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

stared at me. “I’m a level 14 miner. I’d bet that I’m the only level 14 little girl miner in the whole of Xynnar. Learning that you were once a dungeon core does that for you, y’know. It opens your mind to possibilities and stuff. I can locate materials for you, sure. What do you need?”

“Well, I have traps to make, and the essence cost for crafting iron stuff is killing me. Having a heap of iron would bring the crafting cost down.”

“I can do that, but I’ll have to go back onto the surface and perform a mining scan.”

“Great. That will buy you a few hours of hard labor from my kobold friend here.”

Tomlin nudged me now.

“What?” I asked.

He nudged me again.

Then I understood. “Ah, yes. Another thing. Would you be able to buy a few books for me? I assume your village has a bookshop.”

“My town might be kinda backward, but they do have things called shops, yes. What do you need?”

“Tomlin? What do you want to study?”

The kobold scratched his chin as he thought about it. “Tomlin would like to study architecture and management.”

I looked at him now, puzzled at his choices. “Really, Tomlin? You could learn anything. Alchemy, botany, artificery, what happened to wanting to know about those? You want two subjects as dry as architecture and management?”

“Tomlin would like to be more useful in his nest. Learn to improve the slapshot placement of rooms…no offense, Dark Lord…and how to manage creatures under his supervision.”

“Under your supervision?”

“In Soul Bard, Tomlin is the bard’s friend, no? His second in command. Tomlin thought that…”

I was touched by how he’d taken his name to heart, and he was right; I could use a partner. “Fine. That sounds all well and good to me. In fact, Tomlin, I hereby promote you to dungeon Lieutenant.”

“Lieutenant?” asked Vedetta. “I believe that is an army rank, and you’ve skipped a few of them.”

“My dungeon, my ranks. Tomlin is promoted.”

Tomlin the kobold [Miner Lvl 3] is promoted to lieutenant!

Relationship status with Tomlin improved from [warm] to [friend]!

Ah, my first real friend. As a core, anyway. I’m sure in my first life, I had so many friends that I couldn’t leave the house for all the well-wishers gathered on my doorstep. Still, it felt good after starting here with nothing.

“I’ll go to the surface and scan the ground,” said Vedetta. “I’ll try and locate iron deposits surrounding your dungeon, and then you can mine as you see fit.”

“Great.”

“I’d like my payment in advance, if you please. If the kobold could leave the dungeon with me, I have located a section of ground that might just have what I need.”

A big grin spread on Tomlin’s face now. “Tomlin can see the land outside his nest?” he said, and he looked at me hopefully.

Damn it, the stupid kobold was like a puppy! I nodded. “Go on then. I have things to do, anyway. Make sure you’re back before it gets too dark.”

So, after Vedetta and Tomlin left the dungeon, I checked that the door was locked behind them. Then, I spent time hopping from pedestal to pedestal. I didn’t want to make traps just yet, because I needed the iron deposits, but there was stuff I could be doing.

First, I placed lockable doors on the entrance and exit of every single tunnel, the ones that the heroes would use to navigate my dungeon.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want the heroes to be able to traverse my dark palace. I was a core, after all. Why create a dungeon if you don’t want heroes to die in it?

No, my thinking was that if I placed locked doors everywhere, then any rogues or mages would have to use their lockpicking skills and spells to open them. This would gradually deplete their skill points and mana, giving them fewer to work with when they finally reached my loot room.

Small advantages, sure, but a new core had to take everything he could get.

Hours had passed by the time I heard a knock at the room four door. I mentally gave an unlock command, and then I heard the soft tread of a kobold walking toward me.

I had to admit, as soppy as it sounded in my head, that I had missed Tomlin while he was away with Vedetta. Sure, I had the fire beetles to keep me company, but it wasn’t the same. All they did was scuttle around and make that annoying chirp to each other.

Given that I could understand the speech of all creatures created in my dungeon, I knew what they were saying. I wasn’t lying about their intelligence.

“Wall!”

“Food!”

“Crumb?”

That was the extent of it. It grew pretty tiresome, which was why I locked myself in my core room. I got some peace and let my essence regenerate.

“Tomlin has returned!” said a voice.

There he was, standing by the door of my core room, the lovable little kobold with a wide smile plastered on his face, covered head-to-toe in mud and weeds.

“Enjoy yourself?” I asked.

“Tomlin dug for the girl. Vedetta bought Tomlin a pastry, and it was delicious.”

“Don’t get used to it, you won’t find delicacies like that in here. Though, I suppose we had better sort out the food situation, since our dungeon population is growing.”

This was a bit of an annoying aspect of being a dungeon core. It wasn’t all making traps and killing heroes, I also had to take care of my creatures. In fact, there had been an entire class on creature husbandry, taught by Overseer Fencegate.

“Study time?” asked Tomlin.

“Soon, I promise. We just have a little more work to do.”

Under my supervision, Tomlin dug a narrow tunnel sprouting off from the loot room. That done, I instructed him to