waited for the perfect time before giving the order to send the heroes to the ice. A well-timed ambush was a thing of beauty and to him, it felt like how an archer must feel when they pull the drawstring taut and sense it trembling, letting them know it has reached the perfect tension.

He was in the loot room, hidden behind one of the mounds of earth that the little kobold, Wylie, had constructed with the help of his mining crew. There was another mound opposite, with the main area of the loot chamber in between, forming a natural ambush point. Now, Razensen and his unit were divided and waiting behind each mound.

The heroes strolled in. A kobold archer caught Razensen’s eyes, but he shook his head.

Not yet. Wait for it…

The heroes didn’t look like heroes at all. It wasn’t because of their armor or weapons, but something about their attitude. Something that told Razensen that these men and women were used to different terrain and that they didn’t spend much time underground.

The strangest of the group was the young girl and boy. Teenagers, perhaps. Maybe older, maybe younger. Razensen could not judge human age well; they were all just fleshy blobs no matter how many years they had faced.

“I still don’t understand why we’re poking around a trap infested dungeon,” said one hero. “We already lost Yeez, Gates, Bulwy, Gorka, Rodvine. This place is a bloody death trap!”

“Captain Endliver says we gots to hold up on land while the ship’s getting repaired,” said one. “An’ we can’t just hang around not earning gold. Since there are no ships to plunder, we gots to raid dungeons.”

“We’re not equipped for it, as evidenced by us losing five good men and women.”

“At least we gots the sneaky kobold as an ‘ostage. If we ain’t been able to get the information on the dungeon from her, things would ‘av been a lot worse!”

“Do you really have to talk like such an idiot? I know you put it on for show. You spent a year in college, did you not? Speaking like that doesn’t make you seem tough,