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

“Huh?”

“Pete Leaf’s blood didn’t move the scale at all. See? And that’s not because he was a skinny little git. It’s because I killed him. He didn’t sacrifice anything.”

“I still don’t see many of us wanting to give our lives to that thing, Captain.”

“We don’t need to, you seagull brained chump. Watch this, and if your hand goes nearer to your blade, my boy, then as the gods witness me, I’ll cut off your head, scoop out the crap you call brains, and use your skull as a receptacle for my ale. Now, heed this.”

Please work, thought Endliver, as he approached the scale.

Drawing his blade, he cut his thumb and then reached up and strained, letting a drop fall onto the scale. It landed with a plop.

The scale answered by making a groaning sound and moving down by four inches. One drop of blood had made it drop four inches! They didn’t need to balance the scales with an equivalent amount of blood; they just needed blood that was truly sacrificed.

“See, you salty mollusks? It’s always up to old Captain Endliver to sort things out, isn’t it? What if you’d reached all the way for your blade, Trunks? What if you’d slit that cool blade across my jowls? Still wouldn’t have been a sacrifice and wouldn’t have moved the scales. You’d be nowhere near closer to leaving this place, and you’d be about ninety percent of our total brain power lighter. Now, you chumps, cut your bloody thumbs and let’s get out of here before the poison chokes us.”

Shadow wound through the tunnels and passageways of her former home. It was strange but though she had lived here for a while, the place seemed removed from her now. Distant. Like somewhere she had once been in a dream but had never really known.

When she thought about the people in it, she felt nothing. She had the logical knowledge that some of them had been her friends, but she felt no accompanying emotion inside her. When she thought of Anna, she felt an overwhelming heat in her chest. She felt love like she’d never experienced before.

Now, she remembered her lovely friend’s kind orders.

“When we get to the dungeon, Shadow, I’d like you to find those essence vines that you told me about and burn them all. Okay? Good.”

It seemed a strange order. Shadow couldn’t see the sense in it, because if she burned the essence vines then her old master, Core Beno, wouldn’t be able to use his powers. Why would she do that to Beno, when he had tried so hard lately to foster their relationship? After he’d trusted her with the most important of tasks in Hogsfeate?

But that seemed so long ago. Anna was her master now. Whenever Shadow thought of Beno, she could only hold his image in her mind for a second, because an image of Anna, bathed in yellow light, forcefully replaced it.

Anna. A pure soul. A kind master with really nice hair and a lovely singing voice.

Shadow rounded a tunnel and emerged into a chamber filled with vines. Thousands upon thousands of leaves spread over walls and glistening with vitality. At the far end of the chamber was a kobold who was kneeling down and squirting a liquid onto some of the vines.

Tomlin.

She had dim recollections of liking him once.

But was that a dream?

Now, whenever she thought she remembered a friendship with this kobold and began to explore that, an image of Anna slammed in place in her mind.

Anna. A pure soul. A kind master with really nice hair and a lovely singing voice.

Shadow kept her blade in her hand and crossed the room.

Demons below, what the hell was happening?

The girl must have been insane, because she had pulled one of the levers. I was offering her a way out, and yet she’d preferred to take a fifty-fifty chance on surviving or plunging to a horrible death and taking her friend with her.

And what the hells did she mean about her and Shadow having a chat?

If that wasn’t enough for me to deal with, the genius pirates had figured the solution to my sacrifice scale chamber and right now were streaming out of it and into the tunnel that would eventually bring them to the loot room.

If those were the sum of my problems then my day would have been dark enough, but there was also a rogue sneaking around and stabbing my kobolds!

I had to prioritize my attention, and I had to do it quickly.

Razensen and his new unit were on hand to deal with the pirates. The exit to the witch’s current chamber led directly into the nest of tunnels in the heart of my dungeon, and it would take the witch and her freckled friend a while to navigate through them.

That meant my time was better spent finding the rogue kobold killer. To do that, I would have to use my core vision.

I checked my tile puzzle chamber. My alchemy chamber. My monster melding room.

Nothing.

Where the hell were they?

I checked tunnel after tunnel, chamber after chamber. I even looked around my core chamber in case they’d somehow dodged all my safeguards and penetrated the most secure place in the dungeon. Had I missed anywhere?

The essence cultivation rooms!

But Tomlin was in there. He’d have told me if…

I switched my core vision, focusing on my essence cultivation room. I saw walls of vines, lots of lovely leaves glistening with orange liquid. Hundreds and thousands of vines threaded together, pulsating with essence.

And then I saw a kobold lying on the ground.

“Gary! Brecht! Get to the cultivation chamber.”

I arrived there at the same time as my bard and my spider-troll-leech monster. We rushed into the chamber, where we found