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

“In truth, I thought I’d wounded you enough that you wouldn’t be capable of tracking me. When I learned that you were here, brother, I thought about going home, back to the snow. It would have been easy to give you the slip. But then I decided to stay for a while so that I might get the chance to watch the wasteland claim you. I have adapted to this place, but you…you don’t have the heart.”

“You talk about heart, and yet you serve this wretch?”

“The duke? It is sensible to make friends. I will need them when I return home to lead our people.”

“I will send you to the ice!”

“Oh, Razensen. Always full of bluster. You couldn’t even protect our parents when I slit their throats.”

“Bastard!”

Razensen’s eyes turned from yellow to orange and finally to red. He lost control of himself, charging forward to get to his brother. The duke’s men parted, leaping to the side to avoid being crushed underfoot.

Soon, the two hulking beasts met each other and embraced, but this was an embrace of murderous fury. They began grappling, throwing punches, biting each other, and tearing away bloody chunks of fur.

Nazenfyord caught Razensen with a sickening blow to the stomach. While his brother gulped for breath he grabbed him by the arm, roared, and then flung him into a nearby sword shop. The wooden walls caved under his weight, burying him in splintered timber.

“No!” cried a voice. It was Core Jahn, who was being carried in the arms of Warrane, one of the Yondersunians. “My lodges! Please be careful!”

“I don’t think they’re going to listen to you, Jahn. Anyway, you should have stayed underground with the others,” I said. I turned to face my creatures behind me. “Dungeon mates…it’s time.”

My monsters rushed forward. Thirty fire beetles, their blackened husks buzzing with the hero essence I had fed them and giving off multi-colored streams of light. Kobolds raised swords and pickaxes and charged toward the soldiers. Shadow and her pups scampered onward, howling like wolves. Kainhelm raised his skeletal arms in the air.

“A pox on your ancestors!” he shouted.

 Reginal and Galatee’s Yondersunian soldiers joined their dungeon allies, and the twin armies met the duke’s men in the ridiculously crowded street. The ring of steel on steel was deafening, and the effect of dozens of boots and feet kicking up dust was that a new mist arose, one that got into men and kobold’s eyes and made them cough, splutter, and gag.

Razensen rose from his timber tomb and gave his brother an uppercut that sent the bogan crashing into another house, flattening it.

Nazenfyord struggled to his feet, grunting and holding his hand against a bloodied patch on his right hip.

“You always did have fists like blocks of ice. Remember when we used to spar?”

“I remember trying to make you strong. Acting as a brother should.”

“More fool you,” said Nazenfyord.

He rushed at his brother, feigned a punch but then barreled head-first into his stomach.

With bogan fighting bogan and with soldiers fighting Yondersunians and kobolds in the middle of the street, there was already enough chaos. I added to this by sending forth Varanius, my new boss monster.

He rattled toward the soldiers, stopping just ahead of them. The duke’s men, no doubt wondering if their take-home gold was worth the situation they’d found themselves in, looked at the walking skeleton with mixtures of freight, awe, and pure hate.

They watched as Varanius stepped aside, creating copies of his bone guy self. And then again. Again. Again.

Soon, eighteen skeletal warriors formed a line in front of the duke’s men. They held no weapons, they wore no armor.

It was only when one of them raised a hand, swept their arm, and telekinetically sent a big chunk of timber flying straight into a soldier’s face, that they understood they were dealing with an enemy who didn’t need weapons.

“That’s the poltergeist part of him, I take it,” said Gulliver, joining me.

“I couldn’t create anything as hideous as I’d hoped,” I said. “But at least this is something they’ve never fought before.”

The sight of another piece of timber flying through the air and hitting one soldier’s skull was enough to shake the others from their stupor. They charged forward, sword and spears ready.

Jahn’s Row, once a peaceful trading street, filled with the sounds of battle. Screams of pain, the clangs of swords, the rush of flames from fire beetles’ antennae.

Gary wrapped his leech legs around one soldier’s face, tearing into his skin with his hundreds of leech teeth.

“Ah! I’d forgotten how splendid this feels!” he said.

Rusty set up totem after totem until his mana was spent, each shard of bone imbued with magic and sending out blasts of flame. “Yip yip!” he chanted, dancing side to side as his totems fired.

Varanius used his poltergeist powers to bombard the soldiers with projectiles, forcing them to choose between raising their shields to protect their heads or being able to swing their weapons.

The duke’s men fell. First a handful of them. Then dozens.

My dungeon mates fell in turn. Swords crunched through beetle husks. A spearman thrust his weapon into Gary’s abdomen, spearing him like a kebab, pinning him against a lodge front.

“Wylie!” I said. “Protect Gary. Don’t pull the spear out yet, we don’t want him to bleed out.”

“Yes, Dark Lord!”

While the chaos roared on, Razensen and Nazenfyord fought each other, smashing one another into houses, picking up giant pieces of timber that would once have been part of roof frames and clubbing each other senseless, their red eyes burning with a never-ending red fury. Anyone who strayed close, be they soldier, beetles, or otherwise, were crushed underfoot.

When the sounds of battle finally began to fade, Jahn’s Row was covered in bodies.

From what I could tell, the Duke’s men