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

his mining work. Goo ball after goo ball exploded. Gas seeped out, filling the uppermost section of the cavern. It simultaneously put the insects to sleep, while infecting their minds and making them resistant to outside control. When these insects awoke, Riston would have no control over them.

One by one, the balls discharged and covered the insects with chemical mist. They crashed to the ground, smashing against the stone. Since gravity was responsible for any damage they took, they didn’t multiply.

That told me something, too. Their damage-copy effect was a spell. Or at least, something unnatural.

Now, when these things woke up, Riston would be locked out of their minds. And hopefully, we’d be long gone by then.

Soon, all goo balls had been thrown. All the insects were lying on the ground. Dozing away. There were so many of them. It looked like they’d had a giant party, and now they were all sleeping off their hangovers.

“That was easier than I expected,” I said. “Let’s press on and-”

I stopped talking.

I heard a buzzing sound that quickly got louder and louder. An ominous racket, horrible to listen to. Fear spread through us all like chain lightning.

Soon, more insects flew into the cavern. There must have been a hundred of them in all. So many that I couldn’t even see the roof anymore, all I saw was a writhing mass of monsters.

We were out of goo balls.

Out of essence.

Out of plans.

And then, I heard something else.

The sound of a bell chiming. Once, and then again. As though someone was striking a giant, invisible gong.

What in all hells?

Shadow stumbled. She held her head, groaning in pain.

Warrane ran over to her. “Steady!”

He reached for her.

Shadow pulled her dagger from her sheath and sliced it across his throat.

“No!” shouted Wylie.

Tomlin cried something. I didn’t know what. Words, but not ones that made sense.

Gulliver stared on, mouth agape.

Shadow’s hounds barked and yelped, some with raised tails, others backing away from their master, tails between their legs.

I couldn’t even process what was happening.

Shadow had just…she’d just taken her knife and…

Stop it! I told myself. Get a grip! Think like a core!

Logic rushed at me like an angry tide.

Okay, first, take care of Warrane.

“Cynthia! Can you stop the bleeding?”

She was already sprinting over to Warrane. She unslung her satchel and threw it on the ground. She took off her shirt so she was just wearing a dirty vest, and she doused it in something and wrapped it around Warrane’s neck.

I was worried about my friend, but Cynthia was the best person to take care of him. I had to focus on other problems.

Eric and Gulliver warily approached Shadow. She slashed out with her dagger at every movement.

“Look at me, Little Wolf,” said Eric. “That’s right, look at me.”

With Shadow focused on Eric, Gulliver crept to her left.

She suddenly spun around. Swung the dagger at him.

My nonexistent heart leaped into my nonexistent throat.

Gulliver screamed in pain.

Tomlin recovered from his fear of seeing Shadow like that. It seemed to take a tremendous focus for him to snap out of it, but he did it. He tried to drag Gulliver way, but he was too weak. Wylie helped him. I floated over to him, full of concern for my friend.

There was a great cut on his thigh. Sickening, already covered in blood. If she’d hit a vein, he was done.

“Cynthia!” I said. “You need to help Gulliver!”

She pointed at Warrane. “He’s bleeding out, Beno!”

“So’s Gulliver!”

“If I leave Warrane, he’ll die!”

Damn it, it was true! But if she didn’t get to Gulliver right now, he was done, too.

Maginhart rummaged through Cynthia’s bag. Grabbed a couple of things. I didn’t know what they were. Some kind of alchemy tools, I guessed.

She grabbed his arm. “You don’t know how to use those, Whiskers. I never showed you.”

“I have watched you. Ssstudied. I can usssse them.”

“They’re dangerous…”

“Just let him try!” I said.

Warrane and Gulliver were both my friends. Gull was my best friend, in fact. I had to make sure they were okay. That was more important than anything.

But we were being attacked by the insects. And Shadow had lost her mind again.

Right then, it took everything I had not to let emotion overwhelm me. If it did, If I let myself worry and panic, I was no use to anyone. I couldn’t let it happen.

I felt emotion wracking through me. I felt my mind breaking under the weight of it.

“Steady, Beno,” said a voice beneath me.

It was Core Jahn. He was on the ground. Warrane had been carrying him, I remembered.

“This is your problem,” said Jahn. “You’re fighting it. At the academy, they always taught us that cores don’t have feelings. That we’re emotionless. That feelings are for humans, and we aren’t human. But that’s a lie. It was why I was so bad at learning core stuff; I kept feeling remnants of my human emotions. It made me think I was a defective core. A freak. So I put everything into fighting my feelings away, and that left no energy for study.”

“What are you saying?”

“That if you want to think logically, you shouldn’t fight your feelings. Let them happen. They’re like the insects; they duplicate when you fight them. So you need to stop. Just let them happen.”

Jahn was right.

It went against everything I’d learned in the academy, but he was right. I realized that Jahn wasn’t bad at learning dungeon core stuff because he was stupid, or because he didn’t have that indefinable quality that made a core successful. It was because he was struggling with a truth that I was way too late in catching up on. If anything, Jahn was ten times the core