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

“You could start by explaining how you are speaking to me and are not, in fact, dead.”

“It’s quite a simple story, as many are. Your classic yarn of betrayal and murder. The sort one might find in most hokum adventure stories, of which I have a guilty pleasure.”

“So do I!” I said, my enthusiasm for finding a fellow penny-yarn adventure story fan overruling my usual cool. “But that isn’t important right now. First things first, exactly how dead are you, Namantep?”

“Worried that I might suddenly start draining essence from your essence vines and using it against you?”

“I have some brunt-scale and esther-edge stored away. I could easily make sure of your death.”

“Oooh nooo! Big, bad, Beno with his scary alchemy flames!”

I sighed, deciding that each time I showed my frustration in front of her, it only seemed to make me appear stupider. I don’t know how she did it.

“Calm yourself,” she said. “Look at me. I’m half a core! It took decades of dormancy for me to get strong enough to even speak again, let alone use essence. And besides, I am not a dungeon core.”

“What?”

“I’m a healer core. Can’t you tell? Don’t I give off an aura of tranquility?”

“You perpetrated a mass slaughter in Hogsfeate,” I said. “If you’re a healer core, then you are very, very bad at your job.”

“Yes, I know of those lies. Let me explain this to you, Beno. A long time ago, a man named Great Argden was mayor of Hogsfeate. He was a kind man by all accounts, not that I care about that sort of thing. His son became grievously ill with an affliction that no healers could fix. A disease that they believed came from ingesting a certain rare seed.”

This was interesting. Devry, Chief Reginal’s son, had the same disease.

“Do they know who fed it to him? The fruit is rare, and definitely can’t be found in the wasteland.”

“You know of this?”

“I have…read things. Go on.”

“The mayor paid out of his own purse for healers from across Xynnar to visit, but none of them could fix his son. Finally, after exhausting most options, he purchased me from my old master. I was forged as a healer core, you see. I was able to cure his son.”

“This tale is a lot tamer than the one being told about you in Hogsfeate. Where does the mass slaughter come into it? Did you get bored or something?”

“A violent lie spreads easier than a boring truth. Sir Dullbright, back when his hair wasn’t grey and he didn’t walk around with his belly hanging over his belt, decided that he wanted to become the mayor of Hogsfeate and rule the town himself. Knowing that Great Argden was years from dying, and that even if he copped it there were other, more popular people in town than him, Dullbright had an idea. He needed to spin a narrative to boost his popularity.”

I thought I was beginning to understand.

“Ah. He decided to make himself the hero of Hogsfeate, and every hero needs a big, scary monster to vanquish. He told everyone that you were a dungeon core and that you had gone mad.”

“Yes,” said Namantep. “He slaughtered some townsfolk himself and blamed it on me. Then he used a scaleedge sword to carve me in half. Being a healer core, I had no defense to this and thus had to resort to the rather humiliating tactic of playing dead so that he thought he’d ended me. For years. Decades, in fact. It was seriously boring until I learned how to completely clear my mind and let the seas of time wash over me.”

“You know, as surprised as I should be, this version of events makes more sense, having met Dullbright,” I said. “I take it that after believing he killed you, he also murdered the mayor, and used his new hero status to elevate himself to power?”

“That is the tale I pieced together while lying dormant in the wizard’s tower. I tell you, Beno, the things I would do to Dullbright if I wasn’t a healer core. I would tear him apart. I would pluck out his beard hair by hair. Rip off his fingernails and press the exposed flesh into a pile of salt.”

“I might have some good news for you,” I said.

“Oh?”

“Dullbright is dead.”

“Did he die painfully?”

“Not overly so. Not to your tastes, anyway, but he was murdered all the same.”

“Murdered? That’s wonderful!” said Namantep.

She began laughing. It was a marvelous sound. Full of amusement, yet wicked at the same time. As is the case when two cores are in the same chamber, when one starts cackling then the other is soon to follow. Before I knew it, I was laughing too, and the sound of our twin cackles became a din that spread far and wide through the dungeon.

It was only when we laughed ourselves into exhaustion that I saw Redjack had returned and was standing in the tunnel archway, eyes wide, clearly disturbed.

“I left my pickaxe, Lord Dark. I…er…will come back later,” he said, and scarpered off.

Namantep cleared her throat. “I owe Dullbright’s killer a debt of gratitude.”

“No need to thank me,” I said.

“You?”

“Well, I sent my rogue to do the job, but yes. Dullbright is dead, and my mimic has taken his place and is currently ruling Hogsfeate according to my wishes. The townsfolk don’t suspect a thing.”

Namantep laughed. “Beno, that is glorious! I misjudged you, didn’t I? I owe you many thanks.”

“Well, perhaps you could begin your thanks by telling me something. Why would Overseer Bolton be so interested in you?”

“I do not know him. But if he is an overseer, then he is from the Dungeon Core Academy, no?”