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

structure would be made by the hands of man, gnome, or orc. Only a core could have conceived of such things. A non-core brain simply wasn’t capable.

“This was a core settlement,” I said.

Ray didn’t reply.

Instead, I saw movement in the core vision.

Cores floated out from doorways in the spikes. Cores of all shapes, all sizes, all colors. Cores shaped like a half-moon, their bodies burning white. Forked cores like Ray. Square cores. Cores that seemed to shimmer as though they were made of liquid.

Some floated alongside one another. Others were alone. Just on the edge of the frame, I saw Ray himself. A trident-shaped core with gold rune marks on him, except in the vision, he was colored the purest green like fresh meadow grass. There were no cracks on his surface.

The cores seemed to be going about their day. Using essence to fuel their powers, though not for slaughter. One core was over by the forest, creating new trees. Oaks, ferns, chestnuts. The forest grew, tree by tree, as he worked. Every so often he’d create a bird’s nest and place it in the tree.

Others were building more of the glass spikes. Spinning glass out from their cores, creating the funneled structures that rose high enough to touch the sun. Way east of the village, one core was even creating a hill. Piling dirt and stone upon dirt and stone, and then spreading it into a shape as if it were butter. It got bigger and bigger. I wondered if it would become a mountain.

Not a single core was creating traps. There were no monsters. No hint of a dungeon.

The powers these cores had. It raised so many questions. Did cores make everything in Xynnar? Instead of being just a cracked, old core, was Ray one of the makers of our world?

“Is this Xynnar?” I said.

“Yes.”

“It can’t be. There’s no evidence of these spike towers. Not a trace.”

“This is Xynnar, Beno. I have been around long enough to know,” said Ray.

The vision grew smaller.

Or rather, the area it covered grew bigger, which made the village itself seem tiny. We were in the sky, looking down upon the core settlement from a great height. I saw lots more settlements spread over a giant mass of land full of green fields and thick forests.

“Where are they, then? Dozens of settlements, all with those glass spikes. You’re telling me these things once existed in Xynnar, and didn’t leave a single trace? What crap. Metallurgy-mages are always digging up coins in the dirt, and they turn out to be centuries old. A little coin can exist all that time, yet these towers just vanished?”

“You doubt me? I have thousands of years on you, young core. If I tell you this is Xynnar, then it is Xynnar.”

“But where? There’s no record of such places anywhere. So where did these villages exist?”

“Right above our heads.”

“This is the wasteland?”

“Yes.”

It was impossible to comprehend. And that in itself was ludicrous.

I was a core. A being brought back from the dead and fused into a gem. I could suck energy from what amounted to a bunch of plants, and I could create monsters from it. My very existence took a great leap of belief.

Even so, I struggled to accept that the green, sprawling pastures in the vision was the dry, dead land above me. This couldn’t have been the wasteland.

Yet, what reason did Ray have to lie to me?

“It was the way of things since the beginning,” said Ray. “Cores were spread all over Xynnar. None of us were perfect. Settlements fought with each other, yes. But all fights ended eventually. There were always periods of peace, even if such periods were just gaps between more tension. No civilization is perfect.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Longer than the memories of any man.”

“That doesn’t exactly answer my question.”

Ray said nothing.

“What happened?” I said. “All these cores settlements. Not a single trace of their existence. A whole land turned to desert. Something big must have gone on.”

The core vision changed now. I was looking at the same core village again, with its bordering forest and its giant, glass spikes.

Except now, people were there. Hundreds, maybe a thousand of them. Soldiers on horseback. Mages in their robes, spell-light flashing from their fingertips. Flames spreading. Catapults tossing rocks into the giant spikes.

All I could think as I watched it was, why?

“Why did the cores let this happen? If someone tried doing this to me, I’d…”

“You’d what, Beno?” said Bolton. “You can’t use your essence on the surface. You couldn’t even protect your own dungeon from Riston. An Awakener. A glorified messenger boy.”

The words felt like a sword thrust deep into my core. They caught me off guard. I’d told Bolton the truth, and he used it to mock me?

I almost fell back on my instincts. My gut told me to act tough. Threaten him. Tell him I’d flay his skin, tear out his bones, and feed the marrow to Shadow’s hounds.

But I held back. I couldn’t help but get the sense that Bolton was goading me. Trying to provoke a certain reaction. Testing me.

“I know my weaknesses,” I said. “Knowing them is the first step to beating them. A hell of a lot better than pretending they don’t exist. I failed my dungeon, but that doesn’t mean-”

“Hush, please,” said Ray.

Like me, Ray didn’t have a face. But if a person can sometimes sense a core’s gaze, then a core can easily do the same to a fellow core.

Right now I could sense that Ray was watching the vision intently. It was impossible to miss the air of despair he felt. This must have happened centuries ago, and yet, look at him. Still feeling the same grief.

The cores in the vision