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

a softer look. “You have done well, Beno. Even without academy support, you have built a lovely place for yourself.”

It would have been nice if I was able to just shrug off his praise, but something about Bolton’s words got to me. It was pathetic. Here I was, a free core, a member of the Yondersun chiefs’ council, and the effective ruler of a whole bloody town, and yet I was sniffing the ground for morsels of praise from my old mentor.

Well, I just had to forget that and keep my wits about me. Focus on what he wanted, and how I could tell him to piss off without invoking the wrath of the academy.

He was sure to ask me about Namantep soon. Someone must have told him that she was here. If that was the case, it meant that I would have another problem – someone in my dungeon was telling tales.

Luckily, since hearing that Bolton had visited Hogsfeate, I’d already thought about what to say. If he asked me where Namantep was, I had concocted a sophisticated string of lies that relied on me using all my wits to befuddle him. He would say, “Where’s the core?” and I would answer, “I don’t know.”

“What brings you here?” I said.

Bolton leaned forward. “I need to talk to you about the girl.”

“What?”

“Anna Stapes and the boy, Utta Long.”

How would Bolton even know that the girl and her friend were my prisoners? Who had been sending him information? I supposed that Chief Reginal could have been the culprit, but that didn’t make me feel much better. As far as I was concerned, the less the academy knew about my affairs the better.

“Well, well, well,” I said. “The girl’s not long in shackles and here you are, sniffing around like a hog. A welcome hog, but still a hog.”

“Spare me the compliments, Beno. I don’t come here to get my ego massaged. As it happens, I already had business in a town across the wasteland, and being so near, thought I’d drop in on an old student and say hello. Now, I’ll need to take the girl and boy with me when I leave.”

“She’s going nowhere, Bolton. At least, not with all her limbs intact. She came here to set fire to my essence vines and destroy me!”

“Oh, Beno. Don’t be so melodramatic! Let’s not pretend you are a saint. You’re a dungeon core, not a…I don’t know…healing core, or something.”

Healing core? Did Bolton also know about Namantep?

“Yes,” he carried on, “Your nature is to destroy. You are the opposite of Core Jahn, who found destruction so difficult, yet his soul sings when he creates things. I have to tell you, of all the cores from your academy class, Jahn is the one who I never thought I would be proud of. As dim-witted as they come, that boy, and yet look at him now. Look what he’s accomplished with the town above us! His love for construction is a stain on the reputation of the Dungeon Core Academy forgers, of course. Sometimes you have to hold your hands up, though. We picked the wrong soul to raise from death when we chose Jahn.”

“He makes me wonder just how many cores are out there doing things that have nothing to do with the academy.”

“I wouldn’t know, Beno. As long as our cores can learn how to murder a hero or two, that’s all the academy cares about.”

“Then what’s your interest in Anna and Utta?” I Said.

“Hmm. A delicate matter. A diplomatic one. The Dungeon Core Academy and the Chosen One School’s dealings with each other are very complex and almost impossible to navigate through. There are things they provide us that the academy finds invaluable, and things we give to them. In turn, the school caters to the Heroes’ Guild, and so on, and so on. This whole thing is an intricate structure, rather like a chain linking all of the animals together so that there is a complex system of nourishment and nutrition, where if one is removed, the whole system fails.”

“A food chain.”

“Yes, that’s the word I’m looking for.”

“Why should I let you take her? I’m not an academy core anymore. I’m a core completely devoid of ownership, and I don’t see why I should let you take anything or anyone one out of my dungeon.”

“Because, Beno, though you no longer belong to the Dungeon Core Academy, do you not think that we build a system of security into the cores we forge? A method by which, if a core were to act in a way that threatened the academy or the wider world, we could make that core cease its dangerous activities without suffering the consequences of us having to fight the damned thing? A kind of underlying protection that we can employ in such times of need?”

“A safety net.”

“What is with you and your chains and nets, Beno? Have you developed a fetish? But yes, that is what I mean, I suppose.”

“You’re telling me that the academy has a way of destroying me?”

“Do you think we would create things like you without ensuring that we can stop you if something was to go wrong?”

It was chilling to think that the academy had power over me as a core even after I had left them. Then again, was I surprised? Not when I really thought about it.

“What the academy have forged, can also be unforged. Free core or not,” said Bolton. “It might be tiresome having to remove you from this place, but once we have you back in the academy forging room…”

“You’re threatening me?”

“No, Beno. This is a statement of the retribution the academy intends to inflict if you try to resist complying with our desires.”

“Right. A threat, then. Hmm.”

So Bolton was going to take