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

must have been his friends, I realized. His family. His village mates. They were gone, and somehow Ray was still here.

“What utter tripe,” said Bolton.

The core vision disappeared as if the harsh words had shattered it. Ray said nothing. Just brooded.

Bolton looked angry.

“This deceitful core would have you believe that the ancient cores lived in peace,” said Bolton. “That they were happy and passive until the evil men from the north broke their towers and enslaved them all. That the men exploited the cores and destroyed their civilization. What a load of old crap.”

“That’s not how it happened?” I said.

“Not everything he showed you is a lie. Yes, there were core villages. For a while, the cores did live peacefully. What Ray doesn’t mention is that a core sickness began to spread. Cores began to die off. Their numbers dropped, and they didn’t know why or how to stop it.”

“Lies!”

“Shut up, core. We watched your vision. I cannot cast light to make my words seem more truthful, but you will show me the respect of listening to me.”

Bolton’s voice made him sound much bigger than he really was. As if the room shrunk around him. I’d never seen him like this. Not even in the academy, when a student core would mess something up. I felt like I was seeing not just Bolton the man, but his old, dead core self too. The mighty core he used to be, before earning resurrection as a man. They’d fused as one, and it made him look scary.

Maybe that was how it was. Just like how remnants of my human self sometimes mixed with my core, perhaps parts of Bolon’s core self sometimes took hold. And at the peak of his powers, Bolton had been a core to fear.

He carried on. “At the same time that core sickness began to spread through villages, people in the far north had begun to advance their own civilizations. They were entering a new age. They didn’t just have to focus on surviving one year to the next, and instead could explore Xynnar. So, heading deeper and deeper south, they began to get close to the core lands.”

I could tell Ray wanted to speak, but he said nothing. He was actually scared of Bolton.

Bolton paced. “The cores, ravaged by sickness, had a choice. Did they wait and see whether the people from the north were hostile, and risk getting attacked when their numbers were lowest? Or did they launch a preemptive strike?”

“Lies!” thundered Ray.

Seemed that he couldn’t help himself. He shook on his pedestal. I was certain he was trying to summon something. I could feel it in the air. I could also feel that he was too weak and that he didn’t have enough essence.

“Settle down, Ray,” said Bolton. “Don’t show Beno a mirror and tell him the reflection is false. If you wanted to show him the past, at least make it the true one. The cores slaughtered thousands of people in their preemptive strike. And in the end, they still lost.”

“Lost? It was not a game,” said Ray.

“The second part of the vision is also true, Beno. Where we saw their villages being destroyed. Ray has shown you the beginning and the end of the tale. But the context lies in the middle. The cores slaughtered thousands of people, provoked a war, and ensured their own destruction. All based on a hypothetical threat.”

“Those people were monsters,” said Ray. “They unforged some of us. Learned the secrets of our bodies. Used them to forge their own people into cores!”

I felt a shudder run through me. I knew that Ray wasn’t lying about this part. After all, what was I? A bloke who died and then got his soul thrown into a gemstone.

“That happened to me,” I said. “After I died. The academy forged my soul into a core.”

“No, Beno,” said Ray.

“Look at me, Ray! What the bloody hell do you think I am? How can you say I’m not a core?”

“I do not doubt that you are a core. I am ancient, but I am not blind. I just doubt that you were ever a man.”

“What?”

“You have always been one of us, Beno. When we knew that losing our war was inevitable, some of us fled. We went underground. We went to places nobody would look. Some of us were discovered straight away, but others chose their hiding places wisely. Some cores made themselves dormant, so as not to give off any trace of our energies. You were one of those, Beno.”

“No. I was a man. I died, and then the Dungeon Core Academy forged me into a core.”

“You were dormant, Beno. The academy found you, as they do. They have people all over Xynnar digging into forgotten places, exploring the unexplorable, in the hopes of finding an ancient core.”

“You’re telling me the whole academy story is bullshit? That none of us were resurrected? We were…dug up, like fossils?”

“No,” said Bolton, before Ray could speak. “That’s not the case. The academy truly does resurrect people and forge their souls into cores. Another part of Ray’s story was accurate; we learned this secret from the ancient cores.”

“Fine. If that’s true, then how would you even know what I am? How would you know that I’m an ancient core, Ray? I look just like any other core.”

“I could sense you,” said Ray. “The second you entered my dungeon, I knew that a fellow ancient one was among us.”

“Bolton? Is that true?”

Bolton looked at me for the longest time.

Memories hit me then.

About how I’d always felt different to the other cores in the academy.

How certain things just came quicker to me than most cores. I was the first in my class to conjure a kobold out of essence. The first to