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

an enemy like this. If I swiped my sword at the fog, my blade would hit nothing but the cold air. I like an opponent with soft flesh that tears when it meets my sword.”

“That’s why we are both chiefs. Together we can adapt to face enemies the other can’t. Now, let’s have everyone moved underground at once. Beno, could you send your ravens out to scout and see how far the fog reaches?”

“Mist,” said Reginal.

“Already done,” I said. “It was the first thing I did when we got back to town.”

“And?”

“Bad news. The fog spreads from Yondersun and all the way north across the wasteland. Not an inch of it has been spared. My ravens could barely fly through it.”

“In all my time living on this dry rock, I have never seen anything like it.”

“Nor me,” said Reginal.

“Galatee, you are being sensible in protecting against possible poison,” I said. “And I believe we should prepare ourselves for another danger. It’s my belief that given how unlikely it is for this fog to be natural, someone created it. The weathermage would not waste such a spell on the slight chance he can blackmail us. He would only do so if his payment was certain. The only man who is both an enemy of Yondersun and has the gold to fund this is Duke Smit. We should act on the belief that Smit is going to bring his army out under the cover of fog and surround us before we can even realize what he’s done.”

“If we can’t see through it, then he can’t either,” said Reginal. “The fog of war blinds both armies’ eyes.”

“Not when you are paying the weathermage who cast it. Trust me, he will have some way around it. We should prepare our defenses now rather than wish we’d done it later.”

“I am with you on this, Beno,” said Galatee.

Reginal grumbled. “Then I suppose I am, too. I will tell my men to stop using their swords as toothpicks, put on their combat leathers, and stay alert.”

“And I’ll go back to my dungeon and get ready,” I said.

CHAPTER 21

The Yondersunians, who had become used to living in fancy new houses above ground instead of a damp cave deep under the wasteland, took the order as well as anyone would have expected. Their grumbles were loud enough to reach me and my creatures in our dungeon, but luckily, we were too busy to care.

“Ah, the monster melding chamber. What are we doing here?” said Gulliver who, for only the second time since I’d known him, was wearing the same outfit twice in a row. I guessed that having to flee Hogsfeate without his wardrobe of clothes was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

“If Duke Smit is coming, I want to put out the welcome mat and make sure he feels at home.”

There were three circles drawn on the floor in runescript. To use the monster melding chamber, I would need to have a creature stand in each one. The melding chamber would combine them all, resulting in a single monster that possessed a mix of their appearance and abilities.

The first time I had ever used the chamber, I’d combined a spider, rock-troll, and a leech. This resulted in Gary - a spider who was the size of a troll, with rock-hard underbelly skin and giant leeches for legs. Sure, he wasn’t pleasant to most people’s eyes, but I thought he was a fine-looking specimen.

So…what would the melding chamber give me this time?

“The thing to remember here is that Duke Smit’s men will be soldiers and not heroes,” I said.

“There’s a difference?” said Gulliver.

“On the face of it, they both swing their swords in exchange for payment. They just serve different paymasters. Soldiers report to their lord or duke, while all heroes kiss their guild’s arse. But there’s a more important difference. Heroes are trained to raid dungeons. They grow up learning about monsters, to the point where they become desensitized to them, and rarely get scared when entering a core’s lair. But a soldier is generally only used to fighting other soldiers. They aren’t as accustomed to facing a monster.”

“Ah. So, they won’t know how to fight one.”

“Well…swing a sword at anything in just the right way, and it’ll die. It’s more that because Smit’s army won’t have encountered monsters as much, so they won’t have become as desensitized to them. If I can create a horrible enough creature in here, I can make Smit’s men wet their britches. I need something really, really dreadful. Something disgusting, loathsome, so disgusting to look at that no sane man can bear to be in its presence for long.”

“Let me consult my records. I’m sure I wrote down the address of my last girlfriend’s mother…”

“You should be more respectful toward your partner’s mothers, Gull. Have a little decorum. Anyway, let’s see what I can come up with.”

 Checking my essence, I saw that I had 2460 / 2460 essence points available to spend, after which I’d need to wait for them to regenerate. There was no telling how far away Smit was, so I couldn’t count on having the time to regenerate. I needed to spend my points wisely.

The problem was that the melding chamber was unpredictable. It could combine three creatures and come up with a monster of ferocious power, or it could spew out a complete mess. I’d once heard of a core combining a raven, poltergeist, and a spider, and ending up with an invisible raven that flew around crapping bits of web everywhere.

Randomness aside…there was a way to stack the odds. The way to do that was by choosing my three monsters carefully.

“Let’s see what I can use…”

Monsters Crafting Category

Spider [Cost 15]

Leech [Cost 15]

Raven [Cost 18]

Fire beetle [Cost