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

“Here we go, clanmates,” I said. “Get ready. Prepare for bogbadugs, but hope for rats and mice.”

The beetles snapped to attention now, streaks of fire roaring over their shells. Wylie stood ready, pickaxe in hand, that unmovable grin on his face. I felt a little anxious, but it wasn’t through fear. I just had a lot invested in my dungeon by now.

In the end, I shouldn’t have been worried.

We didn’t see any bogbadugs, nor anything else as large as that. Instead, a few waves of rats, mice, and voles scurried into the chamber, drawn by the essence. My creatures battled them, making light work of the vermin that came through five or six-strong at a time.

It took a few hours, since every subsequent level is more difficult to attain, but soon I saw a message that made my imaginary mouth beam a big, wide smile.

You have leveled up to 3!

- Total essence increased to 200

- Crafting categories unlocked: Loot, Rooms

- Existing categories expanded

- Dungeon capacity increased: 9 rooms, 12 traps, 6 puzzles, 11 monsters

Your fire beetles are now lvl4 [Warriors]

Ohhhh yeah! The feeling of leveling up was delicious, but even more so were the improvements it gave me.

I am an essence fiend by nature. Seriously, I can’t get enough of the stuff. Boosting my total essence points to 200 fed into my addiction and opened up a lot more options.

I guessed that, thanks to my leveling and my earlier bud splitting, I was ahead of some of the other cores. Especially Jahn. Man, I liked him because he was always the class joker, but I doubted his dungeon was flourishing. Still, I hoped he was okay.

Just as important as the essence increase and how my beetles had toughened up, was unlocking two new crafting categories and expanding the others.

Time to get going!

First, I went to my loot room. There was my trick chest in the center of it with my lovely beartrap inside, as well as the real chest pushed up against the wall. Time to fill it.

I checked my new loot category.

Loot

Bag of Gold Coins [Cost: 50]

Slightly fancy sword [Cost: 50]

Semi-rare Gem [Cost: 75]

Generic Magic Spell Book [Cost: 100]

Now, loot is a funny thing in a dungeon. Common sense would say that a hero doesn’t know what kind of loot is in a dungeon until he fights his way to the chest. So, how does me putting loot in a chest then attract heroes?

Once you open up your dungeon, a little signpost gets created on the surface, near the entrance. This sign has mana woven into it, and the mana takes into account all your monsters, traps, puzzles, and loot, and it calculates a difficulty rating.

The higher the difficulty…yep! The more chance heroes will try to conquer it.

I had already been given my ‘reward’ by Overseer Bolton that meant a higher standard of hero might now come, and I needed to balance things. I wanted to increase my chance of heroes coming here, but I didn’t want ones who would tear me a new bumhole.

So, after considering it, I crafted a Generic Magic Spell Book and a Slightly Fancy Sword.

I figured that this would appeal to both mages and warriors, which would mean a well-balanced hero party would see worth in coming down here to face their gruesome deaths.

Requirement Satisfied!

Requirement: Loot

Requirements Satisfied: 3

This left me with just two things to do: Creating a boss monster, and then finally, finally, making an entrance to my lair of death and torture. Lovely.

So, after letting my essence replenish in my now gloriously flourishing core room, I instructed Tomlin to carve out a new dungeon room right next to the larder.

Tomlin subsequently entrusted Wylie to do the digging, but hey, I had come to accept how lazy he was. The kobold just loved to delegate, which probably made him a great supervisor.

Soon, I had a new tunnel that opened up from the worm larder, ran ten feet, then opened up into a room 8 x 8 feet.

This wasn’t to be any ordinary room, though. When I hit level three, as well as unlocking the loot crafting category, I had also unlocked rooms.

Opening it now, I only saw a few options, but that was okay.

Rooms

Essence growing room [Cost 80]

Specialized insect and fungi larder [Cost 100]

Melding room [Cost 120]

The essence growing room was something I’d need to look at, because it would give me a place to dedicate to growing more essence vines, thus increasing my regeneration rate.

In a similar vein, a specialized insect and fungi larder was infused by mana so that little grubs and stuff would replicate faster, thus helping me feed my clanmates once my population expanded.

For now, I was more interested in the melding room. No, not just interested; absolutely fascinated.

Out of all the classes I had taken in the academy, this was the one that had excited me the most. I remembered sitting there as Overseer Clifftop talked us through it. Core Jahn, of course, spent the whole time joking, but I tuned him out, entranced by Clifftop’s teachings.

Back then, it had seemed like it would take forever until I got to try it out for myself, but here I was. My very own melding room. My chance to create a boss monster for myself.

I was very, very excited.

CHAPTER 22

Okay, let’s see what I can create.

I was alone in the melding room, but talking helped keep my growing excitement in check, and I had to keep a clear head for this.

First, I checked my monster crafting list and saw that it had expanded.

Monsters

Spider [Cost 15]

Leech [Cost 15]

Fire beetle [Cost 20]

Kobold [Cost 35]

*New* Angry Elemental Jelly Cube [Cost 75]

*New*