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

So I stopped fighting.

I let fear for Warrane and Gulliver flow through me.

I let my anger tear through my mind. Anger at Riston for what he did to my dungeon. Fury at myself for letting it happen.

Grief about Fight. About all the other monsters who died in service to the dungeon.

The feelings washed through me like a tsunami, powerful and destructive.

Or maybe not as destructive as I’d expected.

Because when they finally began to ebb, I saw that they hadn’t destroyed anything. In fact, my mind had never been clearer.

And now, I remembered what black essence was.

I had learned about it in the academy, but not in class. It was in a book. An old, forgotten tome in a part of the Dungeon Core Academy library where few cores ever visited. The book had been collecting dust.

Not literally, because Librarian Jestvegel was uptight about cleaning the place. But still.

I focused on the wall of black essence now. I knew what it would do, but I had no choice.

I drained from it.

Essence regenerated!

Essence remaining: 4738 / 4738

Damn, it felt good to have my essence back!

But no sooner did I enjoy the warm rush of essence, then the consequences hit me.

Pain like I had never felt in my second life ravaged through me.

Part of my core exploded. A chunk of my gem self-split away and fell on the ground and smashed.

20% core purity lost!

New core purity: 71%

Damn it!

We cores were immortal, but we weren’t invincible. Time would never touch us, but other things could. Weapons. Spells. If our core purity ever reached zero, it meant our core selves were destroyed.

What a sacrifice. But what option did I have?

With the now-filtered essence inside me, I transferred half of it to Jahn. I had already taken the hit from the black essence, so I knew Jahn wouldn’t lose purity. Good thing, too. The dope was as pure a soul as I ever met, and I wouldn’t want to have hurting him on my conscience.

“Wha…Beno? What’s this?”

“You give me your essence earlier. Don’t let it be said that I don’t pay my debts.”

“But how?”

“Never mind. Just start crafting.”

“Crafting what?”

“Oh, I don’t know…how about a giant steel plate above us? Give us a little protection from those things?”

As the insects swooped down and tried to stab anything in sight, Jahn and I got to work.

Jan began constructing a great sheet of steel 15 feet above us. His progress was painstaking, but inch by inch, the steel began to form.

I used my essence to create stone dwarf trolls. One after another. They were barely bigger than a man’s waist, but boy, were they tough. I only had enough essence to create 13 of them.

“Protect Gulliver and Warrane!” I ordered them.

The trolls formed a wall around Gulliver and Warrane. They bent over, shielding them with their stone backs.

Insects slammed into them, chipping away at their stone, but otherwise being repelled.

It was enough for now, but the trolls wouldn’t hold forever.

“Jahn, you need to hurry!”

“Thank you for the tip, Beno. I’m constructing as fast as I can!”

“It’s not quick enough, damn it.”

“You need to give me time to work!”

It was no good.

Jahn had barely covered a quarter of the room with steel. My trolls were taking a beating.

There was no way to escape this place, and we were out of time.

The insects seemed to sense this now. They all lined up overhead. Their wings flapped together. They pointed their spikes at us.

They were all going to strike as one. I saw their abdomens twitch. This was it…

They began to rush down at us.

And then they stopped.

Just like that, they stopped and floated in midair. Not moving, not attacking. Almost docile.

“What in all hells…”

“Stay…stay…Good boys!” said a voice.

A hidden door on the far side of the room had opened. Three figures stepped out.

CHAPTER 18

“Overseer Bolton?” said Jahn. “What are you doing here?”

Jahn sounded overjoyed to see his old teacher, but I didn’t think Bolton’s surprise entrance was such a good thing. Ever since leaving the academy, I had been wary about trusting him.

“Just keep working on the steel, buddy,” I told Jahn.

Bolton had two teenagers with him. Two teenagers who I could have cheerfully murdered.

There was Utta. A young kid. Tanned skin. Freckles all over his face. Not such a bad lad, really, but his downfall was the company he kept.

His best friend, Anna. Curly hair. She loved to sing to herself, but her voice sounded like a cat giving birth. She had the evilest eyes you’d ever see. Well, I supposed they didn’t look inherently evil, they just looked like normal eyes. But I knew what kind of sinister mind lurked behind them. A mind of malice. Cruelty. There was something incredibly dark lurking in this girl’s soul.

“Hey everyone!” she said cheerfully.

Eric and Tomlin were tying a rope around Shadow’s hands. Cynthia was attending to Warrane, applying some kind of paste to his neck. Maginhart was doing the same to Gulliver’s thigh. I badly wanted to know how they were, but I had to focus. She might not look it, but Anna was more dangerous than anyone I had ever faced. I couldn’t let my guard down for a second.

“Hello, Beno,” said Overseer Bolton.

I felt a flash of wrath.

Bolton used to be my favorite academy overseer and my mentor. I’d thought we would become friends once I graduated from the academy. When I had a dungeon of my own. He would visit me and tour my dungeon, remarking on how well I was doing. How good I was at killing people. They would be good times.

But that had never come to pass. I failed