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

idea of a good night was catching a bunch of heroes in one of his traps and watching them bleed. Interesting, to be sure, but not fun.

Unfortunately, Gulliver had quickly learned that Hogsfeate was a quiet town, despite its size. Full of folk who were more content staying at home with their families than reveling in pleasures of the night. Their tavern evenings were quiet affairs, with the most excitement coming when they bard played a more upbeat version of Come See the Goblin in My Kitchen.

Ah, well. The work was interesting and Beno was paying him well…through the Hogsfeate treasury, of course. All he had to do was stay here a few years or so, save up a nice retirement pile, and then Xynnar was his to enjoy.

He left Kathryn’s home via the alleyway behind her house, a narrow slip where the light from the streetlamps didn’t reach. Perfect for a Head of Communications who didn’t want his own private life being made public.

“Got a second, friend?” said a voice.

A figure detached from the shadows ahead of him. A man. Shorter than Gulliver, but almost twice as wide. Wide enough the Gulliver wouldn’t be able to get around him.

“Ah. A mugging then, is it?” said Gulliver. He reached for his satchel.

“Pull a knife, and I’ll pull your pecker off,” snarled the man.

“Let’s not bring peckers into this, my friend. I was just making our transaction easier. You want the gold in my purse, and I want to keep my face, and my pecker now you mention it, the way they are now. It seems to me that your knuckles can get sore from punching a man’s skull, and it drags the whole affair out. If I just hand you my gold, it will save time.”

The truth was that Gulliver had a bunch of pre-written notes in his satchel. As a master scribe, he could pour a certain power into his words. All he needed was for the man to read one, and there wouldn’t be much question of mugging. A master scribe could get a bloke to bray like a goat if he but wrote the right words the right way.

“Nah, I don’t want your gold,” said the man.

Gulliver didn’t see the weapon, but he heard the sound it made when the man pulled it from a sheath.

“Right. Senseless murder instead then, is it?”

“You don’t seem as scared as they usually are.”

“I was a warscribe. I’ve seen things that would make a blockhead like you piss himself.”

“You’ll die all the same, fear or not.”

“Yes, probably.”

The man charged at him with a speed that belied his size. Gulliver backed off a few steps. When the man was closer, he saw the weapon. A machete. A crude, dull thing used for chopping through jungle vegetation. Not a nice way to go.

He turned to flee when the man tripped up. The man tried to steady himself but failed and was about to fall to the floor, when something collided with him.

“Glurghp!”

He made a horrible gurgling sound and then was completely still. The curious thing was the position he’d stopped in. He was on his feet, sort of, but at an angle.

Gulliver tentatively walked over, to find that the man had tripped and impaled himself on a railing spike that belonged to one of the houses backing onto the short slip of alleyway. The spike had gone through his jowls and into his brain, stopping short of piercing back out through his skull.

“I won’t bother calling for a healer, if you don’t mind,” said Gulliver.

He was about to walk away. After all, it wasn’t his job to be clearing away corpses, and anyway, the bloke didn’t deserve much respect. And as much as he tried to be brave, he felt his legs shaking, and he wanted to be far, far away.

As he turned, he caught sight of something sticking out of the man’s pocket.

It was a rolled-up sheet of paper. He unfurled it.

The scribe usually emerges from behind a house on Sycamore Street and uses the alleyway to get back to the main plaza. Meet him there at night. You won’t have many witnesses.

Not just a senseless killing, then, but an assassination ordered by someone.

Well. Was this what it felt like to have enemies? This was a first for him. He’d had a few feuds in his time but mostly with other scribes, and their battles took place on the page. Back in his teens, Gulliver was the most feared battle poet for miles around. Alas, even remembering those poem battles he and his contemporaries used to have was almost enough to make himself cringe out of existence.

But now he had a real enemy, one who wanted to kill him.

He read the note again. No name on it. The bastard was too much of a coward to put his name on the order.

Wait for a second!

Something was clicking in his mind…

Back in his apartment above the plaza, Gulliver shut the window. He usually liked to keep the window open and let the evening sounds of the square drift in, but tonight it felt right to keep it shut.

There, in the little place he’d called home since moving to Hogsfeate, he searched through piles and piles of correspondence he’d kept. Notes, shopping lists, letters. He had sourced as many as he could from the citizens of Hogsfeate, because owning words written in a person’s hand could give you a certain power over them if you knew how to exploit it.

“Ah!”

He had it!

A copy of an order written in the same hand as the one who had asked the brute to kill him.

Gulliver stared at the two pieces of paper. One was an order for a dozen jam pastries to be delivered from Bubonk’s Buttery Treats. Another was