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

We reached the glorious gloom of my dungeon. The door slammed shut behind me and then the sunlight was gone. I breathed in the darkness and felt it strengthen me, even though a thick coil of tension refused to leave my core.

“It’s good to be home,” I said.

The first chamber was empty. There was a tile puzzle just ahead of me, the tiles dirty from hero boot prints. Ah, what sweet memories we had made here. How many low-level heroes had met their painful end within these walls? I felt nostalgic. Today, no monsters lurked in the shadows; I’d told them all to wait in the loot chamber.

“You guys go ahead,” I said.

“You aren’t coming?” asked Warrane.

“I’ll be along in a second. I need to do something. Jahn, can you help?”

“Sure thing, Beno.”

As Maginhart, Cynthia, and Warrane crossed the room, where two riddle doors blocked them from going further into the dungeon.

One of them, with the face of a bull, stirred to life.

“Hello heroes, don’t delay!” it said. “The answer to my riddle, you will say!”

“Let them through,” I said.

“You’re no fun,” sighed the door.

The riddle doors sighed and opened up. The guys headed through them and down the tunnel, and soon they were gone. Jahn and I were alone.

“What do we need to do?” asked Jahn.

“Nothing. I just wanted to thank you,” I said.

“You really don’t have to.”

“I do. I know how much your role in town means to you. I’ve asked a lot from you today.”

I was understating it if anything. Jahn had trained in the Dungeon Core Academy just like me. Only, he was useless at anything dungeon related. Whatever criteria the academy used to choose who they resurrected as a core, they’d made a mistake with Jahn. He was a dud. A blunder. Or that’s what they thought.

They were wrong.

Really, Jahn just needed to find his calling. He’d stumbled on it in Yondersun, where he was able to use essence not to destroy but to create. Jahn was gifted at constructing buildings and fixtures on the surface, and he’d made more than half the town. There was a reason there was a street in Yondersun named Jahn’s Row, and none named Beno’s Alley.

Creating things is what gets you remembered. All I did was kill. Nobody remembers a killer. At least, not for the right reasons. Hopefully, in centuries to come, people would walk down Jahn’s Row and be thankful to him. Nobody would remember me, the core who lurked in a dungeon and murdered heroes. But you can’t change what you are.

Core Jahn had shown exactly who he was when I asked him to risk his reputation to help me.

Hours ago, before going to see Galatee, I’d used my core voice to speak to Jahn. If Riston was using magic to alter people’s minds, then it meant Jahn was one of the only people I could truly trust. He was a core, and like me, magic of Riston’s nature wouldn’t affect him.

Jahn was so loyal that he’d heard me out, and he’d believed me, and he’d agreed to help. Just like that. That was the kind of person he was.

In doing so, I’d made him act against the town. There wouldn’t be a place for him on the surface anymore. Not unless I could fix this.

“I don’t suppose Chief Galatee will need my services now,” Jahn said. “What will I do? I’m not like you, Beno. I’m a defective core.”

“You’re not defective! You’re just…different. Who’s to say that it isn’t me who’s defective? Maybe cores weren’t meant to murder heroes. What if everything they teach in the Dungeon Core Academy goes against why cores were created in the first place?

“But they resurrect us to kill heroes. How can it be any other way?”

I thought about Namantep. She was an old core who had almost been killed and had to spend decades in dormancy to cling onto life. Right now, she was hiding in a sublevel of my dungeon. Years of sleep had messed with her mind. I had so many questions for her, but it was difficult to get sense out of her sometimes.

She was proof that cores existed before the Dungeon Core Academy. She was a healer core, and her existence meant cores didn’t always have to kill.

I still didn’t know what to do about that.

“Never mind. Look, we’ll straighten this out.” I said.

“I’m not sure you will. The townsfolk hate you now, Beno. When they hear I was helping you…”

“I told you. This is all Riston. If we can stop him, they’ll go back to normal.”

“What if this is normal, Beno? What if you’re wrong? Maybe even if Riston goes away, everyone will still hate us. Not because of a spell...but because of what we are.”

He had a point. It was hard to counter that. I just had to believe that I was right.

“Forget that; we can’t control it. Let’s focus on the things we can do,” I said. “I need your help. Do you have any essence left?”

“Some, but I can’t use it below ground.”

“You can transfer it to me. Let’s get to it.”

We had questions to answer. Plans to make. But right now, I had to make the place secure. Riston’s men would get to the dungeon soon, and I couldn’t let them get in.

There were two entrances to my dungeon that others would know about. One was the main entrance that heroes used when they were raiding, which we’d just used to get to the first chamber. There was another entrance on the west side of the dungeon, adjoining the great cavern where Galatee’s clan used to live.

Jahn transferred half his essence to me, topping me up to full capacity. Using this, I created eight steel doors, one after