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

the girl and with her, he’d take away my chance of using her powers to strengthen my dungeon. The worst thing was I couldn’t do anything. He wasn’t bluffing about the academy having a way to destroy me. They weren’t stupid. Cores are dangerous, and those who forged us would make sure they could end us if they needed to.

I couldn’t go up against the academy, but could I go up against a man? Bolton was alone here, after all. Maybe a little test would tell me if there was a way to get to him. I didn’t know if I would even want to harm Bolton if it came to it, but I would feel better if I had the information.

“Even in your overseer capacity, you are just a man now, aren’t you, Bolton? You used to be a dungeon core, but you earned a new resurrection into human flesh, and human flesh is what you remain.”

“Is this some kind of threat, Beno?”

No, he didn’t betray a thimble of fear. Bolton must have known for certain that I could not harm him. It would be useless to pursue the idea further.

“Just me thinking aloud.”

“You ought to watch that. Thoughts are like exotic birds and have a tendency to flee when they are let out of their cage.”

“Fine, Bolton. Take the girl. She annoys me anyway.”

“Tell me,” said the overseer. “What did you plan on doing with her?”

“The usual, I suppose. Have her melted in the alchemy chamber and feed her essence dust to one of my monsters.”

“You haven’t changed a bit. You always had the best instincts of any of my students, even if you sometimes allow a little of your human past to shine through.”

“I try. Listen; if you have to take the girl, can you at least give me an hour before you do? She has promised to remove a spell that she cast on one of my kobolds.”

Bolton looked concerned. “Wylie? Tomlin? Tarius? Maginhart?”

It was strangely heart-warming that he knew the names of all my creatures. “Shadow,” I said.

“Of course. Do what you must without hurting the girl, and then I will be off. But hurry up.”

“Thank you, Bolton.”

The overseer paused in the tunnel archway. “Are you happy, Beno?”

“Happy? That’s a strange question from you. What is happy, anyway? A phantom state that everyone chases and few ever catch, and those who do find that it is fleeting, and they must begin the chase anew? I’m busy, Bolton. That’s much better than happy. I set my sights on the things I want, and I either get them or I don’t. That’s as much as I can promise myself.”

“Where do your sights lie now?”

I thought about my dungeon. Yondersun. Hogsfeate. The dreams I had of spreading my influence further and further.

And then I saw my demented dungeon mates’ faces in my mind as I unmade them, putting them out of their misery.

“I’m not sure my sights lie much further than this room,” I said.

“You are part of the Yondersun council, are you not?”

“You’ve been talking to Reginal and Galatee?”

“The chiefs and I get on rather well. What’s the problem, Beno? It shouldn’t be an issue to take on another role, especially not with the influence it might bring.”

“That was what I thought. But it turns out that when I nurture one interest, my other interests begin to wither.”

“You know,” said Bolton, “We don’t just close our eyes and point at the nearest corpse when we decide whose soul to forge into a core. We choose our people carefully. Even Jahn, who is a disappointment when it comes to dungeon building but is beginning to show a genius for construction.”

“I know, I know. I should stick to the reason I was forged. To taking care of my dungeon.”

“You have seen my point, understood it, yet you have sprinted in the opposite direction. Only certain people are chosen to be cores. Ones who displayed a talent for certain qualities. A master core must be able to divide his consciousness, Beno. A dungeon can grow to the size of a country, and many groups of heroes will attack it at once. A core in charge of such a dungeon cannot hope to survive if he tries to handle one threat at a time.”

“What are you saying?”

“That you have advanced enough, Beno, that you should take the next step. You have killed enough heroes, reached a high enough level, that the power is already in you. But it is like an itch; attention needs to be drawn to it before you take notice.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Take your core vision,” said Bolton. “You can cast your core vision as a picture of light, yes? And you can cast one core vision next to another, allowing you to watch, for example, your loot chamber and your core chamber at the same time.”

“I have been able to do that for a while.”

“And I have been an overseer for much longer than a while. I look at a core, and it takes me but seconds to see their potential. Their ability. I look at you, and I see that you have advanced, but you don’t realize it.”

“Advanced to what?”

“Just as you can cast several versions of your core vision and watch several chambers at once, so can you do the same with your mind, Beno.”

“I can separate my thoughts?”

“It should not be beyond a core at your level to control several chambers. To divide his thoughts and tackle several problems at once. Once a core kills enough, gets strong enough, he no longer needs to be linear. Try it, Beno.”

“How?”

“Cast a few core visions. Show me your alchemy chamber, loot chamber, and your arena.”

I did so, projecting three rectangles of light in front of us,