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

“I don’t have anything to bargain to get them out of their cells. I already tried using my core voice to contact Galatee, but she ignored me.”

“We can’t just leave them locked up.”

“Riston will have taken them to a cell. Maybe one near Gary’s.”

An idea hit me.

“…or maybe not. One second.”

I used my core voice.

“Shadow?”

The next few seconds were tense.

There was no answer.

And then a voice spoke.

“Beno?”

It worked!

“One minute, Shadow,” I told her.

I turned my attention back to Gulliver and Wylie. “I can use my core voice to speak to Shadow. That means they’re holding her and Eric in a normal cell. One without any alchemic lining on the walls. Those cells are on the outskirts of town. Wylie, I want you and the boys to tunnel underneath and get Shadow and Eric out.”

“I not a miner anymore!”

“Just grab your pickaxe one last time, buddy. Do it for me.”

“No.”

“Then do it for Shadow.”

Wylie knew full well that I had him by the balls.

Metaphorically, of course. This wasn’t that kind of dungeon.

I’d cornered him because I knew how he felt about Shadow. She had always been nice to Wylie. Even in the beginning when he was just a miner, way before he’d earned his promotions and become the kobold he was today. She’d never treated him with anything but friendship and respect.

Wylie nodded. “I will do it for Shadow.”

“Then get to it. The quicker you dig, the faster we’ll get her out.”

He headed off. Gulliver and I were alone.

“So that’s the plan,” I said. “Wylie and the miners will get Shadow and Eric from their cells. We’ll go back to the caverns under the crater, and we’ll launch a full expedition. Find out what Riston’s up to down there, put a stop to it, expose him to the town, and get back in time for tea.”

“Screw tea. I need a beer or ten,” said Gulliver.

CHAPTER 8

Overseer Bolton

Three wheels clacked again and again as the horses pulled the cart over the wasteland. The fourth wheel made a whining sound. It had done that every few seconds for the last five hundred miles. The sound was slowly driving Overseer Bolton insane, but he couldn’t voice his displeasure.

He couldn’t say anything because Anna had told him to buy oil back in Wheedlestone. Given that Bolton hated being told what to do even more than he hated spending gold, he’d told her no.

“We don’t need to oil the cartwheels. They’ll be fine. Now shut up.”

Anna had given him one of her oh-so-innocent smiles. “You know best, overseer.”

That was why he pretended to ignore the whining sound. He put just as much effort into ignoring it as he did into ignoring the smug grin Anna was shooting in his peripheral vision.

After weeks of traveling Xynnar following one false lead after another, Bolton, Anna, and Utta found themselves back in that sun-drenched arse of nowhere. The hellpit they called the wasteland. Faced with the spread of orange rocks, he couldn’t say he was happy.

Give me a beer. A bath. A woman with a sympathetic ear and playful hands.

Well, it wasn’t to be. Not yet. So Bolton quit daydreaming, and he turned his attention to Anna, who’d stopped grinning.

“Not so tight,” he told her. “Pick up on Ham’s mood. See? He’s tired. Pulling the reins tighter makes him slow down out of spite. When he’s in this kind of mood, you have to ease off.”

Anna pulled the reins tighter out of spite.

“He’s a horse. He doesn’t get to have moods.”

“Anna…what did we say about horses?”

“Treat them like you would a person. Pah. I treat people just as bad!”

That was their problem. He and Anna both hated being told what to do as much as the other. Bolton knew it. That didn’t mean he could do anything about it. He was in the twilight years of his third life in Xynnar, and his behavior was on par with a reject from the Chosen One school.

“You know, if you’d just listen to me,” said Bolton, “you might make something of your life one day. We might knock the stupid out of your head.”

“What do you care? I’m your prisoner.”

“You’re not my prisoner.”

“Um…you won’t allow me to leave. Textbook prisonry, by my reckoning.”

“Prisonry isn’t a word.”

“Words are just shapes made of sound. Who made the rules on what shape’s proper and what isn’t? Huh? Someone sat on their fat bum years ago and decided ‘For the rest of time, this is how people are going to speak.’ Well, I ain’t following it. I say whatever words I want.”

“Oh, you’re such a rebel that you don’t even follow the rules of language now, eh?”

“Don’t you forget it!”

Bolton heard shifting from the wagon behind them. It was Utta, waking from his nap. Suffering from intense travel sickness, the only way the boy could get through their journey was to sleep.

“Can you two shut up? I swallowed a doze-root when we left Wheedlestone, and your yammering is cutting through it!”

“Sorry, Utta,” said Anna. She turned to Bolton and whispered. “I say whatever words sound right. And prisonry sounds right.”

Unbelievable.

She’d argue with Bolton about the color of the sky if he said that it was blue. Yet when Utta asked her to be quiet, she whispered. Their friendship was something to behold. Enviable, really. Bolton had lived three lives – two as a human and one as a dungeon core – and he’d never had a friendship as strong as that. He supposed that was what happened when two Chosen Ones were kicked out of the Chosen One School and only had each other.

Bolton spoke at a whisper now, too. He liked Utta. He was a good-natured, hardworking