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

at me. Come to think of it, his nose looked a little like a beak. And he had the beady little eyes of a seagull.

 He couldn’t hear my core voice conversation, so it’d just look like I was just floating there. Stubborn, refusing to move.

“The guard is having an affair, Dark Lord,” said Jopvitz.

“Who with?”

“His wife’s sister.”

An affair. It made me inexplicably irked. I didn’t give a damn about relationships. I didn’t care whose beds the townsfolk danced in and out of. So why should this annoy me?

I supposed it was the loyalty aspect. A dungeon is only as strong as its weakest link. When you’re fighting heroes, you need utter trust in each other, and we prized loyalty above everything. I supposed that was what annoyed me, not that it was my business.

“Segul,” I said. “Can I have a word?”

“You aren’t getting inside, core.”

“Step down, core,” added the other guard. “Or float down.”

Oh, if only you two were in my dungeon…

I swallowed my inner desire to kill and tried to remain civil.

“I just need a quick word, Segul. Either with you or your wife.”

That got to him. I saw him flinch. Just for a second, but it told me everything I needed to know. He moved away from the door, and I floated along with him.

“Just what in all hells do you want…” he began.

“I hear you’ve been putting your beak in other people’s nests, Seagull,” I said.

“It’s pronounced See-gale!”

“I don’t care how you say it, and I don’t care what you get up to in private. But other people will.”

“What do you want?”

“Let me inside the bakery.”

“You do not want to see what is inside, core.” The way he said this worried me.

“Is Gary still in there?” I asked.

“Better that you do not see.”

“Let me in. I’ll decide that for myself.”

I was filled with worry now. I had assumed something had happened in the bakery, but I didn’t think Gary would still be there. I thought…I don’t know what I thought. I guessed the whole thing had surprised me.

Segul tapped the other guard’s shoulder and whispered. A look passed between them. He stepped aside and pushed the door open, just enough for me to float through.

I braced myself. I had a bad feeling. I tried to prepare myself for finding Gary dead. That something had happened in the bakery, of all places, and Gary was dead.

I wasn’t ready, but I couldn’t hover out there all day. I floated in.

The crowd murmured as they watched me leave them. The door swung shut behind me and cut off the noise of the crowd. Inside it was silent, except for a clock ticking from some unseen place.

I looked around. Something stirred in my soul. Dread, maybe. Fear? I couldn’t place the emotion. The only true emotion I could name was confusion.

And then I saw it.

I thought it was jam, at first. This was a bakery after all.

But then I spotted the bodies. Four corpses on the floor. Dead eyes staring at the ceiling. Full of fear. They’d been torn apart, and their blood was splattered everywhere. The ceiling was covered in spots of it. The blood was pooled so thick in some places it hadn’t dried yet. They’d died in the most horrific way, and they’d been gripped with terror while it happened.

Whatever had done this, it had been caught in a tremendous fury. It had ripped them limb from limb. Even I feared the kind of thing capable of this.

But what did Gary have to do with it?

Was he hurt, too? Or did he…

Looking around, I couldn’t see him.

“Gary?” I said, using my core voice.

Still no answer.

I spoke out loud this time.

“Gary?”

I heard footsteps coming from the back of the bakery. A door opened, and a soldier stood in the doorway. Behind him was a long hall, with a trail of blood spread over the floor.

The soldier pointed a spear at me. Pointless, really. Not the spear, obviously, but the action. Mortals don’t seem to get that spears and swords aren’t usually much use against an immortal gemstone.

“You should not be here, Beno,” he said.

It took me a second to realize that the soldier was a young half-orc with dark green skin and three eyes. Muscled, but in an athletic way.

Warrane. One of Ex-Chief Reginal’s favored guards. One of my friends. When I’d met him, he was a weedy teenager from a disgraced family. Doomed to stay at the bottom of the Wrotun clan’s archaic hierarchy.

When the two tribes merged, Warrane proved himself enough to become a chief’s guard. He exercised. His body filled out. He proved himself trustworthy. But even as he got tougher and rose in stature in the town guardship, he kept his amiable manner. It was rare to find someone with a bad word to say about Warrane, and rarer to hear Warrane say a bad word about anyone else.

“Warrane? What in all hells is going on? Is Gary okay?”

“This one doesn’t think you should be here, Core Beno,” he said, his voice kinder this time.

In all this confusion, I hadn’t taken the time to really think.

Gary wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. I had created him, and I would feel it in my core the instant a dungeon creature died.

“Chief Galatee would not be happy if she knew you were here. She would say this one is lax in his duties,” he said.

“Just tell me what happened, Warrane.”

“This one should not. He would get into trouble. He has worked hard to get to this position and doesn’t want to lose it.”

“Warrane, this is me. We’re friends.”

Warrane took a second to think. He relaxed his spear hand. Stepped aside.

“Gary is in there.