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

Barenne? Garenne? Warrall?

If Bore Ceno were here, he’d help Gary.

Oh yes, Bore Ceno would help.

Gary was beginning to enjoy this feeling. It was light and calm, and it made him think he’d never want to hurt anyone again. Not even heroes.

Four guards grabbed Gary’s legs, two of them put their arms around his abdomen. He had the strangest thought that he should be fighting them right now, but he knew he wouldn’t. Why would he? Everything was peace…relaxation…

Thirty minutes later, they had tied him to a stake in the middle of Jahn’s Row. Gary hadn’t protested. Why should he do a thing like that?

Looking around, he saw that people were watching him. Some were in the windows of the houses and shops lining both sides of the street. Others were standing on the street itself. Pointing. Scowling.

Someone had painted a big circle on the ground, and Gary’s stake was in the middle of it. Twelve townsfolk were standing on different points of the circle. They were wearing black shawls and black hoods. Was it to hide their faces? It didn’t matter. Gary recognized some of them.

Look – there was Chopson, the butcher. He always used to give Gary a free portion of desert weasel steaks.

“Hi Chopson!” he said, though his voice was so quiet that his words died as soon as they left his lips.

The crowd in the street went quiet. The silence was like that of a crypt. Their faces were ghastly. So full of hate.

A man walked into the center of the circle. A man with an impossibly tidy beard and blond hair oiled back over his head. He, too, was wearing a black shawl, but he had a symbol drawn in blood on the front.

It was Riston. Riston had come to free him!

A sudden, true thought pierced through whatever the needle had done to his mind. Riston is not my friend.

“The monster will face justice,” said Riston. “And with his blood, we will summon the Fifty!”

Riston walked toward him. He had a long, curved dagger in his hand. The cliched kind. The type people always used in rituals because they thought it was the done thing, even though a normal-shaped dagger worked just as well.

He grabbed one of Gary’s leech legs and gripped it and then cut. Gary felt no pain, but he saw his blood. It dripped from his leg and hit the ground.

Drip, drip, drip. The blood began to trickle over the shape painted on the ground. A great roaring sound came from the sky. Thunderous, black clouds covered it. And then it was nighttime. Just like that.

Only seconds ago, it had been a sunny day. Now, the symbol painted on the ground was glowing red, and the wasteland had been plunged into darkness.

“Behold!” shouted Riston, raising the dagger in the air. “The 50 Nights have been summoned!”

CHAPTER 22

My core senses led us to the heart of the dungeon. I felt essence in the air. The invisible energy flowed from the blackened vines and traveled through the tunnels and passageways. I’d have bet my arse that the core was drawing essence from the vines. He could draw as much as he liked; all it did was help me. It meant that when the tunnels forked in different directions, we just went where the essence felt stronger.

Soon we came to the point where it felt strongest of all. I saw a grand set of doors. Magically reinforced, forge-blackened steel. Near impossible to destroy. Impenetrable to most magic. Lots of fancy symbols carved into them, but there was a big chance they were gibberish. The only thing cores love more than symbology is tricking people with fakes.

For all their impenetrable might, I knew the doors wouldn’t pose a problem to me. I only had to see the great big knocker to realize that. The great big knocker with the face of a cockatoo.

It squawked.

“Here you are! Hope you didn’t come far,” it said. “If you want to get past…hmm, how should I rhyme this next part…ah! If you want to get past, answer the question I’ll ask!”

“A riddle door,” I said. “Perfect. Get on with it.”

“What can you break, even if you never pick it up or touch it?”

I thought about it for all of two seconds.

I mean, how stupid can you get, asking a dungeon core a riddle?

“Are you even serious? The answer is a promise.”

The cockatoo gave another squawk and grumbled about me answering so quickly. The door swung open to reveal the chamber beyond.

“I’ll speak to it alone,” I said. “Core to core. The rest of you wait here.”

“I’ll join you,” said Bolton. “I told you why I came here.”

“Me too!” said Anna.

Bolton shook his head. “Beno and me only. Wait here.”

I expected Anna to kick up a fuss, but she didn’t. It seemed she had developed a measure of maturity from somewhere. Only the gods knew what Bolton had said to her when they went off alone, but it had worked.

Bolton and I headed into the core chamber. He shut the doors behind us.

I took a second to get a sense of my new surroundings. While every dungeon has different monsters, different traps, different puzzles, a core’s central chamber is the most individual place of all. It’s where we truly express the beauty of our souls. Spend just a few minutes in a core’s central chamber, and you’ll get a sense of their spirit.

This chamber was ancient. Way older than any core chamber I’d ever seen. There were weird statues dotted around. Ones of creatures I couldn’t name, and others that I recognized. There was a statue of a gogoloth, a monster that had long ago died out. This place was archaic. Forget the old dungeons we’d studied in